It's my blog, and I can tell cat stories if I want to!

At this festive time of year, when our brains all turn to mush, it's nice to reflect on Christmases past. Isn't it?

No? OK, but I'm going to do it anyway.

We had a cat for 17 years. A cat who dominated the household in more ways than one. His furballs were life-threatening hazards, and his continual meowing for forbidden tuna or ham could grind down a human nervous system to the point of collapse.

Murphy was such a fuzzy little cuteball when we first took him home. But there was something ominous about him: his paws were huge, with big tufts of white fur growing out of the fat pink pads. Along with the tufts at his eartips, this made him look a little like a lynx. Soon he grew into those paws, then morphed (Murphed?) into one of those big sedentary housecats that look like permanent home installations.

But this is a seasonal story: Murphy's First Christmas, a sentimental tale laced with unexpected violence.

When he was only about 8 months old, we brought a fresh Christmas tree into the house (the last time we ever did it), and Murphy just went wacky. This thing wasn't supposed to be inside the house. It smelled pungent and outdoorsy, and it had bugs and other things in it. This tripped off something in his primitive little triangular cat brain.

He would sniff at it delicately, and the fur would rise on his back like some ludicrous orange Mohawk. But we thought he'd get to like it, or at least get used to it.

I'm not sure who witnessed this first-hand (or did any of us? It was a long time ago.) Anyway, at some point the 8-month-old lynxy-cat gathered himself up, waggling his behind for a huge pounce, then sprang into the air and grabbed hold of the tree about 1/4 of the way down. It didn't just bend: it collapsed completely, sending ornaments (including heirloom glass ones) flying all over the room. Worse, the big thingie of water that the tree was sitting in tipped over, saturating the rug. The cat wouldn't let go right away. He was stapled on. Finally, with a feral snarl, he popped off and ran around and around the house with his tail kinked up. Then he disappeared under a bed somewhere and didn't come out for half a day.

Uhhh, it was a mess, and only funny in retrospect. Kind of like his savage chasing down of a neighbor's black cat in our back yard, tearing through the bushes until the intruder leaped over the fence. At which point Murphy would put on the brakes, sit down and begin to groom himself like nothing had happened.

In spite of his flashes of savagery (including leaping 3 feet in the air and catching a dragonfly in his mouth), he didn't look like much of a hunter. He was fat. FAT fat. At his fattest, he weighed about 22 pounds, though I swear to God we didn't feed him much. (The vet thought we were lying). He was only sick once, when he nearly died of liver disease and had to have surgery. He came home like an empty sack of fur, but, as cats will, he dramatically rose from his own ashes when he realized we were going to feed him straight tuna until he recovered.

There's one other funny Murphy story, except that it's kind of macabre. As he passed the 17-year mark, he began to dwindle down, to become more clingy, to eat less. He didn't see well or hear well, and even walking was hit-or-miss. Toilet habits all came undone. We knew it was only a matter of time.

One evening, he began to act very strangely. He was staggering like he was drunk. Bill and I looked at each other. "He can't even hold his head up," Bill said.

It was plain the end was near, but it was far too late to take him in to the vet's. We tried to get him settled for the night, though he stubbornly kept trying to go upstairs.

Bill gets up very early, but I don't. For some reason on that particular morning, I did get up early, and noticed Bill making his lunch. I asked, "How's Murphy?", and he gave me a weepy thumbs down.

"Ohhh. . . he must've died during the night."

"Yes. It just looked as if he was sleeping."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Except he was stiff."

We burst into guilty laughter. Then we had to find a suitable cardboard box for a stiff dead cat. When we carried him in to the vet's office where he had been a client for his entire life, the vet, a jaunty fellow who never seemed to be in a bad mood, beamed at us and exclaimed, "Oh! Is this Murphy?"

"Uh. . . yeah, except that he's. . .

"What? Is he sick?"

"He's. . ." We showed him the contents of the box.

"Oh. Ohhhh! Oh dear."

We were barely able to restrain ourselves until we paid the cremation charge and got out the door, then doubled over.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

POST SCRIPT. I think I may have told these stories in a previous post. Can't remember. But don't we always repeat the same shit every Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life and all that?

Micro-phonies!

I don't think I've laughed like this in years. Guess I have a primitive sense of humour.

Mummy, Mummy!

That last post left, shall I say, a bad taste in my mouth. But I couldn't help it. I was watching a National Geographic special (God knows how old; most of them are at least 15 years out of date) about "bog mummies", poor sods who couldn't com-peat in the real world, so were either murdered for sport, or executed for crime. Their bodies were then heaved into the quagmire of the bogs.

Some of these guys are creepouts: parts of their bodies are incredibly well-preserved. But it's haphazard. One poor guy is only 1/2" thick, with his skeleton the thickness of your fingernail. Others are so lifelike, you can still see their facial expressions after 3000 years. Sorta like Pompeii and all that stuff.

