WARTHOG FAMILY SOJOURN 2021

 Hello fellow submarine racers!  

I may have never told you this, but our family crest bears the image of the noble WARTHOG.  We are the Warthog Family, warting our hoggy way around the obscure and wonderful places in Western America since 1986 and often leaving graffiti in our wake to mark our progress, which is childish, destructive, and antisocial.  Like warthogs.

The Mighty Warthog Will Find All That Is Funky And Dig All Which Is Diggable

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Imagine that you are in your favorite place.  

That’s where  I am now.  Anacortes, Washington.

The motel where we are staying is as good as any out there, for 1500.00 a night less than we used to pay.  And so we contribute to a privately owned, local business run by people we really like, that has the same linens and decor as the $$$$$ place we used to visit, and we feel all smug and shit about how we really commit to that whole Thinking Globally and Acting Locally thingaroo.  Or acting out locally, which will inevitably occur after our third high-test craft beer.

We used to stay in the most deluxe accommodations in town. It was absolutely wonderful, please, don’t get me wrong. The Majestic, Anacortes Washington.  I mean, GO THERE NOW.  Views unparalleled.  Amenities galore.  Beautiful historic building - check.  Fine dining? Room service? Gym? Spa? Tours? Excellent staff?  Check. One of the finest accommodations on the West Coast, check checkity check.  We spent vacations, Thanksgiving and Christmas at this inn for years, and mooned out over the waters of Puget Sound by day and did the wild thang out on the balcony at night, and lolled in their Lucullan bathrooms like chubby warthog gods.  And that was nice, but no matter where we stayed, what we loved was Anacortes.  We are intrepid explorer warthogs, not gym-rat, spa-loving warthogs, and while balcony sex is great, they were not Warthog sized balconies. And so we made our move.

Anacortes is genuinely worth loving.  The neighborhoods, the people, the shops, the food, the amazing byways and particularly all the freaky, amazing places big and small, some charmless and some sugar sweet with sprinkles, all left in time out in the nearby hills. Old resorts from the 1920’s, tumbledown logger-baron mansions that have ghosts dripping out of the windows, stretches of windblown madrona and ancient juniper sheeted like flames blown back against the granite headlands that spear up from the water, hidden beaches and parks, eccentric public art and private homes... and hands down THE BEST FARMERS MARKET I’VE EVER VISITED.  I mean a no bullshit, non-hipster, A-1 farmers market with real farmers marketing their locally grown vegetables, meats and cheeses, honey, eggs, cured meats, fish...you GOTTA visit.  I mean it.  You’re my Elect.  My most trusted minions.  Skagit county is a miracle, but Anacortes is the crown of the region.

It’s a small part of the Western U.S. that few people have heard of ( and don’t spread it around, kids.  It’s our secret.)  There are untouched, pristine biomes here! I mean, my God, the ENVIRONMENT, folks. 

Don’t come here expecting Oregon’s Disneyesque color saturation, the lush growth, the soft-focus sunshine and gentle mosses and ferns through which trip clueless fawns and sassy bunnies and birdies in kerchiefs.  This is more boreal, more dramatic, wilder, Game of Thrones stuff.  And it's right there. All around you.

Anacortes is a historical working town dropped into the middle of tidal flats alive with uncounted birds, marine life and sea-flora, sudden cliffs, vast fucking evergreens too clawed into the steep hillsides to ever log, Pacific madronas with smooth red bark like satin and broad green leaves like laurels; always shining like they’re polished, and cove after cove of small hidden beaches and parks and places to swim (clothed and nekkid.)  In fact the graveled coves are rubbing places for killer whales, who will beach themselves in the wash of the waves just to exfoliate their bellies on the rocks.  They look like big puppies playing as they wriggle around and roll back into the water, clearly having the time of their lives as they tumble into each other.  Wow, right? Fuck yes, wow!

Killer whales know how to party, and are arguably the most particular sea mammals when it comes to skin care. Plus they chomp baby seals.
  

