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The Midlife Gals are writing for More Magazine online now!  Woo Hoo, AND we're doing a VIDEO advice column for them...Dear Midlife Gals!  We don't know whatever happened to Dear Abby, but she's bound to be 128 years old by now, and frankly, we don't care because we're taking over!  So, we BEG you to join more.com (it's free and very cool), go to the Reinvent Yourself/Second Acts section and send in COMMENTS on our bizarre writings and QUESTIONS to Dear Midlife Gals, PLEASE!  We need to show More Magazine that we have friends!

Thanks in advance!!!

KK and SalGal

I looked up “pay the piper,” and one of the definitions is:  “to receive punishment for something.”  Some people think that taxes are that form of punishment.  And, we tried so hard to make that money, didn’t we?  There are so many conundrums about living that I just do not understand.  But, whatever you’re doing, if you haven’t paid your taxes yet or filed for an “extension,” you’d better get your ass in gear and finish that project.  You have until midnight tomorrow, April 15th.

Of course it won’t surprise you to know that I did my taxes a long time ago and forced the other members of my family to do the same for fear of daily beratings.  I feel so sorry for those slackers who are frantically going through piles of receipts, bank statements and travel information.  I found one of my grocery receipts with a full-lip smack on the back.  I must have run out of kleenex.  And, I used my cat’s name as someone I met with for a business transaction.  Shhhhhhh!  Oh, hell, the IRS isn’t looking for me.  They are understaffed, overworked, and I’m just not financially worth it.

I like to park my car near the downtown post office as midnight nears on April 15th just to watch the frantic, anxiety-ridden deadbeats who have procrastinated until the last nanosecond.  It’s a strong reminder to me of what stress can do.  Those people are all heart attacks about to happen.  In those last few moments, they’ve taken 3 years off their lives.  But, their theory is that the fun they had until they realized how late they were with their taxes was well worth it.  For a person with control issues, that dawg just won’t hunt (for you yankees, that means, the argument will not fly, I mean, hold water, whatEVER!).  Those people ate the icing first and everyone knows that you eat the cake AND the icing together so the last bite will be perfectly balanced.

Oh dear, now I’m wafting into societal issues that bespeak my ‘peculiarities.’  Just pay the money and shut up.  It won’t come around again for a whole year.  Whup it up till then.

KK
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Yeah, it’s that time of year again when you are reminded of death.  I mean, taxes.  After all, those are supposed to be the two things that never change.  I think that’s the quote. It’s appropriate.  You try and work to get what you want and then the grim reaper comes along and says, ‘Wait a minute, you’ve got to pay the tax on that.’  Whether it be on that new zebra-patterned purse or the fact that you just drank one too many margaritas at The Hula Hut…you’re gonna pay the price.

I wonder what would happen if there were no taxes at all.  Maybe there would be no poor people and so we would not have to pay taxes to help the government give them food stamps.  There would be no money in the government at all.  Then what would happen?  Our government employees would all have to volunteer and there would be nobody to clean out the bathrooms at the public parks.  There would be no money for toilets at The Pentagon, the streets would all look like wagon trails, and there would be no money to print money.  Let’s face it, we have to have taxes.

And we have to have death.  OMG.  Just think what would happen if we didn’t have death.  That means that everybody who was ever born would still be alive.  Talk about global warming.  The face of the earth would look like an ant hill and your great aunt Hilda would be three thousand years old.  The cost of Depends alone would skyrocket.  And then…we would need taxes to pay for caregivers for thirty five trillion people wandering around in the streets wondering what the hell happened to the sabre-toothed tigers and trying to figure out how to deduct their twenty three thousand dependents on their taxes.

You just can’t win.

SalGal

Tags: taxes midlife midlifegals

I’m in a medical state of mind these days and I know there are some out there who, like me, qualify for the ‘dental phobic’ category.  As a matter of fact, I announce my category to the receptionist with each new dentist I try.  I’ve tried a LOT of dentists because they may seem alright at first, but some of them mean me great harm or might be too neglectful of me, and then there are the ones who want to do too much.  I’ve had them all.

As a child, The Ancient one thought I wouldn’t mind going to a dentist who was in her social circle.  Never mind that the guy was 6’4” with an anger management problem.  He used to get pissed off and throw instruments around the room...with me as a wee little girl frightened beyond measure, shivering in the big chair with the spotlight blinding my sensitive little eyes.  Oh, and he yelled at his nurse which really made me mad.  That was about 54 years ago, and I’ve been a dental phobic ever since.

In any family, there seem to be two groups...siblings who have perfect teeth, no cavities or malformations of any kind and the ‘other’ group who had their first cavity at age three, teeth going off in every direction with a tongue like a heat-seeking missile, following the dentist’s every move around the mouth.  I will curse SalGal until her passing for being in the first group of those with perfect teeth.  She doesn’t have the first clue what mouth pain really is.  Actually, aside from a time or two when the medication was wearing off, neither do I.

I am so heavily medicated on Valium when I have to have work done in my mouth that SalGal has to drive me to and fro. I shuffle slowly into the waiting room like the old man from Laugh-In, feet never actually leaving the floor, head dropped, drool dripping from the corners of the mouth...pretty much nearing a comatose state.  That’s the way I go to the dentist.  Oh, and then I demand the nitrous oxide on top like the cherry on top of the whipped cream of intoxicants I have swallowed.

I could have missed all of the dental pain I’ve had to endure through the years had I not begun my movie popcorn addiction at the age of six.  Fifty-one years I’ve scarfed down a family-sized tub of popcorn at my weekly movies...down to the very last, very hard, un-popped kernel until I put the tub down to finally focus on the film.  I have never been able to rid myself of this addiction and now it’s the only one I have left.  So, I have a continuous supply of Valium (okay, I do cheat and take one just for fun every few months or so...sue me)...for every time I need to have the dentist re-adjust my ‘partial.’  Yes, I’ve had a few teeth pulled that accidentally cracked on those last kernels of popcorn, but that’s a trade-off that I’m willing to accept for just one more handful of the puffy stuff. 

I guess I shouldn’t complain, but then life is just a series of trade-offs, is it not?

KK

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I hate going to the dentist more than anything.  It’s true that KK has had more unfortunate experiences with dentists than I have but being afraid of that office and the tools they use is an archetypal fear.  The only scarier thing that I have done is stand-up comedy.  Both are frightening enough to cause heart failure and both can leave you shaky and in need of a Xanax beforehand and a stiff drink immediately afterward.  Some people use marijuana but that involves hiding in the alley and I would rather chill at home with that whole idea.

I had a baby tooth come out of the bottom left side of my mouth when I was about twelve years old.  Our dentist’s name was Dr. Dean Stract and he saw after a while that a new one would never grow in, so he made me a false tooth in a cradle of steel that slipped right into my mouth and it’s still there!  I am 58 years old for God’s sake.  That means this thing has been in my mouth for 46 years! Sure, my partial is a little loose and I can’t eat Milk Duds anymore, but I’ve had it for so long now that it seems like a part of me.  Like my toenails…or maybe my hair.  You have to clean it every day, make sure it doesn’t go down the drain in the bathroom sink, and keep the cats from using it as a push toy.

Yeah, I lucked out in the tooth department.  The worst thing that ever happened in my mouth was when I had to get my two upper molars removed.  That hurt like a son-of-a-bitch and they didn’t warn me at all.  I even went back to work that day thinking, this is a piece of cake.  When the drugs wore off toward the end of the day I thought I was dying.  Either that or a bat had flown into my mouth and was eating my head from the inside out.  It was grim and I ended up in bed for three days reading The National Inquirer and watching reruns of The Dick VanDyke Show.

And how about the sound of the drill?  Is that the scariest?  It makes you feel like you got caught in a scary movie.  I know, I know…it doesn’t hurt but it’s just the sound of it.  You hear the sound of liquid and the light is in your eyes as dim faces peek at you from the darkness and you feel like you are drowning and…wait a minute, I’m on stage in a comedy club and I’m dyin’ up here….please let this be a dream, please let this be a dream, please let this be a dream….

Wait a minute, there’s laughter and applause!  My dentist and hygenist love me.

SalGal

Tags: midlife dentist

Frankly, I don’t care which came first, the chicken or the egg; I’m just damn glad that chickens shoot those ovals out at such a clip.  You may think I’ve finally run out of things to blog about and saw an egg in the kitchen and just thought, ‘What the hell, I’ll write about eggs.’  You would be only half wrong.  True, eggs may seem boring to some, but those of us who crave them will be riveted to this tome.

