Blogger

Sheesh! I've been skipping blogging for a few days, and I go to sign in and get caught up, and the dratted Blogger wouldn't let me in without upgrading to the new Blogger. C'mon, guys! You've been offering that upgrade for weeks now, and I haven't done it because, jeez, I don't want the new Blogger.

So they give me no choice. I have to upgrade or not blog at all. First the link they send me doesn't work. Then, after trying multiple times, it says okay -- but first we have to upgrade your accounts to the new Blogger.

Oh-kay, I say. (All right, that wasn't exactly what I said. My words were a tad more profane.) Upgrade me.

Sorry, comes the message. We're only upgrading certain people to the new Blogger. Check back later and maybe we'll let you do it.

Grrr! After logging in for the umpteenth time, finally I got in -- with the upgrade I didn't want in the first place. Holy cow! Granted, I might like it once I see what the changes are, but that doesn't make me feel any less pissy about it right now.

But, hey, that's okay, right? I mean, a woman's gotta feel pissy about something, doesn't she? Rachel9:53 PM

Adding insult to injury

It was a beautiful day here in Oklahoma -- seventy-some degrees, sun shining, spring fever rising . . . and how did I spend a portion of it? In the doctor's office, getting the results from the tests done a few weeks ago. Great, great, everything looks great, the physician's assistant told me, except your blood pressure's a little high.

Well, yeah. Like, every person in my mother's family has high blood pressure. Why should I be an exception? I knew going in that I'd be coming out with new medication.

But first, the PA said, let's talk about adding some physical activity to your daily routine.

Excuse me? I walk 45 minutes a day. Me, the former couch potato, the former huffer-and-puffer. I walk. Fast. Burning calories. Pumping blood.

Okay, the PA said. Let's talk about dietary changes. You could lose ten pounds or so.

Having high blood pressure isn't enough? I have to listen to a kid maybe half my age casually mention that I could stand to lose ten pounds?? (Wonder what my pressure would have been then.) (A nice kid, granted, but still . . .)

Lose ten pounds. I can do that . . . and I'm real good at finding them again. I love chocolate. Snickers. Hershey's Kisses. Peanut M&Ms. An occasional Reese's Cup. Bit O' Honey . . . oh, man, I LOVE Bit O' Honeys! And I'm not one of those who can savor one piece and be satisfied. No, no. One leads to another leads to half a bag.

Have you ever figured how much fast, blood-pumping, calorie-burning walking you have to do to burn off one Snickers? It's waaay depressing.

Good thing warm weather's coming, because one of the few things I love more than chocolate is working outside. I've got a new tomato bed to build, some trees to cut down, some heavy-duty weeds to trim. I'll lose those ten pounds, or raise my blood pressure trying. Rachel9:16 PM

No brainer of the day

I saw a story on TV about a kid in Florida (I think) who is going through a gender identity crisis. He's male; there's no question of that. His classmates have known him as a guy for a long time, but now, while dealing with his crisis, he's dressing as a girl.

Okay, no big deal. (Easy for me to say, since he's not my kid.) But now this "conflicted" guy wants to use the girl's bathroom at school. He's got a lawyer, national press, and support from some of his fellow students and their parents. And, NATURALLY, he's lacking support from a whole lot of students.

Duh! What's going on in these people's heads? I can dress like a professional football player or a nun, but that doesn't MAKE me a jock or a nun. This guy might have an identity crisis, but he's still a guy, no matter what clothes he wears. What kind of goober thinks clothing has ANY bearing on whether to use the girls' bathroom or the boys'? It's what's UNDERNEATH the clothes that makes the difference, and anyone who can't see that is just plain wrong.

Call me narrow-minded -- you won't be the first -- but sharing my bathroom at home with my husband and, for the years he was here, the kiddo was enough to last a lifetime. (Yeah, okay, I've used a men's room on a few occasions, but I was all by myself, and it was an emergency.) When I go to the women's room, I want to know everyone else in there is a woman. That's just kind of like a basic right in my world. The day this guy starts taking hormones and gets his thing whacked off, he can go into any ladies' room around.

But until then, as the old saying goes, clothing doesn't make the man -- er, woman. Rachel6:37 PM

Rehab

My name is Rachel, and I'm in rehab.

