Smutty Senses Don't Tingle Well...Yet

Below is a short article I submitted about celebrity gossip. It had to be 200-300 words and I assumed, preferably snarky. Unfortunately, I failed to win a spot to help blog about the Toronto Int'l. Film Festival. I had to go to lainey's site to see who has beaten my editorial to submission. Naturally, I think that he will do a fantastic job. But just for grins and giggles, here is what I wrote:





Hubby has left me to see our new nephew out of town this weekend. What was a girl to do? I rented the DVD of the sleeper no-hit "Australia" by Baz Luhrman, his name proudly emblazoned on the disc.

I am not a movie expert but I found this film tolerable eventhough it was quite long. I cannot count how many times I thought it was over only to be hit by "But wait! There's more!" moments.

Nicole Kidman was very interesting. I was riveted by how much effort it took her to convey any kind of emotion. Girl seriously needs to lay off the Botox. Maybe she should ask husband to perform his contractual obligation and get her pregnant again so she will stop using it. At one point in the movie, there was a forgettable scene where I could've sworn it looked like they drew three vertical lines on her smooth forehead to make it seem like she was troubled. Her lips were scene stealers too- plump and juicy and red. But the third lip reared it's ugly head every time she tried to smile. All these almost distracted me from leching after Hugh Jackman. Almost.

Hugh is an amazing actor considering he had to be falling in love with Miss Plastic Face. He had love in his eyes when, in the back of his mind, he's probably thinking, "Would those lips feel like smooth rubber balls?" He singlehandedly made this movie bearable for me. Everything about him makes my lady bits happy. His voice, his accent, his eyes, his lips and oh, that body. If I concentrate hard enough, I could imagine him loving me instead of Nicole. Needless to say, if I had a Freebie Five, he would be in it.

Same Old Song? Not Really

Drama... This is how I remember growing up. In our culture, theatrics prevail. Our television shows are saturated with melodramatic episodes for public consumption. Our radio is much the same way. Sappy tunes waxing about being in and out of love are played nonstop in most of the stations. I grew up listening and singing to Air Supply, Journey, Jan Ian, Teri Desario, Charlene, Lani Hall, Helen Reddy and the like. I bet that for most people, they might know two, possibly three of those mentioned. Not us. To this day, we hold their melodies close to our hearts.

I try to visit the country I lived for a little bit over two decades every couple of years and each time I'm over there, I can turn on the radio and one channel will almost always be playing the same ditties as if frozen in time. But there's one song which has eluded me until one day I found myself alone and nursing a broken heart. It's called, "If I Could Read Your Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot. I remember waiting for it on the tuner, recording it in a cassette then deciphering the lyrics with fervor. Without a doubt, it tugged my heartstring hard.

I found this haunting melody again in Youtube and I am posting it with the lyrics. Little known fact, I think, is that Bob Dylan said Gordon is one of his favorite songwriters. What's more, Johnny Cash did a cover of this song in his album America V: A Hundred Highways, a testament to what I believe is more than just another heart-rending number.

Weep if you must but enjoy.

If You Could Read My Mind

by Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind love

What a tale my thoughts could tell

Just like an old time movie

bout a ghost from a wishin well

In a castle dark or a fortress strong

With chains upon my feet

You know that ghost is me

And I will never be set free

As long as Im a ghost that you cant see

If I could read your mind love

What a tale your thoughts could tell

Just like a paperback novel

The kind that drugstores sell

When you reach the part where the heartaches come

The hero would be me

But heroes often fail

And you wont read that book again

Because the endings just too hard to take

Id walk away like a movie star

Who gets burned in a three way script

Enter number two

A movie queen to play the scene

Of bringing all the good things out in me

But for now love, lets be real

* I never thought I could act this way *

And Ive got to say that I just dont get it

I dont know where we went wrong

But the feelins gone

And I just cant get it back

If you could read my mind love

What a tale my thoughts could tell

Just like an old time movie

bout a ghost from a wishin well

In a castle dark or a fortress strong

With chains upon my feet

But stories always end

And if you read between the lines

Youll know that Im just tryin to understand

The feelins that you lack

I never thought I could feel this way

And Ive got to say that I just to get it

I dont know where we went wrong

But the feelins gone

And I just cant get it back

Cut the Main Wha??

