Bye Bye, Pie!

Fascinating

I never did find the lining of my uterus, so I thought maybe I'd get shelf liner today at Target or something. What say you?

The other day I was at ...friend's, and he was cooking something because he does actually cook, and Ima tell you how well in just a minute, but anyway he had a bottom cupboard open and I noticed some really spiffy brown-and-blue polka-dotted shelf liner down there, that actually looked good with the throw rug he had, and I said, "Oooo, I like your shelf liner!" Because I am a fascinating person.

"....Shelf liner?"

"The polka-dotted stuff. Did you pick it out?"

...friend looked at the cupboard. "I've never once noticed that shelf liner in all the time I've lived here. Also, do I really seem like the go-out-and-buy-shelf-liner type?"

Only a boy would live somewhere for more than two years and never notice shelf liner. There have been too many times I've had to cease unpacking because I had to run out and get shelf liner I could stand. I mean, you see that every day for the rest of time.

Or not. If you're a boy.

At any rate, ...friend had offered to come assist me in my hour of need last night, and really, when am I NOT having hours of need? Nevertheless, he offered to assist in this PARTICULAR hour, the hour of no uterine lining. "Can I bring you dinner or anything? How about Thai?"

Well, that sounded absolutely delicious BEFORE my surgery, but once I had some nausea, and once I got my discharge papers that said eat bland things, I changed my mind on the Thai.

"I can have (a) a baked potato and (b) rice, according to my papers," I told him, because perhaps I have not mentioned I am the most fascinating person on earth. "Well, I can make you those things," said ...friend, who recently has begun to cook in an effort to be healthier. He really is kind of healthy. That makes one of us.

"I can make this rice dish," he said. "It involves avocado, too."

I would sell my mother for avocado. I would gleefully take all four pets to the pound, stampede them right to the gas room, for avocado. Go a week without hair gel? For avocado? Sign me up.

So ...friend comes over with all kinds of things, including rice, and then had the audacity to ask for stuff like a cheese grater and a cutting board. Has he met my kitchen? Fortunately I scrounged that stuff up, from deep in the pyramids, because you know how often I'm getting out the implements.

"Do you have a measuring cup?"

JESUS CHRIST! Who does he think I AM, Julia Child? "I do have a measuring cup, but I use it for the dog food," I said. "...wait! I think I have weird measuring spoon/cup things from Ikea somewhere," I put on my Indiana Jones hat and plundered the secret tombs of my kitchen.

I did find this olive-green cup that measured...2/3 of an ounce.

"How many cups are in two-thirds of an ounce?" asked ...friend, who was totally over me.

My point is, he put a bunch of rice on to boil and said, "We don't have to stand in the kitchen anymore," which quite possibly could be my favorite words in my native tongue, other than "free kittens."

So we sat on the couch while the rice boiled, and the thing is, often we are over there trying to out-funny each other, and I have the feeling being around ...friend and me is annoying for anyone who isn't us. Tallulah often rolls her eyes at us. Iris would, too, if she had eyes. So there we were, thinking we were funny, when I started to smell...rice burning.

"#$@&!" said ...friend, dashing up.

Yeah. Also, what a clear photo. Perhaps we could start ...friend and June Cooking and Photography School.

why yu roooin rice, Uncle ...friend?

So you know what we ended up doing? Going out for Thai. I KNOW. I got those leaves that Tall Boy and I got that one time. Remember I told you about them? They're some kind of, I don't know, LEAF, firmer than floppy lettuce but not like you're eating a succulent or anything. Some kind of cabbage, maybe? What do I know?

The point is, the leaves come with teensy cute bowls of the thinnest-sliced limes and peanuts and toasted coconut and some kind of hi-I'm-Asian sauce and teensy minced onions and ginger and oh! You throw all that on your rubber-tree-plant leaf or whatever and IT IS DELICIOUS.

...friend got some kind of chicken dish (the first person to say, "I thought ...friend was vegetarian" gets slapped with my uterus. What's left of it. I do not know HOW this thought entered everyone's brain but he is 100% NOT VEGETARIAN. I think you must all have him confused with Tall Boy, who I dated for four weeks back in the fall, and I do not know why that stuck inside you all like a barnacle.) and guess what he got with said dish. Guess.

