So, excercise did not kill me. My entire belief system is shaken to its core.

I’ve been taking a brisk two mile walk a few times a week since June and by brisk, I mean that I walk fast enough to create a nice, cool breeze and yet, paradoxically, I actually sweat ten minutes in.

Why doesn’t life make sense?

And why don’t we use the word “paradoxically” more often?

The first time I became aware of this conundrum, it completely freaked me out and I jumped all around on the sidewalk, swatting at my chest and shrieking, thinking that bugs were congregating in my bra and having orgies.

But it was only the dripping of sweat.

Yes, people. I am willingly sweating, in an attempt to get healthy.

And while I’ve been sorely tempted, I have not yet ripped all the skin off my body and replaced it with a sparkly neon blue jumpsuit made out of ice packs and a portable air conditioner.

And you know what else? I have not eaten a donut in two weeks.

My.God.

I mean, I’ve obviously been privy to this information this whole time but … I don’t know … it’s just so much more profound when I actually type it out loud.

I need a minute to process this.

And possibly cry.

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Even though I’ve been taking these walks for several weeks now, I still stand in my driveway when I’m finished and simply wait to be blinded by my own perspiration or for a heart attack to take me right then and there, if only so I can shout to no one in particular SEE? I TOLD YOU SO. CAN I HAVE THE DAMN DONUT NOW?

But so far, I’ve only managed to successfully blind myself twice. I wind up trudging inside the house and jumping into the freezer, resigned to my fate of repeating the entire disgusting, miserable, sweaty process the next day.

Exercising makes me cranky. A little insight to my mental state of mind before, during and after my walk:

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8:00 am:     Shit.

8:02 am:     Oh! Is that rain? Oh, please please please let it be rain. PLEASE. I can’t walk if it’s raining, right?

8:03 am:     Ummm, yeah. Thanks, God. Thanks a lot. Why’d you even bother? Would a thunderstorm have killed you?

8:04 am:    Yeah, like a rainbow makes it all better.

8:06 am:    UGH. It’s hot.

8:07 am:   So freaking hot.

8:09 am:    I can do this. I can do this.

8:10 am:    I cannot do this. I just can’t.

8:11 am:     Are my feet really this big? Is it the sneakers?

8:12 am:    Hello? Why are you calling me? I’m exercising. No, you cannot have baked ziti for breakfast. No. Have a bagel. You used to like them. Since when? You know what? I don’t care. I am walking and sweating. Goodbye.

8:13 am:    Stop calling me.

8:14 am:    I mean it.

8:14 am:    Ooh, ooh, anytime that you want me … ooh, ooh, anytime that you need me … oooh, ooh, anytime tha… Wait. What? Oh, come on! NO WAY.

8:14 am:    Pick up, pick up, pick … Hello? Who used my iPod and didn’t recharge it? Did I say you could? Dammit, I need to have things that are just mine. MINE. There are boundaries. You can’t just … *beep* … hey, what was that? That beep! … *beep* … That one! Wait, what? … *beep* …  My phone is going dead? … *beep* … What do you mean? I never even use it!  …*beep* …  WHO USED UP MY PHONE? There are boundar … *beep* … Hello?

8:15 am:    Oh, that’s great. Just great. Fine. I hope a car hits me. I’ll be lying dead in those bushes, not that they would know since I can’t call them. They’ll find my rotting corpse next week. Who’s going to make sure there’s milk and bread come this winter when we’re buried under ten feet of snow? Then they’ll be sorry.

8:16 am:     Fine.

8:17 am:     FREAKING FINE.

8:18 am:     UGH. UGH. UGH. This is so gross. I hate summer. I hate everything.

8:18 am:     *sniff* … ewwwww … is that … *sniff sniff* … Oh God, it’s me. UGH.

8:19 am:     Don’t forget to tape Real Housewives tonight. Don’t forget to tape Real Housewives tonight. Don’t forget to tape Real Housewives tonight.