J.R.R. Tolkein didn’t have a goddamn CLUE.  Someone should have told him about this place, the San Juan Archipelago, the eerie grace of the rainfall as it sweeps down from the clouds in twisting arcs among the islands, the flights of thousands of birds just over the tops of the waves, all lifting like a single living sheet of shadow into the sky before the bow of your boat.  This is the land of bold ravens, wolves and bears and cougar, eagles and every kind of bird of prey; sea birds and water birds in wild profusion, where deer walk the streets of downtown, where the casinos rake in the cash, where the refinery takes care of what the Alaskan pipeline puts out, where the traffic is part log trucks and part supercars, an international freight and passenger gateway to Canada, Russia and the Orient.  

Cultural cross-pollination has been good to Anacortes.  It makes the place attractive to just about anybody. Live and let live is the rule. It’s home to all the retired bigwigs from nearby Whidbey Island Naval Air Base, big petrochem, college professors, Burners, Wiccans, truck drivers, and Microsoft geniuses.  There is a huge population of farmers, native fishermen, and the people who work in the tulip fields that provide flower bulbs for the world, even more than Holland.  It was home to a pioneer ‘Free Love’ commune (Imagine all those grim people in the daguerreotypes sans clothes, joyously hippity hopping through the mud celebrating their right to dangle!) Nearby is a branch of the famed Ramtha cult.  Bow Edison a couple of miles away hosts at least five organic farming communes, all flourishing, cheek by jowl with gnarly old loggers, internationally known artists, general rich as fuck people, The Banditos MC, and the largest Mexican population in the state. It is also the center of the Coastal Salish Nation and a party destination for the swabbies.  This is the most multicultural town I’ve ever visited.

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The town of Anacortes is the unofficial Victorian capitol of Skagit and Island counties. It is weird and wonderful.  The geology supports xeri, temperate and boreal plants.  You’ll see barrel cactus, palm trees, tundra willow and Douglas firs side by side.  The geology changes by the mile.  Ancient granite meets basalt meets sedimentary deposits carrying different fossil aeons.  The inhabitants date from the pre-Ainu Pacifia dispersal adventurers, who set up their longhouse palaces and then met and embraced the latter-day Celtic expansion to boldly screw and damn the torpedoes. They just took a long, primordial look at one another and said “We must do the Bossa Nova!!”  (I am related in a small way to the Salish Nation, and they kick ass. As you would expect.)

My room looks out on an alley- not the cement nightmare of most cities, but a back byway for service vehicles. There is laurel growing in huge swathes, verdant in the last days of Winter.  I can see the old downtown from here.  An old theatre, with its shameful uppermost balcony still giving testimony to how we used to divide ourselves into better and worse - and failed.  I can see the gardens of private homes, and parts of a few  of the main roads, and finally Puget Sound. We are three blocks away from a park that was designed in homage to Gaudi- which is weird as fuck. I meant; they did,  and I’m grateful, because it’s funky as shit and right in the center of town.  And town itself is a modest commercial strip surrounded by houses from every decade since the place was started.  Things are jumbled together here, which I love.  They still use the pioneer shipyards and warehouses, storefronts and homes.  There are sleek modernist mansions next to old Victorian cathouses.  There is A LOT of money here in Anacortes, but it’s a working town, not a quaint historical district, and that’s what we love best about it.  

We are also a  mile away from a vast Catholic cemetery where years ago the nuns and priests buried the young Native girls and their illegitimate infants in numbered blocks, hidden away by overgrown trees and grass, the Girls Home now gone, and that kind of shit driven out by the Salish Nation for good. The best bakery in the state is in Anacortes - 'Store Bakery' is it's name, weirdly, but it's their bakery, and with baked goods as excellent as theirs they can call it whatever the fuck they want.

You will eventually run into Puget Sound in Anacortes.  It’s connected by a thin strip of land and a couple of two-lane bridges to Whidbey Island, so think of it as a kind of spur starting out from the flats and fields of the mainland out into the long, wide fjord that cuts down through Washington state from the north.  There are islands everywhere, some tiny, some private, some huge, and most of them connected by a ferry system which is counted as federal highway.

There isn’t much traffic in this year of our lord  Covid 2021. But the business district is busy, and all the restaurants have turned the parking places on the main street into covered and heated outdoor dining areas, which is the most forward thinking thing I’ve seen - and people are out there in the rain and cold, partying it up!  Not old farts like me who get to sit inside, but still.

