Justin Bieber and Michael Buble have a stupid contest

We don't need Justin Bieber to remind us how inane celebrities can be. Not only that - they actually go on the record with it.

Claiming the legendary holocaust writer Anne Frank would have been a "belieber" (and does anyone under 50 even know who Anne Frank was?) is just the tip of the iceberg. This guy has no street smarts at all and has not thought it through in any area of his life and/or career. Why do I get that sickish creeping feeling that all-too-soon it will do him in?

But soft: what's this? Michael Buble has been around a long time now - he has almost 20 years on Bieber -and he's STILL saying inane, stupid things and everyone goes "selah, amen,  give me a ticket" because he's a "star". 

This is only an excerpt (because I can't stand the whole thing, and besides, this kind of sums it up) from an interview that I found particularly painful. I've got nothing against singers who can mimic a sort of melange of Sinatra, Torme and Vic Damone and bilk seniors out of their pension money. I just wish they'd THINK before they open their cavernous tonsil-baring singer's mouths. 

Singer, songwriter and lifelong ham, Michael Bublé lives his life through music. Through the ups and downs, breakthroughs and breakdowns, the 37-year-old, one of the world’s most recognizable artists and host of Sunday’s Juno Awards, has grown (up), thrown (up) and blown (up) (parentheses mine) to a soundtrack. While pop music fans await the release next week of his new disc To Be Loved, with tunes by artists including Randy Newman and Smokey Robinson, Bublé recounts (one of) the singles that have kept him comfort through his radical changes.

Seasons in the Sun, Terry Jacks, 1993

“I’d turned 18 and was working on my father’s commercial salmon fishing boat and we’d sing that old Terry Jacks song. At that time, I wasn’t thinking about melody or voice, I was having fun. We’d sing: ‘We had joy/we had fun/we had salmons up our bum/but the pain was too strong/because the salmon was too long.’ I thought that was hilarious — salmons up our bum! It was silly and stupid, but what do you expect? I was 19.”


(Salmons? Is that sort of like trouts or basses or pikes, or other assorted fishes?)

On his other interest, family life: 

 “Even though I’m in love with my new record, I have bigger fish to fry. In a few months, I’ll be a first-time dad and that means everything. I’ve waited my whole life for this and when I see my wife next, the first thing I’ll do is sing to her belly with my little boy or girl in there. ”

Boy salmons or girl salmons?

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True confessions: is fiction really fiction?

So how much of "me" is in these stories? My three readers want to know (or not). Sometimes, *I* want to know, myself.

It's hard to unwind, unplait the strands of what actually happened (which is sometimes hard enough to decipher) and what was woven and knitted up to fill the gaps and holes. But it's never made up out of whole cloth. How can anyone write except through their own perceptions? These strenuous denials by authors who insist NONE of their real life ever spills over into their work are pure bullshit.

I think it's the rushing groundwater of emotion that always floods through, the rampaging cascades that dominate all our lives, whether we want to admit it or not. My work is emotionally driven, and sometimes I think the fiction I've presented here is nothing but "reaction", a character squirming and writhing and squirting squid ink in distress. (And that's another thing. What is a story? A story is something going wrong. If everything went right in a story it would be a crashing bore, and not even a story because nothing would happen. Is the same true in what we so chucklingly call "real life"?)

I've always had the impulse, even the need to "make story", but it's rare that I can keep my careening emotions and hairtrigger reactions out of it. The first novel I tried to write - it makes me wince now - I guess I thought it was publishable because I sent it to 65 publishers, and nobody would give me the time of day. Most didn't even read the manuscript but hated the outline so much that they immediately fired off a form rejection, with all the force of that cow being fired over the castle wall in Monty Python's Holy Grail. I finally understand why (I read about half a page of it recently and mentally barfed), but what scares me is that at the time I was SURE it was great and was going to get published and make me famous.

It was too much about me, probably, my wretched reactions, though the characters were either totally manufactured or heavily disguised. Each character narrated their part in first person, a technique which is as deadly as a ferret latching on to your jugular. So: failure, but other things came of it. A very wise writer once said to me, "When you're sending out your first novel, make sure you're writing your second one." This was advice that saved my life.

When I wrote Better than Life, I wasn't in it, not really, but so many of my ancestors were: they were given a twist of course, but the essence was there, all these half-cracked Irish people feuding and drinking and generally carrying on. And it worked. Took a while to sell it, but someone wanted it. What happened? Did it improve the novel's chances that I wasn't "in it"? 