"Oh! I got rice! Would you like some?"

Yeah.

So, anyway, that was my evening, and I feel pretty okay today except I could go for a nap. It's 10:30 and I could go for a nap.

Perhaps I did not mention to you that I am the most fascinating person on earth.

Post Op

No wonder Tallulah hates this thing. It really does hamper your depth perception.

So I'm home. Does this lack of uterine lining make me look fat? I had to get there at 7:15, so Laurie, being what you'd call more organized than me, was at my house about 2:30 a.m. I really don't know WHEN she showed up, actually, as I opened the blind and there she was lurking in my driveway.

Remember the time I took her to the train station and we couldn't find it? Now that I know her better I'll bet that was giving her hives, even though we were still 30 minutes early. I am always that asshole running across the tarmac to jump on the plane as it's pulling away.

Anyway, everyone was very nice at the surgery place, and the anesthesiologist came and I gave him my usual speech where I grab his arm and look deeply in his eyes. "Barfing is my least-favorite emotion. Do what you can to make sure that doesn't happen."

You know who probably enjoys him the June? That anesthesiologist.

Anyway my doctor got there right on time (Laurie would probably like him) and he said, "Let's take care of these fibroids once and for all." No. No, let's not. Because this is what I want to be spending my wrinkled Georges on.

How much do you like me for saying "wrinkled Georges"?

After walking into the WORLD'S COLDEST ROOM, they said, "You may feel sleepy now" and all of a sudden it's 2012. What is this fancy thing called the Internet? Why isn't my cell phone the size of my shoe? Dylan McKay, what a dreamboat. That was all a lot like the first time I tried Jagermeister.

I am sad to report that I felt (a) a little chest pain, which hi. Not alarming, (4) a tad nauseated, which, hi, WORSE THAN CHEST PAIN and (ii) hurty. Through the miracle of modern medicine (read: ginger ale) I feel much better now and await ...friend's arrival, which will probably be the last time I do so because Q: Looking? A: Sexy. And you know he's into me for my leonine good looks.

In the meantime, I was thinking 40 winks might be nice. Because I didn't just get those, or anything. Didn't just wake up, Shark the floor (I know. But it was bugging me), blog at you and now go back to bed. It's kind of like a normal day, except, does anyone know where I put my uterine lining? I just had it...

Karaoke singer will survive. As will June.

So this has been a sort of harrowing few days. I hate waiting for medical test results. But finally Monday afternnoon my doctor called and said, "June? All your tests were negative." Which is about the best news you can hear. Other than, "June? This is Barry Gibb. Have finally left that wife of 42 years and I am all yours. Also, your go-go dancing skillz are needed at the Whiskey. Stat."

They thought I might have had the cervical cancer, which by the way comes from a very common STD known as HPV. Nearly all cervical cancer stems from that. WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN SO UNFAIR. I was, you know, married and engaged and all up in Marvin exclusively since 1996, and to tell you the truth, there hasn't been that much, you know,

HOOO-HAAAAAA

since I got single again. I am certain you wish to know every detail. And any

HOOO-HAAAAAAA

if there HAS been any, and I'm not saying either way, but if there WERE any, I would hoo-haaa safely. SO I WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY ANNOYED TO GET CANCER FROM AN STD. Is what I am saying.

Anyway, I now have my PhD in HPV and false postive tests and pap smears and all that, so if you ever run into this issue (and anywhere from 50 to 80% of hoo-haaaing people will get HPV at one point or another, so...) (and you probably won't even know you had it because usually you shed it on your own), ask me anything. I now know.

And you want to know something kind of sad? As soon as I got my results I emailed ...friend, and also Dick Whitman, and Hulk, and some of my chick friends, and my parents.

And it was hours later that I finally thought to email Marvin.

Marvin used to be the first person I told, you know, EVERYTHING, and he was an afterthought. I guess that's natural at this point. But it's weird.

