Balance

If you’re me, your shape changes in middle-age.  Other things happen but I’ve been sworn to secrecy by the Coven of Middle-aged Women with Fancy Handbags.  I’m mad.  I work out, jog, but I am not shaped the way I used to be shaped, a subtle shifting of body mass.  I was warned by the Coven.  I didn’t think it would happen to me though.  I eat quinoa.

And also, not to brag — I just did 50 sit ups but my stomach still protrudes. Why? Fucking fibroids.  Yeah I said it.  It happens more so at a certain time of the month.  Why now, a few days before my author reading?  I’m tired of this.  I could have my uterus surgically removed.  I just don’t want to be knocked out and cut so that I can have my guts ripped out.

I was waiting for that device in Star Trek to come out.  Captain Kirk, Bones and Spock time-traveled.  They went back in time and witnessed a 20^th century surgery.  Bones said it was barbaric.  Their time era is the future where Bones just waves this wand thing over the part that needs surgery and – bam!  I could be uterus-free in seconds with not a one scratch on me.  I think it’ll be a while before this is invented, so I’ll just wait for menopause.  That’s when my estrogen level is supposed to decrease, which ideally would mean that these things will shrink.  But we’ll see with the luck I have.

All’s not awful though.  I’ve always had kind of a big ass even when I was a skeleton.  But I don’t look good bone thin anymore and that’s a good thing – like it was ever a good thing.  Now I don’t need to be always worried about staying a certain weight.  I’m more relaxed.  The effort would be wasted anyway.  When you’re this age two carrots, plus 3 walnuts, plus one celery stick does not equal ninety-eight pounds soaking wet.  It equals what your metabolism tells you it will equal.  Listen youngsters – eat, smoke and be reckless, because, you won’t be able to later on.  I’m not killing myself to be skinny anymore, so I don’t have to smoke cigarettes and eat grass.  Since my shape has changed I look like a bobble head if I’m too thin.  And I realized recently that the big ass balances off my big head nicely.

*A post of vanity, by Sandee Harris

Can’t I have anything!?

When I was 12, a friend said I’d get titties in the springtime.  I did.  Sort of.  I got A’s.  Wasn’t bad actually.  Had returning customers.  (No. I wasn’t a prostitute.  Maybe I should have been.  You know, charged money?)  But if my breasts were gonna be small I’d have a tight body I reasoned.  I exercised stringently and smoked cigarettes — crack diets didn’t come out ‘til later. The payoff was being skinny, which wasn’t always good enough.

I told my dad I was getting implants.  He said I needed to go explore, be around different types of people – I like to think he meant I needed to be around classy, arty people who were too deep, too brilliant to focus on titties — haha yeah, that’s what he meant — and my friend said smaller breasts are aristocratic; and my other friend said, Yeah, yeah, I like your titties like that – ah shhhhit yeah!  And as I’ve said before, if you have smaller ones all the energy is focused, you know, down there.

So at times I wasn’t bothered, though I wondered what it would be like to have big ones.  Summer would come and I saw how big women’s breasts were – wow – this is where mine went – these bitches got my portion!  I’d go in and out of feeling inadequate.  I regretted not being able to ‘have sex with my breasts’ or not being able to slap somebody silly with my titties.  Then it would be okay again because I was a waifish nymph, or a nymphish waif, or a nymph-waif-pirate drunk.

Now that I’ll be 50, I’m more relaxed.  I spent years going in and out of being skinny and nearly sick because of it, and obsessively weighing myself, because I valued myself that way.  It all came from being flat-chested.  I still exercise regularly, but it started out as an obsession having more to do with vanity than fitness.  I gained weight here and there, freaked out, and went on a holistic diet.  I thought of becoming a vegan not for health reasons, but because I thought it would keep me skinny.

Now I have fibroids that cause a slight protrusion in my abdomen.  Menopause, which is soon, may shrink them.  I don’t want surgery because I’m asymptomatic. Along with running and working out regularly, I do fifty sit-ups at least three times a week.  My stomach was flat until a couple of years ago.  Can’t I have anything?  I feel like all my effort is futile at times, just as I do with my other efforts that yield minimal results. Are my biorhythms off?  Did I kill somebody in a past life?

No, I just need to find my worth in areas that don’t require external approval.  Who I am is not any certification, degree, award, Pulitzer Prize, or drooling admiration. Unfortunately I didn’t get that until now.

Entenmann’s Cherry Cheese Danish

On the walk home with my groceries including my Entenmann’s cherry cheese danish that I totally planned to eat for dinner, a neighborhood drunk, sitting on the side of the historical house says, “I thought you was supposed to be losin’.”   That son of a bitch!  He sees me jogging all the time so I guess he felt like he was calling me on something.  [Warning to men: “Female Problems” Alert] I have fibroids that make my stomach stick out at “certain times.”  I was twisted with bags and wearing a tee-shirt so it was probably prominent.  I don’t have a weight problem.  I exercise regularly and generally eat quinoa, steamed vegetables every night – organic shit – that kind of thing.  So what he said didn’t make me want to run home, get on the scale and throw my danish away – I’m too old for that shit now.  My toothpick days are over, and it ain’t as bad as I would have imagined as a 25 year old neurotic who’d rather smoke than eat.  I do know this rat bastard – he’s one of the neighborhood bums and drunks that I plan to write about.  “How dare you?”  I said lamely, and went home where I indulged in a scrumptious meal of Doritios, orange ginger cookies and my Entenmann’s cherry cheese danish.  Suck my dick you greasy drunk bastard!