Wednesday, April 24, 2013

PUBLISHED @ HUMORPRESS.COM (MORE SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION)



Hair Of The Dog
By Linda L. Zern, Florida

My husband and I got rid of our kids the old fashioned way. We swaddled them, wiped them, smothered them, adored them, bossed them, and then firmly and finally kicked them out. They went. It was too late. We were addicted to the swaddling, wiping, smothering, adoring, and bossing. We were addicted to the caring—so we got a dog.

The dog arrived just as the kids escaped. She was free, adorable, and covered in hair. That dog and the fur coat she came wrapped in was proof positive that my husband and I had lost what little equilibrium we had managed to cobble together over the years. Just as our home had become clean, comfortable, and hypoallergenic, we filled it with a mammal that shed the equivalent of sixteen angora sweaters per lunar cycle. She’s a hair explosion. We adapted.

We started buying lint rollers in case lots from a start-up company in Indonesia. We qualified for the large quantity discount and the company Christmas card. Our account rep’s name is Omja; it’s a name that means, “born of cosmic unity.”

Last night my husband cracked open a new case of lint rollers and then pointed out that we were closing in on our thirty plus year wedding anniversary. He was trying to be romantic, but I got distracted by a tumbleweed of dog hair as it drifted languidly through the air in front of my nose. Waving a lint roller like a road flare, I expertly whipped floating fur from the air.

“Hold still,” he said, and with a flick of his wrist ran a lint roller down the back of my Winnie the Pooh pajamas.

I trembled and jumped a bit. It was hard to tell if the ‘old spark’ was still there, or I if was being electrocuted by a mix of sticky tape and static cling. Either way, I felt my innards flip-flop and my neck hair crackle.

“Sorry, I thought—you know—the shedding.” He gave me a half grin and a shrug. “There was dog hair on your . . . back parts.”

I watched a single hair drift and settle onto the top of his skull. Nodding, I rolled his head, noting how much white hair belonged exclusively to him now and not on the dog’s butt. Where had the time gone?

Climbing into bed, my husband lint-rolled his pillow and then mine, while I ran a lint roller across the part of the bedspread that catches our chin drool. In tandem, we ripped fur clogged sticky strips free from our matching rollers, wadded them into clingy balls, and tossed the wads over our shoulders.

“Honey, have I told you that the last thirty plus years have been,” I said, pausing, as another errant tuft of fur floated by, “a thousand kinds of fun.” I watched it settle and then drift like snow across the bedspread. I flashed on the image of a snowman wearing the shaggy coat of a mixed breed Golden Retriever with a dash of Boarder Collie. I chuckled softly.

Smiling his special smile at my apparent good humor, my husband ran his lint roller down the front of my Winnie the Pooh pajamas. I giggled. A dog hair stuck in my lip balm, making my lip itch. Lint rolling my upper lip, I returned his special smile with my own special smile.

Just as he leaned in to kiss me goodnight, our sixty-pound canine hair factory vaulted onto the bed and shook. Dog hair showered down like dandelion seeds in May. We lint rolled each other’s faces. Pushing in between us the dog flipped onto her back, burped a burp that smelled vaguely of plastic wrap, shoved her four legs skyward, and fell asleep in a puddle of her own shedding.

“A thousand kinds of fun,” I repeated, quietly.

We tapped our lint rollers together. They stuck. We left them that way all night.

Now that’s love born of cosmic unity.

BEWARE! Scary Girl Stuff (A Classic)


For the past fifty plus years I’ve been a girl person, during a dizzying period of technological advances that have allowed mankind (oops, I mean human beings without apparent gender) to fly to the moon, dive the Mariana trench, and humiliate me in every conceivable way.
 Cathy Rigby, the first US gymnast to win a medal in the Olympics, introduced me, and a whole host of teenage girls to the wonders of modern feminine hygiene products. Cathy made Stayfree Maxi pads cool, and she made you think the you could be upside down on a four inch balance beam and not have a girl care in the world. I must have gotten stuck trying out the maxi-pad prototypes, because I never could do a handstand on a balance beam, ever, but that’s Madison Avenue for you.  You can find out more about Cathy Rigby, the Maxi pad-wearing gymnast, at the Museum of Menstruation.
 Later, after my first mammogram, a technological marvel that can look inside your boobs—if your boobs are really, really flat, I was told that I would need a needle nosed biopsy and that the incision would be no larger than a grain of rice.
 “Brown or instant?” That’s what I should have asked.
 With the image of a grain of rice emblazoned on my mind, I walked into the biopsy room, wearing a paper washcloth, noticed that there was a great big hole in the surgical table, and had a hideous vision of my future.
 Horrified, I turned to the strange man about to dig around in my mammary gland and asked, “Is that hole in the middle of that table for what I think it’s for?”
 “Yep.”  And it was.
 Once I flopped my slightly used, less than perky bosom into the mammary gland hole in the middle of the table the words “Boob Loogie” came to mind.
 When the highly touted anesthesia refused to deaden my dangling breast, and I complained loudly, the strange man digging around in my boob with a needle, said, “Well, some breasts are more dense than others.”
 “Dude, the end of my boob just hit your shoelace, how dense can it be?”
 Don’t even get me started on four C-sections in six years. For my first baby they shaved me “nipples to knees.” No, seriously that was the official medical expression. By the fourth baby, I was watching the entire surgery in a giant mirror, angled for my viewing pleasure.
 Recently, my daughters were describing the latest in advancements in the way of the latest in gynecological examination chairs.
Apparently, there is a new “exam” chair that mimics the space shuttle in the act of taking off. A girl patient climbs in and with a flick of a switch, stirrups are deployed, the part under your bum disappears, and the chair reclines—until your head is poking down and your girl parts are poking up. When my oldest daughter demonstrated I felt faint and had to put my head between my knees.
 “I cannot do it,” I murmured from between my knees, “I simply cannot risk “The Chair.” I will be making my next appointment with a certified witch doctor of the noble savage variety. As Scarlett O’hara is my witness, I swear it.”
 I love being a girl.  I love the shoes, the clothes, the makeup, and the mystique of it all, but honestly, is it just me or is the modern world out of its technological mind?
 Linda (Girls Just Want to Have Fun) Zern

PS   Have everything checked constantly so you can keep wearing those darling girl shoes.  



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