Got a tiger by the tail (or something like that)?

Every now and then, my middle-aged, middle-class suburban existence does chafe and burn in strange ways.

Last week, prior to attending a "staff meeting", I ate lunch at a funky little cafe (decorated in cute neo-Roccoco). Munching bad falafel, in this mostly-deserted place, I was seated next to two pretty women who were about my age. Both were much thinner than me, even though they were eating formidably more substantial luncheons. I notice these things.

One of the women was decorated with casts and bandages, but both had apparently been through the mill. They were discussing battered women and why the visibly damaged one needed to finally, permanently break away from her very abusive partner. Her sidekick was physically healed but clearly still wounded -- she was voicing "been there, done that, it is not going to get better."

Meanwhile, I was trying to mind my own business and read an entertaining and informative book on vampire bats and other bloodfeeding creatures. Before anywhere near finishing my sandwich, and barely dipping into my otherwise thoroughly engrossing book, I was gone from there. Had to pay up and split.

The ladies were so lovely and this sordid topic did not belong in their mouths or most especially in their broken bones...

why are women so often damaged by the people they love best of all?

rrrrrowwwrrr

I've got a tiger by the tail it's plain to see
I won't be much when you get through with me
Well I'm a losing weight and I'm turning mighty pale
Looks like I've got a tiger by the tail
"(I've got a) Tiger by the Tail", c1964
Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. aka Buck Owens

Haven't lost any weight yet (though I have high hopes). However, I may be the palest white woman in America.

For example:

Damn but I have a powerful weakness for Buck Owens.

You too?

Maybe not? I am thinking he may be an acquired taste.

Spent a lot of childhood weekends viewing Hee Haw on a big console television with my grampa (plus siblings and parents and aunts and uncles and many cousins) as grampa blew amazing smoke rings out of his ears, while my granny was slowly dying in a hospital bed in the dining room, right next to the buffet.

We didn't have a television at home, but the grandparents had a huge one. My early television memories involve no fondly-recalled cartoons, no (ultimate hip and cool) Dark Shadows. Nope, nothing slick in my TV history. What we watched was Hee Haw and The Lawrence Welk Show.

Cigarettes, country music, cancer. An inseparable trinity.

I used to know a girl who could do one scary, deep-throated tiger snarl. She could make people jump with it, but her purr was sexy and engaging too.

rrrrrowwwrrr

Still struggling with whether to abandon or re-direct or just carry on with this blog. Taking another stab at it tonight, forgive me but I am rusty and crusted over with barnacles from weeks of blog-immobility aka unposting. Even worse than not posting at all, I have been creating and then deleting posts like a fiend.

Maybe Buck Owens was behind my aborted attempt to flee The Husband by taking a job in Bakersfield? Never got away, though I did subscribe to the Bakersfield Californian via third class mail for several months. Talk about escapist reading.

What have I been up to lately, besides not blog-posting? Well, I have been reading a lot. Reading after dinner, companionably sitting with my television-viewing spouse. My husband is sorely addicted to television news pundit programs.

I glance up from my book, usually during the commercial breaks for Cialis. These generally catch the eyes and ears of our teenage daughter and her fifth grade brother too. We all sit in silence and wait for it while the narrator intones "... in the rare event of an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term injury." So far neither son nor daughter have remarked on this but they have certainly heard it enough.

They never ran commercials like this during Hee Haw.