Living Dust and Other Quirky Stuff

Today was my Big One . . . before THE BIG ONE. You know, the birthday ending in "9" before the birthday ending in "0". This is cause for pause - don't want to be semi-conscious when THE milestone rolls around in exactly 12 months and miss it in one silly fell swoop or something. So, in preparation for this coming, momentous and fairly dreaded event, I want to mark each day in the next year, by way of a sort of little exercise in cementing the stuff I want to preserve for my teenage daughter. I want to accomplish something. I want to try personal discipline. Yeah, that's right, I'm going to start blogging. If I blog every day, how can I possibly be comatose when THE BIG DAY arrives? Then again, I might be bargaining for too much. Wait until my daughter gets a load of this. Right now, of course, teenage daughter LABORS at tolerating me even just a speck. And I give her credit for her labor. Her artsy handmade birthday card asked, How does it feel to be __9? Next year I can officially make fun of you for being old! YAY!! :) Just kidding, she offers. Life is more or less composed of patience, isn't it? I mean, when you've (I've) lived so many (enough) years, it helps to think maybe something has counted for something? Just a tiny little bit of nothing something, please? Say 'tis so. And maybe one day this child will absorb a slim eentsy (my husband's spelling) dot of my valuable, surely, if modest, life experience?? Oh, and then I get to wait around for ?? years for her to possibly one day give me permission to be myself around her, sans her clearly audible sarcastic observations for everything I am/say/do? And maybe, if I'm really lucky, she will move me one notch lower on the Freak Scale? This will be BIG, trust me. Well, patience has become the name of my game.

The fun thing is that my wonderful friend gave me a book for my birthday on detoxifying the body. When DTD (Darling Teenage Daughter) took me to lunch, her treat, I said, Just think, in another 10 years or so, you will be as old as I was when I had you. I found that a very profound and comfortable thought and sat there with a smug smirk, I can dish it out a little, too. Not one to not have the last word, she, who never misses a beat, said, Maybe I will speed things along and get married soon and have children 10 years younger than when you did. So my little secret weapon is this detox book. I'm going to inform DTD that when I operate by the principles set forth in this book, my age will start reversing, but her age will still be advancing, so in about 15 years we will have become the same age, meeting in the middle and all that good stuff. That ought to throw her for a jolly good loop.

DTD is of a very generous nature, whether it's to hurl insults (I told her she needs to become a teenage satirist, a newspaper columnist or something) or buy gifts. She gave me Estée Lauder mascara, which I requested when she texted me, What do you want for your birthday? (I am not shy about getting what I want for my birthday, she told me today she knows NO ONE who loves a birthday more than I - sorry, can't help it, once every 365 days, I'm gonna make the most of it.) I know everyone loves Lancôme or the drug store one with hot pink tube and florescent green wand, but I like to be different. At any rate, I can now ditch my dried out $3 VS mascara bought on a whim (because, after all, who is going to pass up a deal like that?), that leaves less-than-lovely clumps on my lashes and makes them look like roach legs. That was an original comment made to me by my boarding school roommate umpteen million years ago, when she stared down my eyelashaes in math class one day. She pronounced, evil-like, Your eyelashes look like roach legs. Then she laughed a wicked little witch laugh. And I haven't quite forgotten it. And it's true. If you're lucky enough to live in Florida, you know roach legs have these horrible little sort of fluffy, sticky feelers attached to them, and they do look exactly like a bad mascara job. If it happens to you, you (and everyone besides) will be running for your life.

After lunch DTD surprised me by wanting to go to the health food store - a voluntary first, going with me, that is. She is on a major health kick to find a solution for a bothersome little allergy she has. I said, How about it! You actually have incorporated something I've tried to teach you over, lo, these multitudinous years - healthful eating! She said, No, what you gave me was poor health. But the real reason she wanted to go the health store, I deduced, was that the last time she was in there (yesterday?) some male clerk who assisted her told her he was a photographer and wanted to photograph her eyes. Oh, goody. Nevertheless, I learned that there is a vast arsenal of gluten-free, wheat-free, dairy-free and, basically, it would seem, food-free, products of which I was previously, blissfully, and wishing I remained so, ignorant. The packages are boldly labeled, listing their virtues, and now I'm sure that's all I'll see when I shop there. They'll jump out and scare me and get me! Of course, switching to the health diet is going to put DTD in the Poor House. Rice milk or corn spaghettie is easily double the price of good old-fashioned, sensible dairy and wheat. But, hey, she lives on her own, works and goes to college. She's one sassy, cool kid, AND I LOVE HER!!

You know what? I have to close this out NOW because I have a great talent for breathing on the wrong key and making it all (everything on the screen) vanish . . . just like that! (snap of the fingers!) . . . unforgivably (is that a word?) . . . FOREVER! It almost just happened. That would be a sad sorry start to the blog, to say the very least.

Tomorrow . . . What is Living Dust, anyway?

Thanks for reading,
KEM