Category Archives: Life and times
Surrender Your Dignity: The horror of the skin check
The thing no one ever tells you about middle age is that it’s the beginning of the end of dignity as you have previously known and experienced it. Adolescent store clerks start calling you Ma’m, or worse Dear. Incontinence supply catalogues mysteriously begin arriving in the mail – with your name right there on the cover next to the photos of Tranquility Briefs (sm) and hernia belts. And suddenly the term “age appropriate” is casually slung around by your hairdresser, your yogi and the bra fitter at Bloomingdale’s.
Special offer just for YOU, Kitchen Slattern!
Then, as you are desperately trying to crawl up from the Fifth Circle of Hell — which by the way is Humiliation, not Anger — you suddenly slip down a couple more rings to Violence in the form of medical appointments, treatments and tests. Here tissue is flattened, squeezed, poked and punctured; orifices are regularly violated; and your inner workings are routinely nuked, drained and irradiated. All in the name of maintaining virtuous good health.
Ribbed! For Herr Doktor’s amusement.
In light of the above, then, it would seem that the annual dermatological skin check is hardly likely to redline the stress meter, given that it consists of nothing more than someone eyeballing your epidermis; no needles, chemicals or surgical instruments are involved. And yet, somehow, it is this appointment I dread above all others, even the one with my gastroenterologist, the operator of an outsize colonoscopy hose in Midtown West, and whom I strongly suspect to be the evil spawn of Dr. Mengele, so watch your back.
In any case, the skin check is entirely pain-free, at least in the physical sense, so there’s no worry on that score. It’s the psychological torture of interaction with Dr. Clinka that agonizes. As with every dermatologist I have ever laid eyes on, her face is so smooth it’s nearly featureless — like an evil fetus who’s been at the airbrush too long. Her forehead doesn’t move, her eyebrows are halfway to her hairline and her skin is as tight as the casing on a Fenway frank. There is not a mark or a line or a blemish anywhere on the vast white expanse of her visage, and yet by the look of her hands she’s got be at least 110. Every year I vow to find another doctor, but then I remember she’s got the treasure map of my moles and I worry the new guy will overlook something or fail to notice a sudden increase in the size of one of the future melanomae on some part of the body I can’t see. And besides, it’s really easy to get an appointment with her on short notice. I’m guessing very few of her patients book a second visit.
Frau Doktor Clinka never “counsels” me until after the skin check in which I appear nearly naked under approximately one million candlepower of unflattering fluorescent blue lighting. How she manages to get through it without flashburns on her retinas I cannot fathom, but it could very well be she enjoys the pain, or perhaps she just prefers to keep the balance of power tipped in her favor. I suspect it’s both.
Last year we got through the body scan all right but afterward I had some trouble closing up the gown. They call it a gown, but it’s a gown in the same way the Winnebago my Uncle Buzz parks next to the gravel pit is his summer palace. Sure it’s got its own port-a-potty and satellite dish, but it’s not like you ever wonder whether the queen’ll be having her Bud Light in a glass or straight from the can when she drops by for a chat.
Anyway, there I was trying to cover as much of my personal real estate as possible with the skimpy green scrap when I asked about treatments for the ever-deepening frown lines between my eyebrows, which get more furrowed and asymmetrical every year.
“For you I wouldt recommendt zee Botox,” she began, regarding my browline as if it were mottled with a particularly virulent strain of leprosy.
Botulism toxin under the skin? Call me crazy, but no, I don’t think so. That’s a slippery slope I’m not interested in sledding on. I mean, one thing leads to another and before you know it, you find Priscilla Presley looking back at you in the mirror as you try to figure out where your face went. What’s more, the stuff has got to be toxic, and when it is eventually revealed that it causes massive brain meltdowns or brings on uncontrollable episodes of St Vitas’ Dance, I’ll be vindicated, mark my words. Anywho, what with my aversion to needles and sub-dermal WMDs, I demurred and similarly opted out of the injected fillers she was flogging at the fire sale rate of $500 a pop.
