Standards

Lounging in bed this morning, I avoided writing a poem that won’t quite pull itself together, about crows de-roosting at dawn. While not thinking about it, two things occurred to me. First, I really wanted a cup of coffee.

Curled under my duvet, fists balled under the pillow, head wrapped in a turban of duvetness with only my face exposed, my nose was cold. This morning it was -14 Celsius and swaddled in an amniotic sac, I dawdled getting out of bed. My husband had left earlier for a long-distance cross-country ski so there was no chance he’d intuit my longing.

“I should go to Starbucks” was my second thought. Pull on my Sorel boots, tuck in my plaid flannel pj’s, slide into my purple down coat that makes me look like a stuffed eggplant, and go. But then – and here’s the thought – I didn’t because Starbucks has standards. One does not go to Starbucks in a state of just-out-of bedness, still smelling like warm sheets and morning musk. One does not appear with hair sticking straight up like a Common Merganser. If only Starbucks was in Wal-Mart, then I could go because….

Common merganser – photo credit: https://vancouverislandnature.wordpress.com/tag/spring/

I learned a new word this week. “Aposiopesis” is a rhetorical trick used by a speaker when she suddenly stops mid-sentence as though she can’t bear to proceed. If I were sharing a cup of coffee with you, chattering about this profound thought, that “because” would hang there, pointing out without actually saying it “because I’d fit in with all the other sloppy pj’d shoppers wearing baseball caps backwards, covering rumpled hair.”

***

Dearly beloved and I are planning a getaway, our first alone in 21 years. I’m excited but also feeling guilty about leaving behind the children. I’m over-planning food for them (who aren’t really children anymore), and emergency preparedness for the two sleeps we’re away, making a long list of “Don’t forget to’s….”

Wardrobe planning is required for this mini-adventure even though we’re not going far, just down the road to a bed and breakfast in a 19^th century gabled brick house with a claw-foot bathtub and a four-poster bed. The anticipation of sleeping in – though not too late because we don’t want to miss the breakfast – of spooning my husband’s warm back, him spooning mine, waking me with a nudge and a wink – drove me to an intimate apparel store. Which lead me to a parallel universe where youth and beauty don’t intersect with 58 year old women.

Standing in the store in the previously mentioned Sorel boots and knee-length down coat, admiring the images of smooth young women with skin gleaming like olives, fingering the frilly filmy panties and appraising the strength of bra cups that could strain tea leaves but not hold me up, I felt like a queen-sized pillow. Maybe I’ll go home and bedazzle my sports bra, I thought. At least I won’t bubble over the seams like meatloaf.

Speaking of bedazzling, while at the hairdresser last Sunday flipping through the reading material, I came across an article on spa treatments for lower lady parts – explicitly, the adorning of your labia majora and mons pubis with glitter. This innovative treatment conveniently allows me to use another word I learned this week – clinquant – which also delightfully sounds like a word invented to describe a jeweled vagina, don’t you think?

Some spas also offer something called “vaginal rejuvenation”, more commonly known as the “labial puff”, which involves dermal filler injections. For those just wanting to buff their Brazilians, however, and avoid pesky ingrown hairs that result from excessive wax removal of pubic hair, you can opt for a steaming. Just picture it or Google if you must.  As I was reading, Beyonce’s Single Ladies with the line “…if you liked it you shoulda put a ring on it” came to mind and I thought there’s probably a spa treatment for that, too.

All this comes full circle back to standards and that today I’m glad I’m old – mature, well-seasoned, whatever – and lean more towards Starbucks than Wal-Mart.

PS: Feel free to post your best composed sentence in the comments below using the word “clinquant”.