Thursday, September 30, 2010

Flashdance Mess Your Pants

"I really don't think I need buns of steel. 
I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon."
  ~Ellen DeGeneres~
If you've ever seen me, you know at first glance that physically, I'm built for pleasure, not for speed.  In other words I have lots of, well, let's just call them soft spots. Despite my natural propensity for food, wine, merry-making and what I'm sure boils down to having blue blood from a past life somewhere in my all-Canadian veins, I do manage to get out to the gym a few times a week.

This may seem like an unrelated bit of information, but trust me it becomes important later in this blog post.  I also like to bake. Each week I bake on Sunday night or Monday night.  It's my child's choice, and ironically this week the request was for raisin bran breakfast muffins.  Stick with me here folks.

As is reflective of my personality, I love to be surrounded by people provided they don't bother me, or are at the very least entertaining without making an effort.  Fitness class allows this combination of social indulgence. Sweating and losing my breath is a very private pursuit, best shared at a distance if it's not brought on by multiple glasses of wine and masculine charm.  Before the classes start, there's a bit of chatting, and at the end of class, we all dissolve away home and leave our acquaintance at that.

I've just been back to the gym for a week.  I let it lapse during the summer so I could accommodate my child's busy sport schedule...that and I'm a lush. So, tonight I was chatting up the woman who had the bad fortune of assuming her place directly behind me.  Right before the music started, we noted that yet another substitute instructor had been brought in, and my friend's last words were, "Trish, as long as I sweat, I'll be happy." 

Boy did she sweat. Tonight even the dorky squash players who hang out just outside of the women's fitness class sweat just watching our new sub.  She was a gristled up piece of Caucasian  protein the colour of brown shoe leather,  sporting chap-like wind pants.  There was no eye contact with anyone in the class, and it was clear she had heard her calling from the creator to punish us all into the same state of gristleyness.

Before I go to the gym, I make myself as ugly as possible. Well, not intentionally, it just works out that way. I'm hopelessly clumsy, so all jewelry comes off except for the rings that remain on because they're premenstrually attached to my fingers. I put my hair back with a giant elastic band, wash off my makeup, and dress in my spandex. 

There are lyrics to an Aaron Lines song that go, "...even when her hair's messed up and her make-up's gone, you can't hide beautiful".  Well, it's not quite like that when I go au naturel. I'm not hiding beautiful under my make-up and hair-do, I'm at the very least hiding homely if not downright frightening!  I get suspicious of anyone who can maintain eyeliner and lipstick and huge pieces of jewelry around their jugular while flailing around and sweating.  I'm convinced these people are secret aliens, somehow aligned to take over the human race along with pug dogs and persian cats.

Tonight when the music started, and the instructor started speaking, I almost laughed out loud. Clearly, CLEARLY, by the tempo of the music, and the shouting it was evident that she had mistaken this hi/low yoga class as bootcamp.   As we "LIFT(ed) LEFT!RIGHT!LEFT!RIGHT, WORK(ing) THAT BOOTY!!!", the reflections of shocked women stared back at me in the mirror.  I have a broad sense of humour that is often not shared in crisis by the people around me.  I couldn't help but laugh out loud. As my heart rate became dangerously high, I realized that I had an hour and a half of this to go and I'd better pace myself.  Collapsing on the floor in a fit of giggles was not going to be cool, or appreciated. As I lifted and kicked a la '80's style dancersize, I watched as my classmates looked as if they were going to either smack the instructor, or burst into tears.

When Miss Booty, who was wearing dangly earrings and pearls - Yes, that's right, pearls in a fitness class- called out, "Are you ready to really work it?!", I couldn't help but yelp back the expected, "WOO!!!". I was the only woo-hoo-er. If anyone had any energy or nerve enough to vary from the booty-camp regime, I'm sure they would have turned and glared at me. I was laughing at my own shock as much as at the evident horror of my innocent classmates.

