Something's Stalking Me

Driving back from the bigger town Sunday morning, I glanced in my rear view mirror at a car behind me and caught a glimpse of it. I wasn't sure if it was real, so I looked in the mirror again. Because the sun was brightly shining, there was no mistake about it. That line just below my right lower lip wasn't a wrinkle as I had hoped. No, it was dark, and about an inch long, and it was back.

It all started with the sustenance of a mole that developed on my lower lip in high school. The mole appeared during puberty, and in adolescence it was easy to dismiss it as a "beauty mark." But in my twenties, the mole started producing hair, especially a certain dark long one that seemed to stand out among the tiny blond fuzz around it. It was just screaming to be plucked and so began the battle.

A decade of plucking my uni-brow had yielded two separate eyebrows with no further yanking necessary. So, I thought, would be the demise of this renegade mole hair. Every six weeks I would pluck it out of the mole mound and six weeks later the strand would reappear, as long and dark as ever. It never seemed to have any sort of growing cycle. It simply reappeared fully grown at that entire inch size.

After fifteen years of unrelenting plucking and regeneration, the "aha" moment occurred. If the mole is providing fodder for the follicle, get rid of the mole. A 45 minute out-patient procedure with a plastic surgeon, five stitches, $2500 out of my pocket, and I was rid of the mole and the hair forever - or so I thought. Two weeks after the six week healing process, it returned.

For almost 40 years now, the war between stubborn hair and stubborn host continues. Neither will acquiesce. We both intend to win the war, despite each losing battles along the way.

Both a little more gray and withered than our youth, our uncompromising determination is never shaken, although the battles have become fewer. The hair has now changed tactics: it doesn't reappear quite so regularly and often at unsuspecting times, especially in the car or at a movie theater. Perhaps my eyesight just doesn't catch it nearly so soon, but when it is discovered, I've gotten considerably better at jerking the thing out with just my fingernails.

We've gotten a bit more comfortable with each other, but we're still not quite friends. It is truly a love-hate relationship. If I do win the war, and I fully plan to, I admit I'll miss tugging on that hair in moments of quiet desperation far away from tweezers. But not that much.

Celebrating?

For those who have the day off today in honor of Martin Luther King's birthday, I wonder how much time they will spend actually contemplating the great man? 1 hour, 30 minutes, 1 minute? Or are the shopping malls today so crowded they honestly don't have time to even think about it? Or perhaps they are just too hungover from the Packers game last night?

Notable Birthday Quotes

For my three good friends who have birthdays this month, for my blogger friends who also have January birthdays and for my own birthday this month (although not this day in January), here's some favorite wisdom:

1. No wise man ever wished to be younger. (Jonathan Swift)
2. Inside every older person is a younger person - wondering what the hell happened. (Cora Harvey Armstrong)
3. You are only young once, but you can be immature for a lifetime. (John P. Grier)
4. To me, old age is 15 years older than I am. (Bernard M Baruch)
5. The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. (Muhammad Ali)
6. A birthday is just the first day of another 365 day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip. (Anonymous)
7. The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. (T.S. Eliot)
8. Age is something that doesn't matter unless you're a cheese. (Billy Burke)
9. When I passed forty I dropped pretense, 'cause men like women who got some sense. (Maya Angelou)
10. With my wife I don't get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to 'the best woman a man ever had.' The waiter joined me. (Rodney Dangerfield)

And my favorite: It is sad to grow old, but nice to ripen. (Bridgitte Bardot)

Wiggling weinie fools cops

A big scare in my ancestors' homeland. Fortunately the impending explosion was not meant for the public.

When I say "No" I mean "No"

Here's another incident of an arrogant doctor not listening to his patient. The patient didn't want a rectal exam, so they sedated him and did it anyway.

Even worse, I'll bet they billed him for it. Hopefully the lawsuit will reimburse the patient.

No free market here

The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board approved a new weight-loss surgical center for a nearby town. Why in the world should any entity that wants to spend thousands-millions of dollars on a health care facility have to get State approval just to build it? They have turned down several other proposals for the community.

No developer will spend that kind of money on a facility without doing his own feasibility study to see if the investment will bring a proper rate of return. That means they will study the market to see if they will be able to get enough patients for the facility and look at the competition within the marketing area. They still have to meet public health standards in the construction and operation phase. So why shouldn't they simply have the right to build a facility meeting those standards if they want to? They shouldn't have to prove anything to the State regarding "need."

The purpose of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Act says its purpose "is to establish a procedure designed to reverse the trends of increasing costs of health care resulting from unnecessary construction or modification of health care facilities. Such procedure shall represent an attempt by the State of Illinois to improve the financial ability of the public to obtain necessary health services, and to establish an orderly and comprehensive health care delivery system which will guarantee the availability of quality health care to the general public. "

If keeping costs down for consumers is their purpose, then the Health Facilities Board should be approving every application for new health care facilities. Competition is good. Competition drives prices down in the marketplace. Competition provides choices for the consumer. Health care facilities providing poor services will not get patients and will shut down. Facilites providing good patient care will thrive.

We don't need any State board to tell consumers what we need or don't need. Let the developers build all the health care facilities they want. We as consumers will decide who stays or goes.

The Real Thing

My husband gave me this book for Christmas. He is an enabler. This is like giving a drug addict a pharmacy reference manual.

I am a Coke addict. If there were a CCA (Coca Cola Anonymous) group, I'd be a lifetime member.

I've tried to quit numerous times, several times for as long as a year, and did it cold turkey during both my pregnancies. But then I'll get an urge for just one sip... and oh, how I love that first burn in the throat!

The one sip satisfies me for that day, but by the next day I'm thinking that one of those mini 8 oz cans wouldn't hurt. It's only 150 calories and it's not nearly as good as a bubbly Coke directly from the soda fountain from the convenience store, so I won't have a craving after I drink the 8 ounces, and I'll just cut back on bread today to balance the additional calories, and my how good that tastes even if it does come from a can.

By the end of two weeks, I am now drinking an 8 oz can with breakfast and a 20 oz cupful from the convenience store for an afternoon jolt. By the end of the month, the daily fix is two 20 oz drinks from the convenience store. Couple of months go by and now its a twice daily fix of 32 oz drinks. But I am proud of myself that I have never stooped to buying one of those 48 oz big guzzlers. OK, the real reason is that I sip my Coke and it would taste flat by the time I finished one of those monstrosities. It's all about the carbonic acid, you know.

After approximately 9-12 months and fifteen additional pounds, the entire cycle starts reversing itself. It comes from me being too cheap to buy a whole new wardrobe. So you see, you can gauge where I am on the Coke cycle by the size of my butt.

I blame the addiction on my childhood when super cold 8 oz green bottles of Coke were dispensed in red freezer chest-like coolers. You inserted your money, then dragged the bottle through a metal maze to a large opening where you pulled out the bottle, dripping with condensation, popped the cap on the built-in opener, and took a swig on a hot summer day. There was nothing better than the burn of that first sip.

Change to Diet Coke, you say. My body doesn't tolerate aspartame or any other fake sugar. Besides, Coke prides itself on being The Real Thing. Diet Coke isn't real and I'm a realist by nature.

I have decided that I am allowed at least one vice in my otherwise perfect life and drinking Coke is it. Since I am not a coffee drinker, I reason it is no worse than someone having a latte and doughnut. So as long as my body isn't suffering any ill effects and it hasn't so far, I'm sticking to the bubbly brown burn over ice.