Halloween heroes and Pain relief

Hello this is Anne’s brain in black and white. This is Anne’s brain in black and white, on drugs...any questions? Recovering from knee surgery sucks! Anne held captive day two.

Two weeks of purgatory is required and I sit on my rear, accumulating cellulite and new rolls. As I stew in the same stiff position (insert obvious male arousal joke here), listening to the media coverage of campaign vomit, I realize that I’m screwed out of one of my favorite holidays: Halloween. I love Halloween! As a kid, my favorite costume was Wonder Woman. I relished in the fact that my Wonder Woman power bracelets could deflect any boy cooties and unwarranted weird friendships with a flick of my wrists.

The ghosts of Halloween past seem to creep into what’s left of my grey matter and I recall being Cat Woman, Tarzan and the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz. To me, it seems that Halloween is a definite parade of alter egos, of the possibility of what one can be, of what one wants to be. In one way or another, our own definition of a hero. There are no rules or regulations. Last year, I was hero to myself and my kids, coming up with three costumes under twenty bucks. Fashioning my character after SNL’s Superstar, I went to a naughty Halloween party. My alter ego, little Mary Katherine Come-Lately, was a hit, complete with pigtails and a mini-mini-plaid school-girl skirt (under which I wore some bright red satin boxers-see? Naughty). I jumped into furniture yelling, “Superstar!” and vigorously smelled my armpits. The next day, I helped my kids with their costumes and we carved jack-o-lanterns. While we trekked to our Church’s Trunk-or Treat party, the kids costumes were recognized as a Confederate soldier and The Corpse Bride, sweet success of costume frugality. Halloween costume recognition enabled me to emerged from the depths of costumes-funds lost up to the status of creativity found heroine.

Yep, Codeine is a narcotic and I am feeling Frankenstein blue about missing one of my favorite holidays. Truth be told, I probably wouldn’t be up to crashing into furniture this year, but the last straw that broke this scarecrows back, was that my kids no longer needed help with their costumes nor did they want to carve jack-o-lanterns this year. They just need a taxi service. “You’ll be able to drive by then, right mom?” My daughter, now fifteen, is attending an all girls costume/hot-tub/sleep over party. My son is going to our church’s Trunk-or-treat with friends and then attending an all boys sleep over at “one of his posses cribs.” This year, my Halloween celebration is going to consist of greeting trick-or-treaters, gorging on codeine and candy while watching, 'It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.'

So, I sit, contemplating the universe which is usually reserved for a few moments alone on the pot. The surgical pain though narcoticly bearable, nags at me, but the sitting really gets under my skin. The Molotov cocktails of daytime TV is excruciating. I can’t believe Maury Povich is still skulking around the depths of daytime television. Sadly the consolation prize of landing on the Spanish channel and giggling at our Hispanic soap opera counterpart's acting is short lived. No wonder we are a nation of fatties and Xanax abusers!

There is only so much crap I can endure from daytime TV, U-Tube and email forwards from well-wishing friends and family. I am a captive audience for forward spam and good intentions gone bad. My numerous fan base wants to relieve me from my post surgical encroaching boredom and most of them think forwarding me U-Tubes of the Carol Burnett show is helpful, but after twenty times of watching Tim Conway attempt to flub everyone's lines with his comic relief, it becomes apparent why comedy has, dare I say it? Evolved.

Even the SNL skits have reached my monotone limit. How many times can one endure the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin act? Sadly, I also discovered that my beloved Dirty Jobs CD’s couldn’t save me from the pitfalls of post-surgical boredom. Besides, watching Mike Rowe is like foreplay for me. Dirty Jobs should have a disclaimer for women in their 40s: Don’t watch alone or batteries required.
One of my friends, a single gal, owner of fourteen cats, never been hitched and still lives w/her mom, has decided it is her mission to send me forwards of the Kathy comic strips. Opening her email is like opening an anthrax envelope: I try not to sound like Dick Cheney as I scream into the echoes of my empty house: Where’s my gun? Cruising around face book isn’t safe either. My single cat lady friend is always on, waiting for the next, um, victim to show up on line and then she pounces into chat, about everything, forever. I’m just not a chatty Kathy type. I try to recall, where in the world I put those Wonder Woman bracelets...

It’s not like I don’t have anything to do, however, being the anal retentive housewife/mother that I am, pre-surgery: I scrubbed, cleaned and organized the entire house to spare myself any guilt of an inept motherhood (well, that and I really didn’t want my kids to ask me while I was stoned out of my gourd from post- surgical drugs, “Mom, where are my cleats, my bat, my art supplies, etc, etc.” I may have responded, “They are in the dogs yard, under the car, or in the pool”).

Re-reading The Secret Life Of Bees and two other novellas keeps my mind working on a sublime level. I’m organizing my photos for the umpteenth time but I will never make the Creative Memories album of the year award. Still tackling my new play Karaoke Tonight, , but I only get in a few cognitive lines before the inevitable Codeine stupor kicks in and then the dialogue starts sounding like a Hemingway novel.

My friend Kathie, fellow stinker extraordinaire and fabu writer pointed out: November is National Novel writing month. Oh brother! I took the bait, attempting to jump off the great novel-writing bridge. I’ve written a paragraph and it took the obvious turn of play writing as I struggled: Jessica, lost in her own sorrowful thoughts, pushed the stroller across the deceptively happy park as leaves and giggles from children wafted across the hot blacktop, (Jessica holds back tears as she crosses center stage right). Suddenly, a sharp shrill of a dog’s bark wakes her to consciousness (Jessica looks stage left sharply, jumps back)....The adage of write what you know has new meaning for me. I'm still under the impression that a novel, a really good novel has to have some dark, dramatic element. The only way for me to write dark and dramatic is to involve the depression which is slowly seeping its way into my mind set due to the narcotic affects of the codeine. That and sitting on my fat arse for way, way too long and then, my ridicules attempts at novel writing indeed, start to resemble a Hemingway novel.

Hemingway had it right when he said: As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary. And then I remember: I have two weeks of dinners coming our way thanks to my Wonder-women girlfriends-heroes all! Surrounding us in spaghetti, chicken and sloppy joes with dessert..not to mention that my Wonder-women super heroes drive all the way up here to Hillbilly-ville and deliver. Real super-women take-out, gotta love that!

Suddenly, my warped sense of humor flies like little Mary Katherine Come-Lately towards, not a sofa but a nano-second of genius: Who says a novel has to have dark and dramatic? Maybe I'll try my hand at the silliness of Romance novels? Flicking on the first season of Dirty Jobs: Sewer Inspector and Pig Farmer, I type with inspiration and sheer, novel genius :

Jessica holds the crimson rose between her veneers, ready to jump into Fabio's arms as the music sounds and crowd cheers. It is 'Dancing With The Stars' all new twenty-fifth season and the momentum builds as the Tango erupts from the Electronica DJ, "Now! Jessica, Now!" Fabio urges as Jessica takes a flying leap into mid air only to briefly land and spin on her head. Confidently regaining her composure as Fabio drags her by the arms across the stage, Jessica realizes this was the moment she has fallen in deep, obsessive love with Fabio. The crowd roars, the judges are on their feet in standing ovation as Jessica looks up, tears streak her face and yet, the crimpson rose still intact between her teeth, she winks at her biggest competitor, 150-year-old Cloris Leachman, as the two exchange admirable grins, ....