Cancer in the family: the things you don't want to know

The things you don't know are, sometimes, the things you DO know, packed away in a sealed box of memory somewhere in a dusty attic.

All night I dreamed of spiders. They were huge, big fat ones with distended abdomens, and I wanted someone to come and kill them because I couldn't even begin to go near them. At one point a big black snake sprang up out of nowhere, and I found an Indo-Canadian boy to come and catch it and take it away.

The spiders were deeply enwebbed and camped all around my bed, crouched and lying in wait. I could not possibly use that bed. Where would I sleep?

As an adjunct to the kicking-and-screaming post of a couple of days ago, the one about not wanting to go to the doctor, well. . . I went. I went expecting it to be awful, and in fact it was a relief.

But not for the usual reason, the "oh, there's nothing wrong here". The truth is, we don't know. I came away with a couple of requisitions for medical tests, the sort of thing I would have hated and dreaded before. Now I was actually determined to go ahead with them, even grateful to have them.

What brought on this change of heart? The look on my doctor's face when I told her my symptoms. It was not exactly an uh-oh look, but it was more serious than anything I'd seen on her face before.

Maybe it's nothing, I said to myself, knowing full well it wasn't. Don't be a hypochondriac, don't fuss about every little thing. But at a certain point, you begin to connect the dots.

And maybe it isn't anything. I told myself, statistically, it's probably nothing. For years and years, if doctors asked, I said, no, there's no history of cancer in my family. Both my parents lived to be over 90.

That last part is true. But it was just today, one day post-examination, that I began to remember things. I  remembered things that, strangely, I had never entirely forgotten, but had packed away in a category marked "please forget".

Because both my parents lived to be over 90, I assumed there was no cancer in the immediate family. No one died of it, so it couldn't have been there. Now I realize how erroneous a conclusion like that can be.

Suddenly I recalled being, maybe, 12 years old or so, which was in the mid-1960s. Then without any explanation or warning, my mother was in the hospital.

There were murmurings about what was going on, some sort of surgery, but I remember I was never allowed to visit her. (Never allowed to visit my mother in the hospital?) You must understand, you were not allowed to say the word "cancer" back then, or even think it. The whole topic was drenched with a sense of impending doom. So I never asked any questions about this, because I knew I couldn't.

A long time later, she told me her doctor had prescribed massive doses of estrogen for her when she was in her 40s. There was a book called Forever Young that was a bestseller back then. Written by a doctor, it claimed that estrogen "replacement" would keep middle-aged women young-looking and interested in sex for decades past the "change of life".  It could even turn back the clock and take ten years off a woman's appearance. A preposterous idea, not to mention a very dangerous one.

This estrogen was not balanced with progesterone or anything else, just dumped into the system "raw". I doubt if anyone found themselves becoming preturnaturally young from this. My mother's appearance didn't change except to get older, like everyone else's. But then, years later there was this mysterious, frightening "thing" where she disappeared for a while, and for some reason I couldn't see her.

Fast-forward to the mid-1980s. This time my mother phoned me with some "news", but now I was an adult and I DID ask questions. My father had discovered he had blood in his urine and had to be rushed into surgery. They told my mother the tumor they found was "the good kind", and she countered that with, "There is no good kind." She was right; it was cancerous, but he lived. The surgery had been successful.

It looks now as if both my parents had cancer. Because they didn't die from it, because they both made it past 90, I have never "counted" it in the family medical history. The whole thing sort of disappeared. But when they're taking a medical history, they don't usually ask you, "How many of your family members died of cancer?" They usually ask something like, "Have any of your family members had cancer?"

This doesn't look good for me. But up to now, any weird or scary symptoms I've had have turned out to be "nothing", so maybe this is just more "nothing".

I had a bleak and bizarre thought today when I first woke up, my pelvis sore from all the peeking and probing: I can't die from this, because I don't exist.

You may ask: how can this be?

I am not in touch with my family of origin, a very long story which I will not attempt to tell here. I did not see my mother's obituary until a couple of years after her death. For some reason, I looked it up on the internet.