Altogether more lifelike than Burt.

I TOLD you to keep it in the fridge!!

Bog Butter Mystery Solved?

(Not written by me, but by somebody in the UK. I have to give credit where it's due.)

For many years farmers and turf cutters have been finding huge lumps of what looks like butter in the peat bogs of Scotland and Ireland.

The 'butter' is a waxy substance, usually a creamy white or very pale yellow colour. Lumps dating back as far as the Bronze Age, 3000 years ago, have been found in barrels, baskets or animal skins. They're buried in holes deep in the bogs.

Bog butter has fascinated experts for years as until now no-one's been sure exactly what it is.

A team of scientists have been running tests on bog butter from the Museum of Scotland and found that some lumps were made of dairy products while others were meat-based.

This tells us for sure that our ancestors in Scotland and Ireland used the peat bogs as a sort of fridge (remember, this was long before electricity was discovered and fridges were invented). They would put their stores of food in the bogs to keep them cool and safe.

Peat bogs are laid down over thousands of years as plants decompose, or rot. The peat's very wet and heavy so does a good job of keeping the bog butter sealed, away from germs and bacteria in the air.

Once peat has been dug up and dried out it burns very well, which is why locals dig up the bogs and keep finding bog butter.

All sorts of questions still remain though. Why do you think the bog butter stores weren't dug up and used by the people who buried them?

Was the food buried because the bog made it taste better perhaps? Was it buried for special occasions or as part of a ceremony?

(Or did they just really really really really really like shortbread?)

Sing!

Frock on!

Weird things happen at Christmas.

Many of them are predictable. Every year, women's magazines run articles about How To Beat That Holiday Stress, using such techniques as placing cucumber slices over your eyelids or going to Acapulco for a few weeks with that guy from the tanning booth.

How this is supposed to help you pay your Visa bill, I don't know. They don't explain it.

There's also the inevitable How To Keep Your Diet Resolutions Through The Holidays piece, which tells you to fill up on plenty of bean curd before you go to the office party. Therefore you won't snarf up 3000 calories-worth of deep-fried fruitcake washed down with some sort of red stuff.

And, don't let's forget, How To Safely Thaw That Holiday Turkey. Don't you even think of putting it on the kitchen counter! Let it thaw slowly in cold water, changing it every half-hour, for 48 hours. (And isn't it worth it to set the alarm in the night? If not, just let it thaw in the fridge for 72 hours per pound.) If this seems daunting, try to focus on the results: a perfectly glazed, savoury 32-pound bird that you bear in on a giant parsley-garnished platter while smiling proudly in your gingham apron (not streaming with sweat and ready to scream).

Foo. My turkey looks more like the one in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (my fave seasonal movie: with the added bonus that it has Randy Quaid in it!). My favorite of these well-meaning but identical articles (which I suspect are recycled almost verbatim each year by exhausted magazine staff ready to go partying ) are the fashion pieces.

I saw one recently that said in its headline, "Party Frocks Rock". I've always thought "frock" is an archaic word, or at least very English, but it surfaces every year like annoying relatives. The word "retro" kept popping up too, a la Mad Men (and don't get me wrong, I live for Mad Men. But if I dressed in a wiggly sausage-casing like Joan Holloway, I'd be arrested.)

Yes, this year we will "bling" in the New Year, in which we must pick one essential "glad rag" for the season, something so radical we don't even know quite how to say it:

The dress.

I've worn these. Not lately, of course. I prefer pants because I don't have to shave my legs. Plus my knees are starting to look like rounds of unbaked Pillsbury biscuit dough.

But never mind, back to the bling. We will herein quote the advice of one Emily Scarlett, PR manager of H & M Canada in that centre of the Canadian universe, Toronto. (Do you detect a note of wire service here?)

Pick the right little dress, and you're fixed. "You can put a blazer over top and put on some thick black tights and wear it to an office function." Unlike on Seinfeld where Elaine and a co-worker make out like bandits, this particular gal's office parties seem pretty tame.

"And then if you have a holiday party at night with friends or family, you just whip off the blazer, throw on a nice heel, and bam! You've got a great going-out little cocktail dress."

The violent verbs in these descriptions always get to me: whip off, throw on (especially a "nice heel": isn't that a contradiction in terms?). It sounds a little like Clark Kent changing into Superman. If I "threw on a heel", I'd likely miss and hit the cat.

Besides, I like it better the other way: "whip on, throw off." Adds a pinch of Christmas/S & M spice.

But wait, there's more. "Retro-inspired embellishments are definitely welcome this season," the article continues. "The black, stretchy-wool Monogram Bow Dress at Banana Republic (various locations, $275), for instance, has a beautiful, oversized pop-out flower attached to the left side of its rounded neckline."