Bet that caught your interest, didn't it? I am in rehab, but as a guest, not a patient, and it's not drugs or alcohol but cardiac rehab. Yep, I'm taking my mom to cardiac rehab. (Remember a while back I said the last part of 2006 was sucky sucky sucky? That's part of the reason why. Chest pain, triple bypass, three major surgeries in seven weeks, MRSA infection, partial sternectomy . . . I get down just thinking about it again.)

We go to the physical therapy part of the rehab first, then have an hour-long class afterward. The first day, the nurse gave me consent forms so I can work out, too. (I wonder -- did I look as if I WANTED to work out? Worse, did I look as if I NEEDED to?) Yesterday I even went so far as the take a pair of comfy workout pants and sneakers with me. I walked into the room, accompanied my mother through the weighing in, donning the monitor pouch, applying the four-lead monitor -- all the time too cold to even consider taking off my gorgeous black-wool-and-fur coat. Other than the staff, I was by far the youngest person in the room; I don't know how those fragile little eighty-somethings could stand the chill. Honest to God, I saw my breath when I breathed.

Then came the music. I like music. I even like it loud. But the rock playing in that room was so loud that I have no clue how the nurses were able to hear to take blood pressures. The music -- which I didn't even like -- was rattling the fillings in my teeth, so as soon as Mom was settled on the stepper, I headed for the hall. I walked, which had been my plan; I just did it up and down the long hallways, where the temperature was at least ten degrees higher, the music a hundred decibels softer and much more pleasurable. I got in a good walk -- my preferred method of exercise when it's too cold to get out the trimmer, mower or chain saw -- in time to join Mom in a nutrition class. Didn't learn anything there I wanted to know -- fried food is bad. Sour cream is bad. Thai food is bad. Asian food in general is bad. "If I like it," one poor man sighed, "I shouldn't eat it." (Bless his heart, he was learning to cope with both heart disease and diabetes at the same time.)

Just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from nutritionally: before rehab, we had a late breakfast of bacon, sausage, ham, eggs, hash browns and pancakes with butter and maple syrup, then Robert and I had dinner at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant. (And if the nutritionist thinks soy sauce is salty, she should try nuoc mam (fish sauce). Wowza!

I'm going back tomorrow for another walk and Healthy Eating, Part II. Hope there's better news in that class! Rachel11:30 AM

"The girls are back . . . and they've brought friends!"

Sister Liz and her gorgeous daughter were up for a visit last Friday. Leah and I met them for lunch on a too-cold day at Utica Square, wedging ourselves and all our Christmas packages into a narrow little place called Queenlet (Queenlet's?) that has wonderful panini. It's a tradition of ours to exchange gifts sometime after late January (last year it was April, a bit late even for us!). It's a great excuse to get together, eat, laugh too much -- as if we need an excuse.

After trading gifts back and forth while eating (and amusing the people around us), we drove over to Saks. Yep, drove, even though it's less than a block away. It was COLD, did I mention? And we hit the Bobbi Brown counter.

Leah introduced me to Bobbi a few years back -- the makeup, not the artist -- and it's become my biggest splurge. We do makeovers three or four times a year, stocking up on the new colors and products for each season -- visiting so often and spending so much that the Bobbi people are always thrilled to see us coming.

Liz, however, has missed out on all the Bobbi fun, so she and Gorgeous got their first makeovers (but not last, I'm sure) while Leah and I browsed for our own purchases. When the makeup artistes were finished, Liz and Gorgeous looked fabulous. Of course, considering that they're already beautiful, even stripped down to bare skin, that was no surprise.

We walked out of Sak's an hour or so after getting there, our Bobbi urge satisfied . . . at least for a while. They're doing Beauty Week in March, with artists coming in from all over, and Leah and I already have our appointments. We'll make an afternoon of it, like we always do, and go in ready to spend and get beautiful.

You know, you'd think for the amount of money we spend on Bobbi, the least she could do is handle our makeover personally. Wonder just how much we'd have to spend to get that? Rachel6:22 PM

Life is a stress test

Treadmills look so harmless. Not too big, not too complicated, not something that's liable to yank you inside its mechanical workings, chew you up and spit you out the other side. All they require you to do is walk, right? Something most of us have been most of our lives.

Ha. I went in for a nuke treadmill. Officially, it's called a myocardial perfusion stress test or something like that. Personally, I call it One Bad Day. It starts with an IV. Needles and I don't like each other. They're sharp. They hurt. My veins prefer to remain unpunctured, with all the blood inside.

