March 16, 2012

Only skin deep

My husband’s umbilicus has a significant architectural disorder.

I just thought I’d get that out there.

The plan was to leave his health out of the blog—and all is well now—but he and I could not let a recent lab report go unlampooned.

Now that we know all is well, I can report that the first two months of the year here in Nymphland were focused on my husband’s diagnosis with a Stage 2 malignant melanoma on his left ear, for which he had surgery but for which, fortunately, no follow-up treatment was necessary.

During suture removal, a suspicious speckle was spotted inside his navel.

The good news came in by phone that this abdominal anomaly isn’t particularly worrisome, though he’ll be going in later today for a bit of surgical scraping and scooping, just to be on the safe side. Doctors warned him that his bellybutton could end up in a different place, which I’m imagining might be on his left shoulder or behind his right knee.

Yesterday we received the full pathology report of February’s “umbilicus punch biopsy,” which had my husband and me in stitches. So to speak.

You think you know a man after 29 years, then you learn he has an exaggeratedly reticulated epidermis. Furthermore, there are nests scattered in the vicinity of his periumbilical region. Where the rest of us store spare lint, he carries around a lentiginous dysplastic nevus, which “cannot be fully appreciated.”

The pathologist closed with: “Thank you for sending this most interesting case in review.”

Off I go this afternoon to take my husband downtown for his re-excision. May you have a Happy Nevus Appreciation Day.

Be honest: How many of you are checking out your own navels right now?

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March 10, 2012

Drawl come back now

Having written a fair number of executive briefing books in my career, it’s hard for me to resist drafting briefing notes for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as he faces important primaries in the South in a few days.

I trust he has taken a regimen of prophylactic Mylanta to secure his sensitive system from the plattersful of barbeque and hush puppies he’ll gobble along the campaign trails of Mississippi and Alabama this weekend.

He has already bragged about eating “a biscuit” and liking grits, believing this will endear him to Dixie delegates he seeks. At least he used grits, plural, after having professed his love of “sport” in Daytona, at the risk of defeating the purpose of yukking it up with the NASCAR crowd.

Romney boasted about having mastered “y’all,” as if contracting a second person plural were colloquial rocket science.

I informally canvassed cohorts in the southern states to learn what they might contribute to my fictitious briefing book. What terms must the candidate master to prove he’s southern-savvy?

One person cautioned Mr. Romney to stay far away from the Paula Deen method. Simply inserting extra syllables is only patronizing and insulting.

Some suggestions came in under what I believe is an erroneous assumption that good grammar doesn’t matter in the South:  ”We’re gonna win this thing, Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise” and “I need me some red eye gravy or my grits just ain’t right.” If Candidate Romney buys into these in next week’s primary elections, he might as well not come back for the general.

Some submissions I received were right out of the stereotypical Paula Deen phrase book: “I’m plumb tuckered out,” “I’m fixin’ too go down the road a piece” and “Oh my Lorward.” Most came from people who might delight in poor ol’ Mr. Romney’s taking bad advice.

When I sent out my solicitations yesterday, I was hoping to get a more esoteric glossary, containing a few of the words and phrases—actual, not stereotypical—I had to learn upon marrying into a Southern family. This page from my briefing book will help the southern gentleman from Massachusetts fit in with voters in Miss-sippi and Alabama without a single y’all.

Romney-speak:  I beg your pardon?
Translation:  Do what?

Romney:  When you enter the voting booth on Tuesday, be sure to press the button for Mitt Romney.
Translation:  When you enter the voting booth on Tuesday, be sure to mash the button for Mitt Romney.

Romney:  It appears that would be so.
Translation:  I reckon.

Romney:  In the debates, the other candidates and I took turns addressing the issues.
Translation:  In the debates, the other candidates and I took time about addressing the issues.

Romney:  I’m spending my own money, so put your checkbook away.
Translation:  I’m spending my own money, so put your checkbook up.

Ten thousand bucks you can come up with more?

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March 6, 2012

Kids spell the darndest things

It seems my parents and I sometimes lived on different planes, because I’ve told a number of stories here that neither one remembers. I’m betting this will be another.

Either way, a childhood memory sprung to mind yesterday when a friend shared that she overheard her little tike singing in the bathtub: “I’m sexy and I know it.”

She wondered if her child knew what exactly he was claiming and how she would respond if asked to define “sexy.”

Immediately I buckled myself in and zoomed back to 1967, when I used to do my second grade homework in my father’s office in our basement.

One day my parents took me down to the office and asked me about some writing on the wall beside the desk. Printed in pencil, in a column, was an indiscernible word, in several different spellings, such as:

secksapeel
ceksepele
zexipeal
setsapile

I don’t remember why I worked this exercise of mine on plaster rather than paper; perhaps I planned, once I figured it out, to go back and erase it. But I didn’t. And I was busted.

Defending my devilish actions in my little Catholic school uniform, I pointed out that I was simply trying to figure out how to spell a word. When I told them what it was, their faces showed a mix of shock and stifled amusement. They asked me where I had heard this word and why I was interested. It was a television commercial for something this seven-year-old, not the target demographic, found appealing.

Thank Heaven they didn’t make me go to confession.