 So here's the scoop. We took advantage of our states’ declaring ‘Stage 2’ to get out of fucking MAGA Sumas and hit our favorite town, and to eat at our  favorite hangout, and drink their limited-run Scotch Ale (probably not a real thing on the world stage but we love it) and eat their wonderful food and explore their wonderful town.  We are staying nearby in our favorite privately-owned lodgings in our favorite town, loving the fact that no  matter where we go, we will be accepted and greeted no matter how we present ourselves.  

Anacortes has always welcomed our Warthog nature.

Rock the fuck on, Anacortes. We love you.

I Survived Modern Dentistry

 So far so good!  I now have my temporary crowns and I genuinely DID NOT FEEL A THING.

Folks, I was geeking out.  I was so scared to have this done, because who enjoys the dentist anyway, right? Plus I am the official Worlds' Biggest Coward when it comes to pain, anything remotely medical, and Republicans.  I am pleased and relieved to say that I sat completely at my ease, watching HGTV while unspeakable things were done to my teeth and I had not a care in the world.  Honestly, it was like a spa day.  I NEVER thought I'd be saying that about a trip to the dentist!

In case I have any local lurkers, the place is called Everson Family Dentistry.  Jodi was my saintly hygenist, and Dr. whatever his name was was quick, friendly, efficient and did not have fingers like sausages.  If I'm going to have something in my mouth...well, there's a time and a place for everything, let's say.  This guy had little thin fingers like a pianist, and it was nice for a change, because most dentists have fingers like kielbasas, or professional bowlers. Or bananas.  I was awake, I was able to drive myself home, and there will be no YouTube videos of me slurring stupid shit in the aftermath of being drugged (sadly.  I know you were all looking forward to that.)

I'm home now, the novacaine is wearing off, I've take a few aspirin and a couple of Valium and I'm doing just great.  I won't be operating heavy machinery, deciding the fate of nations, or signing any legal documents, but I didn't have that planned for today anyway.  I'll decide the fate of nations tomorrow, as normally scheduled.  Expect a regime change coming to your neighborhood soon!

   

Dugongs, blowjobs, gardening, malicious paint schemes

 Everybody needs more dugongs in their lives.  It's true.  Scientists doing science stuff have determined that the average life is made 200% better if it includes a dugong, so you have to figure, the more dugongs the better.  They're like ketamine, or blow jobs.

Tastes like ketamine, looks like a blow job.  Lick one and see what happens!  

Many of todays important developments were initiated or developed by dugongs.  Mt. Rushmore was carved by a dugong.  David  Green, noted mountain-carving dugong of note totally did that shit.  That's right.  We would not have a Mt. Rushmore if it were not for one proud and talented dugong, a visionary with a jackhammer and the severed heads of four presidents.

Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.  First in the stone of the moutains, first in the hearts of their whatever.  Dugongs. 

Jonas Salk, who freed millions from the scourge of syphillis was also a dugong.  He didn't even take out a patent for his discovery.  He could have made $483650626.00, but he was a visionary and a true philanthropist who was only interested in eating crud off the bottom of ponds.  How many of us can say the same?

Is anything related?  Is the moon made of green cheese?  Am I suffering from cabin fever?  Is 'dugong' more fun to say than 'manatee'?  The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind.

You should go out right now and invite a boatload of dugongs into your home.  Their needs are simple and the benefits are long lasting.  You will have dugongs.  And isn't that what life is all about?

There! You now have more Serene Sea Flubbos than you did when you first started reading this, and your life is better.  See how that works?

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I actually got outside AND DID GARDENING ACTIVITIES yesterday!  I actually got outside, in a t-shirt and yoga pants, and stood in my own yard, outside of the house!  I used secateurs!  And a rake!  I MOWED THE YARD!!!!  Good God it's the first time I've felt like a human being in literal months!!  The sun was shining, but the ground was still frozen solid, so I was able to go out on the rider and scalp it right down to the root so it will come up super green and thick when it finally decides to be Spring!  And guess what?  I RAKED OUT THE BEDS IN THE BACK YARD.  Yes.  I totally did that thing.  And I trimmed off some rose canes, and cut back my buddleia, and it was AWESOME!!!!!!!