“In zat case your only options are zee surgery lift or zee topical lozion, which, unfortunately, makes for zee least effective treatment.”
I was all over the topical option, and I said so. “It sounds like a beach vacation,” I offered in the same way you might throw the last scrap of beef jerky from your rucksack at the feet of a particularly peckish alligator.
With a sigh, she extracted a tiny pink sample tube of Retin-A from her cabinet of curiosities. It looked like it had been klepped from Barbie’s Dream House, except of course everyone knows Barbie doesn’t need wrinkle cream. Bitch.
“So vat you do is take this amount every day and rub it on your face after zee moisturizing und sunscreening which of course you do not use even after I tell you zat you must.” She squeezed a white blob the size of a pea onto my index finger.
“Right here?” I asked indicating the trenches above my nose.
“No, all over. And I vould recommendt your neck und chest too.”
“All over? Do I really need it all over my face? What are you saying? Is it really that bad?” I whined, but got no answer, just a knowing smile, at least I think it was a smile. The only muscles in her face that still seem to be fully functional are the ones controlling her lower lip.
This year I vowed things would be different. In the wake of last year’s horror show, I’d been using the magical Retin-A, which the pharmacist charges a mere $200 a tube for, on every inch of exposed skin, coating my body in zinc oxide then swaddling myself on the beach in August and wearing ridiculous floppy hats year round with Jackie O shades to help me stop squinting. And so, fish-belly white, rejuvenated, exfoliated and depilitated, I was ready for my close-up as I entered the examining room.
Scale: the mannequin is four inches wide.
I was a fool, however, to think the good doctor had been asleep at the switch for the past year. Right away I realized that like all evil geniuses, she’d been hatching new plots to take the mortification level of the all-over skin check to previously undreamed-of, stratospheric new heights. This year’s flash of brilliance: paper bikinis.
Now I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a disposable undergarment, let alone had the pleasure of slipping into one, but just in case you’re not familiar with these items, they consist of a three-inch wide scrap of itchy fiberglass-infused tissue paper with skinny white elastic threaded through either end as a “waistband.” To say that these are universally unflattering is as mild as understatement gets, because unless you’re dancing for the Bolshoi, you are going to look like a sumo wrestler after a pig roast and a three-week Ding Dong binge in this rig.
More Pepsi, please!
Still, there is an upside. With the paper bikini, La Clinka can now scope out my entire ass without having to yank down my underpants as I lie splayed on my stomach, an act that has a distinctly weird porno vibe about it. Every year I half expect her to give me a little spank when she’s done and am always afraid the scene is being secretly videotaped for some deviant web site, like Dermo Doc Spank Fest.com or BottomsUp.net, which is why I always wear my sunglasses during the exam. The doctor never objects, which makes me doubly suspicious. Sure there’s money in Botox and micro-dermabrasion, but the real dough’s in porno. Everybody knows that.
Stylin’ with Beppe
Image via whyweprotest.net.
Given my recent spate of nonstandard fiction posts, you may have guessed that I am on vacation. This year, however, rather than booking our usual warm weather getaway, Mr. Slattern and I have debunked for Italy, which I am sorry to report is experiencing some truly Old Testament weather on the eve of the big papal party. Obviously we hadn’t anticipated either contingency back when we made our holiday plans, but here we are in soggy Florence with a relocation to even soggier Rome in the not too distant future, and so we must make the best of both the climate and the impending riot of pope-mad tourists. On a positive note, we have found a bottle of Chianti or two at lunch and a steady supply of Aperol spritzes in the evening really do take the sting out of being occupied. Or is that ossified? Either/or I guess.
Now, I don’t really get to the Continent all that often, but when I do, I am always interested to see what the locals are up to. If the fashion- and culture-cognoscenti are to be believed, just by breathing the rarefied air of Paris, Milan or Frankfurt, our EU cousins are innately more sophisticated than we mall-stomping, burger-munching sad sacks will ever dream of being.