As a teenager I often filled in for the fitness instructor who came to my little town to teach evening classes in the school gymnasium. I was 5'8" and barely 100lbs.  I could kick, jump, squat and move like the wind.  I was never going to be the unfit-35-year-old-tired-out-full-time-working-mom that I've turned into.  Tonight I was vaulted back to those days in the late 1980's/early 1990's as each song pumped itself out of the speakers. I'm not sure which song made me want to laugh more, the I'm-on-cocaine-120-beats-per-millisecond version of, "You Sexy Thing", or the same hyped up style of "La Bomba".  The moves matched the music.  A room full of spandexed chubbsters squatting and kicking like my mother and I used to do to Richard Simmons's "Sweating to the Oldies". 

About twenty minutes into the class three people, mopping their faces with their delicate little towels, left the room.  "KICK IT UP TO YOUR BOOTY!!!", the instructor barked into the mic.  Booty? Really?  There's nobody in here under 25! No one here uses that word in their regular vocabulary! Heck, at this stage of my life, the word "booty" is kinda porn-ish.  I relate more to pirate ship booty than to anything that I'm going to shake if you know what I mean.  I'm at an age where I really only want one man to check out my booty, and that's by flattering candlelight after he's had enough to drink to make the puckering smooth itself out.

We did cardio, arms, legs and were moving on to abs before yoga. I hadn't done some of those moves since I was a kid.  The last time anyone called the "bicycle" the bicycle, I'm sure I was in public school. Although, one brutal she-man-wanna-be-gym teacher that I had in high school may have made us do that, but I've blocked that trauma from my long-term memory. 

After the bicycle (and the traumatising memories that brought back) we were instructed to roll over and "swim". You know, lift your arms and legs and flail around like fish out of water.   I'm not sure whether I was horrified or relieved when my raisin bran breakfast muffin announced it's arrival in my colon.  I was praying there would be no applause for this arrival by any other part of my digestive tract.  So, as disappointed as I was to miss out on the entertainment of watching this woman take us back to the eighties and the reactions of my classmates, I decided to play it safe and waddle home with my aching muscles and bran filled booty.

I ache tonight. I actually feel like I've worked out, and I kind of hope this woman comes back to push me a little harder than usual.  I respect her. I am reconsidering my baking though.  Clearly I should just stick to cookies and and my other favourite gooey baked delights so it doesn't get in the way of my favourite hour and a half fitness class. I'm a genius. Pass the chocolate.





Saturday, September 25, 2010

The Grand Ole Opry

~Nostalgia is a file that removes
 the rough edges from the good old days.~


Doug Larson

There are some things we do because we get nostalgic for the happy times we remember from our childhoods; putting too much sage in our turkey stuffing, day trips to the country, making fruitcake at Christmas, or drinking ginger tea when you come down with a cold.
A few nights ago, just before I tucked myself in under my cuddly new duvet cover that reminds me of my grandma's guest room, I felt a little disconnected.  I was reaching back into my past for a little comfort, maybe for a touchstone, like those hugs from my grandma that I haven't had in so very long.  Sometimes I pull out old photos, or let old memories ramble around, but I was a bit restless, so I popped in an DVD that my newfie neighbours gave to me.  It was one in a series of a bazillion Grand Ole Opry Classiscs videos. This collection of videos was the "Legends" DVD.   Granted most of the performances happened way before I was born; Faron Young singing Hello Walls, Ernest Tubb croaking out Waltz Across Texas and Dolly Parton with her Coat of Many Colours.

Not only was I raised with no other choice but to occasionally have to watch the Grand Ole Opry on the weekends, but I was also exposed to Hank Williams via the neighbour's vinyl record collection that would twang through his open bedroom window. My family owned a Box Car Willie album that would find it's way to the turntable every now and again, and I would shout out the lyrics at the top of my little-kid-lungs.

It was kind of fitting that on the day I went to Tennessee to scatter my grandma's ashes, I ended up, by complete surprise at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, watching the curtains rise and fall as the performances were broadcast out into the living rooms of little jammie-wearing-girls watching the Grand Ole Opry the very same way that I did twenty five years before that. There, in the flesh, was Whispering Bill and Little Jimmy Dickens.  I almost cried, and my best friend did cry when Charlie Pride came out on stage and sang his classics, "Crystal Chandelier" and "Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger". To make a very long story short, we were flown to Nashville instead of Knoxville, our original destination, and when in Nashville, well......