By some magical act of transmogrification, my mother, who gave birth to four children (five, actually - one died in infancy) now had only two children, my two eldest siblings. I had been completely erased from the record, along with my brother Arthur, a brilliant musician and my closest childhood friend. A schizophrenic, he had brought shame on the family with his mental illness, his pagan religion (Buddhist) and his untimely death in a fire.

Two children from four! That's some mathematical trick, this omission of two lives, two births. It's as if we were somehow unmade because we were unwanted, or at least too much of an embarrassment to keep on the roster.  A friend of mine (stunned) said to me, "But. . . but. . . what about people who knew the family, who knew you when you and your brother were growing up? What would they think? Wouldn't they be confused that you weren't mentioned?"

I don't know.

So, folks, it's good news after all! I can't die of cancer, because officially I don't exist.
I was never born or even conceived. I never was. This gives me a strange sense of liberation, as if I am already floating around free like a ghost.

I thought I had two pregnancies, but you can't be pregnant if you don't exist, can you? My children must have suddenly appeared full-blown like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. And my grandchildren? They were already miracles, but now that I know they appeared out of the thin air, they are more precious to me than ever.

(I'm no great fan of Dr. Oz, but I thought this article was enlightening and well-written and also, I think, unusually honest for a TV guru.)

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2075133_2075127_2075098-1,00.html

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

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I give up: what is this cat saying?

 

 

 

 

 

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK (or the end of the week):

What is this spooky pussycat saying?

Can you translate?

Is it possible to lip-read a creature

that has no discernible lips?

 

Give it your best shot.

I hate the doctor, and I don't want to go

The title sums it all up. I hate doctors. When have they done anything good for me? Every time I go, it turns out to be "nothing".

So should I conclude that it will always be "nothing"? The "it hasn't happened up to now, so it won't happen in the future" philosophy sucks rocks because it's illogical. It simply isn't true.

I am at the age - God, I hate that word - where I maybe need to worry. This is the time people are told to have screening tests like colonoscopies (which I always call colostomies by mistake - I freaked out a friend once by telling her I was supposed to have one) which scare me half to death because I've been told they can be agonizingly painful. One health forum had a comment from someone who said she would take her chances with serious disease rather than go through that again.

My husband collapsed on the floor about a year ago, and paramedics and police rushed over. Made me wonder why everyone ignores me when I have a medical problem, but then, he's male and considerably older than me. It might be heart disease, after all (because we all know women don't have heart attacks!). In the hospital they put him through a meat grinder, doing every possible diagnostic test on him. The follow-up was even more rigorous, cardiac, neurological, urological, bowel and guts and everything else they could ream out.

The result was exactly nothing.

So I don't want to go to the doctor. I don't want to go to the doctor because I've had some symptoms lately that are probably nothing, but at the same time scare the hell out of me.

It's funny, because Bill and I have talked about how we can't afford to live as long as our parents did (all four them were well over 90). In fact, we may have trouble affording our 70s. We've joked that if we make it to 80, we'll kill each other, kind of like a duel where we both shoot at once. But what if he misses, and I don't? Will I be charged with murder, or merely self-defense?

It doesn't sound good.

I think about cancer, everyone does, or do they? I don't know, I don't interview everyone in the world, or on the street. The thing is, people with cancer are usually seen as heroes, brave souls who keep smiling no matter how much it hurts. In contrast, don't ever get a psychiatric problem or you will be more or less seen as a fuckup. No one will visit you in the hospital with flowers and balloons because it's your own freaking fault you're there. Their ancient, deeply-buried dread of demonic possession will keep them away. But cancer, now! There's a great opportunity for bravery, for heroism, for stoicism in the face of pain, and lots and lots of warm get-well wishes.

Do I sound just a little bit cynical? I have my reasons.

I don't think I have cancer. So why go? I have this niggling worry. Shouldn't I ignore it? Do I want to be called a hypochondriac? But how can you be a hypochondriac if you hate doctors and stay away for years at a time?