This seems to get into Carrie Bradshaw country, where only an unconventional fashionista (who's a size zero) could pull it off - oops, I mean put it on! But here also is some sage shoe advice, this time from Tara Wickwire, PR director for the Gap (based in - guess where?): "What's really fresh now is putting a nude shoe with a black dress. You see a lot of celebs doing that." I'm not sure what a nude shoe is, but you'd save a bundle just going barefoot. And what's this "shoe" business? I've even seen trousers referred to as "a pant". So what else, "a sock"; "a mitten"; "a glove"? Why does one side of the body have to get cold like that? It's winter, for God's sake.

Let's frock on: "Whatever dress you go for this season, you're going to have to accessorize, and most stylists are saying the same thing: statement pieces, statement pieces, statement pieces." I'm trying to figure that out. Does it have to say something on the front of your ultra-feminine Pleated-Organza Bustier Dress (BCBG Max Azria, $778), kinda like a "message" t-shirt? Obama Sucks? Free Randy Quaid?

Whatever. If we get pie-eyed and start doing a frenzied boogaloo at the office do, no one will notice what we're wearing anyway. Yet another Toronto-based PR rep from RW&CO says we must "choose one piece that's glittery and really own it." In other words, don't pull a Winona Ryder this season. Own it! Pull out that charge card! (And no buying it, wearing it once and taking it back the next day with a guacamole stain on the front.)

By way of illustration, I've included some glam shots of my favorite fashionistas displaying their finest retro styles. According to Gertrude Heathcliff, PR rep for Target, Inc., these iconic icons wear nothing but the most cutting-edge, backward-looking fashions, which they really own (plus they're iconic).

I mean, really.

Separated at birth, Part Deux

Rain dance

First heard about these guys on ABC's Nightline. It's a new phenomenon (or not-so-new, growing organically out of break dancing, mime, Michael Jackson's moonwalk, and Shields and Yarnell's robot routine) called turf dancing, with sudden, spectacular leaps and jumps and flips. This was also called the rain video, in memory of Rich D, of whom I know almost nothing. This is a phenomenon of Oakland, California, for reasons unknown. A "how do they do that?" sort of thang.

Winter Glade

This is one of those weird things. An ad has been running for Glade air fresheners in "holiday" scents, presumably cinnamon and sage and things (and booze breath? Quiet, Margaret.) It has the most sprightly, droll, silly, sweet music, and so oddly familiar! But I couldn't have told you where it came from.

Thank God for the internet, for it took me about thirty seconds to find out what it was (a lot of people wanted to know). Delius isn't my first choice, as he can be almost bland in my estimation, but this piece (the Winter Night or Sleigh Ride from Three Small Tone Poems) is twinkly and lovely and oh, so seasonal. Break out the nutmeg candles!

(Like most YouTube videos, this has its technical limitations. Somebody vastly cranked up the volume during the jaunty opening flute bit, probably thinking, "Oh, that's too quiet", just before the whole orchestra comes in, forte).

Wanted: dead or alive

It's just that kind of a day.

I don't know if it's the time of year (or maybe it's the time of man). Looking out my window at my layered, cedar-branched view, I see ribbons and streams of grey, a relentless killjoy rain that falls sideways so that an umbrella does no good at all. Killjoy weather that snatches all the light away.

I like-and-hate Christmas, lovehate what it does to me. I do all the shopping and arrangements, and lately I've felt like I get no acknowledgement for this (or anything else) from anyone. Even the grandkids soon get bored with what I buy for them.

It'd be different, maybe, if my work were going well. I'm walking in place, soon to go backwards. I haven't posted much about Harold Lloyd, and maybe I should to "get it out there", but it's like a sore place in my soul. If I talk about it too much, nothing will happen. Meantime, Lloyd synchronicity continues to happen daily, with a peak of five times in one day.

What does it mean?

I at least want to return some of the Build-a-Bear stuff I bought, because I overbought, but that's un-shopping, isn't it? At least some money flows the other way, but it was supposedly mine to begin with. So I stay in the same place.

This isn't related, maybe, except under the category of frustration: but recently I ordered a boxed set of Season 4 of Mad Men. This was incredibly stupid, because Season 4 just ended and the DVD set won't come out until March 2011. And it was ridiculously cheap, I won't even tell you how cheap because it'll make me look very gullible and dumb.

Sooooooo. . . what did I think I'd get? So far all I've got is two emails from this outfit, one saying their web site was "under construction" and that you could use This Link to Their UK Site; then, a couple days later, another "hmmmmmm" one, about how they'd changed their email address.

Just a coincidence? I don't think so. Something was up, and it smelled like fish.