8:20 am:     Would it kill the town to plant a few trees? What’s with all the bushes? What the hell am I paying taxes for? A forest for hobbits? Am I a hobbit? No. Thusly, I should not be paying taxes.

8:21 am:     I forgot my watch. Wonder what time it is. I’m hungry. My hair hurts.

8:22 am:     Who paints their house that color? Anarchists?

8:22 am:     Maybe they’re color blind.

8:22 am:     I feel bad now. I’m sorry, weird purplish, blue-green house with orange shutters. Why can’t I just shut up?

8:23 am:     I can do this. I can do this! How does that go? That which doesn’t kill me just makes me stronger? Yeah, that’s it. Stronger! I CAN DO THIS.

8:25 am:     Who’s the asshat that came up with that one? Nietz, something or other.

8:26 am:     Like he had nothing better to do than sit around all day, trying to sound deep. Must be nice.

8:28 am:     Make me stronger, my ass. Oh yeah? I’m raising a teenager and I’m still alive. Barely. And yet, I have the arm strength of Gumby.

8:29 am:     And the wherewithal of a potato. EXPLAIN THAT ONE, NIETZSCHE. Or whatever the hell your name is.

8:30 am:     Yeah, that’s what I thought.

8:30 am:     Say it to the booty ‘cuz the hand’s off duty, Nietz.

8:30 am:     My feet hurt. Stupid flat feet. Thanks a lot, Mom. Really. Owner of the highest arches in the eastern hemisphere save for Mickey D’s and I wind up with flat feet. Oh, but I got her love of books. Big whoop. How the hell is my reading Little Women at nine years old going to help my thighs not rub together now? Answer me that one, Mom.

8:31 am:     Oh my freaking God, are you talking on a cell phone while driving? In a school zone. Are you stupid? I should call the cops and have you busted.

8:31 am:     I totally would, if my phone worked. See Zoe? If you hadn’t texted the entire world on my phone last night, I could probably save a life right now.

8:32 am:     Look. He’s still talking. Blah blah blah blah blah BLAH. Why do stupid people breed?

8:32 am:    Just SHUT UP already, Andy.

8:33 am:     Holy crap, that is a big dog. My whole head could fit in his mouth. He’s still peeing … still peeing … and still peeing. He must have a bladder the size of … I don’t know. How big is a giant dog’s bladder normally? One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi … Wow. Just wow. It’s a virtual sea of urine.

8:34 am:     If they ate my ziti, I am going to scream.

8:34 am:    Oh, no way. NO NO NO NO NO. I’m almost home! Oh, please please please …

8:35 am:    Are you freaking serious? Now it rains? I can see my house! Please, just sprinkles. PLEEEEEASE.

8:35 am:    Sure. A monsoon. Why the hell not? What, the 97 inches of rain we’ve had this summer wasn’t enough?

8:36 am:    Oh my God, am I …? No way. DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY SWEAT IN THE RAIN?

8:36 am:    Apparently so. Who knew? Not me, that’s who.

8:36 am:    I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

8:37 am:    So much.

8:38 am:     Shit.

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Don’t you love it when things come around full circle?

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Lip service

Hey everyone!

I’d like you to meet Hildegard, my newest house guest:

Hi Hildy! You’re looking particularly repugnant this morning, I must say.

For those of you new to my blog, I get cold sores in bulk and I’m prone to naming them and then blogging about them not only because I’m a freak of nature but because, other than “Jon & Kate Plus 8” and “Octamom,” there are no better Google key words than cold sore to guarantee an orgasm of blog traffic and a healthy erection of your blog stats.

In case your interest is aroused, there are other Google key words that hit the G spot as well, but I’m going to have to think long and hard about them as I can’t recall them off the top of my head at the moment.

For those of you who have been here for awhile and are accustomed to seeing my anatomy in various stages of distress on a routine basis … I’m sorry.

Hildy came to visit yesterday and parked her big, fat, ugly ass on my lip, one week before we’re due to leave for San Francisco for our tenth anniversary celebration. Seeing as how my cold sores last anywhere from 2-3 weeks, I fully expect to pack her a little suitcase of her own, chock full of Valtrex and Lysine and Zovirax. I hope she doesn’t need her own airplane seat, the miserable little shit.