There is something cold and frightening about the medical assembly line, the way you come out the other end feeling like dressed meat ready for the oven. There is a "NEXT!" feeling that only seems to get worse over the years. Too many patients, not enough time, because the equipment is absurdly expensive, the tests take forever and suck up resources, and it's usually for nothing. After all, somebody important might come in.

But we are stuck with it. In the past, if you had cancer, you just died. Probably horribly, because there wasn't even a good way to manage pain. Unlike today, when it's the banner illness that has spawned a million fundraising walks in every color of the rainbow, it was heavily stigmatized: people didn't even say the name. Probably this was fear, a dread that "something" had taken you over, colonized your body and was eating away at you beyond your control. This "something" would suck out the marrow from your bones, cause you to waste away to a skeleton, and probably drive away all but the most loyal family members who probably prayed that it would all be over soon.

All kinds of stuff has been written about illness, its social and emotional significance, etc. Usually the sufferer is blamed for not having it all together emotionally, for having "unresolved issues" (as if everyone doesn't have those). I wonder now if it isn't just bloody bad luck. Have you noticed how unevenly luck and blessings are distributed in life? Ain't it a bitch, and don't you wish it was different? People still get sick and die, in spite of all that fancy equipment. I've had five friends die in the last few years, and three of them were only in their mid-50s. One who was exactly my age at the time pulled his truck over, opened the door, and fell to the ground dead. Perhaps his fate was better than the woman who battled breast cancer for years, or Glen, one of the most beautiful men I have ever known, who escaped from a psych ward, swallowed a bottle of pills, and was found frozen to death beside the railroad tracks.

Oh, and that's another thing: the war imagery we use, especially for cancer. She "battled" breast cancer, she "waged a valiant struggle", and sometimes she "triumped" or scored a "victory" over it. I wonder why we do this. No one questions it, and when no one questions something I just get furious because we are PEOPLE, not cattle! My feeling has always been that you should question everything, especially loony social trends. The war imagery not only renders the sufferer especially valuable for being a "good soldier" (and we still think the military is special, no matter what anyone says), it places the whole thing at a safe, fictionalized distance, as if we're watching a World War II movie on TV or going to the Cenotaph for 45 minutes to watch old men stand in the rain.

Ah, the stoicism, the smiling in the face of doom. I wonder why people feel they have to do this, why it has become such a cultural imperative. If I had cancer, I think I'd raise bloody hell and be so hard to get along with, NO ONE would come visit me (a situation I should be used to by now). Then again, maybe I'd be terrified. I know I would not be stoical. I'd be shit-scared and probably miserable from all the clinical attention, the being fed through machines with no one talking to you.

I've heard it said that quite often, when you get your diagnosis, the doctor comes in the room, says to the patient "you have cancer", then turns and leaves. If I don't go, I won't hear that, will I? These guys are sons-of-bitches, aren't they? Are there any good ones? Well, OK, my brother-in-law, he's a Gunning man and as far as I'm concerned they're all great, but he lives all the way across the country.

If I don't go, I don't need to hear any of that shit. But if I don't go, this little scritchy-scrabbly feeling in my gut may not stop for a long time. If ever.

EXCLUSIVE!: Whale, dead for five years, imitates human voice

Being of a sensitive (morbid?) nature, when I first heard this, I freaked.

I freaked because it just sounded so dang-blasted weird.

As a kid, this would've scared me into my bedroom for a month. Fortunately I'm not a kid, but as with everyone, a little dotted-line ghost-kid lives inside of me and was scared half to death.

This is a whale (and for some reason this strikes me as "fishy": he died five years ago, and for some reason he's being called a "white whale" when he sure looks like a beluga to me) that somehow was able to imitate patterns of human speech. Not actual words, unless "lillgadillgawawwllyagawllwwlwlyawggldlgalyylga - PHHHT!" qualifies as actual words.

