Saddam Hussein is Dead, and I Don't Feel So Good Myself

...and the bloated blogger should NOT be posting right now, because she is in a very cranky mood. She blames the eggnog, and also, her female brain, which, according to the book she got for Christmas, The Female Brain, causes her to get a little cranky sometimes....

(...so what's Mr. IQ's excuse??....)

The problem with my shallow obsessions is that they are always very, very short-lived.

I have come to recognize the symptoms, or symptom as it were: I will suddenly notice something is awful, and frantically, obsessively try to make it perfect. Last October, it was, for whatever reason, this horrible house I live in. Every scuff, every torn section of linoleum, every damn thing that looked worn (i.e., basically the whole house) made my brain frantic. I obsessively cleaned and worried and despaired over this stupid styhole we call home. I calculated how much it would cost to put in tile and new kitchen cupboards and then fell into a quasi-depression over the fact that we could never afford to do it. To comfort myself, I bought an expensive, arty floor lamp, which we also couldn't afford, and put it in our decrepit TV room, where its soft, sophisticated lighting cleverly highlighted the crumbling paint on our walls, the stained carpet and the primitive crate furniture we have in there.

Then, just as quickly as it came, it left. The house collapsed into total ruin within seven minutes of "its" departure, and I reverted back to my slobby normal self, storing my daughter's underwear on bookcase shelves and wasting hours of my life looking for things lost in the crud.
In other words: Setback city, dude. This place looked worse after I was through, and keep in mind, I was miserable while it was happening.

So what's the point?

Last week, I felt the obsession mania creep up on me again, only this time, I wasn't focusing on my house. No, there was something much more urgent that needed attending to: Me.

I'm not sure what started it. Perhaps it was my four-year-old complimenting me on my nice moustache. Maybe it was catching a glimpse of myself in a mall mirror and recoiling in horror at the tired old hag staring back at me in her stale, second-hand clothes. Maybe it was my hair: Let's face it, it always comes down to the hair, doesn't it? Whatever it was, I knew this: Old Girl Whippersnap needed working on.

When the urge to do the make-over thing strikes (approximately once every year and a half) it means I have to subject myself to the two things I hate most: Hairdressers and clothes shops. But I did it. Highlights. New pants. Earrings. This lip thing I bought at The Body Shop that scrapes dead lip skin off. (What the hell??) Moustache bleach. Everything. And, unlike the house, I actually managed to get it all together to a point where I thought, "OK, now all I have to do is maintain status quo." And then the baby puked all over my new pants, and I lost one of the earrings, and, worst of all, I had to wash my hair and destroy the 45 minute hair ironing process my hairdresser had worked so painstakingly over. And now I look exactly the same as I did before, except my roots don't show anymore. Oh, and I gueeeees my lips are a little less scaly. (What the HELL??) Big freaking deal.

I'm not exactly sure where exactly I'm going with this. While I do consider myself to be suffering from some minor form of mental illness when these obsessions come over me, I must confess a small part of me rues the fact that I can't always be like this. I'm very jealous of people who have everything together all the time.

(Then again, it's very expensive. I won't even tell you how much my lip sander cost.)

(WHAT THE HELL possessed me???!!!!)


P.S.: They interrupted regular programming on CBC radio while I was writing this to tell us Saddam Hussein had been hanged. I blame all the rich food I've been eating this week for wreaking havoc with my system, because when they made the announcement, I burst into tears. Now what the hell is up with THAT??