Also, as my hormones level out, my skin is freaking out a little bit, and I have a giant zit just under the outside of my right nostril. Like GIANT giant. So giant that when I told A. I was meeting two friends for lunch, he asked if we would be getting a table for FOUR.
I've taken to calling it the Zit Mustache, and making feeble attempts to cover it with makeup, which I am not so good at, and which you might think I might be good at having spent so much time in the fine arts department with paints and such, but no. I cannot successfully cover up a zit on my own face. I must have completely skipped that lesson in Junior High—when all of the other girls my age were learning how to convincingly apply cover-up, I was probably practicing for the Spelling Team. (You think I'm kidding. I was a competitive speller. Explains a lot, no?)
But the zit. It will go down in history along with the monster zit that appeared in the middle of my left cheek a week before my wedding, the one I fiddled with and poked at so much that I actually had to wear a band-aid over it. And apply Neosporin.
We will mark time by this zit. When I am old and gray and I drag out my ancient crock-pot to make some spicy black bean soup at the holidays, my adult children and their spouses will gently joke with me about how old that crock-pot must be, and I'll turn to A. and say, "honey, how old do you think this crock-pot is?" And he will say, "Well, you got it the year you had that zit mustache. That makes it thirty-four years old this October."
We lost her tonight to a swiftly growing brain tumor, discovered just over a month ago.