I am unique. Really.

Back in 2007 when my husband was in his last days of school and was about to graduate, my uniqueness was brought to attention at the center and front of our lives.

I went to work with an annoying right-sided chest pain. I had been working out about two to three times a week and so I brushed it off as muscle pain. I went about my business and about an hour later, I had to go use the bathroom. I remember feeling a breeze on my arm as they have just replaced the toilet paper holder with a bigger one to hold industrial-grade wipes (read: cheap, thin and scratchy). They did a bang up job of leaving a gaping hole on the wall, thus the free breeze. I finished up, washed my hands and walked back to my workstation. Suddenly, I had a massive, sharp chest pain on that same side. Was it a heart atack? No. A friend of mine said when he suffered his at the ripe old age of forty plus, it felt like an elephant sat on his chest. How he knew what that would have felt like, I forgot to ask. Was it indigestion? Heartburn? Possibly. Rice can be my mortal enemy from then on. Was it anxiety attack? Panic attack? Crazy attack? We could be on to something. Having one or a combination of all three because you think your heart is slacking off is perfectly logical. Then came the shortness of breath and the dizzy spell. Because of connections, a co-worker of mine helped me get hooked up to an EKG machine to pacify the voices in my head. My heart was fine but something else is awfully awry. A sane person would have hurried along to the emergency room save for me. So I went home and slept it off. Curiously enough, the duration and severity of pain was almost always positional and fleeting. There was also a curious extra "tok" sound on breathing, as if there is a small lung appendage breathing on its own.

On the third day, I paid my physician a visit. The office was open but she was off. Don't ask me why they were even open. They told me to go the ER. Although I had not keeled over and died yet, it still hurts to breathe. So I finally went and since it was a chest pain, the doctor saw me in no time. The diagnosis came quick, too. Pneumothorax.

Pneumothorax is the clinical term for a collapsed lung. Prior to this, my knowledge extended to this condition happening to trauma patients. A sucking chest wound, where air enters the pleural cavity and collapses the lung. Good doctor explained to me that my right lung is 10-15% collapsed. As he looked at my history, he noted that it was spontaneous (Thanks, Dr. Obvious) but could also be catamenial, meaning it is related to menstruation. Although extremely rare, I fit the textbook profile. Woman? Check. In their thirties? Check. History of pelvic endometriosis? Onset seventy-two hours before or after menstruation with a right-sided lung collapse? Check and check. He called a cardiothoracic surgeon for a consult then gave me oxygen for about three hours to see if the lung reinflates. If it remains stable or the collapse decreases, I was to be sent on my merry way home but if it increases, my physician would have to put a nifty little chest tube in to help things along. Fortunately, going home was the better option.

Why me? Because I'm unique, didn't you know? Statistics put my condition at about 3-6% accounting for spontaneous pneumothoraces which happens to about 1.2-6 in 100,000 women. (For more on this, click here).

I'm reminded of an old Rupert Holmes song in which a few lines say, "Nobody said that life is always fair, sometimes it clips your wings while you're in midair..."

Indeed.

Woo-hoo!

I've given my word that I won't post "Our Ride Back to the Hotel" on Youtube. However, I am unable to find a more suitable way of sharing this so I compromised. I have my setting on private which means no one can see it on YOutube without my invitation and I'm only broadcasting it on this blog.

This video has been a long time coming. I could name at least two people I promised to send this snippet back in May. Life has a funny way of stealing your precious moments and replacing them with the mundane drudgery and everything else. It is a bit underwhelming considering that this piece is not even a minute long. But for those of us who were on this European jaunt together, I am certain that this will bring us a smile or even a chuckle or two.

"Paris je t' aime..a la nouvelle eve...." That was what those Parisian women were singing as they waved us, tourists, adieu. Outside the cabaret, we waited for Francesco, our gorgeous Italian driver to pick us up. Everyone seemed animated thanks to the liberal use of French wine and champagne that most of us had. I, for one, have lost count how many times I needed to go for a bathroom break after three glasses of wine and two glasses of champagne.

When Francesco came and got all of us inside the motorcoach, there was a bit of a traffic delay due to another tour bus loading our less interesting counterparts. Kevin, our amazing tour director slash mind-boggling village schoolmaster, then decided to regale us with his backflip. Twice. The high-pitched voice in the background is the wife of the soccer player whose name I cannot remember. She was studying for a law exam, I think. The other voice going, "woo-hoo!" is me.

Good times!

Lazy Hot Summer

Just like when i was a kid, i am wasting my summertime weekends waking up up late in the mornings, taking long afternoon naps and catching up whatever is good on TV.

For the first time in five years, I am actually working during the daytime hours now instead of the evening hours of two thirty until eleven at night. For most of my fifteen years in my profession, I have always worked the evening shift with a little bit of night schedule thrown in. It's strange having to work these daytime hours again. For one thing, I have to contend with the blaring deet-deet-deet of my alarm clock in the morning. Having to go to bed early is a challenge, too, since it doesn't get dark until about eight or eight thirty. I imagined myself having more time to do chores, cook and run errands and finish a short story or two. Unfortunately, domestic work has to wait until the weekend, the stove top use reduced to maybe once or twice during the week and the tales still incubating inside my head. I did make some headwind though, and wrote about one thousand words one day last week. If I were to follow the format, I have about five or six thousand more words to go. i've forgotten how much a day job takes up your time and everything else has to be saved for the weekend.

The unseasonably hot weather is no help either. On weekends when it would be lovely to do some gardening, I often find myself on our bed, snoozing. Don't get me wrong. I force myself to clean the house at least once a week and do our laundry but with the unrelenting heat, it makes everything cumbersome. I rue the days when I have to stop at the store after getting off work at three in the afternoon to get some last minute groceries. I may sound too whiny but really, I am not. I would always take 105 degree weather over a miserable thirty degrees. days, I merely feel like my brain is fried all the time. Hence, I am sluggish and judgment- impaired on deciding whether I should lay my head down or pull the weeds that are viciously overtaking our once lovely backyard garden.

July is almost to a close. i don't know what August will bring. Yet, if these dying days of this month is any indication, I will be looking forward to catching more forty winks, take outs and a nature's preserve outside the back of my house.

Chew on this Part two

So, I hope you had a chance to answer the question.

The instructor's reply is a bit complicated for my simple brain.

I chose to give the bleeding old lady a ride before my best friend and my potential partner of my life. If he/she is my BFF, then what I did would be understandable. As for my perfect mate-to- be, he'll find out a way to find me again. Besides, a random act of humanity might even impress him enough to even flag a taxi and follow me to the hospital.

I have been told that this was the most common response. Oh, but no... according to whatever book this instructor is reading, he said the "correct" solution for the dilemma should have been, to give the car to my best friend and for him/her to drive the dying lady to the hospital and stay behind, googly-eyed with my potential mate. Now who has the presence of mind to plan such a thing? It's lucky if people even have the gumption to stop and give aid. Some might panic at the sight of blood and drive off as fast as they can, swerving on and off the road trying to get rid off the gory sight out of their minds.

Clearly, there are many ways to skin this cat. As for me, a convoluted plan like this is out of the picture.

Chew on this

Photo by Andreas Praefcke

I have the pleasure of dragging myself today on a weekend to work. So it shall also be tomorrow. Such is the nature of my profession. I couldn't even get myself to sing "Aloha Friday" yesterday because of this fact.

One of the good things that came out of it is that I saw a co-worker who I have not seen for quite some time. She is going to

nursing school and she posed a question to me that she said her instructor asked the class as a sample of a mock interview. I believe it is some type of behavioral query. Whenever you run out of things to fill your time today, ask yourself this question and tomorrow I will tell you the right answer according to the instructor.

Imagine yourself driving and you come across three people and could only give a ride to one person, who would it be?

• Your best friend
• An old lady who is bleeing to death
• A prospective partner who will become your perfect mate