Image via blog.iodonna.it. Gesture via Beppe.
Certainly one sees the hand of old world sophistication at work in the choice of Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi as presidential frontrunners. I mean Jesse “The Body” Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger only made it as far as governor and governator respectively. Imagine what heights the USA might have risen to if they’d been allowed to scramble to the top of the political dung heap.
Aesthethetically, we are also told, the Euros have it all over us, and having visited the Louvre, the Uffizzi and the occasional Paris pissoir, I can certainly attest to that.
Better art? Absolutely.
Superior architecture? Check.
Pre-eminent fashion? Not so fast…
Though the average European is certainly slimmer than her Yankee cousine, she is just as prone to fashion faux pas as Betty from Peoria, let me tell you.
The mini-sweat via cocosa.com.
In the past week I have been subjected to a steady stream of what I call the mini-sweat pantalon. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this hot fashion trend, let me explain. The mini-sweat is an extra cheap, shrunken, shortened version of all American grey sweatpants. Like American sweats they flatter no one; however, unlike the Walmart version that aims to camouflage, these little gems give unattractiveness a sophisticated new spin by virtue of being skin tight and made of some kind of lightweight synthetic material that shows every bump, bulge and pimple on the ass beneath. Sadly, I have seen these on both men and women, but in truth I can’t say which is worse.
I have also noted that the perennial Euro favorite of t-shirts with nonsensical English printed all over them is one trend that’s still going just as strong as it was 20 years ago. Such authentic slogans as “Super Texas! Throw some cheese!” and “Rockin’ good booty San Francisco style!” routinely adorn the upper halves of the continent’s golden youth.
When paired with the mini-sweat pantalon, these make some kind of statement. Like maybe Beppe for President.
A little Valentine’s Day closet porn anyone?
C’mon down the rabbit hole.
Alert readers may have noticed that I have been rather conspicuous by my absence of late. The rest of you have probably been hanging out at the portable bar speculating on more pressing issues than why I can’t seem to get it together to post something pithy, and good on you.
As it turns out, I have been busy rather than slothful recently, though, let’s be honest here, there’s always at least a whiff of indolence mixed in with the miasma of eau de cologne, vodka processed through the skin and apple cider vinegar (trust me, you don’t even want to know) that surrounds me.
Image via bagsnob.com
So where have I been you ask? Down the rabbit hole of middle-aged porn, obsessively re-screening the homeowner’s peep show, hanging out at the housewife’s glory hole. That’s right, my friends, I’ve slipped on my trench coat and have been spending huge blocks of time, and outrageous sums of money, at The Container Store. If you’re over forty or female or both, you probably require no further explanation, but for those of you who fail to grasp the significance of my new predilection, let me explain.
As I may have mentioned, I have some shoes — considerably more than pictured above, though nowhere near Imelda scale. Let’s just say it’s a substantial collection, carefully curated, lovingly arranged and personally significant, at least to me. As we all know, you can gain fifty pounds, develop female pattern baldness and a goiter, but your shoes will still fit. They are the foundation of the adult woman’s wardrobe, her security blanket, her hedge against sartorial disaster. As such, they need to be properly organized and displayed; they need “breathing room,” if you will.
Oh Imelda, one never is enough, is it?
Image via pinoygigs.com.
Now, Mr. Slattern and I have shared a rather large, though inefficient, walk-in closet for several years, and in that time my need for space has increased. Unfortunately, this has impinged on his need to keep my off-season shoes out of the area designated for his shirts. Rather than accept marital discord as the inevitable result of this rather fraught arrangement, however, I came up with the clever idea of dividing the one large closet into two smaller ones. Well actually one smaller one and one really tiny one, but that’s more of a detail than a feature item. Let’s move along.
