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A woman’s life is a cyclical thing.

As the moon orbits the earth, exerting its pull on even the mighty oceans, our own cycles ebb and flow along with the tides. And then there are the seasons: Maiden, Mother, Crone. Except that now, thanks to science, that middle time between Mother and Crone–that I call for myself the season of the Brazen Woman–has been extended far beyond what our female ancestors ever imagined possible.

As a maiden, my main concern was mating up. Finding the right mate to raise a family is a such a HUGE responsibility for a woman, and frankly one that more and more women are not taking very seriously until it is too late, and then not even then.  It seems that women have lost their way, screwing any worthless guy who walks by and gives them the least little bit of attention.

Now before you dismiss my last statement because you think I’m some sort of Sarah Palinesque Conservative Republican Christian (which I’m not) let me qualify my statement by saying that I’m a Labor and Delivery RN and therefore an authority. I’m at Breeding Ground Zero.

And I will tell you with absolute authority that more women are having VOLUNTARY sex with more worthless guys than has ever happened in the history of ever. (I added the “VOLUNTARY” because men do have a long and sordid history of rape and shit like that, and women can’t really be held responsible if they don’t have a choice.)

Today, more men–who would never get laid in a sane society where women took such things as the future of their potential children seriously–are getting laid in droves, and with very little accountability. I’m telling you that I’m seeing men–who apparently are getting laid FOR FREE–who would have had a hard time finding someone who would do it for MONEY years ago.

We have raised a veritable generation of worthless pieces of shit men. They know they are going to get all the free sex they ever want, anytime they want, and they have to do next to nothing to get it.

And even worse, the women are FIGHTING–a la Jerry Springer–over these worthless pieces of shit. I’ve seen it firsthand. It is happening and it is happening more than you might think.

The last time I was a youth counselor for Christian Youth Camp I spent my entire evening “Tent Time” with the girls listening to them cry and fight over boys that weren’t giving them ANYTHING.  The boys weren’t doing ANYTHING.  The girls were getting up at 4AM to fight over the showers so they could get ready for a day of high competition over boys who didn’t seem even the least bit interested. It was eye-opening and appalling.

In my early years as a homeschool mom, many families were going Anti-Dating. Dating, we were warned, was the precursor to the Divorce Culture because dating and breaking up were really just little practice divorces. The idea was that if you forbid your kids from dating you were preventing future divorce.

Only because I was working at Breeding Ground Zero (the labor room) AND kept my hand in the cookie jar of Youth Ministry did I see what was really happening. And I put out a warning then on the homeschool forums: DATING IS DEAD! COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY IF YOUR CHILD DATES!”

Dating wasn’t the enemy–dating was dying–and today, nobody dates. (Well, almost nobody.)

We live in a culture of “Hooking up” where predatory women compete for the few worthwhile men left.

And if you are so naive that you don’t think that culture is affecting you, then you need to wake the hell up.

When I was struggling with my son’s radically unacceptable behavior a few years back, what was most difficult for me to remember was that what we were going through did not necessarily mean the things I thought it meant.

His decisions to do the things he did didn’t mean he didn’t love me, but I thought it did. In fact, many of our arguments were specifically about that issue, and the argument usually started with my accusation, “How could you do this TO ME if you love me?”

I could not see how a son of mine, nursed lovingly at the breast for THREE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS, could love me and choose to run off and live on the streets of San Francisco! Of course, if he loved me he wouldn’t do that!

Makes sense, right? Didn’t he understand the pain he was causing me? Didn’t he even consider me and my feelings at all? Where was I in his decisions?

I didn’t see at that time that I had even a tiny place in his heart.  From my point of view, I couldn’t see where I mattered to him at all.

And that hurt, dammit. That hurt A LOT.

I wish my mother weren’t dead. And now I don’t think I really grieved her passing until this past month. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I felt sad when she died. I cried. We had a memorial. Griefy stuff like that. But real grief? No. I don’t think so.

I didn’t really begin to grieve my mother’s passing until I realized that the only person in the entire world I really want to talk to is her, and she isn’t here for me to talk to anymore.

Despite having good friends standing at the ready, and a sister who took my hysterical–and just possibly very drunken–phone call the other night, it feels to me that no one else can truly understand me and my circumstances like my mom would have.

