A  little too busy for much more bloggifying today. Over at Writers Plain & Simple, though, see today’s comparative review of Word templates designed for e-book and print book design.

The water heater died!

So Saturday a couple of friends wished to visit and go out to lunch. This is my first exposure to live humans who are not nurses, volunteer babysitters, or my hapless son. I’ve got to figure out what to wear that will accommodate the Grenade Sack and not look too, TOO bizarre. And I ain’t got many candidates….

I rarely wear button-up-the-front shirts. It’s too warm in the winter for flannel hunter-type shirts like we used to wear when we were young hippies. And in the summer…if you could go without a shirt at all, you would. Plus I wish never to iron again. Consequently, almost everything I have amounts to pullover T-shirts or various fancified equivalents.

Furthermore, I live in Costco jeans. It looks a great deal to me like fitting the bulky waist of Your Grandma’s Jeans under the Grenade Sack (which holds the grenade-shaped pumps for the Jackson Pratt drains)  is going to be hugely problematic. And where the damn drains are concerned, I wish to avoid “problematic” at all costs.

Complicating matters, the sky has clabbered up, it’s cold, and it’s starting to rain. The few shirts I have that do button are cotton.

I decide to put on an old pair of stretchy yoga pants, which I haven’t worn in years. Run them through the dryer to shake out the accumulated closet dust and ambient dog hair.

Top?  Oh god. Maybe an old, warm sweatshirt that I got at a tourist attraction about 15 years ago?

Decide I can NOT cope with a bulky thing that has to be pulled over my head. Also, I don’t think it will cover my tush, which no one in their right mind (or who wishes to retain their right mind) would want to see beneath the yoga tights. Ugh.

Finally in the back of an unused closet I find this white 3/4-sleeve smock thing that I picked up at B’Gauze, also years ago. It’s cotton. It is NOT warm. But it’s as long as a short dress (I think it was marketed as a “jacket”) (can not BELIEVE i bought this thing!). It looks like a big, flowy, floppy, ill-conceived artist’s smock. BUT…. It’s loose fitting. It covers the Grenade Sack. And it’s easy to put on and take off.

Problem is, the thing is white. The Iron Maiden and the Grenade Sack both show through it. Curious eyes will be awed and delighted.

It occurs to me that if I can get into one of my favorite Costco camis, it might provide some camouflage. And indeed this works: the cami does disguise the hardware. However…these are the old CC camis with a shelf bra, and the elastic band stretches right straight across the incision. Not good.

However, I’d bought a package of the new Costco camis, which do NOT have a shelf bra. Now that I have nothing to jiggle, I figure maybe I can wear these. I hope.. So I break through the consumer-proof packaging (it only takes ten minutes to unwrap the damn things), take out the off-white one, and very….very…VERY gingerly slide it on.

Damned if it doesn’t work. It not only doesn’t hurt, because it sort of secures the effing drain as it passes out of the Frankenstein torso into the Grenade sack, it seems to feel…uhm. “pretty good” is not the operative term, but “OK” would do.

And lo! It does hide all the junk (well…most of it), and it does not bind across the chest. The fabric, by the way, is MUCH softer and silkier than the old Costco camis. Once the incisions are fully healed, these things may actually feel very nice as undershirts. There are some possibilities here…i hope.

So. Here’s my first fashion statement of 2015…

Yrs in continual spectacularness,

—Twiggy

 

 

And Many Happy Returns!

 

Yah. Paint those effing lemons!

So here’s a little discovery along those lines: You can cover up your mastectomy scars with TATTS!

Yes. Tattoos, and we don’t mean fake areolas. We mean extravagant, baroque, surrealistic, and truly wonderful artwork that turns something you’d just as soon not look at in the mirror into a delight.

Check out this marvelous “sleeve” that grows into a spectacular vine:

This lady has a reconstruction, and a pretty darned good one, too. Looks mighty convincing, assuming you think women’s breasts should be bulbous, as in the shape of  grapefruit. Nevertheless, even a very good reconstruction can leave you with some nasty scars. The tattoo, with its wonderful organic structure, distracts from the artificialiaty of the reconstruction job and in fact takes advantage of it. If there were any scars there, the artwork covers it exquisitely. To die for!

Here’s one, by the same artist, Vyvyn Lazonga, that appears to be over a no-reconstruction job, covering the straight, flat scar that results when the woman is rather slender and the surgeon is skilled

Now that, I could stand to look at in the morning. Or at any time of day.

For the reconstructed set, look at what the same artist did for this poor soul:

One of the things docs don’t always make clear to women is that autologous reconstruction — wherein blobs of flesh are ripped out of other parts of your body and hung on your chest to create fake boobs — is violent, destructive surgery that leaves you with scars from terrific wounds on your belly, back, fanny, or thighs. This is the “before” shot:

Here’s another very successful and appealing decoration of an unreconstructed mastectomy:

Personally, I decided to elect a double mastectomy so as to avoid becoming lopsided — out of concern about effects on posture and hoping to avoid aggravating the chronic back pain. But as a matter of fact, a design like this could overcome at least one of those concerns.

Here’s my kinda woman:

She looks like she’s close to my age, and she’s not afraid of anything. Don’t you love it?! That gecko is as perfect as perfect can get. And she looks great.

There are many more to be seen at Oddee.com and at SheKnows.com. Also — wouldn’cha know? — there’s an app for that.

From what I understand, before getting a boob tatt you need to wait a year or two after the surgery, to be sure the incisions are fully healed and everything has settled down.

Besides finding an artist who can actually do these amazing things (how to find her?), your main concern with choosing a tattoo is to address the risk of infection. The inks are injected into your skin, through the epidermis (the outer part that sheds or peels off when you get a mild sunburn) and into the dermis. Obviously, that procedure poses some risk of transferring pathogens, whether bacterial skin infections or hepatitis, a potentially lethal viral infection.

However, there are ways to maximize safety. The Mayo gives you quite an earful on the subject, plenty of useful guidelines on that site. Consumer Reports advises on what to look for and how to insure the safest procedure. The FDA, not surprisingly, inveighs against the practice, but the Washington Post reports that by and large it’s considered reasonably safe.

But if you’re scared — or just not so sure how it would look — you can get fake, temporary tattoos. Obviously, these are not going to be as gorgeous as the real thing custom-designed by an in-the-flesh (heh!) artist. But they could at least give you a clue about how a real tatt would work on your particular body.

Images:

Pink sleeve and vine: Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Ad Agency Jumps on Tattoo Bandwagon
Morning glories over flat scar, Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Vine around the belly, Vyvyn Lazonga (I think–apologies if this is wrong), found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Pre-vine belly: ibid.
Flower and vine over single mastectomy: Found at Tattoo Road Trip via Fifteen Most Amazing Mastectomy Tattoos — sorry, I can’t find the artist’s name at either site.
Grand lizard: Jane Fox, found at Tattooists Turn Scars into Butterflies; again, no artist’s name seems to be provided, at least not that I can find.

Damn. I planned to make a run on the Costco on the fringe of Richistan to pick up a roast for Christmas, having let time slip past me to the point where if I don’t do it today I’ll end up in the Hell of Retail-Land that is Costco on the weekend before Christmas.

But I’ve been working (remember that?) this morning and so was running late; have an appointment with Financial Adviser Dude early in the afternoon.

The morning was partially consumed by a little computer scare: I start to work and suddenly see a pop-up: An appointment is being entered in iCal, and I need to open it for that to happen.

Huh? iCal? I never use iCal. If I use an electronic calendar, it’s Google Calendar because it’s connected to my business account.

I try to close it. No chance. I try to close iCal. It won’t shut down. Go to a system command and close out of iCal. This works.

Temporarily. Forthwith, though, up comes the same demand: I should enter my Mac password.

Don’t think so… Use the same command to close the errant iCal again. Back up DropBox again to a flash drive. Shut down the iMac (this is happening on the MacBook, but the iMac is on so I can watch Netflix).

Try to make an appointment at the Genius Bar but Apple has complicated this process SO ridiculously that eventually I give up. Figure after the afternoon appt I’ll drop by the Apple store and ask about this.

So finally, after this and some other banging around, along about 11 I go to get into my car…

And…discover that the remote key fob doesn’t work. Try to unlock a door — I need to get into the passenger compartment to put some cargo on that side — and find the key doesn’t open the lock manually, either!

Holy shit.

Fortunately, when I stumbled into the house last night after, I’d left the driver’s side door unlocked, and fortunately, the damn car had NOT locked itself, which it does off and on, erratically and unpredictably. Otherwise, I’d had to break a window to get into the vehicle.

Knowing my proclivity for operating on autopilot, I could just see myself getting out of the car in some parking lot and, by reflex, pressing LOCK on the key fob. Or the damn car locking itself on a whim.

Dig out the Gorilla Tape and slather it down over the little pop-up switch that causes the lights to come on whenever the car door is open. Said car being parked in the garage, leave the driver’s door open.

Call the mechanic. Get his answering machine.

By now it’s too late to do a Costco run all the way to hell and gone out to Paradise Valley, get home, put the groceries away, and get to my afternoon appointment.

A client importunes me. I tell her, as politely as I can, to f*** off.

My son, bless his marvelous heart, VOLUNTEERS OUT OF THE BLUE to pick up meat. Love love love!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That gives time to throw some meat on the grill

Mechanic calls. He says to bring the car by after my afternoon meeting…maybe they can fix it.

I SHOULD’VE BOUGHT A NEW CAR!

 I think lunch is almost cooked. And so, up, up, and AWAY!

Tune in next week, same time, same place. 😉