Anyhoo, it was during the closet renovation project that I began frequenting that den of organizational iniquity, The Container Store, to ogle its aisles of color coordinated hat boxes, ingenious rolling shelving units and mad clever “storage solutions.” I’d spend hours talking about retractable fixtures with the staff, stroking the finishes on cabinet facings and fantasizing about stackable accessory storage. I fetishized the perfect reach-in closet and lingered in front of the titillating array of colorful bins and coordinating hampers. I was hooked, an addict, a filthy closet junkie who could not get enough of that sweet organizational stuff.
See? There really were costumes.
Via Wikipedia.
Now, before this little adventure, I had never really understood the obsessive need for this kind of stimulation. It wasn’t until I was in college that I saw my first dirty movie, an X-rated version of Alice in Wonderland, complete with costumes, dancing, singing and more than a few acts of extreme lasciviousness. Given that Cosmo generally tucked the particulars of its centerfolds out of sight in those days, and that the interwebs wouldn’t be invented (and cluttered up with naked girlfriends, randy phone repairmen and bleating Kardashians) for decades yet, I had very little experience with this kind of thing, which is to say none at all. But my friends and I figured it was time we found out what all the fuss was about, so we located a fellow student with a car, offered to spring for gas and trundled off to the Stillwater monoplex for a double feature.
If you’ve never seen a pornographic musical, it may be somewhat difficult to imagine. It is certainly a singular experience, what with all the dancing and singing interspersed with nudity, fellatio and random episodes of fornication. If memory serves, it was all very light-hearted in tone, what Patsy Stone would call, “a bit of cheeky fun.” In truth the particulars of the film are a bit hazy owing to the extended Blue-Nun-and-bong binge that preceded our attendance, though I do recall being somewhat taken aback by Alice’s escapades with the Red Queen. Let’s just leave it at that.
In any case, not since Alice dallied with the Mad Hatter (in his improbable size 9 1/2 hat) has one pleasure seeker found such fulfillment in a single location: aisle 5 of the Container Store to be precise. Enter at your peril and try to be discreet is my advice.
“They call me MRS. Badass”
Inspired by my poetess pal over at Unfettered BS, who made a To Do List for 2012 and succeeded in crossing off every item, I have decided to forego all resolutions this year and instead make a list of my own. I’m quite goal-oriented and thought it might be nice to try and achieve something that didn’t involve a cocktail shaker, heavy cream or a bail bondsman, just for a change. So I drew up my 2013 syllabus last week and am pleased to report significant progress on Item #2, Become a Badass.
Of course it would probably make sense to check off Item #1, Lose 20 Pounds before moving on to Item #2, but I’m thinking a little extra progress on the physical fitness front might result from the pursuit of a fiercer demeanor, so I’m forging ahead. Killing two birds with one karate CHOP, as it were.
My badassery is actually a two-point program: learn to ride a motorcycle (which will have to wait ’til spring) and learn to defend myself in case of attack. Now obviously, it is rare for assaults of any stripe to take place in my kitchen, on the checkout line of Trader Joe’s, or at Barney’s (other than during the annual warehouse sale, but I gave up trying to navigate that madness years ago); however, living in the city, as I do, there are risks, and I have come to the conclusion that my previous strategies for dealing with incidents of theft/aggression have been, at best, middling in their effectiveness.
The swag.
Courtesy primalleathers.com
My first encounter with lawlessness occurred around 1990 or so, during the Dinkins administration if memory serves. I was standing outside my door trying to extract my house key from a balky lock when one of the neighborhood hooligans, a junkie named Kenny I was later to learn, slipped through the front gate and swiped Mr. Slattern’s leather jacket, with his wallet in the pocket, from the top of the gym bag I was taking to him — long story.
Anywho, once I realized it was gone, I gave chase, whereupon the miscreant fled inside his house (yes, he was my neighbor) and peeked at me from the relative safety an upper floor window. Having determined that I could not yank, pull or kick his front door open, and unable to find a suitable battering ram, I settled instead for standing in the middle of the street, screaming and pointing while threatening him with acts so vicious in terms so violent I should probably have been arrested just for thinking about them. Honestly, I used language that would have made even Dave Grohl blush.