I don't know how or why, but today I clicked on the original link I'd saved, and found the following message, with three intimidating and very official-looking crests at the top (Department of Justice; National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center; Homeland Security Investigations):

"This domain name has been SEIZED by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 USC (symbol, symbol - ? Is THIS a hoax, I wonder?) 981 and 2323."

They then laid out the penalties for being such bad girls and boys as to pirate copyrighted material. Up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (not sure what that is, but boy, I wouldn't want to have to do it). "Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (squiggle, squiggle)".

I can just see these poor guys (from Taiwan or somewhere) in DVD-bootlegging solitary confinement, tied to a chair and forced to watch endless back-to-back pirated episodes of The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men: "God! No, no. . . nooooooooo. . . not Charlie Sheen. . . "

Yes! Charlie Sheen, the guy who had "one bad day", shoved up your nose along with the stale bread and water. They deserve it, don't they? Violating intellectual property rights (and who says ancient repeats of Married With Children aren't intellectual?) is a crime more heinous than sexual assault or child molesting (which often rates no more than a few months' probation).

Fine. This was a surprise, and a way to liven up an otherwise totally wretched, depressing, dull Monday. But I only care about one thing. Will I still get my Mad Men Season 4 boxed set? It may be boxed in old kleenex cardboard - hey, a so called bona fide set I ordered from somewhere else surprised me when I opened the packaging and all four discs popped out onto the floor. It may bear an AMC logo in the corner, or even promos for Breaking Bad and, what's that new one, Revenge of the Really Scary Walking Dead Vampires from Hell?

Did some guy point his old Super 8 movie camera at the TV? Will the picture even be recognizable, and will there be sound? Or did they just get together and act out all the parts themselves?

Stay tuned.

Outside the Dakota

I wasn't expecting to actually find it. I have sheafs of old poems in a file drawer, probably hundreds of them, many handwritten or typed on an ancient portable typewriter that probably came out of the '50s. That's back when we ripped pages out, crumpled them up in frustration and tried to hit the waste basket on the other side of the room.

Now I just slam mice - not the real kind! Poor mices. I do go through a lot of them, but Martin Scorsese used to throw chairs, and look at him.

What I'm getting to in my usual circuitous way is: while I was writing the John Lennon poem in my last post, I thought of a poem I'd written not long after his death, meaning it must be 30 years old. And by the holy, after only a little rummaging, I found it.

The only common lines are "John, I" and "outside the Dakota". I seem to remember the poem differently. Thirty years will do that.

It was typed on a yellowed piece of three-ring white binder paper. Saved for posterity. Never published. In my life, I've only had about 12 poems published in "little magazines" (boy, are they little: no one reads them!), and the rest, I think, could be called a private collection.

I still feel the same about John. I feel like he's around, and feel foolish for saying so, for even thinking so. I just saw the PBS documentary, LennoNYC, and was both over- and underwhelmed by it, by the grainy home movies, his wicked wit, casually prodigious talent and unbearable sweetness. But he looked old at the end, older than he should, and gaunt. What happened?

If you want it

I don't know what to say about John Lennon. I don't know what to say about Christmas, except that it's coming at me like a freight train through a tunnel. I don't know what to say about any of it.

I'd like to be a joyful person. Sometimes I am a joyful person. But people who are joyful all the time - or at least never unhappy - or never seem unhappy - they seem to me to be -

Our emotional thermostats are set very differently, obviously. Is this something that's present at our birth, or even before that? Some genetic quirk? Can some people overlook the obvious more easily than others?

Or overlook pain, and even disaster, pretend it isn't there or doesn't hurt or doesn't matter?

The great Nobel-winning novelist Doris Lessing once wrote in her memoirs, "I was born minus several layers of skin." Though she seems tough and durable, life has never been easy for her. She is porous. She feels, turns like the weather vane she is.

Some "deal with" all this by drinking, drugging, gambling, overworking, oversexing, overshopping, or whatever other "over-" there is. In other words, they have trained themselves not to feel.

It goes down well. That's the general rule.

One can use pure logic. "Well, there's nothing I can do about these tragic situations. So why let it bother me?"

This is along the lines of saying to a person in agony, "Crying won't bring him back."

We live in a roll-up-your-sleeves, up-and-at-'em sort of culture. We don't stop to feel. We "move on". Sitting around and feeling things isn't acceptable. And it doesn't bring them back, does it?

John, I -

Outside the Dakota

when the bullets fell

a hail of salty hell

and Yoko screaming pain

and the horror-struck grief of the people that stood

in a pool of his blood

John, I -

War is over if you want it,

you said and somebody

went and shot you for your pains

as if that was the ultimate

subversive statement

(and you had to pay)

You had to get it sometime

You started life all over

You're not allowed to

are you

are you

oh John.

I see you

see you everywhere.
Hear your plangent voice forever saying

as if almost praying

So this is Christmas. And what have you done?

