talking gratitude here

so there's this oddly famous lady in salt lake who has the world's longest fingernails. literally. she's in the guinness book of world records and everything, which why? what would take you to that place where you wanted to make that your life's goal? at least when i was in mutual they forced you to make practical goals involving exercising and scripture reading and NOT growing your nails out two feet so you could scare the holy crap out of kids who came to your house for trick-or-treating purposes.

anyway. i was talking to a man the other day who used to work at a store where this nail lady shopped. she would try on rings sometimes and the process took a lot of time and a LOT of assistance from store employees who had to slide and loop those rings up the nail until they hit her ring finger. and every time this guy would go home and say WTH. how does she do anything, ANYTHING. AND I MEAN ANYTHING with those things.

i, on the other hand, have one extremely excellent good hand which can do many many many things.

and i am grateful.

and now i and my excellent hand are off to tooele again to speak again. this time to a women's conference. tooele has become my home away from home this month.

in medias res

so some days i wear red lipstick. which OF COURSE makes me look EXACTLY like christina aguilera. in fact, there i'll be shopping for produce in the produce section at my smiths. and suddenly people are saying look! it's x-tina! Hey, x-tina! can we have your autograph?

anyway. i started putting on my red lipstick este manana. which is NOT a job that requires two hands. it does, however, require your dominant hand. otherwise, it looks like someone has been coloring outside the lines on your lips.

halfway through i looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and went oh wow. this isn't working.

meanwhile no one looked up from a vegetable bin in smiths and called me x-tina today.

texting

with two thumbs is HARD when you're old. texting with one non-dominant thumb is impossible. yesterday i sat in the dr's office and watched a teenage boy text away like la la la la la la la this is no big freaking deal and suddenly i started imagining bad things happening to his cocky young thumbs.

i ate french fries at hires last night--a pleasure still available to the thumbless ones.

here's another hard thing to do when your fingers are in a cast

flip people off

which i pretty much wanted to do today

but no one would have noticed

and i had to use the other hand to drive

i'm taking lisa b's suggestion

and i'm going to write many tiny essays about being one-handed. because really it's consuming my life. and also affecting every thing i do. like getting dressed in the morning for instance.

this morning as it took me 30 minutes to hook one hook on my bra--i'm old enough to wear one now--i thought how much easier it would be if i could just spray paint my clothes on. and then they would always be on. i'd rolled out of bed. and BOOM. they would be on. i'd step out of the shower and BOOM. they would be on. that is if the spray paint were water-proof.

and so i got all excited about this idea. and i even planned out my spray paint ensemble, including decorative daisies. and then it occurred to me that i would have to spray paint on my new clothes WITH MY LEFT HAND.

and that would be hard.

something else that's hard when you just have one hand

eating lunch at a Brazilian steakhouse.

because they feed you MEAT. which you must cut. which is like clapping with one hand. only in a much less zen kind of way. because really when you sit there looking at your beautiful meat which you CANNOT CUT you want to take your steak knife and stab someone. which, the last time i checked, is totally unzen. i am pretty sure you would not find buddhist monks stabbing each other in tucanos at the gateway.

good thing geoff was there to cut my meat. also to stand on his chair and limply shake a tambourine when the waiters brought his gratis b-day dessert and sang happy birthday to him. they made him do it. and i laughed. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

even though he cut my meat for me.

what people say about you

so i heard a story on the radio just now about how some doctors want to make their patients sign agreements promising that they--the patients--won't say anythings snotty about them--the doctors.

yes. i know. that was a gangly sentence but i'm too tired and lame to fix it.

anyhoo. i went SERIOUSLY? why do doctors think they can do that? A lot of professionals--football coaches, politicians, owners of charming little tea shops, brad and angelina, WRITERS-- have to deal with people saying snarky things online about them all the time.

look. it's reprehensible that people are so casually cruel in their comments at times. but if you enter the public forum in any way, well then you can't gag your fellow citizens.

doesn't mean you should go googling yourself though. THAT can only lead to hurty feelings.