The next day at Tower Records, Kitty Wells came out and played her guitar, singing "Honky Tonk Angels" within a few feet of where I was standing.  We bought straw hats, hit the wild horse saloon, and two country-turned-city-girls kicked up our heels and had a romping-good-honky-tonk-time.

Snuggled in the other night, as I watched Patsy Cline sing "Crazy" all of these memories came back to tuck me in to bed.  Patsy would have made one heck of a Jazz singer!  A short-haired and unrecognizable Willie Nelson (who, I must confess I've secretly always been in love with my entire adult life and own his jazz and reggae albums), sang a medley including, "Funny How Time Slips Away", "Night Life" and "Crazy". Until that night, I did not know that he wrote that song.  I guess it goes to show you that being nostalgic and going back in time can teach you a few things. 

Johnny Cash, head too big, and legs way too skinny, sang "Ring of Fire", and no matter how much I try not to think of it I always think of that darn Preparation H commercial. What a shame. Roseanne Cash, his new bride was singing back up and both of the m were glowing. Youth is truly wasted on the young isn't it?

All of the old country stars that performed, standing simply by a microphone, or perhaps with a band or some people sitting on hay bales in the background, simply sang. They weren't dressed in meat bikinis, or made up like Disney characters. They just came out and sang, and boy oh boy could they sing.

A fresh, young, beautiful Loretta Lynn came out in a tie-dyed dress and sang "Coal Miner's Daughter". Under my snugly duvet, I remembered going to the drive in as a wee little kid, stretched out in the back seat, bored to death and  falling asleep while my parents watched the movie on the big screen. 

As the singers made their way across the Grand Ole Opry stage, I thought of the country community dances that may or may not still happen way out there away from the city where I live. You didn't tart yourself up in "club clothes", pushing your boobs out and wearing dangerously high stilettos like we do now.  You had your dinner at home and maybe the neighbours and their kids came over for a cocktail before the dance.  Everyone dressed in heir best casual clothes and went out to meet almost everyone else in town to enjoy the evening. Farmer's, factory workers, small business owners...Everyone got together in the town of Thomas Edison's birth place, at the little community hall, the same one where everyone had their wedding receptions.

 As a child you played with your classmates, giggled, danced and ate and drank.  That's where you learned to dance, with your sister, your brother, your great uncle who dragged you around the floor like an ill-coordinated robot trying to do the two-step. You danced with your neighbours, your cousins, your mom, your dad.  You skidded across the dance floor after they sprinkled the pebbly wax that made it slippery, and laughed until it hurt when the first couple went for a tumble.

Tonight I'd like to be out there with all of my friends. Dressed in jeans, sipping  vodka and orange juice ('cause that's what country girls drank...ok, maybe just this one because the smell of whiskey makes me gag), and cutting up a rug to some good old fashioned country music.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Robert Plant Made My Top Ten List

`Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.`
Plato
Not that I've ever really considered a top ten list. Well, not since my basement apartment, university days with my best pal and roommate who endlessly philosophized with me.

After listening to his latest collection, "Band of Joy", I figure if I did have a top ten list, Robbie would make it. After all, any talented man is sexy right? After really pondering, I think I realistically only have a top five list after all - but that's a blog for another time.

I grew up with the likes of Paul Young, Simply Red and Boy George as musical-male influences. Led Zeppelin was something that the boys who hung out in the pool hall listened to while I was busy climbing up the stool to the penny candy counter in the 1980's. When kids my age graduated to basement parties with bootlegged tequila and home-rolled and homeg-rown ( I grew up in tobacco country) cigarettes, we were introduced to classics like Meatloaf, Lynard Skinnard and Steve Miller. Great music to take your first salty gulp of cheap tequila to and burn your lungs with your first, unfiltered deeply inhaled breath of freshly cured tobacco.

It is with this memory in my not so sub-conscience that I listened to Mr. Plant's new collection of music.  This and the memory of a great summer, open air concert a couple of years ago featuring Robert Plant, Allison Krauss, and the company of one of my best friends in the world.  Fast forward to a front row seat as a first introduction to the emotionally stoked music of Richard Thompson.