Still, there's something about those sounds. When I saw it on TV - and I will not bore you with all the scientific bumph that surrounded this 15-second clip, cuzzadafact that nobody cares about all that shit anyway, let's just get to the good part - the explanation is that this captive whale, who was at least 30 years old, was accustomed to hearing a man speak to him from underwater. And yes, those sounds do sort of resemble the distorted shouting of someone, a male voice, trying to make himself heard. The pitch of it is several octaves lower than the usual "wwweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!" (sorry, this isn't phonetically reproduceable) of most cetaceans, like the adorable screeching scene in Splash when Darryl Hannah breaks all the TV screens in Bloomingdale's.

But one wonders. Right about now everyone would be clamoring to hear more from this whale, to ask him about the last Presidential debate or to comment on Ann Romney's age-appropriate swimsuit and whether or not she wore Mormon "garmies" underneath.

But no, we can't do that, because this whale is DEAD: it died a long time ago, and all we have is this weird recording and this scientist's claim that he made those eerie, almost-human-speechlike sounds.

They could easily have been faked. Just stick
your head in a goldfish bowl and go "lillgadillgawawwllyagawllwwlwlyawggldlgalyylga - PHHHT!"  In fact, that pop-culture Supreme Court known as YouTube seems to have voted against the veracity of this phenomenon. Someone compared it to their mother-in-law, others to a cab driver in Dublin or gargling with Listerene. 

The verdict? To quote Elaine on Seinfeld when questioned about her orgasms: "Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake."

I don't know what to think. I want to believe; I want this to be real, even though it freaks the fuck out of me.  I am reminded of Willie, the Whale who Wanted to Sing at the Met, a 78 r. p. m. record from my childhood (and now you know how old I am, as if you cared) based on a grotesque Disney animated featurette about a whale who sang "Grand Opera" at "the Met" (presumably, the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York). 

I had no idea what the Met was, and as usual nobody explained it to me. The video is available on YouTube, but I won't post it here because Willie is ghastly, resembling a giant foam rubber toaster with a tiny Clutch Cargo mouth halfway down his stomach. A more awkward, unappealing character was never created by Disney or anyone else, not even Chuck Jones when he was off his lithium.  Why not a beluga (sorry, "white") whale with his mouth in the normal place? Even something like the huge majestic whale in Pinocchio would have been preferable, though perhaps he was seen as not friendly enough.

The Met, as far as I was concerned, was the Metropolitan department store in downtown Chatham (then referred to as a "dime store" - Lord, how things have changed), one of my favorite places because they had a lunch counter and cheap things like marbles and plastic skipping ropes, and you could even buy pets. Turtles that came with round plastic bowls with spiral-shaped ramps in them and a little plastic palm tree and disgusting food in a little tin and everything. And budgies: I finally wore my Mum down about a budgie, though it took a long time, and one tragic day when everyone was out of the house, the bird somehow got out of the cage and the cat ate it.

No kidding: we found a pile of feathers on the floor and a single, pink, scaly little foot.

I spent my childhood in confusion over such things because I was afraid to ask any questions. My sister was thirteen years older than me, and I believed I was supposed to be her intellectual equal and understand Goethe and Schiller and Bertolt Brecht. 

There is another association with articulate animals: the Children's Record Guild recording of a very strange, adulterated version of Puss in Boots. We had a number of these recordings, which originally came through the mail as a sort of record-of-the-month subscription. But this set of maybe thirty or forty records was bequeathed to us by someone who didn't want them anymore. Obviously they hadn't been played much: there was hardly a scratch on them. We soon took care of that.

Through the wonders of the internet, I've found some of these records and listened to them again for the first time in more than ("lillgadillgawawwllyagawllwwlwlyawggldlgalyylga - PHHHT!")  years. The Travels of Babar, Slow Joe, Build Me a House, Robin Hood, etc. I even found a bizarre version of Pinocchio with Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney which we played half to death (though my recent posting about the hellscape of Winchell-Mahoney Time expresses my abhorrence of that particular entertainer, who always struck me as a son-of-a-bitch).