The nuke guy was very good at sticking; he hit the vein on the first stab. Then he injected me with a radioactive isotope. (Wonder if I would make a Geiger counter tick?) After it pumps through my veins for a while, he took a whole bunch of pictures with this camera that defines "up close and personal." That takes fifteen minutes or so, with me lying on my back with my arms above my head.

I don't lie on my back unless I'm doing yoga. It makes me antsy. Gives me headaches. Makes my neck stiff. And I sure don't lie on my back with my arms over my head . . . unless I'm going yoga. An old separation injury in my left shoulder, an old rotator cuff strain in the right shoulder . . . (Jeez, sounds as if I've lived an active life. Ha!)

So fifteen minutes and oodles of pictures later, it was time for the treadmill. I was wired for sound, my blood was glowing green (don't tell me it wasn't; you won't change my mind), and Randy the nuke guy starts the treadmill. Easy going -- 2 mph, level surface. I was strolling along, thinking hey, this isn't bad. The timer hit the three-minute mark, the speed increased, and the thing inclined. Not so easy going anymore. But my heart rate was only about 80 -- still a good ways from the target of 144. Then the timer hit the six-minute mark, the speed increased again, and the incline increased again. Holy cow!

Years ago I saw some show with Bill Crosby where he was having a treadmill. Mine wasn't nearly as entertaining as his. I was huffing, puffing, sweating -- the damn thing was kicking my ass. Finally, I hit the target rate and stayed there while I got another injection of the radioactive stuff. A minute or so after that, the gods of women of a certain age took pity on me, and I got off the treadmill.

Then I got more pictures. On my back. Arms over my head.

Man, was I glad to get out of that place!

We'll see you back next year, one of the girls said on my way out.

Don't count on it. You don't have to hit me over the head with a treadmill to teach me a lesson. I want to live a long happy life, and I'm pretty damn sure that allowing people to torture me on a regular basis ain't the way to do it.

Besides, glowing green isn't my color. Rachel7:23 PM

What's sexier?

I've been reading a good bit of erotica/romantica lately that's leaving me somewhat unsatisfied. They're steamy enough and have plenty of inventive/unusual/kinky sex, but when the story's done, I have a great desire to go read a non-erotica romance because it just feels like something's missing. Oddly enough, when I finish reading an inspirational romance, I have the same response, and I finally figured it out: there's no sexual tension in either of these books. (I'm speaking only about the books I'm reading -- not all erotica/romantica/inspirationals in general.)

I don't care much about the love scenes in romances. Don't care a whole lot about writing them, and don't want to waste much time reading them. In my never-humble opinion, the sex is just an afterthought -- the sexual tension's the payoff. I want to see characters getting turned on -- want to see that spark and crackle and electricity. I want to wonder when they'll do it, and how, and how it will change them and their growing relationship. I want to feel every jolt, every touch, and anticipate the culmination.

In erotica, sheesh, there's no real mystery about when they're going to do it -- generally within the first few pages -- and every few pages after that. I've read a few where the book opens in the middle of a sex scene. Sometimes they don't even know each other's names, and they rarely spend any significant time with each other without stripping naked (or not) and going at it. It just gets to feel so humdrum after the first umpteen times. (I have to admit, books where the guy's too horny to take off his jeans before doing the deed always make me giggle. Is there anything that looks goofier than a man pumping away with his pants danging around his butt?)

And in the inspirationals, they never do it -- and, worse, never show any interest in doing it. Where are all the little Christians supposed to come from??? They hold hands. They exchange an occasional chaste kiss, but they never think about jumping each other's bones or getting hot and sweaty together. As someone else said, every romance has to eventually lead to hot monkey sex, or there's a problem.

The sexiest books I've ever read devote few pages to the actual sex, but the sexual tension between the characters damn near hums. I'm surprised sometimes that steam doesn't curl from the pages. I finish them and realize with surprise that there were only one or two actual sex scenes in the book, because everything about the hero and heroine was so HOT.

How funny that what are supposed to be the hottest books out there are leaving me cold, and the "tame" ones are making me hot.

(Another disclaimer: I'm talking ONLY about the books I've been reading lately, and no, I'm not nameing names. I'm sure there are eroticas out there that manage both wild and kinky sex AND sexual tension, and I'm also sure there are some inspirationals in which the hero and heroine do actually have a sexual thought or yearning from time to time. They just don't happen to be on my shelf at this time.) Rachel10:57 AM

Baby, it's cold outside

Okay, so I don't like bad weather. Don't like to look at it, go out in it, or, for damn sure, drive in it. I'd be happy if not one more tiny little snowflake ever survived the fall to the ground here.