Mr. Thompson gets credit for the second song on the CD, "House of Cards". As the melody and the guitar strain in the first seconds, you fully expect Mr. Plant to break out into his Zepplinesque half-ecstasy, half-agony, melodic, scream. Instead, Mr. Plant mesmerizingly carries a uniform, controlled longing throughout the song.  

Central Two-O-Nine. Can you say blue grass, O Brother Where Art Thou?  You get the picture; "Let me hear that whistle blow/Take me back to my baby's door." Twang, twang, delightful Plant twang.

Silver Rider is haunting. The Chameleon like Plant could be a dead ringer for Robbie Roberston here with a few tweaks.  The harmony with Patty Griffen could easily be a dropped track from his 2007 collaboration with Krauss. Oil and water meet with music as the emulsifier That, and that can't-quite-put-your-finger-on-it bit of breathless lust that Plant manages to smuggle into every tune.

You Can't Buy My Love and Falling in Love Again....pretty much sum up my emotions at present about my love life. Bath soaked and beer quenched it makes me want either A - my baby back, or B - another beer. A rock 'n Roll beat to, " You can give me money, diamonds and pearls/But you can't buy my love for no money in the world."  Bop diddly do, do, do!!! I'll take option B thanks. These two songs will make you hold your head up high, walk away, and fall back in love again one right after the other. Oh, sing it Robbie my troubadour of lovin'.

Can't Buy Me Love and Cindy I'll Marry You Someday are again very much reminiscent of Plant's work with Krauss. Twangy, built lyrically and harmonically for a duet. Maybe I just wanted to, but I could almost hear Richard Thompson wrapping Cindy I'll Marry You Someday around his silken-taffy tongue, but then again Lyle Lovett could also do the tune some justice. Go figure.

The Only Sound that Matters - give this one to U2, and Bono could take it to the mainstream. Not because Bono could sing it better, just because he's more marketable to the mass MTV public.

When I read the first two lines of Monkey, "Oh my my, little white lie/I swear I'm gonna make it right this time",  I decided that perhaps I should call my therapist.  How many times have we been someone's little white lie girls? Can't tell my mother. Can't tell my sister. Can't tell my...wife!!! I loved Monkey just for the lyrics.

I had to flip to the CD pocket booklet to see if Harm's Swift Way was a little treat from Mr. Bob Dylan, but surprise, surprise....a little treat from Townes Van Zandt.  Check out the soundtrack to Crazy Heart (one of the best movies I've watched this year), track 12 - If I Needed You. What a beautiful song and statement of true friendship.  With Van Zandt's  Harm's Swift Way, as much as I love Mr. Plant's voice, and the visual I get of him hovering over the microphone in his bad-ass-rocker way, I'd love to hear Dob Dylan croak this out.

The second last, Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down conjures images of cotton fields in the early nineteenth century deep south; an August-hot, deep-south-hell-fire-and-brimstone-Baptist-Sunday-though-shalt-not-burn-in-hell-if-you-sing-loud-enough-and-someone-faints service. This song makes you want to get up, clap your hands, praise God and pray for your neighbour. 

Finally Even This Shall Pass, the final track which could easily be set to a house/rave beat; "Life is done so what is death?/Then in answer to the king/Fell a sunbeam on his ring/Blinding light through fading grey./Even this shall pass away." Nihilistic or life affirming? You decide.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Book Burning, Gender Studies & Canadian Politics

Tommy Douglas
~Two races share today the soil of Canada.
These people had not always been friends.
But I hasten to say it. There is no longer
any family here but the human family.
 It matters not the language people speak,
or the altars at which they kneel.~


Wilfrid Laurier
First things first. You need to know, dear reader, that I have a lot to say in this blog entry. If you get confused, or my writing is too passionate to understand, let me summarize;

1) - Book Burning can be ignorant and inspiring all at the same time
2) - Some people should either be given space to write a properly thought out column in the Globe and Mail, or not be  published at all
3) - Canadians need to get off their bacon-fat, maple-syrupy rumps and vote not for the status quo, but for what is right (you know right - located precisely deep down in that hollow space somewhere between your stomach and transverse colon).

