IT'S POTTY TIME!

Just when I thought our lives couldn’t get any better, faster, or more productive than with products such as The Snuggie (so you don’t have to get out of the blanket to use the remote), 6 second Abs (because we all want to look like Jessica Alba or Matthew McConaughey without all that wasted gym time), and of course the topsy turvy tomato tree (because growing them upright is no fun at all), now comes the ultimate lazy man’s (or woman’s) got to have product – THE POTTY PUTTER.

You get a putting green rug that fits in front of your commode, a mini putter (scaled down because you are putting from a sitting position, mind you), a plastic cup (not to be confused with a specimen cup), two plastic balls (insert your own joke here), and a “Do Not Disturb” sign for the bathroom door (as if the whole family wants to join in on the golfing fun). No really – I can’t make this product up, I’m not that good of a writer and I’m certainly not that smart of an inventor! Need more putting practice but can never find the time. Well, now you have no excuse. Golf game in the crapper? Well, now it truly is! It makes me wonder what other activities we could do to optimize our time on the toilet. Here are just a few:

• The Potty Party – It’s a dance party right in your bathroom. Comes complete with lighted dance floor, preloaded MP3 player, confetti toilet paper, and bartender. Now you can “potty” all the time! Chick to hold your hair back while you puke, sold separately.

• Potty Casino – World Class Casino while you potty! Shoot craps while you crap!

• The Potty Accountant – Now you can do your books and your taxes where it counts – In the toilet!

• Potty Abs – Gotta grunt? Now you can turn those seemingly useless grunts into the tightest abs ever!

• The Potty Grater – Grate your cheese while you cut your cheese!

So now it’s your turn – what potty products do you want for your bathroom?

P.S. Wondering if Tiger Woods has a Potty Putter….

DIGITAL TV, HULU.COM, AND THE SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM

My best friend and so-called adopted brother, Otis (Otis is not really his name, although now that I’ve called him that, he’s probably more known now for that name than his own – anyway, I digress,) is fighting the whole digital TV conversion like an XP user struggling over going Vista; an old Coke drinker boycotting New Coke; or a baseball fan struggling over the use of the designated hitter. He hates it and doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. He’s not going to get cable and he’s definitely not going to get some silly converter box either, he growls. Yet, for some odd reason, he’s shopping for a big flat screen TV for his apartment as if the Food Network is simply going to magically appear on it because he wills it so.

His new apartment has free-wifi so he’s in heaven about not having to directly pay Comcast, although technically he does realize that it’s factored into his rent. So I suggested that he try hulu.com to maximize the full extent of his wifi non-payment experience. If I miss an episode of regular TV that I forgot to DVR or I’m bored with only having 782 channels available to me with absolutely nothing on any of them, I go there to watch my TV. And I am even just technically savy enough to plug an “S” cord into my computer and run it to my TV to watch the show on a bigger screen, especially when I’m on the road and in “motel only has 40 channels and nothing on” hell.

“So do the shows play in real time?” he asked me.

“What do you mean, Otis?” I retorted.

“I want to see my show exactly when it comes on, you know, in real time,” he declared.

“But Otis, hulu.com let’s you watch your favorite shows whenever the heck you want to watch them, regardless of the hour they originally aired,” I maintained.


“But I want to see the show exactly when it airs otherwise, I could care less about seeing the damn thing!” Otis demanded. (Keep in mind that Otis is not a 92 year old crotchety man but a 40 year old, eccentric genius crotchety old man – just in case you were getting a different picture here than the one I was painting above.)

I kept going on and on, however, that it truly didn’t matter that the show was available any time he wanted to watch it – day, night, eve of the apocalypse, whenever, and that he could watch it on that big old flat screen TV and not even have to pay any extra for digital cable! He could have his cake, eat it, digest it, throw it up, sell it on ebay as left over from a Britney Spear’s night of binging – it was irrelevant because it was streaming to him via the internet 24/7 non-stop!

“You just don’t get it, do you, Trace? I set aside time at certain hours of the day to watch the show that comes on at that time. If it ain’t in real time, I don’t want to see it,” he explained, exasperated that I was not getting the quantum physics equation with regard to his own particular way he went about viewing his shows or E=MC2.

E - the amount of Energy it would take him to hunt down his show on www.hulu.com.

M – the mass of all the other meaningless shows he didn’t want to sift through in order to get to the show he might or might not want to view.

C – the crap he’d have to put up with just to watch the one or two shows he actually liked, squared!

I give up. It’s apparent in my quest to help Otis out so that he can watch Paula Dean and Gordon Ramsay, his two favorite shows, that my advice is being sucked up into the black hole of analog TV oblivion. Next time he wants to come over and plant himself in front of my DirectTV with subscriptions to every freakin’ channel known to man and the rock group Menudo, I’m so cutting him off!

