I'm able to schedule a manicure and a pedicure. I can find people to put goo on my face and peel it off to reveal much younger layers. I can even schedule an appointment to have hair removed from any bit of me that needs to be hairless.

But I can't find a good hairdresser. This reduces me to using color from a box-- and for the most part I'm pretty good with that. What I can't do at home is a cut.

I used to have one. I kept him after I moved 800 miles away from him, because it's not easy to find a man who can laugh at your jokes and do a full blowout in 30 minutes or less. He was a genius.

And then he up and left town. The story I heard was that he and his partner, who also worked at the salon, had a blowout of their own in the salon parking lot. Whether he quit or was fired following this incident was never clear to me.

I heard he went to work at a nudist colony. As a bartender. I think it must be the same nudist colony David Sedaris wrote about in his first book, because I can't imagine there are that many forward-thinking nudist colonies in eastern Tennessee.

So to sum up, my hairdresser broke up with his boyfriend and left town to become a naked bartender, leaving me to cope with dry split ends all alone. Leaving me to cope with all the other stuff without sound advice on styling or life's problems. But I'd totally let him cut my hair naked if he served me a margarita first.

When we got her she weighed maybe four pounds. She was a white furry ball with furry little feet, trying to scramble up the side of a cardboard box in the front floorboard of the car. She was wiggling and making squeaky puppy noises. She fit in my hands and I carried her into the house on my shoulder like she was a baby. It was how she liked us to carry her all her life.

What I remember today:
Three days after we got her, I brought my boyfriend home after track practice to see her. It's the only time I ever heard him squeal. Once for, oh how cute. And then for she's got poop all over her and now it's all over me.

When I came home from college for visits, she'd get in my suitcase when it was time for me to go back.

Her favorite thing when I came home to visit was to sleep in the bed with me. It was like a special treat for her, and she'd snuggle up with her warm doggie smell as close as she could get. It was sad for both of us when she got too old to do that anymore.

When she was a puppy she'd get off her leash sometimes and RUN through the backyards of all the neighbors while we'd try to catch her. She thought it was a game. When my folks moved to the Golf Course, she'd run and run down through the fairway out back. And at least once a month my mom would wake to an angry golfer out on the tee shouting about a dog that pooped out there. It may or may not have been ours.

She liked to sit quietly on the porch with ym grandparents and snuggle in her bed in the TV room.

For the past few months she couldn't see, couldn't hear and spent most of her days wandering in circles. She'd step in the water bowl and track water all over the house. She had seizures. Yesterday she couldn't walk, but was trying to drag herself around.

So the last thing she remembers is my mom holding her and telling her stories. She's under a rosebush on the hill, overlooking her fairway and the golf tee. She was a good dog. I miss her.

Time Suck

Right now, in this moment, I need to read a 138 page annual report on a local company for my research methods class. I also need to crunch a lot of data about standardized test scores and teacher attrition in Excel, or-- should I feel really brave-- Access. There's a sweater I finished that needs to be blocked before I try to assemble and wear it. I should get out the vacuum-- the Dyson DC15 ANIMAL!-- and wage war against the IsCat hair. Take out the trash. Swiffer the kitchen because the refrigerator is leaking Mystery Goo again.

But right now, in this moment, I believe it is more important to beat the Suz's high score in Zuma. I downloaded this game from PopCap last summer, and I'm not including the URL here for the same reason I won't drive people to Chinatown at 1 in the morning. I can't be held responsible for starting or feeding someone's addiction. I have my own problems.

So it's this game, see? All these multi-colored balls roll into a spiraling track on the screen and you have this frog, see? And you shoot colored balls out of the frog's mouth and try to get them into line next to other balls that are the same color, see? And when you get three or more balls together in a row, they disappear, see? And you have to get rid of all the balls before the train rolls into the skull's mouth, see?

And that's basically it. There are levels upon levels of this thing (and I've played them all-- once without "dying" at all) and there are bonus balls and different combinations to get more points.

I am a grown woman, and I am ashamed to say how many hours-- nay, weeks-- of my life I have wasted playing this game. And now I may say to myself, my God, what have I done?

And it's spread. The Suz plays it, even when she doesn't want to. Her New and Improved IsBoyfriend has a serious Zuma problem. His roommate.

It's so innocent. "I'll play one board while dinner heats up." Three hours later your contacts are welded to your corneas because you're not blinking as often as you should. Smoke is pouring out of the oven and the alarms are going off. Firemen are crashing through the door behind you and you're yelling, "But I'm just about to win level 13, 'Space'" as they drag you away from the monitor.

This is no way to go through life.

More things that irritate me...

First, there's a clip show of the Dateline series "To Catch A Predator." This series bothers me on several levels. First there are the nagging questions about law enforcement and journalistic integrity. Is it entrapment? Is NBC News too far into bed with the people-- Perverted Justice-- that they're supposed to be covering? These are not questions that are likely to be resolved in my lifetime. At least not before I lose all interest in the subject.

And then there's the extra added fear that, against all odds, I'm going to see someone I know on there. Someone I used to date-- I don't have a great track record for spotting and avoiding the criminal element. What if it's my dad? Or my brother? Or a friend I've known since childhood? Am I being ridiculous? Maybe. But these shows actively prey on and encourage this kind of thinking. They promote the idea that the people we think we know best, we don't know at all. That our loved ones might be leading some kind of secret life that we're completely unaware of. And, I haven't had the best track record of spotting that kind of thing in the past either.

So it may be ridiculous to think that I might see someone I know on this train wreck, but I also think that's the desired effect. I don't like it. It's feeding into a culture where we're all already afraid of our own shadows.