I have had the experience of becoming so desperately in thrall to writing a novel that I felt like I was being dragged behind a wild horse. This was exhilarating and frightening, and though there were (I suppose) some good ideas in it, I reread it now and shudder a bit. What was happening to me then? I wasn't eating or sleeping much, and my thoughts sometimes became very peculiar. Strangely enough, I do not believe I am in that one at all, not even remotely. It's all about people living in the Downtown Eastside, and I've never been near those circumstances. Nor did I show up in the next one, The Glass Character, though I think I identify with the main character (who is not, after all, Harold Lloyd, but a woman named Muriel Ashford who is so obsessed with him that nowadays we might say she was stalking him). 

The emotions, the blissful agonies of obsession are things I know too, too well. I have lived over half my life in my imagination. I don't know why this is and it isn't enjoyable and it isn't even "creative", unless we're talking about Dylan Thomas' frightening view of creativity:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
drives my green age
That blasts the roots of trees
is my destroyer

Yes, and other things: reading about the wretched genius Oscar Levant (speaking of obsessions - we WERE speaking of obsessions, weren't we?), I came across a couple of quotes that I've filed away with the good ones: "What makes you, unmakes you," playwright George S. Kaufman stated, and Clifford Odets, victim of an Orson-Wellesian too-early success, added this thought: "Success is the jinni (genie) that kills."

Yes. Gives you three wishes, grants them, then utterly destroys you. Or is it this way? It's granting the wishes that kills you, like someone poor and illiterate winning 6-49. Or is it the wishing itself, the scrambling around for something "better" and never being satisfied with what you have? Is it the human agony of always wanting? Of consuming, of eating and buying and taking in and taking in, hungry, hungry, always hungry? Why can't we rest, why can't we just be? All this meditation crap is just playing at stillness. We'd have to stop breathing to really be still. 

So we are left with the maelstrom, the bucking and heaving, the scrambling and never having, as years pour through our hands and the ground dies under our feet.


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Sacrificial lamb (short fiction)

May 24, 2013

This is The Day, but I don’t feel like celebrating it. I just feel like kicking my life into the gutter. There seems to be nothing to celebrate but rancor, unresolved issues and chronic pain.

I am completely fed up by the last “episode” which happened yesterday. I’ve been thinking of giving Carol a gag gift for her birthday (on Monday – we’re babysitting the grandkids then). I thought of designing and knitting a doll that looked like her, but had no luck and turned it into something else.

Then I thought: Desiree has been nagging and nagging her to get a dog (and she hates dogs), so what if I did her a little dog? I’ll tell you, it was one of the hardest and fiddliest things I ever tried. I went through 3 different patterns and once I settled on one, threw 2 nearly-finished ones out. Had to go to Michaels to find some wool I could use, even though I am drowning in wool and have bins and bins of it. It was all extremely expensive and not suitable.

Plus would an executive like her want a little knitted dog? She isn’t the type to put it on her desk. Hardly. And she doesn’t want to be reminded of her mother, does she, how she sits there and knits all day when she could have made something of herself?

Well, maybe Desiree would adopt it. She likes dogs. So finally yesterday I made something I thought was OK, but put it aside, thinking, I probably won’t give it to Carol. Then (typical of me, never giving up when I know I should), this morning I got up and thought, hmm, it’s really not so bad (a sane person would have thrown it out, probably) and began to personalize it, giving it features, perked ears and a long tail, collar and tag, etc. I truly believe that my persistence is the worst trait I have because it never leads to anything good.

When I was finished, or at least I thought it was finished, I told Roy I was going to give it to Carol as a gag birthday gift (I'd been talking about making her a dog for weeks) and asked him, “what do you think?” He looked at it for a while, then said, “It could be one of two things. A small bear or a lamb."

A lamb, a fucking lamb! With a collar and tag and a long black tail. I was just so bloody upset after all that hard work, told him I was going to throw it out, headed over to the garbage pail, grabbed the scissors to eviscerate it, then he started saying things like “You’re crazy!” 

I couldn’t believe Mr. Wonderful and Perfect would say such a thing. For me, it’s the worst there is. It’s like saying, “it doesn’t matter how much hard work and effort you’ve put in over years and years to try to get your life back on track after a horrendous mental breakdown that nearly destroyed you. YOU’RE CRAZY.” This is exactly what my sister (the most vindictive human being I have ever had the misfortune of encountering) used to say to me when she really wanted to twist the knife. My sister, the one who used to invite me to those drunken adult parties and could not understand why I wasn’t “grateful”.