These reborn-through-the-internet kiddie records are miraculously pristine, with no World War III going on in the background. Someone must have preserved them in a vault somewhere, or found some way to remove all the scratches. Anyway, the one I most happily happened upon was Puss in Boots, the strangest re-imagining of the story I've ever heard. Puss, a cheeky little feline in seven-league boots, adopts this person named John and somehow renders him into a Prince by wangling an audience with the King. Sort of like that. But first of all, John is totally gobsmacked by the fact that THIS CAT CAN TALK!

Here is the Ballad of Puss, which we used to sing to each other endlessly. I just listened to it again (I had to convert an unplayable MP4 file into an MP3 for this, which took some doing), and made an effort to transcribe it: for you, precious reader, the gardenia that blooms in the innermost Eden of my heart, deserve to share it with me today.

When I was just a teeny-weeny kitty
Everyone told me that I looked so pretty
They said, 'beautiful eyes'
They said, 'lovely fur'
But all I could answer was 'meoowwww' or "purrrrrr"

My coat was black, my eyes of course were yellow
People always said 'what a charming fellow'
I wanted to thank them, but I did not know how
For all I could answer was 'purr' or 'meow'

Then one day as I was lying sleeping
A great idea into my head came creeping
A pussy cat that had learned to say 'meow'
Could say just 'me', by leaving off the 'ow!'

So I said me, me, me, me, me,
Then it was plain as could be
From me to he to she to we
Was just as simple as it could be
I practiced daily for a week
And that is how I learned to speak!

(Here a verse is omitted, I can't keep up)

Soon I was no longer a beginner,
When someone asked 'how would you like some dinner?'
If I wanted to answer, I could say 'yes sir!'
Instead of just saying,
MeOWW-wow-wow-WOWW-wow-wow-WOWW-wow-wow-WOWW
Or purrrrrrr.
Prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So if a cat can learn to talk, and a whale can sing at the Met, along with all those turtles and budgies and things, why can't a beluga - or is it a "white" whale, which I thought was something entirely different - go
"lillgadillgawawwllyagawllwwlwlyawggldlgalyylga - PHHHT!"

When a whale that's been dead for five years shows up in the headlines, anything is possible.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Life's Lesson: you're an asshole!

(An excerpt from one of those advice columns, it doesn't matter which one)

