The memory of being in bed, tuned to 92 Pro FM on my walkman and listening to TNT (the top nine tonight) was so vivid.  When I listened to my music, I imagined some pretty unlikely scenarios. For instance, when “Angel” played I was in the finals of a roller skating competition.  Now, most people would have imagined ice skating or dancing, but I felt that there was a whole world of competative roller-figure skating waiting for me.

it went a little something like this, but in a jean skirt and no guy.

I loved to roller skate, the kind of skates with the big clunky “brake” on the front of the foot that I never quite figured out how to use. If you leaned forward to depress this rubber stopper, you would fall on your face, if you dragged it behind you, you tripped yourself.  The only way I knew how to stop was to gracefully crash into a wall.  I say gracefully because at this time I was still in middle school and I was boy-crazy. I felt that the faster I skated, the more attractive I was to the opposite sex.  I am not sure of the logic here, but I DID insist on wearing a jean skirt when I roller skated. Hot stuff. I hadn’t yet had the high-school realization that I was just not a guy-magnet and that high school boys would never appreciate my wit and humor.

So in my head, I had this elaborate roller skating routine to the Aerosmith ballad and as I am driving, I replay the exact routine in my head.  I actually laughed out loud when I thought of how ridiculous this was, but then the “baby, baby, bay-yay, bay” part came on and I completed three conesecutive singles and ended in a spin.  Is that even possible on a roller-skate? I looked glorious.

In a nut-shell, my son gets it from me.  He is a superstar, a legend in his own mind and I love it. 

I visited my sister last weekend.  This was the first trip I have taken alone in several years, I was expecting a blissful, quiet drive. It was quiet, but 50 mile an hour winds and bridges do not equal bliss.  I arrived safely, slept as well as a country mouse can sleep when there are live people wandering around outside of the city-window shouting at each other. 

My morning was spent having the annual haircut and wandering around stores without using a shopping cart as a child-mover and a weapon. 

As an aside, I hate to have my haircut.  I think it comes from having moved so much over the past 10 years, it’s another relationship that I am not emotionally ready for.  I feel the need to make senseless chit-chat to pre-empt the inevitable “you have split ends have you never heard of deep conditioning and having your haircut more than once every 365 days” conversation.  So on I blither.  I also self-color my hair which from my understanding is the equivilant to telling your dentist that you perfer to perform your own root canals with the aid of a hand mirror and a Dremel.  There is also the guilt about not washing your hair before you go to the salon.  Having unfortunately inheirited the greasy hair gene, I shampoo daily, but twice would really be too much. 

After apologizing profusely for the non-shampooed hair, I then begin the count-down to the  “oh, you must have well water, I can tell from the brassy tones.”

More blithering  from me.  Then comes the “what side do you part your hair on, ” question.  To be honest, I hate to choose sides so I just tell them to part it in the middle.  Probably not the best look for me.  Next comes what seems like hours of blow drying and then inevitable “product“.  I always tell the stylist that I spend about 3 minutes blow-drying my hair in the morning and I never use “product” I don’t like to feel weird things in my hair.  Somehow I always leave with “product” in my hair and everytime I am told that this is special “product” that I won’t even notice.  And every time, I wash this product out as soon as I get home.  Luckily all of this only happens once a year. 

My haircut on this trip was different, she did a great job and didn’t use too much product.  After trying  on some dresses with my sister, I called home to check on the husband and kids.  I could tell from my husbands’ tone that something was amiss.  Normally he is the type of guy that you can’t get off the phone, he will tell you in painful detail everything that is going on.  When I asked how it was going and he said, “fine,” without telling me exactly how many Cheerios each child had consumed, the jig was up.  “How bad is it?” was my first question.  Long story short, my son puked all over the couch.  He insisted that I didn’t need to come back, he had it under control.  I return home, my son seems ok and our couch does not. 

Fast forward to Wednesday, the baby woke up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and covered in puke.  Having watched a lot of CSI, I estimate the time of pukage to about 9PM, it wasn’t a fresh kill.  She seemed totally unfazed, I didn’t know whether to strip her or the bed first. Haz-Mat clean up completed mu husband now tells me that he feels nauseous.  Fortunately for him, he has learned the valuable survival skill of finding an approriate place to vomit. 

So here I sit, waiting for this short but powerful bug. They say that you live and learn, I learned that pet-odor cleaner removes the scent of kindergartener vomit.  I dare say the couch smells fresh as a daisy.  I have Lysoled everything that didn’t move and my hands are chapped from Lady MacBeth-ian washing. I even brought an emergency bowl to bed last night, in case the dreaded beast struck when I least expected it, stripping beds is getting kind of old.

Exhibit A

In college I was affectionately referred to as “Hi, ass.”  This was at the University of Chicago where puns and geeks run freely across the quads.  I never realized that I had this high-waisted condition until it was pointed out to me that I “had a shelf back there’ and if I “got tired I could just lean my head back and have a rest.”  It also may have been suggested that I didn’t need earmuffs if I wore a belt.

Having two small (young, not just odd-sized) children, fashion is not at the forefront of my world.  I have had this pair of jeans at least 5 years and I think as they have stretched out, the waist has crept up even higher.  As I type, I can feel the waist several inches above my belly-button which is probably not ideal.  Navel, I don’t like that word, it sounds too much like black matter that someone could get lost in, but I digress.

Having yellowish (some would say golden) and reddish (some might say ruddy) tone to my skin is the unfortunate result of having a Greek father and a mother of Scottish descent.  This makes color choosing very difficult for me.  The yellows clash with the reds and greens and the reds wreaks havoc on the blues.  The shirt that I am wearing was recently purchased, extremely on-sale with the thought that it matched my eyes.  I have green eyes and wearing green does accentuate this feature but usually it makes my skin look yellowy-green and my whole face kind of sickly looking.  That’s the look I am sporting today. Luckily I am not leaving the house and my son is kind of into reptiles right now and it should be pretty dark by the time my husband gets home.

Like peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and chocolate or peanut butter and just about anything, Jenny was made for Lifetime movies.  She has the “woman in trouble” face down perfectly.  She has a heaving bosom that is arbitrarily featured in random scenes and ill-fitting clothing.  The low-rider pants that are most certainly giving her plumber-crack. The hair extensions so large she couldn’t wear a bike helmet.   My one complaint is that she is a really ugly crier.  Now, I don’t claim to look good whilst crying but they aren’t paying me Lifetime movie dollars! She gets all scrunchled and it adds to the rat-like face.

This movie really was a page turner, I actually went back to it after commercial, that’s how good it was!  The story is that of a former teen pageant queen (if you are like me and don’t find her beautiful, don’t worry, they spend much of the first half reiterating how beautiful she is) and is married to the H.S. football hero, which in Texas is like being married to a Kennedy.  They have three children and have fallen on hard times.  Our girl is a licensed massage therapist. She applies for a job one hour away from home, which is like the moon to her friends, and discovers that they are not in fact looking for licensed massage therapists (really this is exactly how it happens!) Her mom is played by Cybil Shepard and she is a beautician.  I am just happy to see a leading lady of the 80′s not look like she has been dragged down a cobblestone street (sorry Kathleen Turner).  There is a lot of soul-searching and some flashback of some happier times then a lot of footage of J-Lo-Hew in hilarious “sexy” costumes.  Of course, the law closes in and she becomes the “total recall madam” or some equally stupid moniker.  She cries a lot, unattractively as I have previously posted and gets a minimal sentence because she gave the DA’s office a list of 69 Johns. Did I mention it was a classy movie?  I fell asleep so I missed the typical ending, but I don’t feel like I missed much.

I must confess that my taste in movies is even worse than my taste in television shows.  I used to love the Sci-Fi show “Mystery Science Theatre” so a bad movie=good movie in my world.  If you have watched, “Showgirls” and laughed, then we are on the same page.  Hooray for Lifetime, we could all be superstars! Don’t get me wrong, Cybil Shepard is a beautiful woman, I think she deserves her own Lifetime movie, all though, she may need to tone down her acting ability.