Cheers!

LOOSE DRESSES, IRONY & THE HIPSTER LESBIAN COUPLE

Today was my first postoperative visit to my doctor after my hysterectomy/gallbladder surgery. My stomach is swollen, I have tiny incisions where they did my gallbladder surgery laproscopically and I have a major incision along my abdomen because they realized the hysterectomy surgery was going to be more complicated than they could do laproscopically. So yeah, my whole abdomen area basically looks like a grand reproduction of a Eurorail map. Needless to say that even though I’ve lost over 10 pounds since my surgery, I’ve gained about 10 inches in the stomach area due to the swelling, etc. Go figure.

Because of the swelling and pain, I can’t wear my jeans and have opted instead for stylish leggings and cute and loose knit sundresses. Thank goodness for Old Navy! I have a quirky but cute sense of style (so I’ve been told), so keeping that part of me is important right now while I heal in order to maintain my self esteem with all that is going on in and on my body right now. But the loose fitting clothes have one major side affect - I look like I’m about five to six months pregnant. That alone is ironic, right!?!

I have not been cleared to drive my car yet so my friend, Kelly Mills, has been helping me out in that arena, thank goodness. She was my escort to the doctor today. Both of us have the same sort of quirky style – we both love hats, dress very vintage and eclectic, and are cute as hell! She’s 23 and I’m 33… er 37… ok, I’m 45 but I look 33! Also both of us couldn’t be more heterosexual if we tried. She has a wonderful and cute boyfriend named Max. I have… ok, no boyfriend at the moment but I do have a cat, a dog, and huge crushes on George Clooney, Derek Jeter, and Gerard Butler if that helps you get who I am into perspective.



We both sat down together in the waiting room at my doctor’s and thumbed through a Redbook magazine with Faith Hill on the cover, both of us gushing at the clothes, the makeup, etc. We’re girls, that’s what we do! I didn’t think anything of it. My name was called and I, with some pretty good post-op pain but still very secure in my sexuality despite the hysterectomy, waddled to the back for my exam, oblivious to the world around me which was awash in expectant moms waiting to get a snap shot of their growing fetus to hang on their refrigerators or frame over their cubicle at work. Kelly, also oblivious, sat with her Blackberry, sending sweet little love texts to her boyfriend as she waited for me. How cute and precious we both were!

Well, apparently, our cuteness had not gone unnoticed by a pregnant patient in the waiting room who decided she was going to be progressive, open minded and genuinely congratulatory. She leaned over to Kelly and praised our same sex union and gushed over our brave decision to have a child together! Irony has now run amuck. If Jane Austen were alive right now, she’d have a field day with this. Me and Kelly as the apparent poster children for the hipster lesbian couple with a baby on the way - classic! While flattered, you can’t possibly get more ironic than that.

So tonight, Kelly reports that she’s spending some serious quality time by cooking a quiche with her boyfriend, Max, while I’m kicking back with a pain killer (from laughing sooo hard today I actually pulled a stitch) and by watching P.S. I LOVE YOU for the 114th time just to watch Gerard Butler do that stripper thing he does so well! Our men…. Heavy sigh!

Tracy :-*

P.S. I am happy to report that an anonymous expectant mother has now graciously registered us at Baby Gap, Bjorn Shoes, Lowe’s, and the Indigo Girls online store!

Instant Menopause

It’s finally dawned on me that I may not be as young as I used to be. A big indicator of that was waking up in a pool of sweat this morning from the month long deprivation of estrogen that my doctor has imposed on me to cure the endometriosis that was discovered after my hysterectomy last week. At the ripe age of 45, I am cloaked, or rather soaked, in a wash of instant menopause.

And there doesn’t seem to be enough Black Cohosh or Dong Quai in the all natural health food store to hold it at bay! I am taking the supplements, religiously, but they aren’t working as well as I’d like. And the bad thing is that I actually have the end all be all cure sitting in a drawer in my bathroom – an expensive compounded elixir of natural estrogen that I filled before I knew I was going to have to be replacing my bed sheets and mattress for one of those cooling blankets and a slab of ice! But if I take the estrogen, the endometriosis will remain. But If I deprive myself of estrogen, the night sweats, terrors, trauma, anxiety, and sheer hell will continue. The stress of this dilemma is actually causing me even more stress!

I am older and wiser than the age I wish I was – I can surely endure and persevere. I will emerge on the other side of instant menopause with a new outlook on life and new Egyptian cotton sheets. I can do this for the next three weeks, surely. In the meantime, I’m off to buy an oscilating fan, 50 bags of ice, and a personal Chinese herbalist.

Ciao!


P.S. Is it hot in here, or what?!