October 23, 2012 - Give YOURSELF the chance to start fresh Nearly two years ago, I broke some dishes on our loft’s concrete floor. I left. My wife broke the rest of the dishes. She also broke the kitchen tap and didn’t know how to turn it off. She called the super who told her to call the cops. She lied and said I did everything. I got arrested, got legal aid, pleaded guilty, and got 18 months’ probation for "mischief under $5000." Calls from my probation officer to my wife, to ensure my possessions were returned, went un-answered. We operated a business together. I was its founder in 1998 prior to re-incorporation in 2005. Now, I have next to nothing, struggle with making ends meet, and trying to get a job that doesn’t receive anonymous phone calls that get me sent home. I have no money for a lawyer; get no help/sympathy from Police, or Probation. The judge who sentenced me said I’d get my possessions back. We’re not divorced. My probation disallows direct or indirect contact, unless by lawyer, till the end of November. I was told that some of my possessions were sold. My wife told the courts/police that I worked for her at her company. I never received a paycheck since she re-incorporated in 2005. I was her biggest cheerleader and found nearly 100% of the new clients, while she managed accounts, lied to me about the lack of progress on them, while telling clients that I was to blame when accounts’ issues arose. It's like I had no idea who I married. I totally screwed up and put her at the company’s helm. Sometimes I feel I should move to another province, but I don't want to leave my family. I've had a lot of therapy, but I can't seem to choose to accept this and move forward… as if the universe won’t let me heal until I figure out what I’m supposed to learn from all this. Used and Defamed   You’ve written to a relationship advice person, not a lawyer, so I’m looking through the lens of your relationship with yourself. You even close your account with an inward view… about being stuck, unable to heal from the whole episode, unable to move forward. The issues of your lost possessions, along with business and other past “screw-ups,” must now be kept separate from your sense of self, of inner strengths and abilities, and of having a future. You need income. You need your family. And you need to regain self-respect. You’ve served the probation time. Hanging on to despair about your stuff, or the company, keeps you mired in sadness and defeat. Legal Aid workers can ask the court to now demand the return of your remaining possessions. It’s a practical matter; your self-esteem does NOT rest on it. Focus on what’s needed immediately, which is a job. If anonymous calls start, inform Police you’re being harassed. Give yourself a fresh chance at the future.     Tip of the Day: Even significant mistakes can be put in the past, if you believe in yourself. Blogger's Comments. EARRRGHHHHHH. I am old enough to remember the ancient dinosaur advice columnists such as Ann Landers and - who was that other one, her sister? The stuff that ran then was pretty mild, such as the earth-shaking issue of how should you hang the toilet paper roll, with the end of it facing in or out. She was coy about anything sexual, and the really raw problems were - well, I'm not even sure there WERE problems like this way back in what they now call "the day". It's not so much the appalling mess this guy has got himself into - doing a lot of heavy blaming for what strikes me as an obscenely abusive pas de deux - but the pat, ribbon-tied advice this "expert" gives him, the shallow "positive attitude and self-esteem" stuff that is so easy to dispense in a world that is becoming more superficial and less literate with every passing day. I have a feeling there is a lot more going on here than this guy is revealing, just from the menacing subtext which seems to murmur the abusive tyrant's sweet refrain: "Look what you made me do." What appals me even more is the way women seem to be sucked in by these frightening losers, as if they have no protective emotional radar whatsoever. Maybe I watch too much Dateline. I don't know. But it happens over and over again, not just on some slick American TV show but right here in my own back yard. I wonder sometimes what sort of cushy self-esteem-oriented advice these rotters get that gives them license to go right back out there and find some more victims. What frightens me even more is this: more victims are never in short supply. In too many cases, women CHOOSE to be with men who are convicted criminals. They write them sweet letters on death row, even marry them, buying their well-practiced, totally self-serving line of bullshit that they were railroaded by the legal system and are in fact completely innocent. I once heard it said that a woman like this will walk into a room with 100 men in it, and gravitate immediately toward the one loser, the one on probation, the one with a secret wife stashed away, the one who can't help his rages because he's in the throes of a terrible addiction that he can't recover from because he was abused as a child, and furthermore, whatever is wrong with him is HER fault anyway, so how can she leave and stir up all his tragic abandonment issues? Women can be just as evil and slimy as men, can be sociopathic murderers and not bat an eyelash, but it seems the really elaborate, Byzantine stories of emotional destruction are man-to-woman. These guys don't need hand-holding or lectures on self-esteem. They don't need bullshit New Age therapy that tells them "the universe won't let them heal" until they figure out "what they are supposed to learn from all this". Jesus, give me a break. They are supposed to learn that they are assholes, and if they don't change their behaviour and their attitudes and KEEP them changed, they will always be assholes. But that's not the refrain we hear from therapy circles. First, I don't get this "universe" stuff, as if all the stars and galaxies revolve around ME, the mighty epicentre of all things. It reminds me of The Secret, that infamous crooked belief system spawned by sociopath James Ray, which claimed we can have anything we want (and isn't that the purpose of life, after all: to get what we want, particularly wealth?) just by wanting it. Even Oprah got down and kowtowed to this person, who obviously fed into her financial might-means-right philosophy.  In an insulting parody of a sacred native ritual, Ray brainwashed his followers into entering a cobbled-together, unsafe sweat lodge, an updated version of drinking the Koolaid, this time involving searing smoke and fatal fumes. I don't even think Galileo believed the universe was some sort of Big Daddy God-force that looked after him, wiped his nose and patted him on the back, spewing out "lessons" at regular intervals. I'm afraid such an entity does not exist. I used to ascribe to it, more or less, but I now believe that there is no one hovering above us that knows everything about us, that made us in the womb, etc. If there is a God, it's a totally impersonal force that was somehow ignited when life on earth began, then didn't know how to stop itself. The rest was up to the relentless forces of evolution. If there is a personal God, then it lives within us - hardly an original thought, but it's the only one I can adhere to after a personal crisis that nearly tore me to pieces - and it has become more imperative than ever that we listen to it. Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, I believe it compels us to love and care for one another in a way that can make a profound difference. If we think we can get something just by wanting it, try wanting sensitivity - wanting compassion - wanting grace. If I got a letter like this guy's,  and thank God I'm not one of those glib advice-spewers who generally have no qualifications at all to do what they are doing, I'm not sure what I'd say. How about, for starters: you're a creep, buddy, you're lying to me, and if SHE had a chance to speak she'd tell me a whole load of stuff you didn't say because you're a con and a sociopath who sucks people dry, then ruthlessly moves on. You can't say that, or you don't, because everyone has to learn to love themselves, even Jeffrey Dahmer types who strike me as more reptile than human.  Is there no such thing as true recovery? I know it exists, I've seen it, but it's hard work, it's long and discouraging and must be maintained day by day for the rest of your life. How many criminals and cons are willing to take on such a gruelling wilderness trudge when ripping people off and fucking people over is so much easier and even more personally gratifying? I get tired of it all. Tired of the bandaids plastered over cancer, the "stay positive", the basic falseness that keeps people from finding real recovery, the kind of recovery that generally speaking turns your guts slowly inside-out until you somehow find some semblance of personal authenticity.