I have this terrible habit of having conversations with my colleague's while leaning on their door frames, my arms and legs casually crossed.  As annoying as my posture must be, when I'm standing like that, often with a cup of tea in hand, I'm paying that colleague a great compliment. My body language is saying, "Tell me more."

Monday morning I had one such conversation with the chaplain who is fortunate enough to have her office located just next to my own. I'm sure you can imagine her unbridled joy at my constant, verbal run-off. We had a great conversation about our weekends (ok, my weekend), baking, films, art, and finally, the hot topic of the week, especially for students of religious studies; the proposed Koran burning in Florida. 

Florida says it all folks. In my opinion the iconic state of overindulgence, consumerism and all things lacking significant thought. Please note the overwhelming presence there of men sporting white pants and white loafers. Ignorant arrogance flaunted in it's highest form. Enough said.

Our Monday morning conversation, and the conversations that I shared during the weekend evolved into conversations about what it means to be Canadian.  The conversations were not so much about Terry Jones the book burning nutso, but what ding-dongs like him can inspire in us - the democratic voting public. I believe if we separate the emotion of religion from the logic of politics, our political conversations can be inspiring and dare I say futuristically ground breaking. 

Historically our great country is in that awkward stage akin to puberty. We've been around long enough to have our own ideas, but we're hesitant to give up the safety of our tested and true politics. Thats exactly what we need to do in order to break away enough to craft the political future of our dreams. It's often the zealots like Jones who say out loud what the bubba's of our nation are silently thinking. In this case it has inspired anyone with a stitch of logical thought to speak up and out. Sometimes we need the Terry Jones's to irritate our apathetic selves into action.

Since I've been old enough to vote, our politicians have done a great job of just pushing the envelope enough to cheese us off, but not enough for our courteous and apathetic nation of voters to protest. No wonder the number of people inspired to come out of their nice cozy-wozy over-priced, over-sized, over-mortgaged homes is plummeting like a paper plane in detention room.  Canada has always been blah blue or retisent red. Liberal or Conservative - go ahead, live on the edge, flip a coin.  Face it -we're stuck.

Currently Canada is poised on the global high diving board with an opportunity to either dazzle everyone, or make a big, humiliating splash.

You all know by now that I love my Saturday Globe and Mail. I start light in the Life Style section and work my way into the heavier, more thought provoking Cover and Focus sections.  One column that I generally skip is Leah McLaren's.  This week her column, "Man, don't feel like a womyn", held my attention until the very end.

I, like McLaren also attended university when women's studies were not just trendy, but a mandatory part of most liberal arts credits.  In the end, McLaren gives a piece of advice that students should, "Steer clear of trendy men's studies courses and stick with the classics. You'll learn more about men and women in one Shakespearean sonnet than you will in a whole feminist-theory program put together." 

Upon graduation I vowed I would never again use the phrase "patriarchal society", but I also carried with me a vision for the future that included considering all points of view. 

Skip to F3....Drew Hayden Taylor's column, "If you really must torch scriptures, why not start with the Bible?", and Stephen Marche's, "When words go up in flames".  Both writers comment about the proposed Koran burning which was inspired by the proposal to build a mosque near ground zero in New York city. 

Skip McLaren and Hayden. Unless the Globe gives McLaren more space to expound on why we don't need men's studies (like for instance we've been studying history written by men for the last, oh, say, 3 000 years), it's not worth the read. This subject deserves way more discussion, and even that snarky little bit I just put in parenthesis can be argued based on the effect of the women's movement during the past century.

And pul-eaze,  Tayor's further example of taking two religions and pitting them against one another like Ali and Foreman takes us back to the Kindergarten of our existence as a civilization here in the western world. Note here that this is not a comment on the state of aboriginal affairs - it's a statement saying we're in way deeper than figuring out how to separate two bullies on the schoolyard. We have a brawl here people. We need more sophisticated systems for peaceable, equal living. Burying our heads in the classics as McLaren suggests or pitting two out of countless viewpoints against another are poorly thought out solutions to any problem.

Pitting one thing against another, in this case Christianity and Islam, or Christianity and Native Spirituality only inflates the ego of the other.  What I'm suggesting is a more inclusive discussion about how,as Canadians we are going to maintain the political stability of secular politics as our population changes to include more and more new citizens from politically less stable countries.