I have had just about enough of Murphy’s Law. Would someone please find Murphy and revoke his legislative powers? Because otherwise, I am going to beat him senseless.

Let’s recap, shall we?

Remember Millicent? She was Hildy’s twin sister who dropped in unexpectedly this past March, on the same day I was due to volunteer in Helena’s classroom, take her to gymnastics, go to a meeting at Zoe’s school and substitute for Bunco, which exponentially increased my chances of being noticed and thus tackled and hauled off to NASA to explain how I got an alien sucked to my face.

Milly stuck around for, oh, about two weeks.

And who can possibly forget the one, the only, the incomparable Bernice?

Not me!

Bernice was the badass mother of Milly and Hildy and, I’m pretty sure, every cold sore that ever was since the dawn of time. She came to visit me on July 4th of last year, exactly six hours before I was due at a picnic where I was to be meeting Nate’s friends and their families and friends, about sixty people total, for the first time. Right before we left for the picnic, I snapped this photo and cried.

Bernie sucked the life force out of me and overstayed her welcome by three of the longest weeks of my life. I never did get around to sending her a thank you note for the scar she left me. After DEAR BERNICE, SCREW YOU, YOU BIG, FAT HAG, I just had nothing left to say.

Who else gets cold sores like these? The kind they don’t show on Abreva commercials lest their entire viewing audience leave their TVs to vomit? The kind that swells up half your face and gives birth to dozens of canker sores and causes your ear to throb and your eye to ache and, in general, makes you want to slam your face against the pavement until it falls off?

Anyone?

Anyone at all?

To put it in terms that Google key words understands, being a pulsing, throbbing member of the trend setting community sucks and blows.

Multiple times.

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I’ll see your zit and raise you my face.

Zoe is angry at me because I wouldn’t let her miss school today just because she has a ginormous zit that has set up camp on the tip of her nose.

I felt awful for her because having “been there, done that” too many times to count in my own youth, I knew exactly where she was coming from. Who among us has not suffered a similar fate back in high school? One minute, everything’s fine and you’re busy fiddling with your walkman, singing your lungs out to Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, fixing your shoulder pads and emptying a bottle of AquaNet into your hair and then WHAM! All of sudden, you are the second coming of Rudolph and you’re panicking because you know you won’t be allowed to play in any reindeer games.

And for those of you sitting there and acting all cool, because you wouldn’t have been caught dead belting out You take the grey skies out of my way, You make the sun shiner brighter than Doris Day, I just have one word for you: LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE. Now go stand in the corner and shout Don’t leave me hanging on like a yo-yo at thirty second intervals and think about how your actions affect others. And then go douse your pants.

Now, for the rest of us who are not ashamed to admit to a little dose of George Michael every now and then … emulating Rudolph sucks, no?

But I couldn’t let her stay home from school because she’s an honor roll student and if genetics have anything to say about it, this will probably not be an isolated incident and if she stays home every time it happens, she’ll be getting her GED about the same time she qualifies for social security.

Why can’t genetics just shut up for once? Maybe then, I wouldn’t have to take cholesterol meds or hem all my pants with duct tape or pay $30 for an industrial strength bra or have a pound of bone shaved off my nose before I could legally drink.

Stupid genetics. Boo on you.

I tried to talk to Zoe about feeling her pain but talking to Zoe under these kinds of circumstances is kind of like having a conversation with a volcano. You can talk and talk and talk to your heart’s content and it will just sit there, stoic and silent, with bits of steams escaping every so often until all of a sudden, it blows its top and goes all Mt. St. Helens on your ass, after which, it will simply fume and ignore you for the next couple of decades.

Remember what it was like to be fifteen? Show me a teenager who thinks her parents had a life before she came into it and I’ll show you a teenager who thinks texting is the work of Satan. As far as my own fifteen year old self was concerned, my mother teleported to earth the day I was born, complete with credit cards and a Buick and mad culinary skills, having never experienced life as an embryo or infant or toddler or tween or teenager. What the hell did she know about zits?

