It’s Funny Because It’s True.

Things Fall Apart. Is It Still January??

It’s Funny Because It’s True.

First, a quick update on Lickety, who is sitting on my lap as I type this.

He’s slowing down a bit these days but his heart is still pure Lickety.

He still loves to eat his breakfast and dinner, loves to sit on laps, and loves to announce when it’s time for his favorite snack of cream cheese.

So yes, his cancer is making him weaker by the day, but he’s still able to jump up on his favorite couch cushion and still able to be annoying. So he’s still 100% Lickety.

In other cat news, I was cat-sitting my neighbor’s herd of three kitten siblings who are UNBEARABLY CUTE. The all love water, so when I was filling up their water bowl and they heard the kitchen faucet go on, they all did this:

YOU ARE WELCOME.

Now, back to our regular programming.

I have not listened or watched much of the impeachment trial in the Senate because although the Democrats have put on a brilliant and water-tight case, we all know that the Republican fucks will vote Not Guilty. So it’s just too demoralizing to get involved, and my morale is in too precarious a condition to hear GOP voice.

Thank you, everyone for your feedback re: facelifts last week. I haven’t gotten one yet, but I haven’t decided NOT to get one yet, either. I was too busy being miserable.

After I blogged last week about how shitty it feels to be 64, I laid down on the couch and had a good cry, the kind where you sob as if your dog died and, in fact, I haven’t cried like that since my dog died. Also I was having a really bad hair day, letting a short ‘do’ grow out and it’s at an in-between frowzy stage so basically I look a lot like The Duchess of Cornwall these days…

She’s probably a nice lady and is good at talking dirty to Prince Charles and we support that but I’d rather look like Diana.

… which would make anyone feel suicidal so I stayed on the couch feeling dog-less and Cornwallish for the rest of the afternoon. When Top Cat came home from work I burst into tears again and for a man who has never seen me cry like that, he was a real champ. He gave me a big long hug and a huge martini, and I sat in the kitchen and watched while he made me a homemade pizza, my go-to cure for whatever ails me. I tried to help, but while chopping onions I cut myself very badly and since then, I have changed the bandaids on the wound without looking at it because it makes me sick to see blood so that has given me another good think about whether I’m woman enough for a facelift.

Dear Reader Pat commented last week that I should be grateful to get old because it’s a condition denied to many, but when your parents told you to eat your damn broccoli because there were starving people in Africa, did that make you suddenly love broccoli?

Dear Reader Leslie had some good words about owning your face, with a shout-out to Georgia Okeefe, who went au natural ’til her death at the age of 200. Wait. She was only 98. She justy looked 200. No sunscreen back then. Georgia Okeefe was 64 in 1951 and I tried to find a photo of her, but all I could come up with is this one, taken when she was 44:

Well, she can get away with that because she’s Georgia Okeefe, but I’m a lowly watercolorist** (see asterisk below) and I like lipstick and tamed eyebrows and will probably wear makeup until I drop dead.

BUT, while I might get a facelift, I can be like like Georgia in that I will never dye my hair. I’m a stickler about that. How can we make gray hair chic and cool if many of us still cover it up? So let’s Stay the Gray!! Who’s with me?!

Me with my dog that died in 2013. I’m 57. Boogie Girl was not a cuddler. I want to wear my hair long again, no matter how many months I have to look like the Duchess of Cornwall to get there.

Next item on the agenda: I’m all for a stint in the local rehab (Thanks, Dear Reader Penny! I could use a 30-day vacation!). However, my BFF has lung cancer and when she’s having a bad day and she calls me up and says Get over here, I’m opening a bottle of pinot and we’re binge watching Grace and Frankie, I gotta be there for my girl. But I’ll keep the rehab suggestion in my back pocket, in case I decide not to get a facelift and want to look years younger by being BORING.

Dear Reader Alex reminded me that a possible side effect of getting a facelift is dying on the operating table and I like a girl who can bring on the morbid. Alex, You Are My People, and I thank you.

Alex reminds me that I could also bite the dust from falling down the stairs in my house. I could hand in my lunch bucket while picking out produce at the Piggly Wiggly. The next time I drink a huge martini and chop onions and slice open a blood vessel, it might be a carotid and BOOM I’m on the wrong side of the grass. You never know.

But the odds are good that I’ll survive a facelift.

Besides, I can’t die because I’m with Dear Reader Marilyn: We aren’t hopping on the last rattler until we see Trump hounded out of office and all the Trump waste product children shamed, jailed, and destitute. Including Barron.

Dear Reader Melissa goes further and seeks for divine intervention that will get rid of Mike Pence to boot and make Nancy Pelosi, the great Speaker of the House and next in line of succession, the President of the United States, and you know who’s had a facelift and is no weak-willed conformist to soul-destroying standards of beauty?

NANCY FUCKING PELOSI.

I rest my case.

**Dear Readers Adrienne and Jeanie wonder when I will paint again. To tell the truth, I only started painting because I had books to illustrate. I’m not the kind of painter who does it for my own enjoyment because unless I’m illustrating something, I can’t think of things to paint. So here’s what: if you, Adrienne, and you, Jeanie, and anyone else, has a request for something they would like to challenge me to paint, I will be happy to consider it. Those old watercolor tutorials were fun to do and I’m looking to add more fun into my life.

Lastly, my Dryanuary lasted all last year’s week and I would have been totally miserable if I had not taken the excellent suggestion of Dear Readers Jeanie and Mae and read Pachinko. What a fabulous book! It’2 485 pages and it kept me busy all week! Who knew that I, Vivian Hater-of-Novels Swift, would devour 485 pages and wish for 485 pages more? Of a novel??? I am grateful to you, ladies, for bringing that sweet misery to me. It was a gloriously terrible reading experience and if you’ve read the book, you know what I mean. Thank you.

Well, it’s Friday and Top Cat needs company for his end-of-the-work-week cocktail hour and I love Top Cat and it’s sad to drink alone**, so I’ll be on the verge of rehab again tonight. Don’t hate me because I’m a good wife.

** It’s actually not sad to drink alone. I’ve done it plenty and every time, I’ve wondered why everyone thinks it’s sad. But I’m also very OK eating alone in restaurants and going to the movies alone so, there’s a pattern there. I can’t stand people.

I hope all of you readers will ignore the impeachment, take a break from the wildfires, push all thoughts of Megxit or Brexit out of your minds, and enjoy your Friday evening — and this, the funniest thing that I found on the internet this week: