embarrassment

Phantom Glasses Syndrome

/ Diane Henders / 48 Comments

It pains me to admit that despite my commitment to remaining as immature as possible, my eyes have ignored the mandate and grown up.  In fact, they’ve embraced middle age with the same fervent enthusiasm as a teenager with a first crush.

The instructions on everything are now written in much smaller print than they used to be.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)  My distance vision is sharp and clear, but I spend far too much time hunting for the correct pair of reading glasses.

One pair for computer work.  Another pair for close work.  A third pair for that awkward range between one and four feet.  Bifocals for when I need to alternate frequently between close and mid-range.  I have umpteen pairs of glasses lying around the house, but the chances of finding the pair I need when I need them are slim to none.

Not only that, but I’m developing Phantom Glasses Syndrome.  Again.

When I was young I wore glasses fulltime.  When I finally switched to contacts it took about two years for me to stop pushing my glasses up on my nose even though the glasses were long gone.

Just to compound the embarrassment, I was young enough when I started wearing glasses that I didn’t know the significance of the middle finger.  And when I first developed the habit of pushing up my glasses, that was the finger I used.

Trust me, you haven’t been truly humiliated until you realize you’ve inadvertently flipped the bird to the entire audience at a public-speaking competition.

At least these days I know enough not to involve the middle digit in my habitual tics; but there’s still ample scope for embarrassment.  My distance vision is so good now that it drives me nuts to look through reading glasses and have everything in the distance blurred.  So if I look up from my close work for even a minute, I perch the reading glasses on top of my head.

You can see where this is going.  Yep:  Me, running around loudly cursing my lost glasses, only to have Hubby point out that they’re on the top of my head.

And that’s my other problem:  After spending so much time with my glasses up there, I feel the grip of the earpieces on my temples whether they’re there or not.  So now whenever I need glasses, I pat the top of my head first.  It’s okay if the glasses are actually there, but it looks pretty damn foolish when they’re not.

Fortunately I’ve discovered that my need for dignity is inversely proportional to my age.  So I’m thinking about adding a verbal tic to that habit just for shits and giggles.  Imagine, if you will, a middle-aged woman patting her own head and murmuring softly, “Good girl, Diane; good girl!”

I haven’t done it yet, but I’m tempted.  It would make social gatherings quite a bit more interesting… at least until people stopped inviting that weird old bag who keeps patting herself and mumbling.

But I suppose that’s still better than flipping everybody off.

Or maybe not… 😉

Anybody else have Phantom Glasses Syndrome?

Sordid Chocolate Mousse

/ Diane Henders / 42 Comments

As you’ve probably guessed if you’ve read my books, I’m a foodie – I love to eat, try new foods, and cook.  Although when things go awry the way they did this week, well… not so much.  But I’m addicted to recipes, and the internet is my evil enabler.

So this week I got sucked in by Blender Chocolate Mousse from a local food blogger’s site:  Dinner With Julie.  The recipe required a blender (quelle surprise), which I rarely use because it’s a pain in the ass to clean. But all the stars and planets had aligned:  I had my food processor out anyway, I happened to have whipping cream in my fridge, and the recipe sang its siren song.

(Note the critical disparity in the previous paragraph:  Blender Chocolate Mousse.  I have a food processor.  This is how fiascos begin.)

Per the instructions, I chucked the chocolate in the food processor, poured in the hot custard, and fired that sucker up.  Knowing that disaster lurks behind the simplest activities, I heeded Julie’s advice to put a towel over the food processor just in case.  But it performed faultlessly – not a single drop of chocolate marred my towel.  Smugly congratulating myself, I removed the towel and took off the food processor lid.

That’s when everything went to hell.

Blenders have watertight lids.  Food processors have lids with a large hole in them for the pusher device.  As soon as I tilted the lid to scrape the mousse off the inside, the pusher thing fell out on the counter.  It was, of course, covered with liquid chocolate mousse.  It bounced.  Several times.

Chocolate mousse splattered over several feet of counter, the backsplash, other appliances and me.  That generated some creative language, but little did I know it was only a foreshadowing of things to come.

The blending bowl in my food processor has an open tube in the centre for the driveshaft, and the blade housing sits atop it.  So you have to remove the blade housing before you pour anything out of the blending bowl.

Liquid chocolate mousse is really slippery.  The blade housing is a smooth plastic cone.  I couldn’t get hold of it.

After scrabbling uselessly at it for longer than I care to admit, I finally brained up and hooked a spatula under the blade.  When I pulled it out, chocolate mousse dribbled through the bowl opening, all over the driveshaft, and all the way to the sink; but by then everything was so sticky that it didn’t make much difference.  I poured the mousse into ramekins and turned to the cleanup.