No one, but no one can begin to fathom the loneliness of a mental breakdown, the long, long wilderness walk, so often stumbling and falling on my face, the utter disgrace of the hospital, the guilt and filth in my soul that can never be washed clean. As long as I “act normal” I am more or less OK, but routinely, at intervals, I must have “you’re crazy!” hurled at me by the person who loves me best in the whole wide world. To keep me in line, I suppose.

It almost works.

Even though he is basically an asshole, it always ends up with Roy acting like he is the Saint, the one who “puts up with” this banshee of a woman, this crazy woman who actually has EMOTIONS and doesn’t keep it all inside like she is supposed to, who sometimes just boils over, and “why would that be?” Then he comes out with “you ALWAYS say that,” “it doesn’t matter what I say, you always yell at me, I’m always wrong,” etc. He does not know how many times in the course of the day I bite my tongue just to keep the peace and to keep him from putting on his martyr routine. Honestly, I wonder if I walked out or just died, how long would it take before he even noticed? He would have to find some other instrument for feeling constantly wronged and hurt without any provocation whatsoever, so maybe he’d miss THAT. He’d miss being crowned the Saint every day.

These are the things that never get solved, and they come up again and again. No use “trying to explain it to him” as I’ve been told to do 100 times, how much it hurts me for him to say these things. He pulls them out and uses them again and again because he knows damn well it is the worst thing he can possibly say to me. I always felt if we went into marriage counselling we’d just walk away from each other, as too many things would be dragged up from his side, i. e. putting up with my “craziness” for 40 years. (I’d know enough to keep my mouth shut. Mental patients have no rights.) I try to get past it and finally have to let it go because there’s nothing I can do about it.

How is marriage supposed to be? Nobody tells you, any more than they tell you how to be a mother. You just flail around and hope for the best and try not to kill each other. I think people think: hey, he doesn’t drink or smoke or screw around, so why can’t you be happy? This is as good as you will ever do. What's the matter, aren't you grateful?

Now I really don’t know whether I should give my daughter what I made for her, that lamb or bear or whatever-the-fuck-it-is, knowing her propensity for zingers. I certainly don’t need any more of THOSE in my life. I just want to show her I care about her. We aren’t a very demonstrative family and the very rare time I hug Carol, she stiffens like a tree trunk.

A LAMB. Oh yes, I’d be giving her a baby lamb for her birthday, that makes a lot of sense! I might as well play the tape right now, of she and her husband denigrating it when they’re alone. Yet, strangely, after all that work and effort I don’t want to throw it away or give it to someone else. I know she believes that I have basically wasted my life and spend all my time knitting and making stuffed animals. It’s as if she sucked all the ambition and achievement out of me and used it for her own purposes.

Anyway, today at this moment I am reminded of Sylvia Fraser calling families “killing fields”. They are all I have and I feel so poorly equipped to handle any of it, so I just go along with everything and when I do explode, I am “crazy”. They should live inside my skin for ONE day and see how easy it is.

So today, we are 40 years old and I regret every goddamn minute of it. If I had a loaded gun, I wouldn’t trust myself in the same room with him. My life partner, the one who has endured me for all this time and put up with my incessant craziness and the fact I don’t contribute anything to the marriage at all.

Happy anniversary.

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T. H. E. Cat

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Milky-abilia: the archaeological dig

Everybody knew that Milky the Clown was in the dairy business. I suppose it could have been worse, but what do we really know about these Twin Pines guys (posing here with His Milks himself)? The girl is sweet enough, and her pleated skirt reads, "Mary Lou". Pierre (with a giant TP on his turtleneck, presumably for Twin Pines) is wielding what looks like an enormous loaf of French bread (but at least he's not wearing a beret). The friendly milkman is just that - the friendly milkman, the same kind of milkman I knew as a child with his glass bottles clinking away. Except that when I was a kid, the milk was delivered by horse and wagon.

Amazingly, these little hand-held games can still be had on eBay. It's sort of like a maze where you have to get little balls in the holes. They were given out as prizes on Milky's Party Time, in which they had a feature called Stars of the Future (baton-twirling, juggling, etc.) This was as forerunner of America's Got Talent.

Closeup view.

I don't know why this is posed on snakeskin. Looks a little ominous to me. I should look up the price on eBay.

Milky on a (milk) glass. Looks plastic, but they didn't really have plastic glasses back then. Cheers!

Milky's Fan Club official button. I never was a member, not much of a joiner.