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Another "It happened here" picture.  Remember the fictionalized version of how I ended up back in my hometown after I left my abusive boyfriend, and I ended up living in a garden shed?  Remember the house that was being remodeled in that story, the one that 'Aunt Audie' lived in?  Here it is, thanks once again to Google Maps street view:

When I last saw this place it was canary yellow with bright apple red trim, like a Chinese restaurant.  This paint scheme was totally cooked up by me, Mike and Big Jim, because Mr. Fields said that he didn't care what color it was painted as long as it got painted.  Well then!  (It's also why all the closets in the place were painted red, white and blue on the inside.  I did that.)  I can understand why our brilliance was not understood by the present residents, though.  Such splendor isn't for everybody.

 

Cold Snap

 We finally got over a terrible cold snap here - high winds straight from the Arctic Circle blasting past my poor little house, temperatures down around 19F., just miserable; and despite our best efforts, the supply lines to our washing machine froze.  Luckily, only for a day, but still.

This is what happens when you live in an uninsulated house.  Well, a partially uninsulated house.  Well, a conglomeration of strange additions and subtractions that might be insulated or might be a howling hole full of ice giants and fear.

My poor bathroom was stuck onto the back of the house by someone unconstrained by modern building codes sometime back in the 1920's, and is three sides to the wind, facing Northwest, from whence all the evils of winter do come.  In a high wind it creaks and groans and snaps like a wooden boat, which is alarming, and the wind going down the sump ventilation pipe makes the water in the toilet bloop and blurble, which is also alarming but also hilarious.  

The same benighted soul who put in the bathroom also decided that it would be an excellent idea to put all the plumbing into the Northeast walls of the house, so from late November to February we have the water trickling from the kitchen tap, the bathroom tap, and the tub spout.  This business about 'only keep the water running out of the the source furthest from the service attachment' does not hold true here, as we have found after years of experience - and last years Plumbing Explosion/Rat Chewing Extravaganza, when  the pipes under the house burst AND a rodent chewed the plastic pipe that runs from the main line to the hot water heater, which, why?  

This year we were lucky.  The cold winds only lasted for eight days, and only for a couple of days were they battering my poor little house in gale-force gusts.  The majority of the time, they were just a constant.  But that constant literally freeze-dried all the exposed bits of earth around here and kicked up enormous tall dust ghosts, which was an odd sight as they seem to literally walk across the fields, twenty feet tall, on long spindly legs that trail rags and swaths of grey.  It's hypnotic to watch, and also disturbing.  I'm beginning to understand why people move to Phoenix when they get old.  Of course, I'd bitch about that too once I was there.

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We have been maxing out on historical documentaries here at Rancho FirstNations, chief among them 'Timeline' and 'Absolute History.'  I am once again moved to wonder how anyone manages to complete a building project in the UK as it seems like whenever someone sticks a shovel in the ground they hit a Roman whorehouse or a king or a mass plague burial or some shit.  But God bless y'all, you do history RIGHT.  Nothing is outside the scope of your studies, and specialists range from Roman  Era Deviant Grave Depositions to Edwardian Sanitation Experts.  Half of you are archeologists and the other half are living in re-enactment settlements in the Midlands, I swear, but it's all fantastic stuff!  You find a Viking hoard full of diamond dildoes and gold spittoons, you display that behind bulletproof glass! You happen across a fossilized turd, then you get in there and examine the hell out of that turd!  And that turd reveals it's turdly secrets and the historical record is immeasurably richer for it's turdular testimony.  You find evidence of headhunting, scalp taking and cannibalism?  You just lay it all out there, nothing loth.

We don't have that same strong spirit of inquiry here in the Northwest.  The fact that our ancient history isn't ours has a lot to do with that.  The other thing is that our more recent history is so recent that it was hardly recorded, and where it was recorded, it was done so in a perfunctory manner with little thought for the vagaries of drunks and clumsy persons who used fire indoors.  You guys had stone buildings to keep your records in; we pioneers only had wood for the most part.  My little dot on the map lost the first 50 years of it's settlement history to a fire that swept through.  (My front room, once a one-room cabin, escaped that fire by a hair; I've seen an old photo and it's amazing.)  The only way we even know who owned what is because the Canadians had, yup, records - kept in stone buildings - that the survivors could consult.