I imagine myself driving over to her house. She would listen to me rage. She would let me sob. And at the end she would hold my head in her lap and smooth my hair and tell me that it is all going to be okay and then she’d say something like, “You are not your circumstances. This does not define you.”

And then she would make the most inappropriate joke and we would laugh and laugh. And for a moment the storm of my circumstances wouldn’t seem so overwhelming.

Getting lost in the storm of one’s circumstances and allowing it to define who you are is so easy to do. And depending on the degree of the storm, there will likely be a time when you will be fully consumed by it. Even a time when you should be fully consumed by it.

And just like real storms, destruction lies in the wake of life’s storms; the destruction of what we had (or thought we had) and maybe even who we were (or thought we were). Somehow we have to take inventory all over again. Who are we? What is it we have?

And then comes the grieving over the losses which creates a storm all its own.

There is a point when it’s appropriate to fully grieve our losses, but then comes a time when we need to move on and let it go and allow ourselves to heal and move forward.

Knowing when that point is though is the differences between personal growth and emotional retardation. Move on too quickly and we’re bound to find ourselves revisiting the pain at some inconvenient point in the future, but allow ourselves to stay stuck too long and we’ll only become bitter.

I hope you listen to today’s song. It speaks to my heart and soul in such a profoundly deep way. I hope that you too can find a way to climb your hill after your own storm and see hope in your circumstances whatever they may be. Take my virtual hand and maybe we can find grace there.

The last time I wrote here I referenced Oz, this time I’m going Matrix.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock since 1999 here’s the quick synopsis of The Matrix.

I think it is by no sheer accident that I wore white on New Year’s Eve since that was the last night of my innocence. Like a lamb to slaughter, I innocently went out that night thinking my world was perfect, but it wasn’t. Things weren’t as they seemed.

In the subsequent 5.5 weeks I have learned things that I didn’t want to know about myself, my life, and this completely fucked up world we live in.

Painful and ugly things that I didn’t want to know, but now can’t unknow.

Some of those things I so want to tell you about. I want to warn you. I need to warn you.

I want to be a beacon for you–shining in the darkness–illuminating the rocks and shoals that lurk just under the surface ready to dash your boat to pieces. I want to shout at you, “Stop! Pay attention! Look and listen! The world may not be what it seems!”

But I can’t yet.

And neither can I be the Mariah Carrey of mid-life and carry on with my blog as if nothing has happened, shilling shit you probably don’t need, and telling you that if you are just fabulous and can fit in the perfect pair of skinny jeans and use the right skin cream your life won’t fucking fall apart on you. That just isn’t true. It can and it might. At any moment.

As they say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

But is it?

Jesus said that “…the truth shall set you free.”

Unfortunately, somewhere in between the bliss of ignorance and the freedom that comes from the truth comes this dire warning: The Truth Hurts.

And damn it, it does. A lot. The perilous road between bliss and freedom is fraught with pain. But Jesus didn’t come to bring bliss; he came to bring freedom; he came to set the captives free. We cannot grow if we insist on remaining captive to our fantasies and self-told lies.

In the past year, I have struggled with my faith as a Christian to the point of coming close to just chucking it all. Part of my brain shouts, “Just give up! It will all be better if you just give up!”

And I might have given up my faith if just one person I’ve known who converted from Christianity to Atheism ended up funnier.

To a man (or a woman), every last friend I have had who has chucked their faith has seemed to lose their sense of humor. And that I can’t lose. My sense of humor is the only thing I received true and pure from my parents. It is my most precious possession. I won’t give that up for anything.

Yeah, I might not seem funny today, but trust me, I’m fucking hilarious. Just ask anyone who knows me in real life and they’ll tell you, “Chloe is fucking hilarious.”

Like Jacob wrestling with God in the desert, each of us struggles to make sense of this nonsensical world; a world that not only doesn’t give a shit about you, but also seems bent on your destruction. The temptation has been powerful for me to just walk out of the wrestling pit, telling God over my shoulder on my way out, “I don’t see you!”

Because if I don’t see Her then She can’t see me, right? Isn’t that the easiest way to end this struggle? Just walk out of the pit and pretend there is no struggle?

But you can’t walk away. Wherever you go, there you are.

So here I am; Round 532: Cage Match, Chloe versus God. Ding, ding, fucking ding.

