I hate that woman in the cancer treatment commercial: the black lady who says “even the doctor’s hands were cold” then brags how she’d been instructed to come back the next day but never did. You know, like disobeying doctor’s instructions is a badge of honor?

Her inability to use verbs notwithstanding (“they kind…they care”), I just can’t help cringing every time she describes how she took her pain and “put it to work for the patients”. Because you just know she was a busy-body who’d show up in other patients rooms snapping her fingers before planting her hands on her hips and bobbing her head around, reveling in her self-appointed role as the treatment floor’s one-woman pep squad.

Honestly, if I were one of those patients I think I’d wind up dragging myself out of my bed for the sole purpose of kicking that woman’s ass.

I’m pleased to say that I survived the annual holiday visit from my mother-in-law, although things were touch-and-go at one point.

Most notably, I survived it sober, which is quite an accomplishment for me since, in years past, I’d taken to wrapping my hands around the nearest bottle of vodka rather than the old bat’s neck.

Things did get a bit touchy at one point though when, as my husband prepared to drive my daughter back to her father’s house (an hour away), my MIL asked why I wasn’t the one doing the driving. “I’d think you’d want to spend more time with your daughter,” she piped up — right in front of my daughter, who’d never given the matter much thought before.

No amount of explaining that we’d been doing it this way for years in order to avoid confrontation over the holidays would appease her, so I finally snapped “Yes, but then who’d be around to wait on you hand and foot for the rest of the afternoon?”

So the good news is that, not only did I survive the woman’s visit, but she did, too.

• is being discharded home to bed. Details tomorrow. #
• was in a bit of a car accident. Waiting in ER for stiches, MRI & more pain relief. #
• just got a spa massage & am now getting a pedicure. Sooo relaxing. #

• Sorry, momentarily nostalgic. It’ll pass. http://blip.fm/~18h57 #
• is off to take a nap. #
• @kevhamm – The tat design’s a surprise. But I promise I’ll post pictures! in reply to kevhamm #
• @copyblogger – Oooh, pack me in your suitcase? It’s freaking cold here! in reply to copyblogger #
• is getting nervous about her upcoming first tattoo! #
• New neighbors are moving in. I feel sorry for their moving dudes — they keep slipping on the ice! #
• Winter vacation starts early for the Big-Eyed Boy thanks to a “snow day”. It’s going to be a LONG sixteen days. #

There’s a new edition of The Joy of Sex out, and I couldn’t be more happy.

Oh, it’s not because they’ve finally omitted the word “frigid” (which, as we all know, really means a woman who can’t get sexually interested in a man because he acts like such a fucking child).

It’s not even because this version includes a section on “Internet Pornography”, and I’m hoping to find some new sources now that my regular bookmarks are getting to feel as predictable and uninteresting as old boyfriends.

It’s because this version doesn’t have those unsettling drawings of the man and woman who are so freaking hairy they look like beasts. Those pictures emotionally scarred me as a child when I found my folks’ dog-eared copy of the book crammed between their mattress and box springs (along with a couple of other toys I’m not going to mention). There I was, in all my prepubescent hairlessness, staring at the shaggiest beaver I’d ever seen. (Okay, the only beaver I’d ever seen up to that point, which might account for just why it was so freaking traumatic.) And the man? He could’ve been Sasquatch’s brother. Nasty.

Come to think of it, that book might very well account for why I’ve become a devotee of Msrs. Gillette and Nair.