What I suggest as a first step is that in a very un-Canadian way we wallow in the pride we've worked hard for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not waving a flag in pride over the Japanese interment, the horror of our history for Native Americans, or the type of what I like to call, "cock-rubbing" politics we've allowed our parliament to fall into (watch any debate in our legislatures).  I'm talking about taking pride in being able to speak freely, build a church or mosque, or temple, or sweat lodge without fear someone's going to take our lives for our faith. We need to take a more obvious pride in the health care provision that's quietly being taken away from us like a toddler being weened from their blankie and give a big yank back on that blankie.

Listening to City of Toronto mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi talk about his tunnel/traffic idea, I have a feeling we're in for a big disappointment during the next set of elections.  It's our opportunity. We either dream big now, beyond the centuries old automobile and tunnels to an effective, green-clean-mass-transit-future or get gobbled up in the big compost pile of global, "cock-rubbing", wag-the-dog, Charlie-Wilson's-War, you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours politics. 

We don't need liberals or conservatives, bloc-quebecois, or even the I-went-out-of-date-in-the-eighties, waffling NDP party.  We need Gandhi's and Mandela's, and maybe even a great Canadian Tommy Douglas again. Stand up. Be proud, and whatever you do, don't fall for this fear-mongering "throw-your-vote-away" crap.  Vote like you're in your grade 12 social issues class. Vote from that space deep down just between your stomach and your transverse colon.

Monday, September 06, 2010

Jock Shopping & Crepey Skin

Holiday time is wonderful. You pack your bags, and jet set somewhere fantasy-like, relaxing into a completely different world. OR - you decide to stay at home, get yourself organized and have pieces of your flesh poked and prodded at during your annual check ups. Guess which option I chose this year?

Although I did not whisk myself away somewhere like France or Venezuela, I certainly did learn a few things, and, get this miss-martha-homemakers, I've organized all of my cupboards. I know, you're jealous.  I managed to preserve my tomatoes for the year, make blueberry jam, pickle some beets and make my Grandmother's chili sauce.  That in itself makes me happy. The pop-pop-popping of homemade yummies makes me smile. 

Between back-to-school shopping, embroidering until I gave myself tendinitis,going to the Canadian National Exhibition and preserving everything I could get my hands on ( I still want to make some salsa too!), my son's baseball team made it to the provincial playoffs.  Between games and practices, we still had time to do some shopping and spend some quality time together.

~We don't have big old Gothic
 cathedrals like they do in Europe.
 But we got baseball parks.~


Jimmy Buffett

THE SHOCK DOCTOR

Now, my son is your average boy. Except of course he's mine. That makes him the best kiddo in the world in my eyes, regardless of stinky socks, the occasional bad attitude, and thinking the living room his a very large clothes hamper for whatever he decides to peel off before flopping on the couch just before bed time.  Being an average boy, he lets me know he needs new stuff way past the expiry date of said stuff. His batting gloves look like the lollipop guild blew a hole in them.  Only after throwing the gloves out and getting blisters did he decide to tell me he might need a new pair. Since he's played so hard all year, I decided to take him for some new gloves before he competed in the last tournament of the year for the provincial championship. 

Off we went to the local sporting goods store.  This was going to be a guerrilla raid on the batting glove section. A simple in and out attack on the target item. We made a bee line for the baseball section. I spotted the gloves.  "Ok, honey," I said, "Here you go.  Which ones would you like?".  "Mom," my son said as he rolled his eyes heavenward, "these are girls gloves. Geez." "Oh. Well where are the boys gloves." I asked, looking around, not seeing any other batting gloves in the area. "Mom, I'm in a men's large glove. Geeeeeeez." my angelic son said, pointing in the direction of a very tall display of men's batting gloves that looked alarmingly like part of a spiderman costume.

Ok, so we were already taking slightly longer than I had hoped. I had some groceries in the car that I wanted to get home and into the fridge as soon as possible. Alright, there we were in front of the men's batting gloves. My son tried on this pair of spidy gloves, and gave that sound that mother's around the world know as, "I just have to have this".  His big brown baby boy eyes looked into my big blue mommy eyes just like the day he was born and he said, "Oooooh. These feel so good. They're not like my other ones. These ones are really nice." SOLD.