There’s a scene in The Matrix after Neo has taken the red pill (that’s the one that opens your eyes to reality) where Cypher (the traitor) sympathizes with Neo’s dawning realization that reality sucks.

Surely it is still January 1st, and I’m cuddled up in bed sleeping it off, right? But it isn’t, and I won’t.

And every day I’m getting more okay with that.

While there are many flaws with the Brothers Wachowski’s Matrix Trilogy (well, the 2nd and 3rd movies anyway. The first movie is just damn near perfect), my biggest complaint is that the real world Neo wakes up into contains no loveliness. There is nothing of beauty in it. All the beauty is in the fantasy world of The Matrix.

But that isn’t the truth. Humans cannot live without beauty. Humans need to believe that somehow beauty can always be fashioned out of the ashes of our lives.

The beauty we perceive in a fantasy world is not real beauty; it’s just a lovely picture we tell ourselves is true. But even the loveliest Monet can not compare to a walk in a real French garden, even if it means you have to slog through great big piles of shitty manure to get there.

Yes, I have swallowed the red pill. I will never be the same again. And this isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a new thing.  And somehow even though I don’t believe that God is like some cosmic Santa Claus sitting up in heaven with a happy little perconstructed plan for our lives, I do believe that somehow God does make beauty out of the ashes we bring Him.

I hate to give you two video’s today, but here’s today’s song:

So this is the post where I am going to talk crazy talk about my dream life.

Lately, I have been dreaming a lot.

Like A LOT.

Terrifying dreams of drowning, suffocating, running, hiding. Nightmares punctuated by panic and terror. Dreams about my children, my son-in-law, my husband, my parents, work, even my blog isn’t safe from my dreams.

And the dreams aren’t the worst of it.

For years I have suffered from occasional bouts of sleep paralysis. Basically sleep paralysis (in case you don’t just want to click on this link) happens when you are conscious during your dreams, but can’t move due to hormones your body produces to keep you from moving while you dream. This hormone disconnects your brain from your voluntary muscles so that when you dream your body doesn’t act on those thoughts.

Sleep paralysis is often depicted in art as a sleeping woman with a demon sitting on her chest. That’s not far off the mark of what it feels like when it is happening. Before I understood what was happening, I wondered myself if I wasn’t being tormented.

When I have sleep paralysis I realize I’m awake and dreaming, but I can’t pull myself out of the dream. Therefore, I’m conscious of the horrible nightmare I’m having, all while trying to make my body move and wake myself up. The dream goes on while I struggle to wake up. Sometimes I will just fall back to sleep and really wake up later. Sometimes, especially if I nap during the day, I will cycle through several bouts of sleep paralysis until I can finally make myself fully wake up.

One of the most benign–but still very annoying–recurrent episodes of sleep paralysis I have is the dream that I’ve woken up and started my day. I get up, I shower, I get dressed, and I eat breakfast, but, like Geena Davis in Beetlejuice, I can’t leave the house. When I open the backdoor to the garage to get to my car, I can’t go through the door. That’s when I realize that I’m still asleep. Sometimes I cycle through this dream several times before I’m finally able to really wake myself up. It’s really annoying.

Sometimes my sleep paralysis is worse than others. I’ve gone years without it happening, but right now it is as bad as it has ever been.

When I was younger I had sleep paralysis fairly often. So often that sometimes I couldn’t differentiate my dream-life from my waking life. Imagine going through life with regular bouts of Déjà vu. Imagine seeing people and events happen and not being able to remember whether they really did happen or whether you just dreamed them.

(Okay, I warned you. I AM going to talk crazy talk. Although there really isn’t anything crazy about sleep paralysis. It is a known medical phenomenon and has nothing whatsoever to do with sanity. But if you’ve never had this happen to you then it probably sounds a bit loony.)

I used to have to be VERY careful what I allowed myself to be exposed to when awake. For instance, I used to never watch horror movies. I remember giving in once and going to see one of the Nightmare on Elm Streets with my husband when we were newly married. He meant it all in good fun, and I don’t think he believed me when I told him that there were going to be repercussions. He told me I could hold onto his hand and I’d be fine because he’d be there to protect me.

But afterwards, after spending night after night  rescuing me from Freddie Kreuger, he never talked me into seeing another horror movie again. Really, a person with sleep and dream anomalies shouldn’t ever watch Nightmare on Elm Street. Duh!