Let’s envision a world without eggs.  There would be no Hollandaise sauce which would be a travesty.  Fried chicken would be a rare delicacy because there would not be as many chickens.  You sure wouldn’t have any souffles and what kind of a world would that be?  Easter would just be about Jesus and rabbits.  Over medium would have a completely different definition, and sunny side up would be some ditzy psychological disposition.

Did you know that on the first day of Spring you can stand a raw egg up vertically on a flat surface?  This is a great cocktail party trick although it does take time, so you’re able to have another drink while you watch the fool trying over and over again to make it happen.  Have patience...it works.  So, eggs have something to do with the sun and the moon.  Freaky!

Whoever tells you they don’t like eggs is lying.  And, I suspicion that even vegans secretly have an egg on toast every now and then.  Okay, I don’t like poached eggs, especially to watch them cooking...it’s just too much information and slimy like the insides of okra, but I’ll eat them when the word Benedict comes after.  Ultimately, if we didn’t have eggs to ‘push around anymore’ there would be no spoon races...what would you put in the spoon, tomatoes?? 

I rest my egg case.

KK

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I love eggs more than anything.  I eat an egg over medium pretty much every day for breakfast.  Remember when they said eggs had too much cholesterol and everybody started eating only the whites?  That's gross.  I never did that.  If you can't eat the yolks what's the point?  That would be like saying, "I'll have the cherry pie but hold the cherries."  No, you've got to eat the whole egg or you are just fooling yourself that you are being healthy.  And...in my opinion...you are a pussy.

Can you imagine eating an ostrich egg?  Did you see that Amazing Race episode where the contestants had to eat a huge bowl of scrambled ostrich eggs?  They were gagging and choking and throwing up all over the place.  And do you remember that time when the contestants on Survivor had to eat those eggs with the partially matured ducks in them?  OMG!! They had feet and feathers and heads and everything!!  I could not do that.  I'm sorry but that would have been my last day on Survivor and Jeff Probst wouldn't have had to put out my flame with a giant candle sniffer.  I would have spit the fire out on my way down the trail of shame.

They serve quail eggs in fancy restaurants but they make me a little nervous.  I don't know, I suspect that they go out to Central Park in NYC and get filthy pigeon eggs from the mouths of stone gargoyles on brownstones and then slap them on top of weeds and call them warm sahlahds.  I don't know why I think that. Maybe it's because I can't imagine the quail egg salesman knocking on the back door of a five-star restaurant to sell his tiny little cartons of quail eggs.  Where did he get them?  I ain't eatin' no friggin quail eggs anywhere.

You can buy eggs in milk cartons now too.  That's weird.  People can't even be bothered to crack their own eggs these days?  And, they even have little half-assed milk cartons of egg whites.  Can that be real?  I would never buy one of those.  That would be like pouring snot into the frying pan.

Okay, that's it.  I'm done.  I just grossed myself out.

SalGal

Tags: eggs midlife chickens

I wouldn’t be young again if you paid me many thousands of dollars.  Okay, if you offered me millions of dollars, I would indeed go back to my dentist and have him put the silver metal braces back on my teeth, but I would ask for a million per year (I had to wear them for four years!).  I’ve heard that young’uns now-a-days have to wear them for about a week, and they can pick purple if they want to.  Injustice number one.

You can tell I’m a boomer because I’ve already used the term, now-a-days.  Isn’t that pathetic? I didn’t realize it until I re-read that first paragraph.  Those terms come out of my mouth without my brain even knowing it.  When those expressions escape my lips, The Ancient One does give me a wink and a nod which sends chills up and down my spine...the knowingness that I am becoming my mother.  Injustice number two.

Now that I’ve re-read the second paragraph, I’m not sounding too happy about my age now, am I?  But, really...would you be thirteen again...EVER?  I grew EIGHT inches in my thirteenth year.  By that summer, my little friends came up to my waist.  I felt like the Empire State Building surrounded by a sea of three-floor, brownstone walk-ups.  My legs were 4’9” long and my neck comprised the other foot bringing my adolescent frame to 5’9”.  Injustice numbers three through twelve.

