Pimple

The only sound right now is the clickety click of my keyboard, and the dog's light snoring as he snoozes at my feet.  It's been a long day. I'm tense and snappish.  The silence is its own comfort.

The job thing has me irritable.  The night is cold and damp.  I have to go to the grocery tomorrow, do laundry, go to work, pay bills.  I should be in bed, but I'm not sleepy.  My mind is busy.  I have a pimple.  A zit.  I'm sixty years old.  I got over these at fifteen, I thought.  Geez.

Where? says Hubby.  RIGHT THERE!!! I almost screech.  That little thing? he says.  THAT BIG THING! I say. Geez, he says.

I can see it, even with my lousy near vision.  It's right there, right above my beauty mark. (oh, OK, it's a mole.  Aunt Marjie called it a beauty mark. No one ever said Liz Taylor or Cindy Crawford had a mole, did they?  Well, DID THEY??) I'm getting testy, aren't I?  The new improved me isn't supposed to have a pimple.  I am too vain to tolerate a teenage imperfection.

As a pre-teen, I put up with the inevitable hormone-induced outbreaks.  One time, my face looked so bad that a teacher sent me to the school nurse....I had measles, thank goodness, not major acne.  It was school picture day, and I never did get a retake.  Believe it or not, this happened to me twice.  I won't tell you the years.  You might look it up and die laughing.

Since the years of misery, my complexion hasn't been too bad.  I'm thinking about cosmetic surgery when I win the lottery, just to tighten up the throat, maybe the jowls and the eyelids. But will that get rid of the pimple?  I think not.

I usually only look in the mirror to use the Great Lash and to fix the curl on my forehead.  Now I find myself drawn there hourly, checking to see if the monstrous growth has taken over the entire left quadrant of my face, or if it has miraculously disappeared.  I am obsessed. 

I'm thinking customers may not want me to wait on them, that I may be contagious.  Will this be the day I run into somebody I haven't seen in years?  I just know I will get called for a job interview when this..this....this THING is at its worst.  Oh, the shame of it.

I examine it for the umpteenth time....this cannot be.....there are TWO!!!!!! Geez, will I ever be able to show my face in public again?  THERE CANNOT BE TWO PIMPLES. I lean closer to the mirror.  I will call in sick, yes I will....but it is a bit of chocolate from my ice cream bar.

I know that one pimple doesn't make me a different person.  It makes me a bit self-conscious is all.  I am still ME, pimple or not.  It is just an eruption, not an interruption of my life.  Nobody cares.

So if one zit or ten (please, God, not ten!) doesn't change who I am, I shouldn't let other little things get in my way either, should I?  No, and I won't.

Forget I mentioned the zit.  I am going to enjoy the silence while it lasts, let my brain drift to sleep, scratch Rocco's ears and put some astringent on my skin.

I will not obsess...I will not obsess...I will not obsess....