I've found a few artifacts here during gardening.  I have a couple of old medicine bottles,  a porcelain dolls' arm, and a stone hide scraper. Lots of hand-forged nails, so many that I've piled them in my perennial herb bed.  Our poor little town museum is kind of lost in time around the 1920's - anything earlier is a loan from one of the nearby towns that no longer exist.  And that's sad.  I've donated a few things I've found going through old barns nearby, and to see them on display makes me feel that nice tingle of civic pride.  No fossilized turds yet, but I keep the flame of hope alive.  Fingers crossed.  Someday.  

Dentists and UFOs

The best way to get something done is to DO IT.  Had I taken my own advice I would not have the dental issues I have now, and I would not be scrambling to get them taken care of.  

In my defense I must say that I've had some seriously shitty dentists in the past.  I won't even go into it.  Cap that experience (you see what I did there) with getting all four wisdom teeth taken out at once - and then getting 'dry socket' on all four craters! and yeah, I haven't been back for a few years.

I can date this specifically to July 4th of 2016, the date of The Ultimate White Trash 4th of July Celebration up in the foothills of Washington, in a tiny little town that doesn't show up on maps, where we rode on our Harley, and  1. taught small children to use firearms  2. used firearms ourselves, badly, 3. while drunk 4. set off many illegal fireworks 5. while drunk 6. set a sofa on fire, and a pool table,  7. while very drunk 8. drove up and down the street blasting funk and disco music while everyone else partied up on the logging stages all around us 9. while profoundly drunk 10. and I broke an incisor; which I then pulled myself, using a needlenosed pliers, 11. while SOBER.

The broken tooth happened right after I arrived at the party, and I proceeded to make my pioneer forbears proud.  Screw that tooth.  After all the kids had marvelled at it, I threw it into the brush and drank a bunch of vodka. 

That's how much I hate the dentist.

I realize that it's my time; that women my age lose their back teeth and that losing your teeth when you're old happens, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.  This doctor specializes in dental-phobic patients, though, and I'm counting on that.  I will not be dignified and I will not put on a brave showing.  I will wince and freak and possibly cry.  BEFORE the dentist does anything.  This is my way of welcoming a new medical specialist onto my team.  Kind of like their initiation.  And after all, I have good insurance, and times are tough.  They'd BETTER treat me well.  At least, that's the kind of attitude I'm trying to encourage in myself.

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Now look at this picture.

   

This is a picture of the very spot, including the arrow, of the place where my mother was standing when she saw her FIRST flying saucer.  (There were more, believe me.)  Imagine my chubby little mom standing right on that arrow, looking off to the left, up by the bar with the traffic lights on it, watching A Visitor From Space!    

Imagine a real music hall yiddishe mama voice, and you'll have my mothers voice, although she was a New York Cat'lick.  "Aouw my gaaawd, theah it was!  An' I was just standin' theah right by the grass!  An I just looked up!  Right theah, and it was, oh it was hyuge and red and cigah shaped, kind of, oh, and people was just loooookin and looookin, and we all just loooooked..." and this would go on awhile.  

Now this was back in her 'mystical' days, before she had her conversion experience, burned her Ouija Board and all her astrological books and got Jesus the way a racoon gets hit by a truck.  She would trot this story out to anyone who mentioned the subject, and since it was quite a subject around 1968, my mother became, unbeknownst to her, one of the 'cool' moms in the neighborhood because she would not shut her yap about this goddamn flying saucer.  Or cigar.  

I was just going through Google maps, travelling around, and I thought it was really poignant that the arrow and the corner just lined up so perfectly, and that the picture itself could be anyplace in America, any anonymous corner, except for the fact that in 1968, my mother saw a U.F.O as she stood on that very spot!  Remember that the next time you're abducted.  Drop the name 'Helen Hartis' and maybe you'll get to skip that butt probe!  

Unless you were looking forward to the butt probe.  I don't judge.