Yes, you're seeing this right. It's a Milky the Clown ashtray. The little beggars had already seen Fred and Wilma Flintstone sucking on Winstons, so what harm could it do?

Then again, maybe it's a hoax, like my Scully and Mulder fridge magnet in the shape of a flower.


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SMACKDOWN: Battle of the Creepy Clowns!

OK, I KNOW I post too many gifs. I'm of an older generation that still thinks they're Magic, and besides, I've learned how to make my own from YouTube snippets. And I'm bored and it's Friday and so what. If you don't like these, and you probably don't, don't look at them. Though my view count is at an all-time low, I am not the kind of social media prostitute that froths up business by wagging her ass. There, I've said. it.

This is Krinkles the Klown shilling for some cereal. Maybe he had aspirations beyond prancing around in a polka-dotted suit and wearing a doghouse on his head. He is plenty creepy and his makeup is classic clown, but the problem is, besides breaking through a big piece of paper, he doesn't DO much.

Milky, now. He was the bane of my childhood and star of his own show, Milky's Party Time. Like Krinkles, he was flogging a corporation, Twin Pines Dairy. Only one rare clip survives, showing him pulling a large object like a tumor out of  Little Nancy's face. Then he seems to shove it back into her face again, which I like. The clip is from some benefit for "crippled children", which is why poor Nancy must stand there on crutches for twenty minutes or so instead of sitting down comfortably. Milky looks like some ghastly vision of Pagliaccio, ready to slay his rival with a butcher knife. His costume has always reminded me, most disturbingly, of the KKK.

Like I said, Krinkles mainly just sits there and talks. He talks about how the cereal makes him "krinkle". I wonder if he is some strange forerunner of Krusty on The Simpsons. And there's that damned ruffle again.

I just noticed this (after 50 years): what's that on his head? A funnel with a sort of handle on it, I guess.

This is where it gets WAY weird, the thing with the sausages. He keeps rummaging around in his pants for some reason. When you look at some of the body language (i. e. his face getting closer and closer to the sausage, which is provocatively curved), you can see this is something that would not be considered appropriate today. And boy, is Nancy getting tired! It must hurt under her arms. And let's hope Milky's breath isn't too bad. Circus performers are notorious for their booze-and-tobacco fumes.

Ah, the taste test! How many takes did it require? He may have chewed his way through a few boxes of that stuff. But wait! Can you really SEE the spoon? Is he (like Milky) a genius at sleight-of-hand and thus able to ram the spoon into his clowny white face with no cereal on it? If so, unlike Milky, he wouldn't have to put anything in his mouth at all.

Would you want this clown pulling sausages out of your child's ear? You can sit down now, Nancy.

POST-POST: In my haste to present these macabre magicians in all their frightening glory, I forgot the most important thing.

WHO WON??

Which clown was the vilest, the scariest, the most sinister? Who pulled the most incomprehensible pranks on poor unsuspecting children?

I didn't even need to count your votes.

I give you. . .  The Victor.

I have put together this merry montage to express my personal feelings about Milky. Now for a few candid shots. . .

Milky enjoys the finer things.

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Big Bang, little fizzle

I have completely lost the text to this. What a horrible feeling. It just. . . went away. What I was GOING to say is that this reminds me of some bizarre experiment on The Big Bang Theory. We have contests at our house about the theme song: how fast you can sing it, word-perfect. So, sigh, here are the words:

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started - wait -
The earth began to cool, the autotrophes began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools, we built a wall
(We built the pyramids!)
Math, science, history
Unravelling the mystery
That all started with a big bang
BANG!!!

I get stuck on "developed" (invented?) and "unravelling" (examining?). Who cares anyway? There's no prize.

It's Friday and I lost my text and hardly anyone reads this shit anyway, so why don't I just quit?

P. S. this only gets interesting around 1:27. Before that it's all setup.

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It's Physics Time!

Remember that kids' game Mouse Trap? The one you wanted so badly you thought you would die of unfulfilled yearning, but never got for Christmas because it was too expensive and "besides, you'd just get tired of it anyway"? And then you went over to your friend's house on Christmas day (the friend who had an Easy Bake Oven which YOU never had, and a Chatty Cathy doll which YOU never had, and Mattell's Creepy Crawlers which YOU never had) and she HAD Mouse Trap and you PLAYED Mouse Trap and it really was - it was - it was a piece of shit! The whatchamacallit always got stuck and wouldn't go all the way through, I mean the trap never went down on top of the mouse, and besides the whatchamacallit was really crummy, it only took 2 seconds and was nothing like the ad on TV.