Ann Romney in a swimsuit?!

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD!!

Ann Romney cooled off on a Florida beach this weekend as her husband got fired up for the final presidential debate.

As husband Mitt indulged in a beach football game between his staffers and invited reporters, Mrs Romney took advantage of the Florida sunshine in her fetching floral suit, going for a swim with her family at a public beach.

The 63-year-old wife of the Republican presidential candidate looked glamorous in the brightly-colored, halterneck suit with matching sarong on Delray Beach.

She splashed around in the water with her son Craig, his wife Mary and grandchildren, before she grabbed a towel and headed for a hired sun lounger surrounded by other families.

 

 

The seven of you who follow this blog will probably realize the heavy political emphasis I place on each and every post. In other words, yes, I am vaguely aware there is a Presidential election going on, or should I say a campaign, and that these-hyarr guys seem to be arguing it out every time I dang-well turn around. Not that any of this affects me in Canada, Land of the Silver Birch, Home of the Beaver.

But I DID sit up and bark when I watched my favorite hard-hitting analysis of world news, Inside Edition with Deborah Norville, and saw a gushing item about Ann Romney deciding to go to the beach in Florida: the BEACH?? Wait a minute. This woman is over SIXTY years old and is deciding to go to the beach? Then surely she won't be wearing one-a-them swimsuit things, will she? Gadawmahty. A Mormon, ain't she? With five kids and the Lord only knows how many grandkids?

So anyway, they show pictures of her in the kind of suit I would die to find, IF I could find one anywhere, which I can't, which is one reason I stopped going to the beach a long time ago, even though I am not 63 or a Mormon. And she looked - good. The suit had a colorful, sundressy flavor to it, no industrial-strength spandex straps or bumpy black crimplene in evidence anywhere.

But here's what got me: their style correspondent or whoever-it-was came on and started gushing on and on, analyzing the suit thread by thread, seemingly, and gasping in shock and awe and even disbelief that a woman her age could "still" look good in an actual bathing suit. It was as if Ann Romney had taken a huge risk, bigger than that guy, you know, the one who jumped out of that thing and spun around and around and around and still landed up OK.

This can't be happening, they seemed to say: some magic must be afoot, and we must find out what it is!

The word "age-appropriate" came up so many times that I wanted to gag. Yes, the suit was attractive, BUT it was age-appropriate. Yes, the suit was colorful, BUT it was age-appropriate. God forbid she should wear something that made her look like mutton dressed as sacrificial lamb, or some henna-haired Mormon chippie.

