I don’t have a blog, but if there were a place online to write musings and random thoughts about irksome things without having to worry about making a point mine might read like this:
One recent day in May – Still in my pajamas at 9 a.m. The pooch is on my lap, licking at the corner of my lip, which means there’s probably a schmear of jelly there.
I tell Chewy there is work to do, but he doesn’t understand sentences that don’t contain “biscuit.”
He’s confused. There’s no way to explain that even with PJs on, adults can’t live a dog’s life of napping and playing – not until Saturday.
A deadline is coming. I troll through newspapers online, The New York Times and The Washington Post mostly, to see what grabs me. The stem-cell research feud? The looming housing-bubble bust?
Too weighty.
Michael Jackson?
Too weird.
I browse through Us Weekly. There’s a reason 1.4 million people buy that magazine each week.
The cover shows Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Ritchie as you’ve never seen them before: ready for the graveyard. The magazine reports that Lohan’s waist shrank to 24 inches and Ritchie is down to 97 pounds. It makes me wonder if they sell minus-2 sizes in Hollywood boutiques.
They must be hungry. Do they need someone to drop bags of rice on their front lawns?
These magazines disgust me. In one issue they rave about starlets who lost 10 pounds in two months – and how you can do it too! Then, a few weeks later, they feature the same celebrities as scary, vanishing women.
Those magazines are partly to blame for our love-hate relationship with food and our obsession with losing weight. Every woman I know is trying to lose “a few pounds.”
I am incensed. Chewy looks up at me, no doubt wondering how anyone can stare that long at a laptop. Besides, it’s time for his walk.
My PJs pass for funky sweat pants, so I take a chance we won’t bump into anyone we know on Wynkoop Street. (I say we because all my neighbors know his name; few know mine.)
We go out, and Chewy excitedly chases leaves twirling in the wind. If only everyone were as happy watching the mundane. That’s why, during those moments, it’s easy to live vicariously through him.
Back inside, I check my e-mail. A woman says she wants to “work with me on a product story” about a rug she designed. Another offers an “incredible opportunity” to interview the author of an advice book for single Jewish women looking to marry.
It’s as bad as pitches for Viagra.
I check voice mail. There are several nice messages, and then one from the same icky guy who calls nearly every day with a new vile comment. This time he says, “Give an immigrant maggot enough (expletive) rope, and he’ll hang himself. I hope he takes you along too.” Poor guy. So much anger, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Then there’s a United Airlines pilot who says he wants to meet me; I’m “his type.”
No, thanks. Does he think he’s reading my column on Match.com? I’m not desperate – not yet, anyway!
Good thing I don’t have a blog. I can see how, in an impersonal world, blogs make a writer feel like she can share anything. How many people can possibly be reading? Potentially everybody.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
