Ketchup

Been offline for a few days while recouperating from surgery on my eyelid last Friday. So today I'm playing "catch-up."

The surgery was to correct the "half-mast" eyelid caused by nerve damage as a result of my fall in the shower last January.

Friday morning, bright and early, my opthalmologist scrubbed up, anesthetized the lid and proceeded to do a "lid-lift." I was in at 8 and out by 9. I had a good time the rest of the day and just goofed-off in front of the new HDTV.

Saturday was a different story. It itched and burned like hell. I kept applying cold compresses to it throughout the day, but still it itched and burned. It FINALLY occured to me on Sunday afternoon that it's the height of allergy season here, so I popped a Claritin last night and slept like a baby.

I'm back in the saddle today. And speaking of horses:

In Memorium
Eight Belles
A Filly Who Was All Heart

I watched the Kentucky Derby Saturday afternoon. It was great up until they ran the filly into the ground and killed her for no good reason other than corporate greed. It really pissed me off. As good as she was, she had no business being paired up with the big boys.

The racing business in this country is a disgrace and the way they treat the horses borders on animal cruelty.

But, alas, gambling is big business with lots of friends in high places.

Sad. Very sad.

Finally, we have this today. The New Jersey Hall of Fame has inducted 15 new members, including The Boss (Springsteen), Sinatra, Yogi Berra and a slew of others. There was an article about it over at the Huffington Post and, in the comments section, one comment in particular really resonated with me. Here it is:

"New Jersey is the Europe of America, (ad hominem attack on another poster)! No death penalty, sane gun laws, paid family leave for a new baby or sick relative, an effective if a little late open space policy and unions for gay couples. Yes we have our warts but we are moving forward at a much faster and progressive rate than the rest of the country. Oh, also a couple towns over is the Quaker settlement of Moorestown, the best place to live in the country the last few years in a row. It's also the weirdest state in the country, and I mean that in a good way. Check out google earth and look at some of the crazy stuff, south Jersey is the strangest."

At 10 years, I have now passed the point of being a New Yorker and am now proud to be from the Garden State!

Mullets and all.

Aging Gracefully (yeah, right)

My hero, Jake over at Nofo, recently blogged about having had lipo done. He looks fab and apparently took up jogging - now marathoning - to keep his new, boyish, figure. His breathtaking and refreshing honesty about such a personal subject impressed me so much that I wondered if I still had time to get some restorative stuff done to my face and midriff.

Then I saw the above photo posted on TMZ. Somebody has developed a bad case of Michael Jackson's disease (My Name is Carrot Top and I'm a plastisurgi-botox-steroid-aholic).

I read someplace yesterday (I never remember my sources for the really good stuff) that George Orwell, of all people, once opined that people "get the face they deserve by the time they're 50." (He wouldn't know. He had the good sense to die when he was 48.)

So I immediately ran into the bathroom to have a good, middle of the day, look.

Honey, I don't know who I pissed off but ain't nobody deserves to see what I saw staring back at me.

My friend Jan once confided to me that one morning she'd stepped out of the shower in her fog filled bathroom, sans glasses, and momentarily forgot about the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. "Mmmmom???" she stammered.

I could relate.