Because this was such a problem for me, I began to research Lucid Dreaming and taught myself how to exert some control over the dreams so at least I wasn’t completely terrorized when it happened. (I chose to link the Wiki article on lucid dreaming because most of the other ones sound so airy-fairy, but lucid dreaming is possible.)

My best lucid dream moment occurred during a recurrent dream where I was being chased and either raped or slashed with a knife by this same man. I don’t know how long I kept having this nightmare, but one night he appeared and I remembered that I was dreaming and that laws of physics don’t apply.  Since it was my dream, I was the strongest person, and I was finally able to vanquish him once and for all. He’s never appeared again.

It is ironic that I’m dreaming so much since I’m not sleeping very much, but understandable. I resist falling asleep because that’s when the dreams come, but avoiding sleep is what is making it worse. I stay up too late avoiding sleep, but then either over-sleep (a real trigger) or fall asleep in the afternoon, and the afternoon dreams are the worst. It is a vicious cycle that I need to break very soon.

Why am I mentioning this?

Well, in this morning’s dream one of the main characters told me to wake up and write a post and title it “Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?”

So I did.

And here’s today’s song:

No. I’m not fine.

There is nothing currently fine about me.

I’m bugshit crazy beyond any bugshit crazy I’ve ever been in my life–and that’s saying something.

In the words of that Great Philosopher, Mick Jagger, (who I find myself quoting a lot lately, which just shows how bad my mental health really is), “Here comes [my] 19th nervous breakdown”.

The only good part is that I’m too crazy to pick fights on the internet this time. That’s an improvement, I think.

It seems that life has seen fit to rip open each and every old wound from childhood all over again so that it can watch me writhe on the floor in psychological and emotional (and physical) agony.

Yippee, fucking, skippy.

I’ve lost a shitload of weight. I’m glad I bought those skinny jeans because they are currently the only pants that fit me and even those things are beginning to hang a little loose.

I’ve burned off all my Botox® sobbing into my pillow for hours on end. It’s all just so fucking sad.

Every year since 2007, I have had at least one major life catastrophe.  I took this test only to find that my score indicates that I have an 80% chance of seeing unicorns, alien spaceships and/or thinking I’m Eleanor Roosevelt within the very near future.

Life just sucks.

And then you die.

The Bible says that one of the first things God did after He created the world was separate light from darkness.

I realize that yesterday’s post was cryptic and leaves a lot to my readers’ imaginations. And that’s how it will just have to stay because bloggers must have boundaries lest they become crazy attention-seeking sensationalists who exploit their lives and the lives of their loved ones for stats and Amazon affiliate ads.

I believe that at the end of this series there will be hope and light and joy, and everything that’s happening now will make sense.  But first we must go into the darkness and blindly fumble our way around for awhile trying to find our way out.

As you can likely guess from previous posts, in my past lies much darkness. I’m going to take you there, but I will forewarn you; where I’m going, there be dragons.

When I was sixteen years old my father dragged me into the hallway of our house, held me up against a wall, and beat me up. As he physically assaulted me, he screamed in my face, “You are such a SLUT! Not even the Pope would be safe with you.”

What precipitated this vicious attack, you ask?

I’d come home from a date with someone I barely knew. I wasn’t haven’t sex with this guy, but my father thought I was.  (Being vastly ahead of my time, I was actually having Friends-With-Benefits-Sex–which in the 1970s didn’t have a name–with someone else, but that’s besides the point.)

When my date drove up to my house to drop me off, my father was standing in the driveway wielding a bat.  I jumped out of the car (don’t ask me why, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with my date wanting me to get the hell out of his car so he could get away) and the date–who, shock upon shock, I never saw again–sped away from the scene.

At the age of 50, I now understand that my father’s attack was more about him than it ever could have been about me, but at sixteen I did not possess the wisdom and insight necessary to understand this. All I knew for certain was that my father was a violent, crazy madman, and that I was trapped with him in that hallway with no way out.

Although I have considered suicide a few times in my life–which is probably only natural for a child raised by two parents who openly pronounce, often and loudly, that your very existence is the cause of their mutual abject misery–I’ve never truly had the level of hopelessness needed for such a drastic action.

No. That’s not entirely the truth.