My Ongoing Hatred Of Coyotes

I was sitting here enjoying the storm last night, the wind blowing, the rain hitting the windows, my music playing low, when out of the night, from right across the street, starts up what sounded like 25 coyotes all giving voice.  I about pissed myself.

"Aw, I think they sound beautiful," people say.  Not to me, but people say it.  And they are usually people who don't live where they have to worry about coyotes.  I LIVE WHERE YOU HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT COYOTES.  They will come right into your yard, or farm, or barn, and steal your animals and dig in your trash and climb up on things and tear shit up.  Hell, I have to worry about eagles and other birds of prey here. I even have to worry about bears, and I even have to worry about wild ducks tearing up my yard during the winter.  Do you have to worry about ducks?  No you do not.  So shut up about how beautiful coyotes sound, because they don't sound beautiful.  They sound like the souls of the damned.  The insane damned.  One coyote sounds like five, and five sound like twenty five, and that's just too goddamned many coyotes, particularly at ten at night in the middle of a storm when most reasonable animals are in bed watching Netflix. 

Animals are just beginning to come out of hibernation, and there's really nothing out there to eat yet.  The coyotes are hungry.  When they're right in town like this, during bad weather, in their numbers, they're looking for 1. Your dog Spot  2. Your cat Princess Puff-Puff  3. First graders.  4. February calves.

It's the February calves that they're really counting on, and they'll take a few this year.  Last fall when the coyotes were out partying they weren't thinking about next February because they're coyotes.  Now there's a bunch of youngsters, and coyote dad is whining 'the condom broke, geeze' and mom coyote is just disgusted, and they have to feed their unplanned offspring.  The guy two fields down raises dairy stock, and he's going to get hit hard.  It's just beginning.

A coyote is fox-smart and dog-cowardly.  They are nimble and they can climb, too.  In packs they are a force to be reckoned with.  When they have intermingled over the years with dog stock, and these have, they are no damn joke.  They'll blitz the loafing sheds like a ninja attack.  And that's what freaks me out about coyotes.  They've always been on the outskirts, and they've always been hit and run scavengers. 

 Mankind didn't take in coyotes and tame them into dogs.  They took wolves.  Our ancestors were not stupid people.  A wolf is intelligent, and it's able to adapt.  A coyote has a different nature.  It was made for a specific ecological niche, and it's been very successful in that niche, and has no interest in adapting.  It's why humans tamed horses and not zebras.  A horse is intelligent and can adapt.  A zebra is just a stripey, pissed off animal with a shitty attitude that occupies a specific ecological niche, and has a passing resemblance to horses, but will chew on your face and stomp you to death because it's a zebra and does not want to adapt so fuck off.

The good thing about zebras is that they don't hunt in packs at night during rainstorms and howl like demented souls from Hades right outside my goddamn front window.  They have the sense to live in Africa.  Coyotes do not.  They live all up in my grille, and they have since I was a kid, because this is the Pacific Northwest, and we have wild animals all over the fucking place here.  When I lived in the suburbs we had coyotes, and when I lived in Portland we had coyotes in Portland; Seattle has coyotes and I know that for a damn fact because I saw a bunch of them one night crossing the park up on Capitol Hill.  They do not give a fuck. They are the reason that you do not put your cat outside at night here.  Or your first grader.  Never do that here. Coyotes will eat them.

When I was in grade school we had friends who lived way out in the country, and they had two girls; my parents used to like to dump me off with them for a week every now and then.  One night we were all sleeping in the downstairs corner bedroom, a room with large windows, almost floor to ceiling.  As we were going to sleep, we heard the coyotes start up out in the hills, and that was fine.  Until they started getting closer and closer, and adding members to the choir, and then came up and were just within the light limit of the house - we could peek out the drapes and see their eyeshine. No, it was when they started SCRATCHING ON THE SIDING OF THE HOUSE that I began to get alarmed.  And the things are still yattering and screeching and howling, remember!

  Mr. Farm Dude and his wife were no help.  They did not care.  Not in the least bit bothered.  Us kids are screaming, and they're just yelling at us to shut up and go to sleep, while just inches away there is a pack of wild animals scratching on the house trying to get in to where we three little girls were sleeping!  That is not a recipe for a good night's sleep.  That is the way you learn that 'Clearly, we're the disposable members of this group.'