This is much nicer, even if I think it's running at the wrong speed. Let us, right now this minute, praise Physics, noble Physics, for giving us these few seconds of entertainment/enlightenment, even if we don't know who Goldberg is. (Newton is that centaur on Hercules who always says everything twice: "Herc! Come rescue Helena! Herc! Come rescue Helena!")

EWWWWWWWW!

Dangling over Death: Harold (Lloyd) hangs on!

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Halle Berry's pregnancy: it's a surprise to me, too!

Halle Berry: “Pregnancy was a surprise!”

Splash News

Halle Berry has opened up about her pregnancy for the first time.

The actress, 46, revealed that she was expecting her second child last week and confessed that it was "the biggest surprise" of her life.

The baby will be the first for Berry and her fiancé, Olivier Martinez. She is thought to be around three months pregnant.

Speaking to CNN, she said: "I feel fantastic. This has been the biggest surprise of my life to tell you the truth.

"I thought I was kind of past the point where this could be a reality for me. So it's been a big surprise and the most wonderful."

OK THEN. It seems to me that we have what is often called a "disconnect", a "remove", if not a downright conflict between what is being spouted on eTalk Daily and Entertainment Tonight,  and the reality that most women face.

Everyone knows that Halle Berry is supernaturally beautiful, and there is no doubt she'll have a scar-less caesarian because she's too posh to push (and won't get any stretch marks, either). But this "biggest surprise of my life" (i. e. like the Virgin Mary, she just can't imagine how this ever happened!) smacks of the kind of insincerity, deception and downright lying that abounds in Hollywood. 

This would be nothing but an annoyance and a great topic for discussion around the water cooler (even though water coolers haven't existed since 1959 - nor little pointed Dixie cups, either) were it not for the fact that Halle's lie/exaggeration/stretching of the truth might be downright dangerous for a lot of women.

When I went to research this subject, I encountered a World War III of conflicting views, most of them presented as "medical fact``. In some articles, any obstacle to conception after 40 (or 45, or 50, or - ) was shot down with all sorts of arabesques,  twists and turns of logic. Statistics on in vitro fertilization and miscarriage and all those conceptual things seemed wildly inflated to support the writer`s point of view, 

Then I'd discover another site (with a completely different set of statistics) warning women in mid-life not to get their hopes up, or at least to proceed with extreme caution. 

The truth of it is, women who conceive in their 40s are most likely "going through menopause", one of the murkiest medical terms ever invented. What DOES it mean? That you've had your first hot flash? What if you are one of those rare but fortunate women who doesn't have any "symptoms" at all (as if menopause were a disease, which is sort of like calling male ejaculation a disease)? Are you "going through it" if nobody knows about it (even you), if you're still fertile and having periods, if you're -

And what exactly constitutes being "in menopause" or "menopausal"? It means having gone one full year without a menstrual period. Thus the whole process is only understood backwards, so that if you have a period again after three, six, nine or eleven months, you must push the clock back to zero and start again.

It means things are definitely winding down, if not completely stopped, and to plunk a ripe egg into that particular body kind of goes against nature, not that we care about nature any more.

Never mind going against nature: the truth is, conceiving naturally in your mid-40s is a pretty far-fetched possibility. According to one source (the magic 8-ball I keep in my office), there's a less-than-1% chance. 

Right. Among the articles I found cautioning women who believe Halle Berry just woke up one day and found a baby in the pumpkin patch, this one made the most sense to me, though it certainly doesn't cover everything.

The majority of Canadian men and women are so uninformed about their own fertility they could wind up childless, according to a new poll from the University of British Columbia.

More than 90 per cent of respondents in the National Fertility Awareness survey incorrectly believed or were uncertain whether in vitro fertilization could help a woman have a baby with her own eggs right until she hits menopause.

In reality, less than two per cent of IVF procedures are successful for women in their mid-late 40s using their own eggs.

This and other common misconceptions are what led UBC counseling psychology professor Judith Daniluk to launch a new website debunking myths and helping adults make educated choices.

“The concerning part is more people are ending up childless by default, because when they delay and they get to the point where they start to pursue treatment, treatment can’t compensate for age-related declines,” Daniluk said.

“We don’t want you to get blindsided.”

Only 51 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men surveyed understood that a woman’s eggs are as old as she is, and just 41 per cent of men and 43 per cent of women realized that a man’s age is also an important factor in a couple’s chances of becoming pregnant.