When you become a boomer you just have to trade some things.  You trade a turkey waddle for empowerment, waist-level bosoms for the sense of humor you always wished you had, and spider veins for the balls, I mean courage you’ve grown as a boomer woman.  God is funny like that, isn’t she?  She gives and takes, and I think she must be middle aged, don’t you?

Oh.  I’d devote this paragraph to middle-aged sex, but I have nothing to report.  And, I’m not even sure that’s an injustice.

KK

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Yes, that old saying is so true.  Youth is wasted on the young.  That’s because they’re stupid.  You don’t get smart until you’re in your forties.  That is unless by then you got paranoid schizophrenia, accidentally went deaf and dumb, or married Donald Trump. Be that as it may, wisdom is wasted on us baby boomers.  We invented Schlotzki’s sandwiches, free sex, and peasant blouses.  We think The Secret is real and that the world will end on 12/12/12, so who cares about how smart you are?  Really.  We only have about three years here to have some fun and max out our Citi Cards.

I guess I wouldn’t mind being young again as long as I can still know what I know now. When I was young I thought all grown-ups were smarter than I was just because they were older and had a cocktail in their hand.  Now I’m the older person with a cocktail in my hand and I’m just now figuring things out.  It took me 58 years to figure out that you have to do what your heart tells you to do and you can’t get spilled fingernail polish out of the carpet no matter what you do.

I know now that the young people of today don’t want to hear anything we boomers have to say.  They don’t’ want to listen to our well-learned lessons because they think we are relics who don’t know the first thing about Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace.  That’s good, because secretly we are taking over the internet and learning how to use it to rid the world of texting, Hanna Montana, and Japanese computer-generated avatars with big, huge eyes.  You can thank us for that one later.

And won’t you be surprised when suddenly the most important demographic becomes 40 to 60 years old instead of 18 to 24.  All programming, ads and products will be aimed at us and ‘Twilight’ will go off the air in favor of…’THE MIDLIFE GALS’!!! So learn all your lessons yourselves, you young punks.  You’re on your own.

SalGal

Probably like some of you, I pay thousands of dollars per year to insure against having to pay thousands of dollars MORE per year in case I might get sick.  This is just one of those things that, if you are able to do, you do.  Everyone tells you that it’s a necessary evil in our society and that if you don’t have it, you’re screwed.  It’s a conundrum though, isn’t it?  On the one hand, if you have it, you feel safe...like there’s a bubble around you through which no bugs, maladies or injuries penetrate. And, if you’re like me, when the bubble does spring a leak, you’re immediately pissed off at the insurance company.  Why?  Because they don’t cover shit!

Used to be, when I thought of the word, ‘rider,’ I pictured a handsome cowboy on a bay mare galloping across a mountain meadow chasing down a lost calf...not a piece of paper that says, ‘By the way...if you should be revisited by a malady that preceded your coverage with us, and need some form of treatment to make sure this malady does not come back...we’ve decided that either one of those categories would mean less money for us, and we need all the billions that we make every year.  SO, you can kiss any kind of coverage for this malady goodbye and pay “out of pocket” (another creepy visual comes to mind here).

Can I hear an Amen about ‘deductibles?’  If you’re healthy, your insurance won’t pay for any little thing you need during the course of a year because your deductible is $5000, and your deductible is $5000 per year so that your insurance payment won’t total more than your mortgage payment, so insurance becomes a moot point, except for the money coming from “out of pocket”...your pockets to the insurance companies.  I can actually see two old geezers in Brooks Brothers suits sitting at their mahogany desks laughing about how clever and successful this strategy has been for them through the years.  It would make my blood boil except for the fact that I haven’t met my deductible for this year yet.

Auto insurance is pretty important to have also, right?  Here’s how I feel about the auto insurance industry.  At age 42, I divorced Mr. Three, left New York City, headed home to Texas and bought the first car I’d owned or driven in 12 years.  Then I applied for auto insurance and was turned down flat.  HUH?  And, the reason was a legal technicality...and the LAW in Texas.  As a woman, I was required to be divorced for at least six months because before that period of time was over, I would be considered, “too emotionally unstable to drive.”  This was the law, I swear to God.  And, when told this, how do you think I responded....................”TOO EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE TO DRIVE????  ARE YOU FRIGGIN’ KIDDING ME????”  Of course, my response had nothing to do with my emotional condition regarding my marriage collapsing and EVERYTHING to do with having been LEGALLY stereotyped in that way and refused service. 