The truth of why I’ve never committed suicide is this: I have this belief (not backed up by any religious texts that I know of) that life is this learning thing and we’re supposed to be here learning shit and figuring stuff out. If you off yourself in the midst of a lesson–especially a hard one–then you go to hell, and the punishment of hell is that you are forever trapped in the pain of the lesson you refused to learn.

Since I’m sure you can easily understand now–knowing what you do about just this one past experience with my dad in that hallway–being trapped in any way, shape, or form is my absolute, ultimate worst nightmare. Therefore, the thought of eternal entrapment has been more than enough to keep me from taking any final fatal steps, no matter how desperate or hopeless I’ve ever felt.

This terror of entrapment follows me everywhere I go, even into the most innocuous places.

Most people desire to park their car close to the supermarket front door, but not me. I’m the sort of person who willingly parks far from the door into the supermarket and walks because I always want to make sure I can get out of the parking lot.

Anyway, back to the main point. Today I’m going to tell you One True Thing.

During my time up against the wall, I made one key life decision:

I would never be held up against any wall ever again.

This one decision has informed most of the choices I have made from that point forward. The moment I feel trapped is the moment I run. And just about anything can make me feel trapped.

I can now tell you One True Thing. It is very exhausting living your life like a crouched animal always on the brink of fight or flight; always checking to make sure your way of escape is clear.

…Along with my life.

The past fourteen days have been among the longest, hardest, most horrible days of my life.

The problem with being a blogger like me–one who writes about her life–is that when my life goes to shit then so does my blog.

I write because I am. Writing is the way I process what I’m going through, and through the medium of blogging I get to have lots of other people interact with my thoughts.  By and large, blogging is an amazing modern art form, but when a serious problem comes up in my life then I’m in a quandary. I still want to write, but I am not necessarily ready to toss my heart and soul out onto the internet and let the forces at large have at me and mine.

Before I can write in any coherent manner, I need to stop the hemorrhaging that is going on in my life. I need some perspective on what’s happened and why and what the fuck I’m supposed to do now.

The reality is that I can’t live in a place where I’m depressed six months out of the year. The toll this has taken on mylife is inestimable.  I’ve been trying to cope with a psychotically fucked up work situation that will never improve and weather that isn’t conducive to my mental health by throwing myself into my blog and all that goes with it. And while I was doing that my life was tanking behind my back.

So here I am.

Just to show you how depraved and hedonistic we are, Jeff and I spent nearly an entire day swilling champagne, donned in our new flannel Christmas pajamas.

And what we learned is that after you drink enough champagne, it starts to sound like a good idea to make a video and put it on the internet.

We bought the little music box Jeff’s playing at a tourist shop on our last day in Paris.  Jeff loves that little music box, and he plays it for me several times a week. I just love this man.  

I tease him that when I’m dead, he’s going to be just like that old guy in Up.

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter “S” for Slut.

Late last night, exhausted after a frustrating day fiddling with my recipes here on my blog , I finished re-reading The Scarlet Letter.

After the steady diet of Mind Twinkies® I’ve been gorging on lately, i.e. Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, I figured I’d do my dilapidated brain a favor and feed it some real classical food. And what better than THE book–after The Holy Bible, of course–that spoke to me most deeply during high school?

Forsooth, I cannot indeed separate the confluence of effect that The Holy Bible, coupled with The Scarlet Letter, had on my formative years, so profoundly did they both inform me; emotionally, spiritually, and sexually.

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See that sentence? Nobody writes like that anymore, because people today only skim what they read.

But Hawthorne wasn’t a blogger; he was a genius. His book is filled with convoluted sentences, and lots and lots of adverbs.

I feel muchly improved after reading it, like unto one who has imbibed a strong paranormal romance novel purgative.

But for you, dear Reader Skimmer, sadly, this meaneth that thou wilt haveth to skimmeth through adverbeths, today.

The value for you is that you will soon begin to understand why I’m so messed up.

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So settle did I, forthwith, down for a long winter’s reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great classic, The Scarlet Letter, to revisit once again whether or not could I, perchance, glimpse the meaning that I once saw therein?

And glimpse it therein, I did. Only now from the vantage point of a woman full-grown, with a lifetime of experience behind her.

I am in awe of what my 14-year old self discerned, and yet so deeply saddened that she perceived it so starkly true with what should have been, by rights, innocent and uncomprehending eyes.

