Doopity-doo, I've got another riddle for you.

I feel like a big ole loser with a capital Loo.

If you’re a regular reader you know that recently Mr. Man and I have been getting surgery for fun. Some people play cards, some drink. We enjoy having guys cut things out of us.

It’s not our fault. Blue Cross is one hell of an enabler. It’s like having a Gold Card, only instead of a swanky hotel room with bountiful room service, we order up medical care.

Our time together is spent now with Mr. Man limping around the house and never bending at the waist and me eating my Vanilla Wafers and then describing to him in graphic and spectacular detail what happens to them once they hit my stomach.

Brangelina wishes they were this hot.

But I’ve noticed a striking disparity between how Mr. Man is handling his unavoidable slow down as opposed to how I am handling mine. It leads me to wonder whether it’s just a difference in my husband and me, or whether it’s a difference in men and women in general.

His room (the space where he is convalescing) is quite plainly disgusting. It’s littered with DVD’s, chocolate stars, empty pop bottles and underwear. It looks like something Gene Simmons would have done to a hotel room in 1975 and smells like it might possibly be the very same room.

He loves it, though. It’s his own personal cave where he is free to indulge his baser male desires and heal in his own way, in his own time.

And that’s perfect with me. So long as he gets his filth on in a room that I don’t have to enter, it’s all good.

What you don’t see him doing is standing in front of a mirror examining every wrinkle and every lump and every imperfection and crying because if he were any kind of man, his lengthy medical troubles would have at least resulted in substantial weight loss so his cheek bones would stand out.

Nor does he compare himself to every other person who’s ever had back surgery in the history of the world and decided they were better than him and he’s a big piece of cacadoodie because he still feels so bad.

If he is lying in his bed at night telling himself everyone hates him because he isn’t well yet, he’s not said anything to me. He never seems to feel guilty about lying down when he feels like he needs to, if he wants something indulgent he asks for it, and I’m almost positive he is not questioning whether if he died, anyone would even bring a casserole with cheese in the middle and Ritz crackers on top.

But I am.

I’m knee deep in wanting to run far, far away and live with the Oompa-Loompa’s because I know I’ll look better than them, no matter how crappy I feel. I also know that they, above everyone else, would understand and love me right now as their odd skin color suggests they are a chronically unhealthy people who are accustomed to uninterrupted nausea and bloating.

Although come to think of it, they were also terribly judgmental, weren’t they? Always just around the corner breaking into song about some kid’s flaws and doing a little superior dance.

Purple bitches.

So is it just me, or does every woman who is going through a rough patch of some kind feel unloved, unworthy and unacceptable? When they have had a year full of ups and downs and maybes and feeling bad, would most women feel the way I do, or would they put on their pumps, suck it up and puke in their office trash can?

Do men have it right? And if they do have it right, do we tell them, or do we make them think they’re wrong anyway and finagle an apology out of them because we know how to do it?

For the answers to these and other questions, stay tuned next time for the continuing saga of As the Crazy Turns.


Listen to this:

Love Amos Lee and love, love, love this song. Perfection. Arms of a Woman.



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