Have Some Lemon Juice With That Paper Cut

Or, Why I Should Never, Ever, Under Any Circumstances, Answer The Phone When Caller ID Shows It’s My Mother Calling.

But, like a MORON, I did indeed answer the phone last night. 

DURING UGLY BETTY.

What is wrong with me?!?

My Mother, per usual, had plenty of annoying and irritating helpful and constructive suggestions for me.

Had I seen The Key Master lately? she inquired.

"He reminded me the other day about your cold womb and thinks it would help if you came once a week," she offered helpfully.

"Uh, Mom?  Between the doctor’s appointments and the acupuncture and boiling that tea and seeing the chiropractor and now doing physical therapy for my repetitive stress injury, I just don’t have time to see him every week."

"Hhhmmppff," she answered, clearly not pleased.  "Well, maybe you can go Saturday mornings?" she suggested.

What I thought:  Why yes, that sounds just great!  After working a long week the FIRST thing I feel like doing on a Saturday morning is being groped by a tiny Korean man with his tiny fingers and tiny hands and all that belching.

SUPER FUN!

What I said:  "Why yes, maybe I could try that…"

And then she asked me, for the seventeenth MILLION time, "are you sure you drank those three bottles of herbs that Sadie the Haitian psychic recommended?"

"Yes, I drank them months ago," I reassured her.  To be more specific, I did in fact drink some of this concoction before I regained my tenuous grasp on reality and asked myself what in the frigging hell was I doing?!?

Apparently, my Mom spoke with this psychic who of course came very highly recommended (she gave a GREAT reading to one of her best friends, warning that her new husband could be extremely dangerous because he was a spy or some crazy thing!) and this woman told my Mom that both my sister and I had cold wombs.  Of course, this is about the gazillionth time I’ve heard this.

This woman Sadie has a daughter living in Brooklyn and she had to purchase this tincture for us, sending it to California.  Supposedly, this was a magical elixir and had worked for HUNDREDS of women producing HUNDREDS of babies over the years!

What was this tincture, you ask?  I have no idea.  It had some herbs in it, preserved in this dark brown liquid of an alcoholic nature that was about 100 proof.  It turned into a thick, brown sludge and tasted like the strongest shot of JagerMeister you’d ever had in your life.  It was vile.

But I did, in fact, try it because there are times I’m desperate and figure, well why not?  If it’s a somewhat natural substance (herbs, people, herbs are natural!) then why not?

Then, of course, good sense wormed its way back into my tiny brain and forced me to reconsider this plan.  I drank part of one bottle and dumped the rest, gagging at the nuclear waste-like sludge collecting at the bottom of the glass bottles.

But I lied and said I drank all of it, and so did my sister who was included in this little experiment because, according to Sadie, she has a cold womb too.

But this has come back to haunt me, because last night my Mother reminded me that my sister drank the herbs (which she didn’t) and now SHE is pregnant (which she is).

And I, obviously, am not.

Which was super fun to be reminded about, as you can imagine. 

Because I had forgotten. 

I had completely forgotten that I am not pregnant.  Just slipped my mind. I guess even though I had cramps and was expecting my period any second, I got so caught up in last night’s Ugly Betty storyline, what with her Marlo Thomas, That Girl attitude and comical braces and exaggerated bushy eye brows and that kicky poncho she sports, well, I had just completely and totally FORGOTTEN that I am not pregnant.

Thankfully, my Mother was right there to remind me.

Bitter? 

Me? 

Bitter as that vile herbal tincture I obviously should have ingested, because if I had I’d probably have twelve little brats running screaming through the kitchen about now…