After a conversation with a male friend of mine, I decided to venture where no mother should in conversation with her son.  "Honey, how does your jock fit?", I said nonchalantly.  "Good." was my son's response. "Does it slide around or pinch anywhere, " I asked, just trying to make sure he was comfortable out there on the field.  "MOM! It's fine!" he said, looking around to make sure no one was within earshot.  I, by the sheer grace of God, just happened to walk by the jock display on the end of one of the rows.  I picked a package off the rack, and turned it over in my hands inquisitively. I had never had to wear one of these things. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I was sure this gel-grip, "Shock Doctor" brand thingy looked a heck of a lot more comfortable than the giant plastic cup he was currently sporting. Drill a few holes in that thing, and I could strain vegetables in it.

Anyway, my curiosity and silence encouraged some interest from Mr. Mommy's boy, and he snatched it out of my hands. "Hmm. This looks like it might be more comfortable," he said. That was my queue.  Just like Houdini, I had that jock out and the waistband of the strap held up to my son's waist. "Mom!!!! MOM!!! You don't do that!!!", my son hissed at me while he did the fighter-pilot-split-second-chick-check to make sure no one, including the great almighty had seen me hold a jock strap up to his body for sizing.  He snatched it like he was naked and our eyes locked.  "Look. You're my one chance at having grandkids, and I don't want those things being knocked around, so stand still and let me make sure the waistband fits properly", I said, never letting go of the jockstrap or losing eye contact. We remained frozen like that for what seemed like hours until finally my son surrendered.  He knew if he wanted the better fitting fancy gel-jock that he'd have to compromise.  Let's just say I had to do some creative size matching to get a teen jock and  men's waist size. Some poor man out there is going to go home with a giant banana hammock and an eensy-weensy teen waistband and I might stand a chance at becoming a grandma one day.

So, there we were, forty dollars down for the new gloves, and twenty bucks later for the "Shock Doctor". A well spent twenty dollars in my opinion.  Then there was the, "Oh look mom! Cleats are on sale!"....we've seen a two and a half size increase in the past year. A hundred and forty dollars later we left the store. One well turned out kid for baseball, and a mom with new runners picked out by her darling boy.

~"All the beauty of the world,
 'tis but skin deep."~


Ralph Venning

THE SKIN DOCTOR

The day after my son's successful baseball shopping expedition, we headed into the city for one of two rather anxiety inducing doctor's appointments.  Off we went to the dermatologists. As you can imagine my junior sidekick was thrilled to be wasting a couple of hours doing this instead of playing in the pool with is buddies.  "Bring a book," I quipped as I put my cell phone in my purse and double checked the address.  I didn't have to turn my head, I could almost sense the eye-rolling going on as he tied his shoes.

Off we went. Traffic was great. Parking was less great.  The reception staff even less great still. Anyway, I filled out the first page of my health history, and flipped to the second one which had a very large illustration of a face taking up over three quarters of the page. "Please point out areas of your appearance that you are dissatisfied with." the form read. What on earth?! Should I just circle the whole thing, or request a psychiatrist?  Was I supposed to be unhappy with my face, because up until that point, I was ok with it. Long ago I had come to the realization that not only would may face not make the cover of Vogue this century, but neither would my body. I looked again. The diagram was remarkably like the anatomical drawing on the back of an embalming form where the embalmer marks the procedure,except this was just a face. I looked around.  Was I in the right place? 

The sign just over the reception area read "Dermatology and Cosmetic blah, blah, blah......"oh for the love of pie! I was in some kind of cosmetic surgery office.  I was here to get some spots checked, not to be spot checked, or liposuctioned, or made to feel I needed a nip here and a couple of tucks there. Although.....now that I got to thinking about it, what would it matter if I took a look at the price lists? I mean just out of curiosity of course. Besides, I was early, and the gently cascading water wall was getting me pretty relaxed.