Speaking of Marvin, as you may or may not know, I never knew where he lived once he moved out. I told him not to tell me, because it was easier to pretend he didn't live here. It's like he was in the ether or something. Well, this weekend I got a letter from a bank; I think it's where his car loan is from. Anyway, it said, "We received your change of address form. You have moved from [my address] to [Marvin's address]."

THANKS, BANK. So now the cat's out THAT bag. So I asked Marvin if, since I now know where he hangs, where his crib is, his pad, and so on, if I could come see it. Wouldn't you kind of like to see how Marvin decorated and so forth? He said yes, of course I can come over and also see Henry and Anderson, so look for a Better Homes & Marvin Gardens issue of Bye Bye, Pie soon.

Finally, in summation, to end this post, I came home and danced till I got shin splints tonight,  

then I streamed a movie. Have you seen We Bought a Zoo? Because I love me the Cameron Crowe and oh, did I sob at that movie, and that LITTLE GIRL in it! She was so good!

Also, would enjoy owning a zoo. Or even Zoom. Ohhh two one three fourrrr.

Okay, leaving now. BUT NOT LEAVING THE EARTH just yet.

Yay.

June's Most Excellent Day

Yesterday was kind of the perfect day, in that I got to go to the makeup counter and the doctor. You know how I enjoy doctor visits. I find them reassuring. For like a minute. Then I go back to thinking I'm dying.

I had a new doctor because (sit down) my last one quit, and if you have been here more than seven minutes, you're saying, "AGAIN?" Yes.

This time it was the gynecologist who removed my charming fibroids last year, and I liked him. Although remember when I woke up from surgery, and that poor orderly or whoever was wheeling me down the hall, and because I was drugged I kept pretending to be Mr. Potter in his wheelchair?

"ConFOUND it man, hurry up!" and I hit him with my discharge papers. I even said to him, "Youuuu once called me a warped, frustrated old man."

Do you remember that? I am just saying to you, if I was that obnoxious an hour after I woke up, imagine what I said to poor Dr. D.

June. Repulsing doctors since 1965. I wonder if the doctor who delivered me became a gardner or anything?

So yesterday I had Dr. L., and he came highly recommended. The person who recommended him was high. No.

I get in there, and the office is right behind where I had my MRI. Well, THAT was a good time. So this was bound to be just as much of a laugh riot. There was no one in the waiting room, which is what you want to see. I hate walking into a crowded waiting room, although in this case it was just the OB-GYN, so what was I gonna catch? Well. I guess I could have caught syphilis.

My point is, even though the room was nice and so was the staff and so forth, the piped-in music was atrocious. I heard I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore, and I really could NOT fight the feeling that I wanted that song to be over. I heard Have You Never Been Mellow (A: No.) and then I heard ...friend's least-favorite song.

 

(Yes, I DID pick the video that had Andy Gibb in it on purpose. What are you, new?)

Anyway, naturally I stampeded for my iPhone to bug ...friend at work about this. Oh! And I totally heard I Won't Hold You Back by Toto. WHICH I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT.

 

(Yes, I did pick the ludicrous-ist video of this song possible.)

When was that a song? Do you remember? It is one of those songs I have classified in my head as a Saginaw song. As in, I can kind of see myself driving around Saginaw hearing this song, and then never hearing it again till I was in the doctor's waiting room yesterday.

Anyway. Bad music. Is what I am throwing down, if you will just pick it up.

Finally, the nurse called me in, and you have never been asked so many questions in your life. Do you drink? Do you exercise? Do you eat meat? I said, "Are you planning to feed me later? Because, medium-rare."

She even gave me a colon cancer kit to take home, which, SWAG! I am supposed to mail her some poop. I am not making that up. She can't say I never gave her anything. "What'd you get in the mail?" "Oh, bunch of crap."

Eventually she weighed me, and I took off my sweater first, which, why do I do that? Who on God's green earth cares if I weigh 118 or 117 after removing the sweater? Do you like how I tried to get away with weighing 118 right now? The last time I weighed 118 our cell phones were the size of a boot.