So remember that the next time you go mooning on about the romance of the Old West.  That shit is imaginary.  It wasn't Dale Evans and Roy Rogers.  It was gonorrhea, whores and coyotes.  

Your Titties And The Law

 So I've just had all my yearly checkups and they've all come back sterling!  I'm back in fighting trim, ready to rumble, feelin' foxy and funky fresh, and then I get the results from my mammogram.

When I get a mammogram, I give the technician a lot to work with. She doesn't have to do a lot of pulling and shaping to gather up enough flesh to squish.  It's just 'blabap!' on the platen, like a slab of raw beef on a scale, and 'zap' I get another dose of roentgens toward the cause of keeping my girls cancer free. 

Gottalotta USDA Prime sweater steak, amigo

I get my results in the mail.  "We are pleased to tell you that your results are 100% normal! (I have medical proof that something about me is 100% normal.  I am hanging onto that shit, believe me.)  And then, appended there at the bottom, I get this message:  

Washington State legislation requires us to inform you of your breast density.  BREAST COMPOSITION:  Your breast tissue is almost entirely fatty (not dense)    

I was a little off-put by this at first.  The State of Washington, no less,  is telling me that what I've got is basically lard with nipples.  

I feel very judged.

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We had to take the Biker in to get his oil changed and his tires rotated.  Nerve entrapment runs in his family, and so they made two incisions in his right arm, wrist and elbow, and sanded away all the excess bone growth, and voila! No more problem.  It was pretty basic stuff, but now I'm stuck with him in the house for about two weeks.  I mean I'm happy he won't put himself through what his father, The Playboy Of The Western World, put himself through by being an Old German Dude who is made of cast iron and scorns the work of medical science because he is an ubermensch.  My Biker was responsible and did the right thing, and I'm glad.

Now, he used to have that Old German Dude mindset, and some of you will recall the bullshit I used to go through trying to get this man to take care of himself.  What had to happen, finally, was me telling him "All I can be responsible for is me.  I will no longer bother you, your health is entirely up to you." (Now for my part, sticking to that resolution was a biiiiiiiiiiiitch, because for me not to nag is not normal behavior.  I was born to kvetch.  You got a problem?  I have the solution and you're gonna hear about it at length until you get  that problem taken care of because I know best.  As you all know.  Which should go without saying actually.)  

So that's what happened.  And it came to the point where he made a bad decision, and now has to live with the results of that bad decision staring him in the face for the rest of his life, because he was too fuckin' metal to do his physical therapy.  (Am I gloating?  Yes.  Yes I am.  I am a terrible person. Which should also go without saying.)  And he learned from that mistake, because that's kind of a big deal, and so he gradually came around to admitting - at least to himself - that he is not 16 and bulletproof.   Was I relieved? YES LORD.

Now we can have discussions that admit to the fact that we are aging.  It's no longer a touchy ass subject, and believe me, it used to be.  And it's a relief for both of us.  

If your health and appearance are a matter of pride, no matter who you are, you are going to get older, and that pride is going to turn into your worst enemy if you don't amend your reality.  Your body is going to change.  You will go through reverse puberty, people. Your ass hair will fall out and turn grey and, just, shit will happen.  Embrace those changes, people.  SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT AND GET OVER YOURSELF.

Meet your new boyfriend.  Now try and live up to THAT foxy.   

  

You're living in a body made of meat and meat by-products.  You have a limited shelf life.  Make the changes you can to keep what you have left comfortable, clean and functioning, and live in your new body like a reasonable person instead of an irritating old idiot who drives everybody crazy with their easily-avoided health issues, denial and bitching. Nobody thinks you're brave and nobody admires you.  What they are is put upon and taken out of their own lives by your continuing to be a stone in their shoe! GET WITH THE FUCKING PROGRAM!

Whew, I feel so much better now!  I needed to nag somebody!  Thank you for being there, my invisible Internet darlings. Consider yourselves well and truly nagged - and you best keep it in mind, because while I may have decided not to nag my husband....

I'VE MADE NO SUCH DECISIONS ABOUT YOU!!!!!!