In my defense, I’d like to reiterate that it was chocolate mousse.  And wasting chocolate is a crime.

At least, that was my excuse when Hubby rounded the corner and caught me licking the shaft of the food processor.  For the record, there are few things more embarrassing than getting caught performing fellatio on a kitchen appliance.  Especially when it’s one you don’t even love.

I mean, I could be forgiven for getting it on with my sexy European tomato press.  Even being caught in the act with my virile high-powered juicer wouldn’t have been so bad.  But a chocolate-smeared food processor?  It just seemed so… sordid.

Anyway, I got the kitchen cleaned up at last, and the mousse was delicious – silky-smooth and over-the-top chocolatey.

But I’m not sure it was worth it.

* * *

New discussion over at the VBBC:  Arnie and John – Friends Or Rivals?  Click here to have your say!

Dancin’ Fool

/ Diane Henders / 51 Comments

Well, I did it. Fortunately I’ve never been terribly attached to my dignity.

Yes; this weekend, after only ten lessons, I got up and attempted to belly-dance in front of a (mercifully small) audience.

It didn’t begin well.

I danced the piece a few times in the morning just to make sure I had it secure in my head. I got through it perfectly a couple of times… and then had a total brain fart.

We learned the first steps of the choreography in our very first class, and we’ve been practicing them ever since. They’re not complicated – 8 beats of simple movements, and then we shift our weight onto the other foot and repeat the same 8 movements.

I got through the first 8. Then the memory of how to make the switch and perform the second 8 vanished without a trace, leaving me gaping at my flummoxed self in the mirror.

Try as I might, I couldn’t remember how to do the next 8 beats. And it was exactly the same damn thing as the first 8 beats.

Nope, not an auspicious start.

But after I managed to assimilate that series of moves (again), it seemed like smooth sailing. Our class ran from 3:30 to 4:30, followed by the recital. We practiced during our class, and I was fine. Somewhat confident, even.

I knew this dance. I could do it.

Then the other dancers began to arrive. There were two other beginner classes and an intermediate class, plus the studio’s dance troupe. They all began to warm up and rehearse.

My jaw dropped.

As I watched the other ‘beginners’, it became humiliatingly obvious that our instructor had drawn the short straw this term and gotten stuck with the slow learners.

These women were dancers. And they had costumes, for shit’s sake!

It didn’t help that my friend and I were the only two students performing from our class– everyone else had ‘prior commitments’. (Including my other friend, who fled all the way to Korea to avoid performing. I know it was required by her job. But I still think the timing was suspiciously convenient.)

I sidled over to our instructor and muttered, “Gotta go; look at the time.”

That’s when she laughed and explained that ‘beginner’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘beginner-beginner’. Apparently a lot of students take the Foundations course several times before moving on to the intermediate class.

Okay… but still…

When Hubby arrived to watch, I made sure to point out we were the only real beginner class, so he shouldn’t expect too much. But at least I wasn’t nervous. It’s nice that my worries vanish when I’m absolutely certain I’m going to make a fool of myself.

The dance troupe performed first, followed by two other ‘beginner’ classes.

Then it was our turn.

And I nailed the choreography! I still can’t do the moves well, but I turned and shimmied and waved my arms exactly where I was supposed to. About three-quarters of the way through the dance I realized I hadn’t made a mistake yet, and that’s when I started getting nervous. Fortunately it was a short song, and it was over before I could freak out.

And you know what? I had fun!

We start a new class on Sunday: another beginner course with the same fun and fabulous (and patient) instructor. Maybe I’ll catch on this time…

* * *

Since some of you expressed an unwholesome interest in watching me jettison my dignity, here’s a link to parts of my ‘performance’. The video is clipped and cropped because my friend persuaded me to edit her out. It’s amazing how persuasive death threats can be.

Here you go: http://youtu.be/K-BngqeNQc8

A Nudie Pic From My Sordid Past

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

All the major celebrities have nude pictures lurking somewhere in their past.  They pretend to be embarrassed about them, but in fact it’s a clever marketing ploy to drum up some sensational news articles and garner more publicity.

I figure I could use some publicity, so today I’m going to unveil a nudie pic from my own misguided youth.  And no, I’m not talking about baby pictures.  I was twenty-two at the time, and old enough to know better.

I have to warn you, this is not a tastefully-done boudoir photo.  It’s a tawdry snapshot from a time when someone who shall remain nameless (and whom I’ve cropped from the photo) convinced me to expose myself in public.

I knew at the time that it was a bad idea.

I protested, but I was young, and peer pressure is a terrible thing.  And I believed in the power of friendship.  A true friend would never ask me to do anything humiliating or potentially damaging to my reputation, right?

Wrong.