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March 2, 2012

Inspiration

In a concert Mary Chapin Carpenter once introduced her song, “The Last Word,” as many songwriters do, by telling the audience what inspired her to write it. She observed that often writers are inspired by the beauty of nature or an overwhelming feeling of love. “I wrote this one,” she said, “because I was pissed off.”

Today, all mankind is on my nerves.

Years ago, a loved one made me laugh when she shouted, very seriously, “What is everybody’s problem?” Today I can relate. Surely it isn’t me. (I know, it’s I.)

The experts say that making a list can be a good first step in addressing the source of one’s anger. So here goes.

  1. When people who borrow my books write in them
  2. When texters walk in front of moving cars
  3. Rush Limbaugh
  4. Rush Limbaugh
  5. Rush Limbaugh
  6. When people expect the Earth to revolve around them
  7. When people over-post on Facebook
  8. When people spew venom on Facebook
  9. Facebook
  10. When The Washington Post doesn’t know who from whom
  11. Me, for over-consuming and under-producing — and getting pissed off.

Thanks. I feel better.

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February 22, 2012

Ashes, ashes

I started today a bit disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to attend Ash Wednesday services at our church. I had a plane to catch, so it just wasn’t possible.

As for many Christians, Ash Wednesday serves as a definitive and dramatic crossover into the contemplative season of Lent. The hour-long service at our church bathes me in an almost magical blend of prayer, music and liturgy that sends me back out into the world calm and unhurried and inspired for the next 40 days.

Before heading to the airport this morning,  I went online and tried to find an Ash Wednesday service—of any denomination—in my destination city. As best I could see, none of the churches in the area had services posted. I had no time to call any of them, so I acknowledged sadly that I’d have to sit it out this year.

Just after clearing security at National Airport’s Delta terminal at 10:55 a.m., an announcement sounded over the intercom that there would be an Ash Wednesday service in the airport chapel beginning at 11:00.

I didn’t have to board my flight until 11:25, so I exited the secure area and hightailed it to the chapel, tucked behind Dunkin’ Donuts.

I was the second worshiper to arrive and the only passenger; the rest of the 14-member congregation were airport employees and crew members.

Granted, it wasn’t the hour at St. Alban’s I had hoped for. Still, we recited Psalm 51, read two verses from Hebrews, heard a bit of Mark’s Gospel and sang along to a boom box blasting out “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” A swift imposition of ashes, and we were out in under 15 minutes. I went back through security, where the TSA agent spotted my ashes, scanned my ID and remarked how fitting that my name is Monica Bernadette. I was at the gate five minutes before boarding.

No, it wasn’t the hour of contemplative prayer and soothing Taizé music I might have enjoyed at my home church. But considering I had already written it off, the Ash-n-Dash was an unexpected blessing.

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February 18, 2012

Venus and Mars

This one goes out to the guys, but gals, pay attention; this may help you too.

My husband has decided to clean out his side of the medicine cabinet. In an act of kindness and generosity, today he offered to yield some real estate to me. He knows women need more space, but I know he wonders why.

Olay Micro Sculpting Serum

I’ve heard many a man bemoan the fact that his missus takes up disproportionate space in the bathroom and bedroom with her mysterious self maintenance gear. I know couples who have engaged in warfare, usually waged by an encroached-upon mister trying to reclaim his rightful flossing zone.

I maintain that the root of the decades-old gender conflict is a simple lack of understanding. And–unlike the self tanner we chickadees apply at the first sign of spring–it’s natural.

Is there any wonder? A random pluck from my own shelf surfaced “Night Recovery Cream.”

Perhaps men wouldn’t shake their heads and their fists at our products if they understood—in their terms—what each one was for.

For the educational benefit of the males, I’ve contemplated the contents of the Venus side of the cabinet—or tool shed—and tried to put them into a context a Martian might better appreciate:

pore minimizer spackle
foundation paint and primer in one
exfoliator sander
self tanner stain
hydrating body gloss shellac
lip liner painting tape
anti-gravity lift cream ceiling paint
Nair® weed killer
tweezers weed whacker
PedEgg™ lathe
foot smoothing cream foot smoothing cream. Would it kill you to use it?

Would anyone care to put on an addition?

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February 6, 2012

The whole truth

As the Super Bowl approached, someone suggested I write about the expression “the whole nine yards.” Why nine, she asked, when the football field is marked in 10-yard increments?

As with many word matters I research, there isn’t clear consensus on any one theory. Various opinion-holders each claim resolutely that the origin of “the whole nine yards” pertains to rounds of ammunition, the volume of a cement mixer, the cubic footage of a grave, the length of a bridal train or nine shipyards used during World War II. The one I’m going with referred to the Long Jump field event. So there we are; it’s not about football at all.

This got me thinking, though, about the whole ball of wax. No clear consensus on that one either. As best I can tell, “the whole ball of wax” has something to do with the way in which inherited property was once identified. Or it derives from “bailiwick.” You choose.

How about the whole enchilada? The whole shooting match? The whole shebang? What is a shebang, anyway?

I recently heard someone say, “That’s a whole different ball of wax.” Nothing like a good mixed metaphor to take us back to the ball game.

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