Thirty years have passed

in a kind of dream.

On the day you'd be seventy,

Sean turned 35

your beautiful boy

almost middle-aged
(like you when you died)

stamped all over with your face

and your greatness,

but never truly great.

John, I -

John,

Pie are square (whoops, round!)

I'm not much when I first wake up in the morning, but I had to be up today. My daughter-in-law was stopping by this morning to pick up a newspaper flyer so she can buy one-o'-dem-dar hot water machines (the Keurig type, which we were recently given and couldn't figure out, except that now we're addicted to it, to that little sucking sound as coffee instantly, effortlessly fills your cup).

When I started noodling around this morning trying to find news sites, I hit on the New York Times. I follow Dick Cavett's blog, always backward-looking and dropping names with audible clunks, but somehow as compulsive as celebrity-watching itself.

But on the same page, I saw the link to the food section: "Pies to Die For".

I wonder if anyone else gets the irony.

We hear, constantly, about how unhealthy it is to be obese, about how it strains the health care system almost beyond the breaking point, and about how it's still escalating. It has oozed into the lives of innocent children, kids raised on McDonald's and almost complete inactivity until their arteries are plaqued-up as severely as a 75-year-old's.

Cheek-by-jowl (pun intended) with these alarms are blaring ads for family restaurants serving ever more grotesque portions of really-bad-for-you food. Fast food chains keep upping the ante, with KFC serving up these horrible things made of two deep-fried chicken patties instead of bread (and who knows what the filling is. A pound of deep-fried peanut butter?)

Blecccchhhh! But people are buying it. People are eating it.

Fat is the new thin.

I can't remember a time when the culture wasn't obsessed with thinness. Models and actresses have that translucent look, as if they'd disappear if they turned sideways. Their pictures are splashed all over the women's magazines, their bony chests sticking out like a chicken's, often with weird globular bolted-on breasts that clearly display the join. These space-alien versions of womanhood appear cheek-by-quivering-jowl with recipes for mouthwatering, saliva-gushing, quintuple-chocolate indulgence cake (the recipe always containing at least a cup of butter) and other scrumptious heart-attacks-waiting-to-happen.

Maybe that pie really is to die for.

Oh, I'm a great one to lecture. I've been a shape shifter all my life. Recently, after a major weight loss, I've begun to creep upward again. I'm just hungry all the time. There are certain intractible family stresses that take a constant toll. Or so I tell myself.

The thing is, all that scrumptiousness won't particularly appeal to a naturally thin person. They will take one taste and go, "mmmmmmmmmm!" - meaning, "bleccccccchhhhhhh". It's kind of like a non-drinker trying to get through a cocktail, finally leaving 2/3 of it sitting on top of the piano. (Sick, eh?) So how come so many people have seemingly had their "blecccccchhhhh" mechanism disabled?

It's NOT heredity, folks. You don't "inherit" fat in a couple of decades. Heredity doesn't suddenly jump out at you like a jack-in-the-box, no matter how convenient it is as an excuse.

It's not just the ready availability of four-patty cheeseburgers (Faster! Higher! Greasier! There's a recession on, and we need those obese people's bucks!). Who actually does anything any more? Who walks? Men drop their wives off at the door of the mall, thinking they are doing them a favor so they don't have to walk the one minute or so from the car.

I walk all the time, and quite frankly, I'm a freak. People stare at me strangely, constantly offer me rides because they assume I'm too impoverished or too weird to drive (maybe so!), or offer false congratulations. "Good for you! I should be doing the same thing" (but I'm not, because I don't want to be stared at and considered weird).

When my daughter-in-law, a keen observer of social trends, was looking through her Home Outfitters flyer, she saw an ad for an egg cracker. "So we don't even crack our own eggs any more?" What next, I wonder - some sort of device you attach to the toilet paper roll?

I have tried to swear off those super-hyper-morbidly-obese shows on TLC, because it's hard to look at anyone whose body has become that grotesquely misshapen. They hardly look like a human bodies any more. Like the gargantuan Mr. Creosote of Monty Python, these patients (usually in for bariatric surgery) look like they're on the verge of exploding. They usually say they don't eat very much, and have "feeders" (often wives, though husbands will do) bringing food to them all the time. What kind of food, and how much, we can only imagine, but like a stash of porn, it's kept secret.

For a while, there was a ludicrous series about an obesity clinic in the States which allowed its patients to order in pizza which was delivered right to their rooms.

There's a certain strange term that has cropped up on these shows, and it sounds like the evil scientist in some low-budget 1950s horror flick: panniculus. What happens is, when a person exceeds, say, 500 pounds and keeps gaining, the fat gets confused and doesn't know where to go. Everything is maxed out, so to speak. So, instead of exploding, the body provides a sanctuary for the excess fat: a sort of circular blob, often attached to the abdomen or inner thigh. It lives there, expanding 'til it's full-up and another one pops out somewhere. Dr. Panniculus, the evil wizard of fat, has taken over the body completely.