I could write a book about insurance, but then no insurance company would ever insure me for anything again because of a new ‘rider’ they have that’s called, “No Coverage for Justifiable Homicide of an Insurance Agent.”

KK

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KK is making me have health insurance now.  I never had it before because I couldn’t afford it.  I sort of didn’t believe in it anyway.  Therefore, I spent one third of my life in LA at the Hollywood/Sunset Free Clinic reading pamphlets about sexually transmitted diseases and bumming grapes off of little old Mexican ladies.  I don’t know why they always brought big red grapes to the free clinic.  It’s just one of those things, like Caucasians in airports who always have pizza slices at the gate.  You can count on it.

I just figured that I would rather pay off my emergency room bill at $50 a month instead of paying my insurance premium at $150 a month PLUS the hospital payment because my deductible was $1,437,899.69 and that didn’t cover anything that was genetic, cancerous, or caused you to be ill.

I’m not sure what I’m covered for right now.  I think I’m covered if a tree falls on me or if I get food poisoning at a restaurant, as long as it is east of I-35.  If it is west of I-35 but east of Mopac freeway then I’m covered if I’m in a car wreck but only if the driver is over 21 but not if it is a woman over 86 and not if there is an open container of grapes in her car.

All you can do is be careful and hope the guy who answers the phone in Bumai, India understands what anal hemorrhoid means and counts it as covered under not pre-existing or treated for cosmetic purposes only.  Good luck.

SalGal

Tags: insurance midlife gals

The Midlife Gals were just wandering through the garden when they stumbled upon the Easter bunny!  JUST the rabbit they wanted to talk to about the location of the golden egg. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_dTGYxe5Ls

Until this very morning, SalGal’s right hand resembled the Komodo Dragon’s mangled, bent, misshapen claw. Her ring finger and pinkie on the right hand were permanently bent at the middle knuckle in a way that made you think she was striking a ‘pose’ as if she were trying out for a hand lotion commercial at Jurassic Park. Would that her 58-year-old hands were ever considered for such a thing... or mine for that matter. We’ve both got knuckles that grew taller than our fingers, and the extra age-spotted skin on our hands is a conversation stopper when reaching for an hors-d'oeuvre, no doubt.

A very nice-looking, young-man-doctor operated on her today and voila, it’s fixed! She got LOTS of amazing drugs with a take-home party favor of Vicodin. Of course, if we don’t immediately pour laxatives down her throat, she won’t be relieving herself three-dimensionally (ifyouknowwhatImean) for about a week. That’s what hydrocodone does to you. It’s a trade off. Sal and I both laughed until we cried while thinking of how hard it’s going to be for her to wipe her little bottom with her left hand anyway! Ever tried that you right handers?

This is my opportunity to play Florence Nightingale! Only problem is that now I’ve got two invalids...Sal AND the Ancient One. SalGal usually handles the care and feeding of The Ancient One while I cover the logistical matters for the family, and now that Sal’s out of commission, this (and several other chores) fall to moi. The splint on Sal’s hand doesn’t come off for another week. I’m doing fine today, just so you know. Part of this caregiving really feeds my control addiction...like my hand is in a death grip on the control panel, but that’s nothing new...besides, if they don’t like the way I’m handling things, what are they going to do...run away?

Let me just say that by the end of this week, they’ll both be begging for me to STOP, WALK AWAY and let Sally resume her duties. They’ll be so tired of Stauffer’s Chicken Pot Pies, wieners in Hormel chili and cinnamon toast that I’ll be off the cooking hook anyway. Here’s the disturbing thing about all of this...I’m so glad I never had children. There, I said it. The Ancient One has nary a maternal gene herself...and whatever lame skills she did pass on to us went right over our heads like prom dresses. I’ll be glad when Sal is well enough to go out with me for martinis! Sal will be back poking out her next essay with her two index fingers before the splint comes off...Hehehe!

With much love intended,
KK
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Hand operation

Yesterday I had an operatilon ojj my rigjt hand Nlo problema. .I wentt o sleep and git ghood drugs. Viacadin today- good dtuff

KK is a peiceof shitmy hand didn’t look thatmbad

SalGal

Tags: radio show the midlife gals

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