Before I could decide which parts of my body were the most evil, and negotiate the price list, I was ushered beyond the smoky glass door into  an examining room.  To my left, on the desk next to my chair was a book with a page opened to show before and after photos of skin pigmentation treatments. I couldn't help it. As grossed out as I get looking at weird skin afflictions (and trust me this was my one ooga-booga about embalming, ok,one of two ooga-booga's), I had to pick up the book and keep turning the pages.

So, I thanked God that I didn't have any weird skin colour blotches happening. That was good. I kept flipping. "Fat Reduction", was the next section. Ok, this I could relate to.  As I flipped the pages, there were photos of women's thighs, you know, the outside saddle-bag situation.  Then there were photos of women's butt sag in the back. Frankly, the before and after pictures didn't really make me think that the pain of the procedure would be worth it.  Although, I would be more likely, I decided, to have my butt fat removed than my outer thigh.  "Hair Removal" followed fat reduction.  Ok, ladies, let's face it, we all have that stray here or there we pluck and have vowed our girlfriends to plucking should we ever become disabled in such a way not to be able to.  I have never seen a man as hairy as they had in these photos. The hair on his back was long enough to brush, and the hair lines perfectly symmetrical on both sides.  It took me back to grade nine biology class when you learn about mitosis. Boy, whatever that dude paid to have the hair removed from his back was worth it. Poor man.  There was "Flaw Removal"....you go ahead and interpret that. I wanted to ask if that included transplanting a bad attitude as well because I had a special someone in mind if that was the case. 

The one that got me was the section labelled "Crepey Skin", which I, in my great academic wisdom read at first as "Creepy Skin". I was so weirded out by the title that I could barely work up the courage to turn to the photos.  Go ahead look up the word crepe...you get two definitions; the french breakfast pancake, or the material.  Ewwww.....I think I'd rather have skin like the pancake than a crepe skirt. ANYWAY...it was a section basically about having facelifts to alleviate the appearance of wrinkles. Just say wrinkles for goodness sake!  Ironically, the idea of lifting my skin, getting rid of my laugh lines and making my eyes look more lively appeals to me. But then again, I've worked really hard for this crepey skin.

Interesting. My first cosmetic surgery catalogue.  I was just finished flipping through the catalogue of procedures when my doctor walked in.  She was a soft spoken woman around....well, I couldn't even begin to guess her age based on the eerie transformations that I'd seen in the professional catalogue.  Off came my clothes and on went the gown. I wasn't there for nipping, tucking or crepey skin, I was there for some other medical based concerns.  In true form, I looked down and realized I had my underwear on backwards...yep, that's my style.

Standing, and trying to maintain some crumb of modesty, I held my gown against my awkward undies. "Hmmm...", Dr. Crepey Skin said  as she poked my torso. " I don't like the look of this here," she said looking up at me. I looked down over the crumpled up paper gown that I was holding to my chest, "What?", I said, looking down and not seeing anything. "Right here, can't you see it," she said, poking me again in the concerning spot. I tugged up the crumpled gown and looked again.  I then, very ceremoniously lifted and then squished my right breast into the paper gown so I could see what she was poking at. "Oh." I said, realizing I haven't seen the skin under my breasts since I hit a D cup back in grade 5. "I'm going to have to take that out and send it for testing," she said. "Just stretch out on the table there, and I'll do it right here."

After some needles in my stomach, some creative scalpel work, and cauterizing, the questionable piece of my skin was placed in a little bottle to be sent away for testing. G-ross.

On the table, she examined my face, and I pointed out a little bump that had creeped up in the past few months. It was ugly, and it bothered me. I was secretly hoping she'd take that off too.  "Oh well," she said in a mildly concerned tone, "we'll have to wait and see what the results of this biopsy is," casually motioning to the little bottle on the desk.  "Just take it off", I said to her, figuring I didn't want to have to face another trip to her office. "It's not covered by OHIP. Just one is," She said. Of course it would be the one on my abdomen that no one but her would ever see that was covered by OHIP.  "I'd have to charge you to take that one off," she said, handing me a conveniently nearby price list. And so began my experience with cosmetic surgery. 

So, as I gingerly move about my daily business with an open and very tender wound on my tummy, I look in the mirror and see my face free of whatever that bump was, and imagine that little piece of my skin in a bottle out there somewhere like a Hallowe'en novelty. Crepey.Creepy.