People in this situation sometimes do lose weight, but they end up looking like deflated balloons, the stretched skin flopping around and making life miserable. It's usually removed, but we often hear that over 90% of people with major weight loss gain it back again, and more.

What would happen then? Would you become a sort of living Mr. Creosote? How much can skin stretch, anyway?

More to the point: where did this plague come from? When I was growing up, we had a neighbor who weighed, maybe, 280 pounds. She was socially shunned and had very few friends, so my mother took her on as a project. (She had caseloads, not friends.) Though it reeked of pity, this at least got her out a little. Otherwise she would have stayed in the house, hidden from sight.

Dick Cavett posted a blog about obesity, and wondered if the circus fat lady of his youth might be considered relatively thin now, or at least unremarkable, not even large enough to qualify for something like gastric bypass.

Will this just keep on going? Where does it stop? I think obesity is affecting about a third of the population now. If something becomes that prevalent, it gradually becomes more acceptable. Or maybe we just don't see it any more.

I recently tried on some clothes, just cheap little tops, grabbing for a Size Large because my ass is so big right now (and the store so tacky). They nearly fell off me. But the Medium slid all over me too. Finally I resorted to a Small, and it was still pretty generous. I wasn't in the Women's(i.e., "plus") section either, just the average range.

I'm not huge, but no way am I small either. I just have a big butt. It has always been a fitting problem. Until now.

Is this size manipulation just an adjustment to the burgeoning bodies of consumers, or a way to make women feel better about themselves? Or just buy more? Is all this a sort of weird rebellion against the imperative to be thin, thinner, thinnest? (If so, the boomerang is about to smack us all on the back of the head.)

Years ago, it used to be considered bizarre and daring for women to wear pants. In the early '60s, long hair meant that you were a pansy. When I was a kid, nobody but sailors wore tattoos, and women never did unless they were in the circus.

We get used to things. They become normal, or at least standard and unremarkable.

Type II diabetes is so common now, people almost expect it. You manage it, but don't try to cure it. Just take your meds, and go on eating.

Food as a cheap, ready drug? Escalating stress levels? Environmental chaos, pessimism and doom? Economic recession? Nature's way of tipping the board and sending us the way of the dinosaurs, as yet another experiment that either failed or just ran its disastrous course?

Sarah McLachlan and the good saint of Assisi

Make me an instrument

It has come home to me once again that life can be overwhelmingly difficult, even crushing. I see, looking back, that I have a certain tendency to be, uh, er, critical. Or negative. Or not celebratory enough. I need to correct this, but I don't know if I will.

I know several situations in which people have suffered an almost incomprehensible grief, in particular a mother whose small daughter died on Christmas Eve two years ago, her snow-covered sled hit by a truck turning a blind corner. My granddaughter was her best friend, and she still talks about her, misses her terribly.

Jesus, God, are you there? I did used to believe, quite fervently, but since I left the church, I don't know. I don't believe there is a God who gets us out of trouble. No Big Guy in the Sky, no lucky rabbit's foot. Faith is not a lottery, and God doesn't give us the things we ask for just because he's nice like Santa, or loves us, or thinks we deserve special favor. In fact, there may be nothing there that helps us, independent of other people and their goodness, or the strength implanted deep down in our own hearts.

Is that, then, what we call God? I don't know. I look out my window today, and I see cedars tossed angrily, shivering as if traumatized. Then they are still again. I need to go out in it so I can order flowers for my daughter's mother-in-law, who has just had successful heart surgery and is recovering by leaps and bounds. (God - ?) I need to look for Christmas presents for my four dear ones, my little grandkids, without whom I - well, let's not finish that thought. And I haven't even started, can't get started because I haven't the heart.

I can't get going. We have this dim understanding, maybe. Or else we don't need it, I don't know. I can't leave life alone, I pick it apart. It's no use, of course. The good is the good, but there is a dangerous estrangement in my own family that I fear will blow us apart at some point. It has happened before, in that other family I grew up in, and I know it is never repaired.

If I let this particular weight press all the life out of me, it would be difficult to continue at all. I know I am blessed, tremendously blessed, compared to others - but how can we compare, when everyone's life is so complex? No one knows what is going on in the mind of another. This is called existential loneliness, and it is built into the species. But I am convinced some people feel it far more than others.

I was looking for an image a few nights ago when my daughter updated me on the mother who lost her child at Christmas. Since then, she has suffered several wrenching twists. Even though I officially don't believe in prayer because God let me down so badly, I lit a candle in my computer room and turned out the lights. The effect was eerie, a glowing screen and a guttering candle. I wanted something to focus on, googled up the name of the little girl who died, and came up with multiple images of a Catholic saint. Small children wore crowns made of holly and candles and walked in solemn processions down the aisles of huge churches.