“There’s starting to become some evidence that men who are fathering children into their late 40s and 50s and 60s, that those kids have higher incidents of learning disabilities, autism, potential schizophrenia, some forms of cancer,” Daniluk said.

Another major misconception was that overall health and fitness levels are better indicators of fertility than age. Wrong again, Daniluk said.

The mistaken beliefs probably have a lot to do with Hollywood, she added, where healthy-looking stars are frequently seen sporting baby bumps well into their 40s. Daniluk said what the public doesn’t realize is that many of them are likely using the eggs of a much younger woman.

Whatever the cause, this misinformation appears to be having real-world impacts on families’ choices; according to Statistics Canada, the average age of women giving birth to their first child has risen from 25-29 in 1991 all the way to 30-34 today.

And though in vitro fertilization can be an effective tool for older women who froze their eggs at a younger age or are willing to use donor eggs, many people are also unaware of how costly it can be – which, even in Canada, ranges from around $8,000 to $12,000.

‘Many women believed that it was under $5,000,” Daniluk said. “There are an awful lot of people who can’t afford reproductive technologies like IVF. It’s only those who are economically advantaged who can even pursue those treatments.”

There are lots of other issues: Down Syndrome leaps into my mind (though perhaps with early screening, these potentially-disabled babies are now routinely being aborted). The fact that when Mom attends her daughter's graduation, she could be a senior citizen collecting a pension. Even when the kid is in kindergarten, she might be well into her 50s, the age of a lot of grandmothers (i. e., me).

When you think about it, humans were originally designed to reproduce when they were, oh, maybe thirteen years old. I`m not recommending turning back the clock that far: but advancing the age of childbirth by 35 years does seem just a little extreme. 

 No one looks into the future, no one plans. No one even thinks they are mortal any more.  A middle-aged man is almost expected to go on fathering children, especially after he has shed his dreary, middle-aged starter wife and proceeded to the 25-year-old Trophy. Yet now we learn - big surprise - that MEN may have something to do with disease and disability in children! What a concept! 

Why didn't we know about this before? Because no one bothered to look. The whole idea was too preposterous even to entertain. If a couple couldn't have kids, the wife was "barren", stigmatized, and relegated to the status of a kind of married old maid.

Oh the myths, the myths, most of them propagated by all these gorgeous stars who come on talk shows with their bellies proceding them. Since when did it become chic to have children? When I had my kids in the '70s, it was during the first wave of feminism. You were fully expected to plunk them down in a day care centre at the age of two weeks, go to your (routine, low-paying, generally unfulfilling) job and never see them again until they graduated and left home.

I even remember a magazine article, published on Mother's Day, which had a huge nasty-looking headline in red lettering that said MOTHER'S DAY IS OVER!. The piece could not have been more vindictive and negative about motherhood and basically claimed it sucked a woman dry and spit out the bones. There was not one positive statement in this article, yet no one questioned it. There were no letters complaining about it. Motherhood destroyed women and was completely thankless and designed to annihilate a woman`s soul. End of story.

I was so emotionally vulnerable then that the article actually made me feel guilty. Apparently, in loving my kids as extravagantly as I did and delighting in all their stages, I was breaking some kind of invisible law.  First thing in the morning, I heard the thundering of feet on stairs and wailing kids as everyone trooped off to their jobs. Most of the time I was the only adult left in the apartment building all day. (As for going around with my bare or barely-covered belly sticking out like a prize ham, I would not have dreamed of it. Maternity tops were flowered tents with puffy little sleeves, tied in the back with a bow.) 

Now we have done a royal flip-flop. We`re all more influenced by celebrities than we realize, so on one level or another, we think (monkeylike) we can do as they do and have the same results. Never mind that we don`t rake in a few million dollars a picture and thus can afford fifteen in vitro treatments, using someone else`s pristine young donor eggs. Never mind that we don't screen the results, as these stars invariably do, weeding out Down Syndrome and other chromosomal abnormalities (just think: how many stars do you know with Down babies?)

In my exhaustive (or exhausting - God, I`m glad to be out of all this) research for this post, I discovered some pretty amazing myths about conception, such as: "a woman can`t conceive unless she has an orgasm during intercourse". Whew. In a way, that`s good. Maybe her husband will take a little more time to get his wife there, whether she conceives or not. And that can only be a good thing. 

But just wait until the little devil comes along and screams to be fed every half-hour. Her days of having orgasms might just be over.



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm