Oprah Envy

I don’t hate Oprah because she’s worth more money than major studios rake in by making movies about attractive, charmingly incompetent pirates. I don’t even hate her because she has a house big enough that if she weren’t speaking to her husband, supposing she’d found a nice model for a good price on Ro-Day-O Drive, he wouldn’t know for six months. Or because she can speed dial any number of people who can prevent her from ever having a bad hair day.

I hate her because she can afford to gain weight.

There are three sections in my closet. To the right are clothes that I have worn within recent history—which includes the eras that boasted Edith and Archie Bunker, Sonny and Cher, and the Beatles. With enough time and dedication to the study of fat content on spaghetti sauce labels and ice cream wrappers, I might wear these clothes again. I might also don a tricorn hat and sail with Johnny Depp on his next voyage, but that's beside the point.

The middle section of the closet is devoted to clothes I can wear right now. This section contains a pair of faded blue jeans, the black top my niece gave me with a buckle that’s guaranteed to draw the eyesight of innocent bystanders away from unsightly ripples in the terrain, and six pairs of stretchy pants.

The section to the left holds selections for days of bloat, hormone fluctuation, and random binges of drinking whole milk. My fat clothes.

My budget allows me these three small sections, although there are days when the power bill, car payment, and rent deadline band together like wayward musketeers to encourage me to sell the buckle shirt on eBay. I dream of a day when there’s enough money left after the cable bundle that I feel comfortable throwing out the bra with the broken wire.

I imagine Oprah’s closets. She probably has whole rooms devoted to different sizes of clothing. If she has an off day and, say, indulges in salad dressing or puts a dab of sour cream on her potato, she goes to the blue closet and pulls out a clever chiffon that skims the hips, conceals arm pendulums, and erases under eye circles.

Last week I went for a walk on the wild side, the closest thing I have to a workout plan, and plunged a chip deep into the salsa at the Mexican restaurant. Without a single thought for future wardrobe planning, I ate the whole thing without sharing a crumb with anyone else, including my lap. Today my jeans wouldn’t zip, my blouse wouldn’t button, and my Victorias threatened to spill their secret.

My life will never be like Oprah’s. Maybe I’ll try for Jerry Springer’s. If my clothes have a story to tell, let them tell it to somebody who will make the most of it.

Taxing Times

“Why is our refund so. . .numerically deficient?” I paused without signing the tax returns and wrinkled my nose in an “Okay who made the stinky?” face so Bill Dear would appreciate the gravity of the situation and conjure a larger refund out of random bits of dust and dog hair.

“That’s all we get.” He said with a shrug and a blank look. He is not as proficient as I am in the art of conversation by facial expression. Now that I think of it, his blank look is the only conversational facial expression he has, excepting his “Everyone is going to die” face, which I can cause him to produce with astounding regularity.

“But last year we got twice as much.” Here I added my “This deficit is obviously the fault of some politician who owes me money. Otherwise it’s your fault in which case you’d better cough up some dough” face.

“We could only claim one son.”

“But I’ve got the stretch marks to prove two children and a small elephant.” I have a face for this, but it couldn’t possibly help the situation at this point.

“It doesn’t matter. We can only claim one son as a dependent.”

“I cook potatoes five nights a week. Anything that moves slowly through my kitchen gets grill marks. There is enough ice cream in our refrigerator to open our own Baskin Robbins outlet store. And there is a pallet of Fruity Pebbles sprouting groves of fruit trees with artificial flavors on the back porch. Don’t tell me they’re not dependent.”

“Son One has a job. He filed his own tax return.”

“Oh sure, I wait 20 years for him to do something by himself and he picks tax time. Why wasn’t he this prompt when he was potty training?”

“Because he didn’t get something nice direct deposited in his bank account for that.”

“He gave me a direct deposit, but I can’t say it was that nice.”

“Just be glad you didn’t get dividends.”

“No, but I got a surprise in his bathwater once.”

“That’s okay. If we kept good records over the year we can itemize and maybe we'll come out better.”

“Great.”

“Okay, where’s the box?”

“The box?”

“The box with all our receipts so we can see what we spent.”

“Oh, we didn’t have a box that was big enough.” I handed him a huge, black garbage bag, it’s contents bulging like it belonged to a pre-Christmas Eve Santa.

He peered inside. “There’s nothing in here but empty Girl Scout cookie boxes.”

“Right. You wanted to know where our money went.”

“It all went for Girl Scout cookies?”

“Yep, but I was smart.” I dug way down past flattened cardboard cartons, crinkly wrappers and cookie crumbs and pulled out one last perfect box full of Thin Mints.

“What’s that?”

“I’m way ahead of the government." I took a bite of cookie heaven. "This is our stimulus package.”

Bill Dear gave me a look. And it wasn’t his blank expression.

I think I'm gonna need a bigger box.

Do Not Remove This Tag!

Becster tagged me for a "Five Interesting Things About Me" meme. There aren't five interesting things about me that I know of, but as an English major in college, I learned to answer discussion questions completely and in great detail, especially in cases where I didn't know the answer. So watch out. I might get carried away.

1. I’m like the Statue of Liberty for stray animals. I've got a flashing sign over my house that only homeless animals can see. "Give me your tired (wanting to sleep on my bed), your poor (looking to get on the Milk Bone payroll), your huddled (hanging around my back door with yowling and gnashing of fangs) masses, yearning to cough up hairballs in my living room." I presently have three cats, two Labradors, and a diva Dachshund who are enjoying the benefits of a permanent residence visa as they lay around on my furniture ringing for room service.

2. I'm convinced that everything in history happened at the same time. I'm one of those folks that can't visualize depth. To me, a timeline is straight for a reason.

3. Most people think I frosted my hair. I didn’t. I had toddlers. Now they’re teenagers. The hairdo was complimentary.

4. I could live happily on a planet made of macaroni and cheese and gourmet ice cream. I’ll know I made it to heaven when I’m in a place where fat content does not precipitate weight gain or coronary stress.

5. I believe in the serial comma and will fight for its right to exist in reading, writing, and bitter arguments about syntax.

6. My behind freezes over like Lake Michigan in winter. It stays cold from the autumn equinox until the ice cracks in the spring. . .my husband says it’s like someone put a Butterball turkey in the bed hoping it would thaw under the electric blanket. It doesn't.

7. I can't count. The five people I'm tagging are Blessed, Heiddi, ravenlea, and poor, dear Bill who may yet live through NaNo to update his blog. See, I told you I can't count!