I'm getting my hair cut later today. I love having a haircut appointment... it's like waking up on Saturday morning, all full of the possibilities of the weekend ahead. On Saturday morning, as you're drinking your coffee and pondering the day... all things are possible. The whole realm of relaxation, accomplishment and entertainment spreads out before you like a Las Vegas buffet. It's the same with a haircut appointment. In my mind I have every possible hairstyle waiting for me in their respective alternate universes... waiting to see which way I will jump.

Too bad my hairdresser can't snip away ten pounds and ten years while she's at it. Think of all the possibilities that would open up.

I've been browsing Hair magazines, studying my face in the mirror, holding my hair up to remind myself of what I look like with short hair. Pondering my eyebrows. This is the cusp. This is the threshold of the New Me. What will I be?

One of the characters in Queens Logic, one of my favorite movies, says "Change ya hair, change ya life." If only it was that easy! But it feels like it, when you're pondering the leap. It feels like, if you just choose the right haircut, you'll walk out of that salon a New Woman. And everything will fall into place.

Sigh. So, I'm thinking about hairstyles, and which one the New Woman I wish to be would wear. Though I know I have to choose something easy, because, sadly, the New Woman won't be any more organized in the morning than the Old one. And it has to be something suited to fine hair, because the New Woman won't have any better hair than the Old one. And it has to be something not too stuffy but not too edgy, because the New Woman, like the Old, is pushing 45 and doesn't want to look like she's Desperately Trying To Be 25 Again. So the number of possible alternate universes constricts. Still.... I have until 4 p.m. to revel in the realm of the Possible.

Shower thoughts

I don't put a lot of deep thought into showering, but I do ponder certain imponderables sometimes. Like why, on earth, there is "extract of pearl" in my shampoo. Extract of pearl? Really? What possible benefit could that have other than to allow them to say "contains pearl!" on the label???

But no, this morning I was unable to drift away in my usual fashion because I was wrestling with my soap.

My mother, bless her heart, gave me this bar of soap at Christmas. It has a nice smell – in a sort of perfumey, fussy way – and it has olive oil in it, so it's supposedly moisturizing...it's definitely a soap made for women, you know what I mean? No dude is ever willingly going to use this soap.

That said, it has one serious drawback... it's freakin' enormous! I can't close my hand around it, and using it int he shower is like trying to wash yourself with a greased football! If ever there was a great argument for the use of a competent ergonomics specialist in the manufacturing of soap, this is it.

Look: Who can hold this thing? Dwayne Johnson? Sure, it looks innocent enough sitting there on a towel all by itself.












But in my hand it becomes a toe-crushing, tooth-chipping instrument of torture and humiliation.


If it wouldn't be way too humiliating a showcase of my sadly under-toned and over-flabbed butt, I'd be tempted to take video of myself wrestling with this soap and post it here. It's slapstick comedy. It slips out of my hand and falls on my toes, which is really painful, because the thing weighs roughly the same as a brick. I'm pretty sure this soap is what those Palestinian kids are throwing at the Israeli soldiers. Sometimes I manage to hop out of the way as it's falling, but this leaves me in serious danger of slipping and breaking a hip.

Sure, I can hold it in one hand and rub it with a cloth or bath mitt and then use that to wash, but I may or may not be able to put the soap down one-handed without it shooting off across the tub and ricocheting back to trip me up or smash my toenails. I have to set it down like a tube of nitroglycerin to keep it from escaping. I end up cursing furiously and/or giggling maniacally every time I pick the damn thing up. It tickles me to imagine what I must look like: weirdly rubbing myself, two-handedly, with this big gray thing. It doesn't even look like soap. It looks like an elephant suppository.

Never before in my life have I considered cutting a bar of soap in half, but I'm considering it. What do you use to cut a bar of soap in half? A soap saw? A bread knife? I don't know what would cut through it.

I'd give up and just toss it out, but I'm sure it's pricey stuff, or my sainted mother wouldn't have given it to me. Maybe it is giving her a secret joy imagining me trying to wrestle it into submission every morning.

Ralph Redux

You must have seen it coming... 48 hours almost to the hour after Grayson started his bout of vomiting, I started my own. Yes, 7:20 p.m. New Year's Day. Happy new year. I spent the first night of the new year sitting on my bed hugging a plastic garbage pail. Why does the stomach flu always strike at night, so that you're afflicted not only with the misery of nausea and vomiting, but also with exhaustion, isolation and darkness? What's more pitiful than barfing by yourself in the wee hours of the morning, and having done it so often that even the dogs are no longer interested?

Hmmph. Happy new year my ass.

Unlike Grayson, I – being some 34 years older – did not recover after a single day of napping and lazing about sipping water. I slept pretty much for two solid days, and then came home from work a half day early on the third day to take another long afternoon nap. Only then did I begin to feel truly human and eat my first real food.

Today I felt blessedly normal, and being so gave me a giddy feeling all day. I was so delighted not to be exhausted and nauseous that every moment was practically euphoric. If a bout of 24-hour stomach flu does this for me, imagine how I'd feel surviving cancer or something! No wonder people turn into Lance Armstrongs after surviving something really life threatening. I just managed to recover from a night of ralphing and I feel like I've been presented with a new lease on life.

Don't get me wrong– O great karmic spirits – I am not angling for a life-threatening illness. No, I think I'd be a pretty piss-poor cancer patient. I was actually thinking this on Tuesday as I dragged my nauseated sorry ass to work in the morning. Man, I thought, I'd be a crappy cancer patient. I wouldn't be one of those "I'm gonna lick this thing!" type of patients. I'd probably be one of those "I've got cancer, do you feel sorry for me?" type of people. I'd probably lie in bed and languish and look gaunt and stare at the wall. I'd malinger, I'd decline.... I'd droop. I'd be a perfect Edward Gorey character of suffering.

SOooooo, I think we can all agree it's best I avoid all that.

For now, hallelujah, I'm healthy, have a new lease on life, and am four pounds lighter following my bout of Ralphitis. All hail Norovirus!

No. Let's not go that far.