So long story short, we ended up getting the item back with the help of the local precinct. Mr. Slattern’s wallet was a bit lighter, but otherwise all was returned as stolen. Since then I have harbored fantasies of making citizen’s arrests, interceding on behalf of cowering crime victims and otherwise becoming a one woman tornado of vigilante righteousness, all with the secret objective of being allowed to hang out again in the precinct, my absolute favorite place on Earth. Really, I just love it there.
Recently, I had another local reprobate try, unsuccessfully, to steal my bag. This time I got to ride around in the back seat of a cruiser looking for him! We went the wrong way down one-way streets at excessive speeds, with the sirens blaring and the party lights flashing for almost 30 minutes before I was invited back to the station house to file a report. It was more fabulous than you can possibly imagine.
C’mon, try and get my white suit dirty. I dare ya’.
Via healthyliving.azcentral.com
So all of this is by way of saying I am a big fan of law and order. And since I’m not getting any younger, it occurs to me that I may be becoming more of a target, which is why I decided to take a self defense class last weekend. Let me tell you, it was the most fun I have ever had in a situation that didn’t involve a bartender, and I highly recommend you all give it a whirl. For a full hour, we practiced strikes and stomps and screaming and kicking. Once that adrenaline starts pumping you feel like you’ve had about a gallon of coffee, half a dozen Boston Kreme donuts and a big old dose of steroids — a powerhouse of lethal force in tasteful pumps.
It was so much fun that I am going to start taking monthly “refresher” classes and am even contemplating martial arts training of some sort. Of course, anything that requires those ugly white jackets is completely out of the question, and I’m not even going to consider wearing elastic-waist canvas pants. Then there’s the shoe issue. Barefoot just doesn’t work for me. I mean you’d never have caught Angie Dickinson kicking a perp’s ass while shoeless. In ballet flats, maybe, but never barefoot.
“Don’t even thing of making me chase you in my best pumps.”
Via kitsch-slapped.com
Scrumming in the dead zone
Holiday travel as designed by Stephen King
Whaddya mean there’s no space for my carry on?
via fanpop.com
So who exactly came up with the genius idea of boarding commercial flights by randomly assigned “zones”? This is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know.
Have you flown recently, by any chance? If you have, you’ve no doubt encountered the zone approach which has replaced the logical process of allowing passengers to board the plane from back to front. Under the new system, frantic holiday travelers are assigned random groups (which for reasons I cannot fathom are called zones), usually, I have observed, from one to seven.
So for example, you could be seated in the middle seat of the last row of the plane (rather than the mid-cabin aisle seat you booked and paid for three months previous when you made the reservation) as I was on a blissful five and a half hour New Year’s Eve flight from Washington state to New York City. And yet despite your location in a non-reclining jump seat adjoining the head, you could still be assigned to zone 7, or the dead zone as I think of it since it’s the final group to board the plane.
“I’m sorry M’am, but you don’t qualify for this seat upgrade. Back to 38-B with you now!”
What this means is that by the time you fight your way through rows one through 37 and the hoards of clueless passengers clotting up the center aisle while lackadaisically messing around with the contents of their backpacks, every available square inch of storage space will already be crammed with the overcoats and small bags your fellow travelers have been told not once but FIFTY TIMES not to stow until everyone else’s bags have been put away. The experience is not, I imagine, unlike trying to navigate your way through a vaccine riot in downtown Baghdad. As a result, you will be able to spend your journey strapped into the equivalent of an electric chair with your feet on your carry-on, your knees under your chin and your handbag behind your head. And if you are especially lucky, you’ll get placed between a nicotine-addicted Ukrainian white slaver named Marko (don’t even ask how I know) and a hapless father traveling with an eight month-old baby and NO TOYS.
You know, I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating. It is a wonder I don’t drink more than I do. And for the record, there was absolutely no need to call in the air marshal. I will be sending United Airlines a strongly worded letter on the subject just as soon as I get out of this holding cell.
Happy New Year everyone!
Kitchen Slattern 