But nevertheless, I tried.

I was all “Zoe, I know you think it’s horrible but every single kid in school will go through this, you are not alone” and she was all “NO YOU DON’T, MY LIFE IS OVER.”

And I was all “I used to get acne like this when I was young, I know how awful it feels” and she was all “NO YOU DON’T, I MIGHT AS WELL DROP OUT OF SCHOOL AND MOVE TO SPACE.”

But when I was all “Zoe, it sucks, it truly does, I know exactly how you feel” and she was all “NO YOU DON’T, YOU NEVER HAD TO WALK AROUND WITH YOUR FACE ALL MESSED UP, I WANT TO DIE,” then I had to draw the line.

A big, fat, thick, enormous black line with a jumbo black, permanent Sharpie.

I don’t know what it’s like to walk around with an abomination of nature on my face?

Oh No, She Di -Int.

Excuse me, Zoe … have you met my face?

Need I remind you of Bernice?

Who could forget Bernice? The cold sore that parked her ass on my lip on July 4, 2008 and within six hours, blew my lip up to what you see here. Not only did she triple the size of my lip, but she also gave birth to multiple leaking blisters and canker sores. This would be the same Bernice who thereafter turned the inside of my mouth to raw hamburger, causing my entire face and neck to swell and ache for three of the longest weeks of my life.

Now, let’s meet Bernice’s younger sister, Millicent.

Millicent moved in yesterday. This was two hours after onset. I have no idea how long Millicent intends to suck the life force out of me, but I’m guessing my lip will be entering a room five seconds before the rest of me does for at least two weeks.

And who could forget my thrilling bout with Bell’s Palsy, when the entire right side of my face became paralyzed and drooped lower than my boobs? And I had to walk around drooling and holding my eyelid open? For six weeks?

So yes, I do know what it’s like to walk around with a neon billboard stapled to my forehead flashing FREAK OF NATURE.

But life goes on and as much as I would have liked to have stayed in bed in lieu of a face transplant, I still had to go grocery shopping, to playdates, to the kids’ schools, to meetings, to swimming, to restaurants, to parties, to holiday dinners and, the best part of all, a July 4th picnic which coincidentally, occurred at exactly six hours after Bernice’s arrival, five minutes after that first photo was taken. Whoo hoo!

But, apparently, because I’m not fifteen and didn’t have to go to Global Studies at 7:30 a.m., I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING.

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Warning: Orange pee and obscenity ahead. Proceed with caution.

I’m currently nursing my … let’s see … dammit, I ran out of fingers and toes so I can’t count that high, so let’s just round up to, say, TOO MANY TO REMEMBER …  urinary tract infection.

This will be a short post since I’m busy munching on cipro and tinkling neon agent orange every 3.5 minutes. Again.

Remind me to call my contractor, would you? I need to find out how my wing at the urologist’s office is coming along. I’m thinking of naming it the Andrea Chamberlain Toxic Wasteland Memorial Wing – In Honor of Putrefied Bladders and Urethras Everywhere.

Grand opening is scheduled for February 1.  There’ll be complimentary cranberry juice and antibiotics for everyone. Lots of fun to be had! Door prizes available, based on highest individual volumes of expressed urine and most concentrated levels of bacteria. Those with e-coli get double the chances to win!

Grand prize of a free catheterization goes to the lucky owner of the brightest, most fluorescent orange pee.

No cover charge, just leave a urine sample at the door, if you please.

Casual dress, paper robes optional.

Hope you can make it!

Sigh.

I’m trying to find the humor in having a hazardous no-fly zone in the general vicinity of my urinary tract system. I’m trying, but quite frankly, I’m exhausted from battling the vermin that insist on squatting and breeding in my innards.

I know I should keep fighting the good fight, but you know what?

UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE.

I think my friend Deb summed it up best when she emailed me this:

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

But five will do.

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