It just galled me, is all. Age-appropriate this, age-appropriate that, and wowee, a woman who looks good  (they didn't dare say sexy: she's past menopause, for the love of God!) who isn't 35? Normally those comments are reserved for the mausoleum look of such death's-heads as Joan Rivers and Mary Tyler Moore. Everybody knows that "older" women (women who are no longer 35) have to preserve their "beauty" at any cost. Which means their eyes suddenly tilt up as if they're Chinese, plastic cheekbones explode forth like ping-pong balls, lips blow up like inflated worms, and faces become dead of all expression, with noses caved in like Michael Jackson's.

I have nothing against political candidates if they want to go knock their brains out. To me, "Romney" still refers to the governer of Michigan, whom I guess was Mitt's Dad, George (and who in their right mind would name their son. . . but I digress.)

Anyway, the below-most little article more or less sums up the bumph I've been seeing on this recent sensation. Funny, when Jackie Kennedy used to go to the beach, nobody said, "My God!", or "what nerve" (which is the hidden subtext of all this gasping and slavering). I don't think it mattered how old she was or whether or not the cameras were snapping. She was cool like that.

MAKING A SPLASH: ANN ROMNEY'S FLAWLESS BEACH STYLE

By Tamara Abraham

While most women of 63 would be hitting the beach in all-obscuring black, or shrouded in a loose cover-up, the trim Mrs Romney knows she has nothing to hide.

Proving women in their sixth decade can have as much fun with swimwear as their daughters, the white floral-print number is a clever choice that flatters the figure without losing out on style.

The punchy print, with its bright flowers, distract from any lumps and bumps beneath, as does the ruching across the midriff.

The suit, which may actually be a tankini, though it is difficult to tell, appears to have some underwire to support the bust. This lends structure, helping to make the waist look smaller - and the wearer walk taller.

A slim halterneck, too, is always pretty - a thicker strap style would have looked matronly with that print.

And though Mrs Romney has slim legs that a woman half her age would envy, the co-ordinating swim skirt covers her behind, allowing for a more modest look befitting her age, while the tie at the side can be adjusted so as not to cut into the waist.

 

 

 

I found a whole bunch of Mormon stuff, too, which kind of gets more unbelievable with every site, but if true, then Ann Romney must have her "garmie" all bunched up inside of that swimsuit, an act which may scandalize the elders of the Mormon Church, not to mention the Sister Wives who really aren't in any kind of shape to wear a bathing suit anyway.

This is from one of those style-dissection sites and talks about Ann Romney doing scandalous things like wearing the skins of animals with cloven hooves.

We can all agree that the black leather outfit Ann Romney wore on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno last night was the closest to risqué she's ever come. But according to a chat forum titled "Why didn't Ann wear her garments ... ?" on a website called MormonDiscussions.com, some members of the LDS church are concerned that she might not be wearing "garments," a kind of underwear worn by most adult Mormons. Here's a sampling of their reactions:

From zeezrom:

Thank God for Ann. This is a cry to all the LDS Women in the world:
"It is okay to raise the hemline!"
Now, let us pray she begins to work on the sleeves next.

From Just Me:

She could absolutely wear garmies with that awesome skirt.
 

From DarkHelmet:

She's probably wearing garments. Garments tend to ride up a little bit. The skirt probably just barely covers her garments.

 

 

From Elphaba:

I have a couple of questions. First, are garments fairly standard in length? I know my mother's garments would definitely have shown when sitting down if she had worn Ann's skirt, but my mom is only about 5'5". Is it possible Ann is tall enough that they would not have shown when she sat down?

Second, does the Church approve of adjusting the garments in some way to prevent them from showing? If Ann's height did not ensure the garments would not show when she sat down, it's obvious to me she altered them somehow, such as taping the hems up. In fact, given she was on national television, I would be shocked to discover she didn't take precautions of some sort to ensure they did not show. I have no personal objection to that, but it does seem to me something the Church would oppose. I admit, however, I really don't know.

Neither do I, Elphaba. I'm going to go lie down now.