Somehow this led to St. Francis and his famous prayer, "Make me an instrument of thy peace. . . "

St. Francis, batty as a loon, may have been on to something. Today he'd be put on antipsychotics and resocialized, though he might still end up under a bridge. Still his prayer persists, that is, if he wrote it at all. Truth is so slippery, so humanly influenced. We make things the way we want, or need, or desperately desire them to be. Truth gets lost, we get lost, and we grab. Still, we grab.

Baby, don't go!

Like a lot of boomers, I remember the Sonny and Cher Show, which got more painful as time went on. Cher was already beginning to look embalmed (a process that has become so extreme, she now looks like a still picture of herself, her eyes and cheeks hollow in that fallen way of the grossly messed-with face). The two feuded, then divorced, but kept on performing together because there was money in it.

When Sonny died many years later in a skiing accident, piling into a tree, Cher got up at his funeral and sobbed and ranted, while his actual widow watched the highly inappropriate spectacle from her chair.

But hey, she's Cher! She's an Academy Award winner (which still serves as a kind of badge of "made it in Hollywood", even if it was 25 years ago). She's a rags-to-riches kind of gal, which still carries some sort of cachet in show biz. Gone are the days when, puffy-faced and large-nosed, her eyes smudgy and her hair hanging in two black curtains, she proclaimed the sappy anthem "I've Got You, Babe" to the much-hated Sonny, the man she couldn't wait to get away from (except at his funeral).

"Some people seem to think that Sonny was a short man! Well, I'm here to tell you that he wasn't short! He wasn't short on talent! He wasn't short on love! He wasn't short on. . . " (Let's not forget that Sonny wasn't short on discernment, either. If he hadn't "discovered" Cher at the bargain-basement counter, we'd be looking at an empty chair.)

But that's not what we are here to discuss.

Cher's in the news again. I've already recorded the recent 20-20 interview on my PVR, but haven't seen it yet. She's in this new movie called Burlesque. It' s being hyped to the max, but so was that other one, that Fellini-esque musical with Penelope Cruz in it: what was it called, anyway? Nine, or Ten, or Eight-and-a-Half? It flopped badly at the box office, maybe because no one in it could sing.

Aiding and abetting all the new-movie hype is the unsettling fact that Cher's daughter Chastity (perhaps traumatized by being given such a Godawful name) is now a man. Yes. No one knows what to call "her" now, least of all "her" mother, who is trying very hard to be cool about it, when we know she's not.

It would be hard to be cool about it, that little blonde tyke who came on at the end of every show, with such a sweet resemblance to her mother, turning into a big beefy linebacker with no clothes sense. "Chas" gradually became more and more androgynous over the years, put on a lot of weight, cut her hair shorter and shorter: in other words, came out by degrees.

Hey, nothing wrong with that! Cynthia Nixon chose a very large, short-haired, tough-looking, be-suited woman for a partner, didn't she? Cynthia Nixon, the red fox! Geez. She could have had anybody, couldn't she? Portia de Rossi is gay, isn't she? It shows it can be done. (Good on you, Ellen.)

So here we have Chaz Bono, or whatever his/her last name is now (Free-to-Be-You-and-Me, Lesbiangaybisexualtransgenderedundecided, Son-of-a-Bono: I'll resist the more obvious one, it's too mean). Obviously, a lot has been done to her, surgically and otherwise, but can't that also be said about her mother?

Cher has been injected with so many preservatives over the decades that she now looks like something from Madame Tussaud's House of Wax. When she retires, just prop her up in some souvenir shop in Niagara Falls. (Or put a wick in her. She'd make a nice Christmas candle.)

I don't really know what to say here. People have the right to be the way they are.

Yes.

And mothers have the right to be distressed, even if they're "iconic" (and you know what I think of that word). Cher is the Comeback Queen, and will use whatever is current in her life (including a dead ex-husband or a daughter who's a man) to get back into the limelight. And she has been known to do emotional flip-flops, marry heroin addicts and other extreme things.

At 64, she no longer has any of her original parts. They've all been gradually replaced. So who is she? She should know something about manipulating your identity

surgically, and perhaps hormonally.

Maybe if Chaz were a slim, good-looking, metrosexual sort of man? Maybe if he looked like Jon Hamm or George Clooney or some other out-and-out fox?

Hell, maybe I'd take him on.

Must be Friday

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00028LDQK/chsan-20/

Uhhhhhhh. . .

I don't know quite what to make of these (click on link, below). Most of them are, I think, real. But don't let your kids see them!

http://www.asylum.com/2010/11/18/creepy-kids-shows/

The ravell'd sleeve of care

I can get addicted to almost anything. Mad Men. Caramel corn. Three Stooges videos. All kinds of good stuff. The knitting addiction started early, and has flowed in and out of my life like the tides.

