Monthly Archives: March 2012

March 16, 2012 · 8:43 am

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 · 9:32 am

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 · 8:20 am

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 · 2:53 pm

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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