The weather guys were predicting a 70% chance of snow on Thursday -- that's today. So yesterday I make plans with sister Leah to meet in Tulsa after my dotor's appointment, go to lunch, then replenish my supply of Bobbi Brown makeup. It's cold, but, yeah, that's okay, because I've got my down coat and suede gloves and a black and gold fringed scarf that's not particularly warm, but it's very pretty.

I get up an ungodly hour, choose my clothes with an eye toward looking good rather than staying warm -- remember, I'm taking the down coat -- put on my makeup and fix my hair. And my hair turned out really, really good. Way better than usual. I feed the puppers and shoo everyone out into the bitter cold, then let them back in, and I'm ready to go.

As an afterthought, I grab a pair of tennis shoes and heavy socks. Just in case. And I head off to the doc's in Tulsa. I get five miles from home, in the car that doesn't have four-wheel drive, and it starts snowing. But it's not sticking, and it's really kind of pretty, swirling and eddying across the roadway. I get to my doc's building and drive up through seven floors of parking garage to find that the only empty spaces are the uncovered ones up top. Good thing I finally rememberd to put an ice scraper in the car.

This doc is one of the best in his field, but he's always so far behind schedule that he'll go to his grave with patients waiting in vain. I'm working on some stuff that Leah had sent me when she calls and says she's not coming for lunch; it's too nasty out her way. I look out the window and see that the snow's coming down harder. It's sticking. People driving on 21st Street and in Utica Square are being terribly cautious. Oops, that car's sliding.

But it's okay; I'm prepared. I have shoes for walking, my down coat, my gloves, my scarf. But no hat, I tell Leah. My hair looks too good to even consider putting a hat on it. She laughs.

Now, I haven't driven on snow or ice since I was pregnant with the kiddo -- a looong time. Even the thought makes my stomach hurt. That loss of control thing. If you watch "South Park," think of Tweak, the twitchy little constantly-freaked-out kid. (And if you don't watch "South Park," you should.) Interminable waiting doesn't do me much good, either. The doc finally comes in and says, "Your blood pressure's up."

Gee. I wonder why.

He also says, "Your hair looks great." Coming from a man who knows everything about my insides and probably wouldn't recognize my face in the hall outside his door, that says a lot.

I finally get out of the doc's office with follow-up reminders clutched in my gloved hand. I trudge out to the snow-encrusted car, scrape it clean, take a deep breath and head down seven ramps to the street.

Hey, it's not so bad. A little slick, but nothing to worry about if you start out slow and give yourself plenty of time to stop. And when I get to the interstate, jeez, the travel lanes are clear from all the traffic. So I toodle on home . . . and the closer I get, the worse the roads become. Finally I reach the bottom of the big hill. Excuse me -- the BIG, snow-blown-deep hill.

I say a prayer, start up it, get halfway, and the tires start spinning. Back up to the bottom of the hill, gather my courage and try again. Less than halfway, the tires lose traction again, and this time my descent is as much uncontrolled slide as my backing. I sit at the bottom and consider my options. It's a mile to the house, most of it uphill, most of the hill VERY steep, and the snow is coming down heavy and wet. I can huddle there and wait until Robert gets home in six or eight hours and hitch a ride with him in the Tahoe. I could go back into town and over to Mom's to wait. Or I can try again.

I do, and everything's going great. I pass the ruts where my previous attempts end and keep going. I'm gonna make it!

Uh, no. The car starts sliding, and by the time I get it under control -- a relative notion -- I'm sitting sideways, blocking both lanes, with the ditches only inches behind the back wheels and maybe three feet in front of the front ones. I inch forward, then back, forward, then back, and finally get the car turned around and heading down. I slide to a stop in the grass at the bottom of the hill, change to my sensible shoes and socks, get bundled up and head up the hill. Three-tenths of a mile. The next four-tenths are easy, and the last three-tenths are a killer. But I can do it.

Thank God as I get to the top of the first hill, the neighbor steps out and calls, "Come on over. Norm will give you a ride home." Bless his heart! He got the four-wheel-drive out of the garage, and off we went without the least bit of skidding, slipping or sliding.

Long story short, I made it home in one piece, and without wrecking the car, and despite the heavy, wet snow, my hair still looked great.

Of course, it took my toes four hours to thaw. Note to self: next time take waterproof, insulated boots! Rachel8:04 AM