And then there were the fish and chips. I like to eat fish and chips from Legal in my jammies while I watch scary television. I like the feeling of simultaneously experiencing my arteries hardening and my brain cells dying all at once. This is also why I enjoy beer and cheese fries.

We ordered from a new delivery service, which I'll keep anonymous. The stuff arrived an hour and a half late, and very cold. The Suz's grilled calamari was half eaten. My fish had no chips and no malt vinegar-- and without malt vinegar there's not much point to the fish or the chips. Then there was this scary-looking soggy salad in the bottom of the bag that both of us were afraid to touch. The IsCats are, of course, averse to vegetables in all their many forms.

So I called the delivery service. I didn't yell, but I was firm in my position that these are all problems that need fixing. The guy said he'd call the restaurant and call us back. To his credit, he did call me back, with this explanation: "Mistakes were made."

How did he know that's my favorite phrase?

They're supposed to be delivering the remaining calamari and my chips. It should be, oh, another hour or so.

I feel like I should explain why I haven't updated this thing in two years. The best I can come up with is, I didn't have time and I didn't feel like it.

I do have an excuse for more recent neglect. I broke my leg in October. Luckily I did this on my way to the Emergency Room for a thing that turned out to be nothing so at least I didn't waste the trip.

It started on Saturday night, when I couldn't, um, go. Or rather I was going a lot and producing very little. But I was drinking a lot of water. Since this means a UTI (look it up) or kidney stones, off I went to the local E.R.

Once I got there, they put me in a room. The place looked pretty quiet, but I waited for about an hour and a half before the resident came in to tell me that, according to my sample, they had been able to determine that I was not pregnant.

Because apparently the prophecies indicated there might have been a chance in hell of that happening.

And then I waited another two hours for the attending to show up. By 11:00 p.m. I was kind of tired of waiting, and seeing as how I didn't have a nurse call button, I put on my pants and my shoes and stood in the doorway to get someone to discharge me. Much the same way you might put on your coat and hat to signal to a waiter that you've been ready for the check for the last, oh, TWO HOURS.

And so THEN the attending comes in. He doesn't look like Patrick Dempsey. His hair is not a National Treasure. His hair is more like, um, Bilbo Baggins. And I only comment on his appearance because of what happened next, so don't judge me for being shallow. I'll only add this. You're a doctor in a major urban medical center. You're probably making pretty good bank. Buy some pants that fit.

So he tells me they need another sample from me. I say I don't have one to give, on account of I've been in a room with nothing to drink for a little over three hours.

He says the sample I gave them was too dilute. "Why were you drinking so much water?" he asks. His tone suggests that he expects me to say, "Why, to flush out the cocaine, of course."

"Because that's what you're supposed to do when you have a kidney problem," I tell him. He doesn't seem to believe me.

I should mention here that I am fully insured, and it's a pretty good policy.

So then I tell him that he hasn't been able to find anything, that I've been in this little room for three hours by myself and am getting a little buggy, and that I have a mountain of work waiting for me at home, so I really don't have another three hours to give him.

And he tells me that I've actually had a pretty short visit to the E.R. and that if I'm so concerned about work, I should be sure to bring plenty to keep me occupied. And if my condition got worse, I'd be unlikely to get all that work done anyway.

Check please.

They let me go home, but told me to come back if my symptoms got worse.
I call my mother on the way home. My mother, who is a nurse married to an E.R. doctor tells me that this is not how things are supposed to be done, and that the guy was out of line. Later she will call the hospital president's office and tell his staff the same thing.

But I go home, and I go to bed. And the next morning, it's worse. I can't go at all. So I pack a bag with plenty to do-- about 20 pounds worth of things to do-- and go downstairs to my car. I step into the hole in the sidewalk where a tree went down on somebody's car last summer and the 20 pound bag takes me down.

I hear the pop. I think to myself, "I can't pass out on the sidewalk on Sunday morning."
I hop across the street to my car and think about calling an ambulance, but I don't know how to tell them how to find me. So I put my head down and wait for the passing out feeling to go away. Then I drive myself back to the E.R.

When I get there, they wheel me right back. I tell the doctor the story of the previous night and how I shouldn't have left and how dumb I feel while a nurse hooks up a saline drip and takes blood samples to check my kidney function. The doctor says, "Okay, but that's enough with the self-flaggelation."

I am happy that I have a doctor who feels confident that I will understand multi-syllable words.
I was there for four hours. They did x-rays on my foot, put me in a splint, taught me to walk on crutches, cat-scanned my kidneys, and gave me a turkey sandwich. By the time the saline drip had finished, my kidneys were a-ok and they couldn't find anything wrong with them. It might have been a small stone. Not a big childbirth stone like Dr. Hobbit tried to scare me with.

But now I had a broken ankle because Dr. Hobbit told me to bring enough work to do.

The worst thing about the broken ankle hasn't been the crutches, or the wheelchair, or the pain in my arms from using both. And I live on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator. I couldn't sleep in the cast, so that wasn't fun, but it wasn't the worst part. The worst part wasn't the nausea from the painkillers they gave me. Or the part where I had to live on cereal and lean cuisine because I couldn't cook for myself.

The worst part is all the people saying "How's the leg?" "How's the foot?" And so on. I'm not talking about friends who ask out of genuine concern.

I'm talking about that guy I barely know who has to ask about my leg every freakin' morning. "How's the foot?"

"It's fine, thanks" I say. What I really want to say is, it's still broken. Just like it was yesterday. And the day before that. It will still be broken tomorrow, so how's about you just stop asking me because the bad energy of my anger is probably slowing the healing process!

I got the cast off two weeks ago. This morning, just like every morning for the last two weeks, "How's the foot?"