And then? Just like on TV, or more specifically Lifetime Television for Women, the nurse said, "The doctor will see you in his office first."

HIS OFFICE!

When do you ever in real life get to go to the doctor's office? You know you're always perched there on the table like a moron. But no, we sat there and talked all about my vadge like it was interesting. It was kind of like a first date. Although I don't usually have a poop test in my bag on a first date.

Then we got down to business. The part where he felt me up and even said, "Uterus feels nice." See above re first date.

He wants to give me a test to see if I'm entering menopause, so when girl time comes (and who knows when THAT will be, see above re menopause) I have to call him and say, "My period's here!"

Now there's a phone call you make every day.

When that was over, I stampeded to Belk to get me the Pink Beach lipstick that Jo was wearing the other night.

Doesn't Jo look so much like a tube of lipstick? It's amazing.

So the saleswoman, who kind of had a Kate-Plus-8 hairdo back when Kate had that short hair, was convincing me I also needed lip liner (A: Yes. Yes of course I do.) (I'm June, and I'm a makeupholic. Hiiii, June.) when I noticed the biggest magnifying glass you have ever seen in your life. It was on a stand, like a mirror, only, you know, it was see-through and magnified you 88383848484 times.

"Are you super farsighted or something?" I asked Kate Plus 8 million of my dollars, as she triumphantly got a lip liner.

"Oh, that's so I can look at your skin," she said, as if to the naked eye I was just a skeleton. "I can see your pores and lines and imperfections."

I'd like to point out for the record that you can see none of these normally.

And that, friends, is how I also ended up purchasing pore-reducing serum, because I am totally employed right now. And if I do not see PORCELAIN CHINA-DOLL SKIN in like three days, Ima be pissed.

You know you can't hold me back now.

Where the hell's my chocolate bunny? MOM? Yes, I am 46.

I actually do not want a chocolate bunny, as I am continuing to attempt thin-ity.

Yesterday was a perfect day to achieve thin-ity--and how soon do you hope I give up saying "thin-ity"?--because I got a migraine. I know I posted yesterday and was all perky-sounding, but as I was typing I was thinking, gee, I feel kind of miserable. Am I getting a migraine? And sure enough. This lovely photo with Nurse Iris was taken at about 2:00 in the afternoon. I was in bed all day.

fgfrr

Lily just walked across the keyboard. Perhaps that is a message to all your cats. You should go get them and let them read it.

Eventually I dragged my sick arse out of the bed, because it was an absolutely beautiful day and no one is allowed to be sick when it's nice out. Here I am in front of a coffee shop, waiting for Dick Whitman to get out the bathroom.

Yes, I saw Dick Whitman again. We had dinner. Rather, I had dinner and he drank wine like the total Richard Burton, Dudley Moore, David Hasselhoff drunk that he is. Actually, Dick Whitman is so not a drunk. But he wasn't hungry yet and I was effing starved, having laid in bed not eating all day.

At one point in the day I got up, retrieved a sleeve of carmel Girl Scout cookies from the freezer (see above re thin-ity), then forgot about them, only to find an empty sleeve of Girl Scout ghost cookies a few minutes later and I HOPE YOUR ASS GETS EFFING FAT, TALLULAH. I HOPE YOU BA-DONK-A-DONK SO BAD EVEN THE PUGGLE ON OUR WALKS NO LONGER WANTS YOU.

I had Pellegrino with dinner, to soothe my roiling insides. And look! They put gems on the Pellegrino bottle! It's so pretty!!

See? It was so lovely I saved both bottles. I have no idea what Ima do with them. Please note Dick Whitman is taking a picture of me taking this picture. Drunk.

Anyway I had to stand up Jo yesterday for our Easter-egg coloring, and she sent me a picture of how pretty her eggs were and I hate everything. I hate my head.

Look at her signature glasses right there by her eggs. She didn't just take her eggs on the road with her--we were supposed to go to this whole event where they give you wax and colors and so on, and here she is getting a drink after with the friend who DIDN'T stand her up.

God, what a bunch of boozers I hang with. Really, she is less of a drunk than Dick Whitman. But who isn't?

June. Getting sued by her friends for slander since 2012.

I had better go, because ...friend and I are going to the movies and if he saw how delightful I look right now, he would turn to drink. Maybe he could borrow some fifths of whiskey from Dick Whitman.

Oh! Happy Easter, y'all! Unless you are Jewish. In which case have a good, you know, Sunday!

Tracy and her Anderson Method can chew on my...oh, never mind

I want you to know I am making coffee as we speak. Screw Tracy Morgan.

I did her again yesterday, so to speak, and figured out I am more sore than the first day, when of course I was not at all sore, and anyway the 39458583774 fire hydrant kicks did not come easily. Perhaps I might have sat there motionless for a moment or two and scowled at her during kicks 39494939 through 39494940.

Well. I would have scowled at her if I didn't have rat poison jammed into my scowl parts.

In other news, I have another interview. This one is in Raleigh. The other one was in Durham and no, I still haven't heard anything since they said I was in their top four. This is annoying.

Anyway, the Raleigh job is to edit science-y things, which I have done before. I don't care WHAT I'm editing, I just like to edit. I don't know when the interview is yet; so far all I've done is talk to the screener. Not that she is mesh and see-through.

I guess everything mesh would be see-through.

Once in LA I was having breakfast with my friend Broken Foot Woman. I really called her that, it's not just a stupid blog name. I worked with her and she had broken her foot and needed someone to car pool with. I'd never really talked to her before that time but I lived near her, so for a few months we rode to work together and got all close and made out and such. She was fun, and an excellent audience. You know those people who laugh uproariously at everything you say? I need that in a person.

At any rate, one day we went to breakfast with her teenage daughter who was similarly cool. The teenager went to the bathroom and I said, "How's she doing, anyway?" My friend went on about how impressed she was with her kid. "She's just so smart. It's scary." and she talked about awards she got in school and so on.

The daughter came back to the table and said, "This is a lovely place. The windows were open in the bathroom to let the breeze in. They had one of those, you know things. In the window. It's kind of mesh."

Broken Foot Woman was all, "Do you mean a screen?" And then we laughed for 107 hours because we had just gone on about how this kid was supposedly smart.

June. Destroying the self-esteem of adolescents since 1997.

Today Ima go out and try to find a gift for Dick Whitman today. It's his birthday Saturday and I am going to lunch with his family to celebrate. I found something online but it wouldn't get here on time, so I will see what there is in elegant Greensboro. His mom and sister and I talked about dressing alike for his big bash, but in case DW reads this, I will just say you have to wait and see if we really do it.

Okay, I am off. With my hurty self. Do I look thinner yet?

Ouch. I know I totally sound like ET right now.

I'm up. I've been up for quite awhile. That's because I went to bed at 10:30. Would you like to know why?

Because this sadistic bitch's DVD came. Note her cruel tape measure. The tape measure that is clearly off by several inches.

In case you did not read the day I announced that I watched an infomercial at 1 in the morning and got right online and ordered $104 worth of workout DVDs even though I am unemployed, please note: I watched an infomercial at 1 in the morning and got right online and ordered $104 worth of workout DVDs even though I am unemployed.

That was several weeks ago, which just gave me ample time to get fatter, and finally this thing--this...THING--came yesterday. When my body still had parts that did not ache. When I could still walk upright. Back then, you could tell from the way I used my walk I'm a woman, man.

No time to talk.

Anyway, so the thing came and it has all this STUFF to read. There are instructions for how to do this workout (i.e., constantly) and what to eat (i.e., nothing you've ever heard of. Today I am going out to get parsnips. PARSNIPS! I don't even snow that that is. Is it like a parson who snips something? Nipples that have been parsed? I don't know. I'm going to find out. And eat it. Because I am effing starving).

First she has you do a "dance cardio" workout--which is basically jumping around like I have hot pokers and cobras on my floor--for half an hour. After you have done that, she actually suggests--ACTUALLY SUGGESTS--that if you are feeling energetic still, you can do the workout again.

I was ready to check myself into the ICU. DO IT AGAIN? Sister, Ima lie down with the cobras and pokers now.

THEN, I had to do ANOTHER half hour of muscle training, which involved me kicking my legs out like a dog at a fire hydrant for 30 minutes. You would not BELIEVE how long you do these leg kick things. You want to reach right through the screen and impale her with a fire hydrant.

This is why 10:30 looked like an excellent time to limp over to the sack last night. And when I woke up this morning at 7:00? NOTHING DID NOT HURT.

I realize that was an excellent sentence. And I have to do the thing OVER again TODAY. And you know I'm doing it. I paid $104 that I do not have, so I am using this thing till I die. Which could be 15 minutes into the DVD today.

I guess I could have stampeded right here and blogged immediately, but I was too sore.

Instead I sat in my back room and had tea. Oh, right. That bitch Tracy Gold or whatever her name is is not  allowing me to have coffee. I can have all the tea I want.

Isn't Tracy Gold the actress who had the eating disorder? That was a lovely and sensitive joke on my part, then. "Just seven hours of working out daily! The Tracy Gold workout DVD!"

No wonder God is punishing me with my life.

Then I read gardening catalogs (my porn) with Tallulah. Please note the ignored laundry behind her.

After that, I organized my vanity. I mean, not my personal ability to be vain. If I could do that I'd never have spent $104 to be rendered crippled. I hate all of those mascaras. The only one I ever really liked was Illegal Lengths and they discontinued it. Please see above re God hating me. And yes, Joann, I have used the highfalutin' stuff, too. Chanel, Lancome, you name it. HATE IT.

Obviously I have high expectations of what I need my mascara to do.

After that, I minced over here--it's my NECK that hurts the most, I assume from the 394858493 sit-ups. Oh, did I not mention we did sit-ups till an alien popped out my marsupial pouch? Anyway, I minced over here and organized all my pictures on my desktop.

Do you have any idea how many photos I take of my pets? I guess you do.

In a bit, I will go out and buy some delicious parsnips. I can hardly wait. Then I will come home and sweat to the Goldie. I have to stop calling her Tracy Gold.

I will write again when I am thin.

Katy Puffy

You know, I...hate to like anything about Katy Perry. I do. She bugs. With her wide eyes and her oh, I'm so cute! thing and her cat named Kitty Purry. Oh, and she married my husband, Russel Brand. However, she seems to have given him back.

But she was on the Grammys last night and she sang a new song that I really liked. I am sorry.

 

I could, you know, identify.

Also, I finally got my health report from my old workplace. Remember how you got a full blood workup and they gave you a number between 1-100 re whether you were gonna live or die? I got a 92! Yay. My cholesterol is a trifle high, as it always is, but the good cholesterol is good, as it always is. I have no weird stuff in my blood.

Oh, and I'm fat. My BMI is at exactly the first number for overweight. Depressing. When did I get fat? I eat right.

...Oh. Right.

There was a whole questionnaire about how you live: do you buckle your seatbelt, chew tobacco, what do you eat?

The questionniare practially had the vapors about my diet. Oh, calm down. I had a vegetable just the other night at Poochie's. Plus, all the Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee products contain two vegetable servings. I am practically Popeye. Or Popartery.

Anyway 92 is good. I must have my father's genes, where his diet consists of Coke, beer and Pringles and yet every time he goes to the doctor they're all, "You're in perfect health!" It's obnoxious.

Pringles sound good right now. It's a potato! Come on!

Look. It says my stress is ideal.

Once again I find myself typing w/one hand. Iris is obsessed with sitting on me. She is the sittingest-on-me cat I have had since I had a Persian back in the '80s, before I knew you shouldn't buy pets in pet shops. I was 20 and sold shoes in the mall. I was good at selling shoes, by the way. I could convince people they needed every color and so forth.

Anyway, at breaks I'd (brace yourself) head down to the pet shop and look at the animals. The Persians were $300 and eventually I could not help my own self and with my riches from that lucrative shoe-selling position, I bought Confetti, my peach-colored Persian. Oh, he was a doll. He slept on my head.

I would love to get another Persian. But you know how I feel about purebreds. Damn. Why are there never any Persians and Great Danes at the shelter?

I guess I had better take my overweight self out of here and get my interview suit ready. Tomorrow is my big interview day. I hope they don't discriminate against the obese and refuse to hire me. Should I ask where the vending machines are first thing, or...?

In which the Feenies and DeFazios are mentioned a bit often

Marvin suggested I paint black spots on Edsel and give HIM to the firemen for saving my life the other day. Now, see? That's why Marvin makes the big dollars. Allllways thinking.

What a valuable asset to a fire Edsel would be. "Oh! Oh Edzul God! Oh no! Edzul flap paws uselisslee! Maybe we play wif Edzul blue toy now?"

No one has Dalmatians anymore. Why is that? My grandfather had them. Somewhere there's a picture of one of their Dalmatians lying on the couch, and me using it as a pillow so I can read. The dog looks all, "Okay, I DO this because I know you kick my spotted ass to curb otherwise, but NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT."

Do you like how my story has progressed to the firemen saved my life? Who can take a nothing story and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? Well, it's me girl and you should know it.

Speaking of old TV shows, AND I JUST WAS, stop being so young, I was next to a woman at work who had one of those commuter mugs, and it had a giant cursive L on it. "Oh, are you Laverne DeFazio?" I asked her, loving my own self as per usual. Loving me is easy cause I'm beautiful.

"?" said the poor girl sitting next to me, who just wanted to learn about our sign-up process for health insurance this year.

"Laverne. Laverne on Laverne and Shirley. How she always had the L-- Oh my God. Oh Edsel God. You're too young to know who that is."

It had not occurred to me until that moment that anyone would NOT know the ins and outs of Laverne and Shirley's lives. I mean, I refer to them so often. Basement apartments, obnoxious neighbors, boyfriends who go from rags to riches, milk and Pepsi. There are so many reasons to think about Laverne and Shirley. And now there are legions of actual adults with actual jobs NOT KNOWING WHO THEY ARE. It's like I'm Ethel Mertz talking about my days in vaudeville.

Actually, I mention them at work a lot, because remember my last job, where I got laid off with 40 other people? I see SO MANY of those people at my new workplace, and I often say, "This is like when Laverne and Shirley moved to LA, and then so did everyone else from the show, so even though they were in a whole new place, hey! There's Squiggy!"

In fact, just the other day I ran into the artist (copy editor) formerly known as my next-cubicle neighbor, Jane West. She now sits two floors up from me. "Oh, hey! Your hair looks good!" she said. "Is it darker? It was..." she struggled to describe it for some reason. "It was more...blonder before."

Wow.

"What exactly do you do for a living?" I asked her. More blonder.

Anyway, I have to go. We get this thorough health check thing at work today for our insurance--INsurance, as they pronounce it here, and the other day I heard myself say it that way and got annoyed with me--but before that I may or may not be getting Botox. So we are supposed to be fasting and yet I will have botulism coursing through my veins.

Cannot wait for my results. "Everything looks good. Except you have a mild case of botulism."

 

And in case you wondered if Lily is still pretty, she is. Also she adores the webcam, still. NO ONE LIKES THE WEB CAM. She's just like Laverne's stepmother.

 

In which Talu has become a Pom

So, like, sometimes I am sick or busy or whatever and I can't blog. If I miss ONE DAY, there is really no cause for alarm. Not that I didn't enjoy the 49595939393 "Are you DEAD!?" calls and emails while I was trying to rest.

Anyway, on Wednesday I woke up STILL feeling miserable. It was like, SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY? Because I am so over this. If I even moved I felt dreadful. So I finally went to the doctor. The good news is I've lost six pounds.

Peg's Diseased Parties. The new weight-loss plan that's sweeping Greensboro.

The woman who came in to take my pulse (which I don't know how she does THAT without hurling) was in all-pink scrubs, with a pink sparkly thingamabob holding her ID tag, and a pink sparkly watch and so forth. You can imagine how she was the wind beneath my wings.

"You look so cute!" I said, noting her almost-eating-disordered thinness. I wonder if she knows Peg. "Oh, I do not," she said, being Southern. "And you--"

Here she stopped, ready to tell me something, SOMETHING on me was cute. Oh, I looked miserable. I was lucky I was able to shower, seeing as all I wanted to do was lie still as Brook Burke's delivery style when she hosted Rock Star IXS.

"Well. You have an excuse because you don't feel well," she finally said. Anyway, the doctor bustled in and listened to my stomach with a stethoscope. "Oh, it's not happy," she told me. Thanks. Thank God you're here. Looking forward to that copay. "Tell me how you think you got sick."

So I told her the story of Peg and her typhoid party, and she said it wasn't food poisoning because none of us got ill until after 24 hours had gone by. "It really takes a perfect storm for healthy adults to catch a stomach bug," she said. Naturally I was riveted, as the topic of how to AVOID them has always riveted me.

"You have to have three things: a really virulent bug, a host that hasn't been exposed before (surely Peg has removed her clothes at least once. She has a daughter), (BAH!) and enough exposure to the bug. I can't imagine how all of you got exposed so well."

"Well, Peg did all the cooking, and she made this gazpacho (which I will never eat again)--" I began. "THAT'S IT!" said my doctor, who I kind of like and who I will miss when she inevitably quits me. "Oh, that IS a perfect storm. She's making that soup while infected, then she puts it in the fridge all day. Oh! That did it all right."

Hunh. Anyway, 250 paragraphs later, she prescribed me some pills to combat nausea. After I got them--and let's talk about how quiet Target is on a January Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Holy pecans. Last time I was there was right before Christmas and you couldn't see the floor. You just kind of let the crowd carry you through. I could have run up and down the aisle with naked exposed Peg and no one but store workers would've seen us.

As I was SAYING, after I got them, I checked in with my boss with a very phony, "You want me to come in?" and he said yes. Oh, I didn't want to go to work. I still felt awful, but with that pill in me I headed off. And you know that thing kicked in?

And look! I had ALL of this for dinner! I mean, not that whole box of Nut-Thins, which is an excellent name. The Poet at work introduced me to these. "June, I'd like you to meet Nut-Thins. Nut-Thins, this is my coworker June."

Anyway, they are a thin rice cracker and I am happy to tell you I have little regret from eating that king-sized meal. Then I slept from 7 p.m. on.

In other news, I got business cards. Was tired of writing my blog name on scraps of paper when I met people at the glory hole or wherever. Kind of redundant to show it to you here, as you are already here. Kind of like when they have ads for Taco Bell at Taco Bell. Not that I would know this.

And finally, Tallulah is sending me mail. And is apparently a Pomeranian all of a sudden. Geez. That's not even how Tallulah TALKS. Shows what they know.

Oh, wait! I almost forgot. Was talking to Hulk the other night, and he said, "So I hired my mom to be my maid."

"Wait. What?"

"Well, you know I work all those hours now, and I HATE coming home to all this dust and a floor that needs sweeping," he said, somehow sounding precisely like Jane Jetson. "And at Christmas I was telling my family I'm gonna get a cleaning lady (Hulk must be fascinating at the dinner table) and my mom said she was totally bored since retiring and she'd do it."

"...Can I blog about this? I mean, your mom wears so many HATS in your life."

Does that scenario strike you as hilarious as it does me? If you just got here, Hulk is my friend from high school. Somehow, while witnessing his mom's marriage at the courthouse a few years back, he signed the wrong line and technically married his mom. So now she's his mom/wife/maid. Which is many ways is redundant for a lot of men.

Also, he told me that his mom came over to peruse the house and discuss what she would and would not do, and she was wearing sweatpants. "This is how you come to a job interview?" Hulk asked her.

I can see this will go places we will gleefully explore. Hulk doesn't see why it's funny. I mean, really? How can you NOT see it? And how happy is Hulk's mom gonna be to be cleaning up after HIS grown-up ass once again? She probably thought she was done with all that.

Anyway, further news as developments warrant.