Sunday, October 25, 2015

Keep Calm and Get a Pedicure

It has been a long time since I threw you folks an earworm - I guarantee you will be hearing Marni Nixon's sweet voice in your head for days.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and bright
And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight
I feel charming, oh so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel
And so pretty that I hardly can believe I'm real
About once every six weeks I allow myself to be pampered by Tammy at Decent Nails with a pedicure. I don't consider the nail fill to be pampering - that's a necessary, like a haircut, but unlike the self-administered haircut I can't apply my own acrylic nails. The pedicure, though - I could do that myself, but then I wouldn't get to sit in the massage chair while the nice lady applies moist heat and massages my feet and lower legs. Also she has that exquisite patience necessary to properly nip and shape my ugly little toenails, whereas I am likely to whack them off to the quick because they annoy me. When I leave here at the end of 2 hours, still unable to speak one word of Vietnamese, I will feel relaxed and pretty and for a little while will have forgotten about fibromyalgia, anti-semitism, and Trey Gowdy's hair.


I came across this article today on Facebook and I will tell you that I was so horrified I did not click on the link. In fact, I changed the title of the article for the purposes of this blog, and I am not providing the link: "Woman Defiles Jimmy Dean Sausage in Walmart Bathroom."

At one level, it is hysterically funny - typical Walmartian behavior, I can hear some people chuckling - but then I realized this spoke to a much bigger social problem, maybe more. First, chances are this woman is seriously mentally ill - okay, I'm stating the obvious here, but that being the case, does she really need to have her name and embarrassing behavior headlined by the media, and made to go viral over the Internet?  How does a therapist help her deal with that?

Second, and perhaps more importantly, why are our young people being exposed to articles like this, in the mainstream or even tabloid media?  How do we raise our children to respect privacy and modesty when we're all okay with prurient details like this being published? I am reminded of my abject horror, courtesy of the Supreme Pervert, Kenneth Starr, when a generation of very young children learned about oral sex leading up to and during the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton.

I also remember a time when woman's sanitary products could not be advertised on TV, and when the media did not report on a President's personal peccadillos. Ads for Viagra and Cialis, with their blunt talk about 4-hour erections, or obsessing on the nitty-gritty details of presidential affairs, this offends me. Yes me, a child of the sixties, raised in the era of free love and cheap drugs.  I remember that there were always rumors, but they were not reported in the media.

We baby boomers may have invented the phrase "let it all hang out" but all the wildness was for the very young, and then we all outgrew the silliness. Baby boomers grew up, graduated college, got jobs, got married, and raised children without allowing them to be exposed to the sex lives of strangers. We got old. We retired.  Some of us got downright crotchety (mea culpa).

Did the President really veto increases in pay to the armed forces? Well, two out of three ain't bad ... what I am referring to is the President's remarks expressing concern over the death penalty and his request to deemphasize testing in schools. On these matters, I can get behind him 110%, which is totally unusual for me. But denying pay adjustments to our military? He just slid back into the "big dope" category.

The birthday party was lovely ... I certainly did not look as good at fifty as my friend Laura.  I had to take a nap earlier in the day to ensure I could make it to the party. So I did, and I did, and it was grand.  

No cooking today, but we did do a bit of shopping at BJ's earlier in the day, and I have Plans.


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