Here’s the proof:

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Sorry, Camille, I would’ve cropped you out to preserve your privacy if I could, but thanks for being there. No, I mean physically there. In front of me, blocking the view.

Believe it or not, I am actually wearing a dress in that photo.  (For the record, Camille was a fellow martyr, not the bride who strong-armed us into this disaster.)

The bridesmaids’ dresses were flesh-coloured taffeta.  Low-cut and strapless, they had an inadequate wrap-around skirt secured only at the waist.  I’m sure I mooned half of Winnipeg just trying to get in and out of the car while the wind whipped that skirt around.

But the top was worse.  Much worse.

When the dress arrived the day before the wedding, I refused to wear it.  The top was so loose that one false move would’ve given the girls far more freedom than was advisable (or legal, for that matter).

So the seamstress altered it.  She was obviously vindictive about the last-minute change.  When I got the dress back the morning of the wedding, it was so tight I couldn’t draw a full breath.  My assets were attractively portioned into four boobs:  Bisected by a tourniquet of fabric, two naked bulges overflowed the top of the bodice, while the sadly flattened remainders were viciously crushed against my ribcage.

It was the 80s, and back then, cleavage was usually concealed in church.  You should have seen the poor minister’s face when I shuffled up the aisle clothed in little more than the tattered remains of my dignity, my half-exposed boobs burgeoning over the bodice with each humiliated breath while I tried to keep that slit-to-the waist skirt closed.  He probably wondered if I was inside the dress trying to get out, or outside it struggling to get in.

Trust me, it was the latter.

Somehow I got through the day, but the damning photographic evidence is preserved for all time:   Me, apparently stark naked in public, smiling for the camera.

So do you think that’s enough to make me famous?  Or just mortified?

Covering My Ass

/ Diane Henders / 29 Comments

I expend a great deal of effort just trying to cover my ass.

I mentioned my disastrous bathing suit debacle in an earlier post, and at the time I noted that I’m very careful about my rear view these days.

Not careful enough, apparently.

The other day I bent over to retrieve something from the bottom of the fridge, and Hubby said, “Oh, nice look.”

With a feeling of impending doom, I said, “Thanks.  Um… what exactly do you mean…?”

Sure enough, the yoga pants that are my daily office uniform had succumbed to the pressure.  It wasn’t noticeable as long as I stood upright, but as soon as I bent over, there was my ass for all the world to see through the dreaded transparent spandex mesh.  (No, the pants weren’t Lululemon – check out notquiteold’s funny Yoga Porn post for more on that.)

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Ever since I was a kid, the butt-end of my pants was always the first to go.  All the other kids wore through the knees, but my jeans were perfect in every way… except for the patches on the rear.

I once wore out the backside of a new-ish pair of jeans in one day, but that was a special case – I was shingling a roof and I didn’t have knee pads.  When my knees gave out I finished the job shuffling along on my butt, which was a bad idea in many respects.  Quite apart from damage to clothing, if you’ve ever installed asphalt shingles, you know about those nasty little spiky bits that stick into your flesh like needles.  Try extracting those from areas you can’t really see without a mirror and some uncomfortable contortions.

But getting back to the point…

A couple of years ago I tore a muscle kickboxing.  A muscle in an uncomfortable and embarrassing place:   right at the top of my hamstring.

Which is polite way to say “my ass”.

I didn’t go for physiotherapy.  I just couldn’t bring myself to beg my (young male) physiotherapist to rub my butt.  Worse still, to pay my young male physiotherapist to rub my butt.  It just smacked of desperate cougar-dom.

Anyway, the muscle gradually healed on its own, but it still gives me trouble occasionally.  In the past few months it’s been sore.  I’ve been ignoring it because, hell, if I woke up one morning and nothing hurt, I’d check the obituaries to make sure I hadn’t died in the night.

But eventually it occurred to me that perhaps there was an underlying cause.

Sure enough, when I had a close look at the desk chair I’d been sitting in for the past three years, there was absolutely no padding left in the seat.  It was just a bum-shaped fabric-covered bowl with solid (and extremely hard) wood underneath.

Which probably explains the destruction of my yoga pants, mercilessly grinding between the unyielding bones of my ass and the unyielding seat of my chair.

Now I have a new chair and new yoga pants, but I know I’m solving the wrong problem here.

Anybody know where I can get a new butt?

* * *

P.S. Thanks to everybody for your concern over my eye. (For those who didn’t hear, I got hit kickboxing on Sunday and spent most of Monday waiting to find out if I might end up with a detached retina. I wasn’t even fighting; it was just a stupid accident during an easy sparring session.)  Everything seems fine so far – my eye is still a little achy and scratchy, but my vision is back to normal and the doc has cleared me for easy workouts.  But no kickboxing for a while.  *sigh*