OK, so the other day, I was just going to start posting less often without explanation. I figured that would be a better move than announcing I want to try to write a book, because what if I don’t write a book? Or what if I do write a book, but nothing ever comes of it?
Humiliating.
With no offense to all of the people who self-publish their material, I am not inclined to self-publish anything. I can self-publish right here on this blog. Click.
So if I write this book and no one wants to publish it, it will likely just start showing up here as blog posts.
YAY! I am published! Ahem.
No offense, self-published people.
Anyway.
Speaking of “No offense,” Maj is enamored of this phrase lately. She loves its ability to excuse what is clearly meant to be an insult. Maj tosses out casual insults all the time, and so this phrase has come in very handy.
Maj was bitching the other day about the fact that Kallan had two extra days off of school a few weeks ago. Now that the girls attend different schools, their schedules do not always match up. Maj is fine when this works to her advantage, but she is less pleased when it does not.
I grow tired of listening to her pointless anger, “Fine, Maj. Stay home from school today. You’re right. It’s not fair, and you cannot be expected to go about your life with this unfairness gnawing away at your every thought.”
Maj stops mid-rant, “What?”
“Stay home. I’ll call the school and explain about how the world revolves around you and how you have to stay home to ensure that it continues to spin in fair and proper Maj orbit.”
Maj considers, “What would we do if I stayed home?”
I smile and walk over to hug her close, “What would we do? We would spend the whole day in joyful mother-daughter bonding! That’s what we would do!”
Maj fights to free herself from my embrace, “Why must you insist on hugging me, Mother? I have discussed the no-hug policy with you on many occasions.”
I hold her tight, “Joyful mother-daughter bonding involves hugging, Maj. Lots of hugging. Plus smooching.” I kiss her noisily on the forehead.
Maj goes limp in my arms and slithers to the floor in a boneless heap, “AUGH! Tell me that you did not just kiss me on the forehead with your slobbery lips! Now I have to sanitize my whole head! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT KISSING ME, MOTHER? WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE MAJ?”
I stand over her and giggle, “Let’s see . . . what do I know about the Maj? I know that the Maj’s need to sanitize her head after someone kisses her is going to be tricky to explain to a future boyfriend.”
“ACK ACK ACK ACK! Stop talking that way, Mother!”
“Ooooh . . . know what else? If you stay home today, we could hug and we could smooch and we could talk about menstruation again! That would be awesome, right? I could show you how the adhesive-backed pads work. They’re tricky, but you’ll master it after we practice a bit. Maybe we could go buy you some period underwear. Ooooh . . . and bras! We could buy you some bras! This is going to be great!”
Maj pulls herself to kneeling and pretends to vomit horrifically.
The gasping and the retching and the gagging go on for a bit, and then she pauses and looks up at me, “That’s what I think of your mother-daughter bonding.” She stands and straightens her clothing, reaches for the hand sanitizer and smears some on her forehead to kill the contamination my kiss might have left. She convulses in one last fake-barf, and then collects herself, “No offense, Mother.”
Off she went to school.
So anyway, I was going to just start posting less frequently without explanation.
Because who wants to deal with all the well-meaning people who keep asking how the book is going? What if it turns out the book goes nowhere? What if it turns out I never get past the first chapter? What if people keep asking me how the book is going until I am driven insane and then fly into a murderous amuckous unpublishable rampage and slaughter all of the moms in my neighborhood who wear camel-toed black yoga pants?
What? They are asking for it.
So I was going to just start posting less frequently without explanation, but then Mark said, “Everyone is going to think you have cancer.”
Wait . . . what?
He laughed, “You just posted the other day about mortality and getting older. You wrote about being scared of getting sick. You just posted about needing to go in for a physical and for a pap smear and a mammogram. If you cut back on posting just a few days later without explanation, everyone is going to think you have cancer.”
Damn it.
Mark continued, “You think the thought of having people ask how the book is coming is annoying? Imagine when they all think you have cancer.”
Damn it.
Oooh . . . speaking of cancer . . . I got a mammogram the other day.
Mark surprised me by rearranging his schedule so that he could come with me, and he was later rewarded handsomely for this lovely gesture, but that’s beside the point.
Ahem.
So I go in for the mammogram, and when I am done, the smiling X-Ray technician offers me a small glassine bag, “Here. It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so we have a little goody bag for you.”
Is that not the most incredibly stupid thing ever?
A goody bag for Breast Cancer Awareness Month?
So I am standing there, vaguely troubled by this goody-bag offering . . . It feels like I am leaving a party at which my boobs have played the role of piñatas.
Squeezable piñatas.
OK, that image makes no sense, but that’s what pops into my head as the technician extends the goody bag to me, and so then I think, “Maybe there is candy in this bag!”
Yay!
Boobs equal candy! What a great idea!
So I take the goody bag.
My boobs are the worst piñatas ever, people.
Inside the goody bag are the following items . . .
A single wrapped breath mint, and by “single” I mean one tiny piece of candy that is not actually candy but instead a minty camouflage of one’s nervous, “getting half-naked in front of strangers and having those strangers smash your boobs and take pictures of your boobs and possibly find cancer in your boobs” bad breath.
So I eat that breath mint as I examine the other items in the bag.
A tiny notepad of Post-its . . . 20 sheets in total (and yes, I did count). I contemplate this number for a minute, because it suggests a rather pessimistic viewpoint regarding mammograms and breast cancer. I imagine some motherfucker in marketing somewhere saying, “Twenty Post-its should do it; most of these women are going to be dead before they need to remind themselves of twenty things that need doing.”
On each Post-it, the words “Live, Love, Believe in the Cure” are printed around a small pink dancing stick-figure woman. It does not escape my attention that this dancing woman has no boobs. Or hair, for that matter. The same gleeful dancing bald boobless woman appears on the side of an accompanying pink pen.
I make a mental note to use the pen to add tiny boobs to each of the Post-it pad images.
I do not make an actual note, because I do not want to waste a Post-it.
There is one final item in the goody bag. It’s pink and plastic, and it has the name of the hospital printed on the side. No dancing boobless lady. No words of optimism. It looks for all the world like a small pink pocket-knife with four folding blades. I hold it in my hand and examine it as I walk to where Mark waits for me, “Look, babe! Look what they gave me! A pocketknife! This will come in handy if I have to do an at-home breast biopsy!”
The X-ray technician does not find me amusing at all.
At all.
But Mark giggles.
Love that man.
I work to unfold the blades of the knife which turns out not to be a knife at all. It is instead a small set of folding emery files. A handy manicure tool!
Huh.
My personal takeaway message from this goody bag is that when one has cancer, it is best if one does not annoy people with further unpleasantness.
So . . .
Listen up, boobless chemo-balded woman . . .
Cancer is not an excuse to neglect personal grooming.
Freshen that breath!
Neaten those nails!
Make a note!
No offense.