I can easily see that, first and foremost, the Girl Who Would Be Me related most acutely to Hester Prynne for she also was a social outcast in her society, which will henceforth be known as High School.

I know. Isn’t everybody an outcast in High School?

But like unto Hester, I was outcast for my sexual transgressions; some real, some imagined, and some unimaginable to those small minds.

We can congratulate ourselves that today’s modern girl does not wear a visible crimson letter “A”.  But we should not think for a moment that such a girl gets off scott-free.

Today’s girl must needs wear the hidden letter “S” thereon upon her back because that’s where everybody talks about it: behind her back.

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To be completely honest, I wasn’t entirely outcast. I did have two girl friends. One I loved, but betrayed, and the other was a beautiful girl who departed right after high school for an exciting career in prostitution. (She tried to talk me into it by telling me, “The sex is just the same, only you get paid for doing it.” Even in my foolish youth, I knew she was grossly mistaken.)

Over the years, I have searched in vain for these two women, but have not found them. Hopefully, just like me, they have simply changed their names.

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As I wrote before, I went to high school with Tawny Kitaen.

She was a sex goddess, and I was a nobody with a bad reputation. And somewhere therein that true tale lies the metaphor for the double-edged sword that is a woman’s sexuality.

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I wish I could say that my comprehension of the agony of The Scarlet Letter begins and ends with Hester Prynne, but I’m afraid that isn’t so. Sadly, I almost more closely sympathize with Hester’s illegitimate daughter: her little Pearl.

Conceived from the ill-fated embrace of two passionate–if woefully mismatched–teenagers on a bunk bed in a Housing Project, I know well what it is to be illegitimate. Even though I wasn’t.

No. My father married my mother to protect her and me from our shame of illegitimacy, and then proceeded to NEVER let either of us forget it.

But my sympathy with little Pearl does not end with my own narrow brush with ignominy. Oh, that I wish it did.  But it gets worse. Much worse.

At the tender age of 7, while my father was off valiantly fighting the good fight in Viet Nam, I stole into my mother’s bedroom one night to find her engaged in my parents’ marital bed with another man. A man who just happened to be a fine, upstanding, married man from our Church.

Now is a good time to remind you, kind Skimmer Reader–for surely if  thou hast gotten this far in my woeful tale thou art deserving of that vaunted title–we were Mormons.

The lovers did not see me, but I saw them.

Realizing with abject horror the threat to me and mine this unholy tryst represented, I did the only thing I could think to do: I lay in wait, and when the opportunity presented itself I called my mother out on her adultery. Publicly. At a Church meeting.

Yes. You read that right.

Such an opportunity did not tarry. While at a Church meeting the very next day, I queried my mother quite loudly, and surely within the hearing of all present:

Why was Corky* in bed with you last night when I was supposed to be sleeping?

This did have the desired result of ending the affair right then and there. Corky, very soon thereafter, moved away, and my mother claimed that they never spoke again.

But the unforeseen effect was that my mother became branded in our Church as an adulteress, and this had some lasting implications that a seven-year old simply could not have predicted.

My mother was called before the Bishopric to answer for her crime, and it was decided that my father alone would be allowed to make the judgement of whether or not my mother would be ex-communicated when he returned home from the war.

My father’s decision was again to spare my mother her humiliation, but not her punishment. He never forgave her, and for the rest of my childhood my father openly–at least to my pricked-up ears–derided my mother doubly so for the faithless whore she was.

He blamed her for enticing him into her bed in the first place and ruining his life at the start, and then he blamed her for being a faithless whore who continued ruining his life by humiliating him as a cuckold (my word, not his).

I suppose in retrospect I think I should have kept my mouth shut.

And far worse for me–socially and, most assuredly, spiritually–a record of  her unfaithfulness followed us in our family’s Church records henceforth. Never again was I to know pure acceptance in the Church. I always felt that I was looked upon suspiciously, as though everyone knew that I masturbated.

I later learned that, while I was still just a flat-chested child of 11 or 12, my mother was approached by certain other women in the Church and warned that I was “too sexy”.  She was asked whether she wouldn’t do anything about it?

But then I suppose the acorn falleth not far from the tree, right?

But you’ve suffered enough. I’ve already used twice my allotment of words a blogger is allowed on any given post, so I’ll have to leave the telling of that tale to another day.