I probably started around age 8 or 10, when "someone" taught me: either my mother, or Mrs. McAigie (don't know how to spell it), a dour old Scottish lady who sometimes looked after us and checked for sore throats using the ornate, grape-carved handle of a sterling silver fork. I remember her saying, "Always knit into the back of the stitch," which I know now is completely wrong.

In spite of all that, I learned. The first big spate of knitting came when my kids were born. I didn't care much about the quality, and they didn't either, but I did turn out some nice stuff: a Scandinavian cardigan in coral, mint and turquoise for my daughter; a pullover knitted side to side for my son. They weren't embarrassed to wear these in public. Oh, maybe they peeled them off when they got to school.

It's a little different story now. Certain family members, who shall remain nameless, don't like my knitting any more and have pronounced it "gross", so I try to avoid making those little sweaters. I've made "blankies" for each kid, probably eight of them by now because they keep wearing them out. I swear, a kid should not have a blankie at age seven.

But what do I have to say about it?

Every once in a while I try to knit something for myself. I remember early attempts, and even see some of them in old photos, and they're not bad, or at least wearable. In the interim, something happened. I just can't do it any more, and I can't quit either. I either give the thing away because it's too big or too small, unravel it and recycle the yarn, or if it's really hideous, toss it in the trash, wasting expensive materials.

So. Having run out of projects, and by now totally, deeply addicted to the hypnotic rhythms of the activity, I decided to take on a cableknit sweater, probably the hardest thing of all because you have to pay so much attention to what you're doing. So if I have my Mad Men DVDs on, I can't fully take in Jon Hamm's breathtaking gorgeousness when in bed with some skank that could be me.

I was totally seduced by the picture, of course. I'll never look like that, for God's sake. And as usual, the color I chose, a sort of caramelly light tan called Heather, now looks green. Store lighting is totally misleading.

Cableknit has such cabalistic instructons as C4F (slip next 2 stitches onto cable needle and leave at front of work. K2, then K2 from cable needle), T3B, T3F, C6F, etc. etc. Sounds like half a postal code to me.

I have to follow a little chart, pictured above. You probably can't understand it, and neither can I. It's hard to stay in step with this thing. It's like an elaborate dance (and I can't dance). Miss a beat, and the whole thing falls apart.

Kind of like life.

Is this why I'm so hopeless at making things for myself? When (I think) I've done an OK job making stuff for other people, even designing patterns for 8 different blankies? I keep trying, too, which I know I shouldn't. Some fatalistic part of me says, hey, face facts. It'll never happen because you're outside the club, always have been, and always will be.

A horrible thought came into my head not long ago, a real soul-killer. I had this realization that sooner or later, probably sooner, the grandkids will see through me (and thus, inevitably, stop loving me). But that wasn't the horrible thought.

The horrible thought was, "By the time they see through me, I'll be dead anyway."

These are the dark things that stir at the bottom of my brain.

I'm reading Furious Love, all about the tempestuous relationship between La Liz and Le Dick (aptly named). Richard Burton apparently harbored a deep self-loathing that drove him to alcohol (his true love). At the end of his life, after a fragile period of sobriety, he went on a bender, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and died at 58.

Almost my age.

I'm not going to drink! I'm not. I don't even know where all this is coming from. I'm having a better week, I really am. I'm not so hopeless about the work.

But I'm gaining back the lovely weight I lost, and finding I can't get into all those lovely new clothes that I spent all that money on. I wonder why I have it in for myself like this. (Maybe that explains why I love the Hopkins poem about Margaret, To a Young Child: "And yet you will weep, and know why.")

So I knit. I try to knit up the ravell'd sleeve of care (speaking of Shakespearean actors. Did you know: my maiden name is Burton?). I try to make something out of nothing. Isn't that what writing is all about? What gives us the right? Who do we think we are?

All the stuff I hear about on blogs and message boards now talks about how nearly impossible it is to get anywhere, to get published, even if you've already been published many times. Some wise souls give up. I don't.

Good? Bad? Indifferent?

I may not be cut out for success, no matter how hard I try. And I've been told, repeatedly, that I have the goods, I have the talent. Some folks just aren't cut out.

Or perhaps they are.

**********************************************

POST-SCRIPT. Since the above post, I discovered some things that bugged me in the 9 or 10" I'd already completed on the sweater. I hummed and hawed about it, thought about backtracking and undoing the worst of it, decided I needed a new color and went to take the yarn back, changed my mind, came home and thought about it, then, ruthlessly, ripped the whole thing out and started all over again.

This may well be a metaphor for my life.

Separated at birth?

J'ever notice you never see Jon Hamm and Gregory Peck in the same place at the same time?