So I noticed yesterday, that my mom is growing a pretty heavy mustache. Yikes. That's what I have to look forward to at that age. I wanted to take a razor and shave it off for her, but alas, none was around. She probably wouldn't be too keen on me doing that anyway. This hair thing is crazy. She's growing a mustache and I'm growing a goatee. Tell me it's not true! What did we do to deserve this? I mean, we've been females all our lives, so why does this have to change now? Is it part of the curse or just God's sense of humor? Probably neither; more than likely, it's our ridiculous hormones, and the older you get, the more hair you grow (uh, not in all places though). Men don't have weird changes in their bodies like we do, do they? Well, maybe I don't want to know the answer to that.
In any event, I pluck each long brown hair, and some of them are actually gray to further mock me. I guess I need to find someone who waxes all this stuff off, because I don't want to walk around with a mustache and a goatee. I mean, gravity has taken ahold of the rest of my body, so give me a break here. Pretty soon everything will be hanging down where they once were standing at attention; I don't want facial hair to add insult to injury. On the other hand, the hair on my head keeps getting thinner and shorter each day. It all comes out in my brush and I quietly freak out because I don't want to be bald when I'm 60. I guess I could order some wigs from Paula Young just in case, but why can't the hair be growing on my head instead of my chin? Speaking of hair, I saw a chain that was made a few hundred years ago, of human hair, attached to a small picture as a momento, on Antiques Roadshow. I suppose I could braid up all the hair that comes off my brush, but then who would want it?
I watched as the nurse changed my mother's dressing from the surgery. Boy, I, in no way, could have been a nurse. It totally grossed me out. I mean, there are actual staples holding her skin together - staples like you use at the office. These are heavy duty ones, I'm sure - but staples nonetheless. So I can see the doctor tell the nurse, "Stapler, please," and she hands him (or her) a stapler they just picked up from Office Depot, and he begins to staple her skin together like a 30-page report. And I guess when her skin heals shut like it's supposed to, the doctor goes in there with a giant staple puller and yanks them out. They probably have to take a clerical class in med school to do this daunting task. The whole thing blows my mind.
Tonight when we visited mom, her roommate had visitors. She's from New Jersey and her sons came to visit her. I thought Chicago people were loud. These people were obnoxiously loud. They probably drive crazier than Chicago drivers too. I want to go to New Jersey one day because the Cake Boss has his shop in Hoboken, New Jersey and I really want to visit there. I want to order all kinds of Italian baked goodies that I've seen him and his crew bake on his show. I could never work in a place like that - I would become the Goodyear Blimp - but boy, would it be fun. Baked treats are definitely my downfall - that and pasta. And rice. And ice cream. And, well, I guess just about everything except liver, tongue and borsht.
When we were comin' up, my mother would make liver or tongue and force us to eat borsht - which is beet soup. Some little Jewish bubbe (grandma) long ago, in some faraway place perhaps sat down one day and said, "Oh! Some beets I have here. Soup we should make out of them!" (And it's been a staple in Jewish homes ever since.) I gagged on the borsht and refused to eat it until she finally relented and didn't make me finish it. And when I found out that liver was a real cow's liver and that tongue was actually his tongue, it grossed me out so much that no punishment would get me to eat them. Back in those days, you ate everything on your plate, and my mother would announce, "This is not a restaurant," so you couldn't get any substitutions. If you didn't eat it, you didn't eat. Period. There were plenty of nights I went to bed hungry, because of the weird dishes she made or just the way my mom cooked the meal. She doesn't believe in salt or salted seasonings, so BLAH would be a good way to describe her cooking. In the past several years, she's done very little cooking, which is a good thing because then my dad won't expect much from me. And I've been putting it off, but I have yet to figure out what's for dinner tonight, so I should probably go and stare into the freezer for some inspiration...
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