*Yes, Corky is his real name. I only change the names to protect the innocent.

For those just tuning in, I’m a labor and delivery nurse. Since fertility, like death, never takes a holiday, yesterday–on Christmas Day–I had to work 12.5 hours at the hospital.

If people would just read my daughter’s gut-wrenching account of what it is like to have a Christmas birthday nobody would knowingly do this to their child. But apparently people aren’t thinking about how badly it will suck for their kid’s entire life while they’re getting all jiggy wit it in March. I know we certainly weren’t.

Since I was told, off-the record, that being on bereavement last year–because my mother died–constituted a HOLIDAY for me, I was obligated to work this Christmas.

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I was also told that I should seriously consider not having my hysterectomy over the Christmas holiday this year because, and I quote,  ”people will talk”. I’m not sure what they’ll talk about. Maybe they’ll say, “That Chloe!  The depths of her depravity know no bounds! She’ll kill off her relatives; schedule major surgery. That bitch will do anything to have Christmas off!”

But I’m not bitter.

And just for the record, the patient doesn’t schedule their surgery; the surgeon schedules the surgery. That’s the way it works in the Big City. My surgeon didn’t have an opening until the end of March, 2012. I’m very excited. I’ll be spending my 25th Anniversary with a “Closed for Repairs” sign hanging over my vagina. Maybe people will talk now about the lengths I”m willing to go to have my 25th Anniversary off. Sheesh.

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As my luck would have it, two women decided to go all Little Town of Bethlehem on me and have babies for Christmas.

Hey, the money was good, right? And I served humankind, which was really Christ’s point anyway, right?

The hospital, out of its deep pockets of generosity, offered a free turkey dinner, with all of the trimmings, for those of us unfortunates who were spending our Christmases working instead of at home in the loving bosom of our families.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful. There are people starving in this world who would kill–if they had the strength to–for a meal like we were given, but the turkey was so dry and the stuffing was so salty that they both could have survived the crossing of the Mayflower and been served at the first Thanksgiving.  But the gravy was pretty decent, so I slathered it all over everything.

Then there was all the stuff lying around.

I don’t know what it is about hospitals, but for some reason people feel the need to bring in the absolute unhealthiest food possible and plop it on the community tables for doctors and nurses to plunder.

There was a veritable sea of boxes of cheap, Russell Stover® candies, bowls filled with aluminum-wrapped Santas and Christmas bells, bags of Hershey’s kisses of every race, color and creed, plates of homemade cookies (by now looking a little picked over), canisters of butter toffee popcorn, industrial-sized tins of Moose Droppings®, and at least two ginormous Mason jars filled with homemade Chex® Mix…with cashews.

No salad was served with our free lunch, and there was not a Cutie® or a veggie platter in sight.

Now nobody made me eat this stuff. I have no one to blame but myself. But eat it I did. The horrible free lunch (proving that there really is no such thing as “free” lunch), the cheap candies, (I passed on the cookies because they had all glommed into a congealed mass of melted chocolate, nuts and once-bright rainbow sprinkles), and an untold number of handfuls of Chex Mix…with cashews.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Here it is.

The point?

Throw it away.

 
Finally, realizing that I was powerless to stop eating all of this crap that was just sitting there within arm’s reach, I began to simply throw it in the trash. I overturned a half-full jar of Chex Mix…with cashews into the trash followed by my half-eaten chocolate Santa Claus.

I’ve heard of people doing this and then changing their minds and foraging into the trash to retrieve the goodies, but nobody is desperate enough to go dumpster-diving in a hospital trashcan. Nobody.

And now you are going to say something about the poor other people who wanted to eat this stuff?

I was doing them a favor.

I wish I could say that I felt better right away, but I didn’t.  At least I couldn’t eat any more of it.

Today is a Daniel’s Fast sort of day for me. Fruit, vegetables and water. And Shredded Wheat & Bran® because I have to eat Shredded Wheat & Bran® every day or the world spins off its axis and we all plunge to our deaths. You can thank me with anonymous cards filled with small, unmarked bills.

The secret to staying slim isn’t dieting or obsessive exercise. The secret is knowing when to stop.

Just stop. Throw whatever you have left over in the garbage right now and walk away.

If I can, you can.

Throw it away and stop now.

Christmas is over.