Happy New Year, y’all!
It’s Tits-free McGee, checking in with my usual end-of-year wrap-up (technically at the beginning of the year, but these things are mere details). Last time we spoke, I was awaiting surgery to remove my remaining breast implant and go flat, in the hopes of simplifying my life, health-wise, and looking more like Cher.
Although it’s still too soon to know how either of those goals is ultimately going to work out, I’m happy to say that the surgery was a breeze; I had it on a Wednesday evening, took Thursday and Friday off work (and spent that time re-learning how to make friendship bracelets (in an homage to Summer 1987, when I spent all day errday weaving skeins of embroidery thread to create striped adornments for all of my friends), thinking I was going to make them for my children; sadly, the one I made for the younger kid left him rather nonplussed, and I ran out of time to make one for the older kid, but DAMN, I’ve still got it . . . muscle memory is a crazy thing . . . but I digress), and by Monday, I was feeling rested, more symmetrical, and ready to return to work (which I did remotely until the removal of the surgical drain, because rocking a drain to the office = GROSS). I’ve felt absolutely fine, both physically and emotionally, ever since — with two small exceptions:
- When I revisited Dr. Boobie Builder a week post-surgery, to get the drain removed, I asked him about the weird “scab” I’d discovered the day after my surgery (I’d been idly scratching, and discovered a strip of surgical tape a couple of inches below my right clavicle; assuming it had been used to attach a monitor of some sort during surgery, I peeled it off, and found the scab beneath it). I thought maybe I’d been accidentally speared with a fumbled scalpel during the operation or something . . . but I learned instead that while I was sleeping, Dr. BB had taken it upon himself to remove a skin-taggy mole that had lived adjacent to my right armpit for decades. And that weird, crusty scab that hadn’t gone away in the week since surgery was actually STITCHES, because he’d pulled that sucker out at the root to ensure it wouldn’t grow back.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” he said blithely. And I assured him I didn’t (I mean, here I was deep in my dropped-scalpel theory, so clearly I hadn’t even noticed the missing mole) . . . but then, on the drive home, I was surprised to find myself fighting back tears. “Maybe I need to eat something,” I thought, realizing I hadn’t had breakfast — so I hit a drive thru on the way back to my house. Once the quarter pounder with cheese was in my belly (plus fries — always fries), I did feel a little better — but still felt some type of way about the situation on principle; I mean, what if I’d LOVED that mole because it reminded me of my precious, dead grandma (maybe we had matchies, because genetics are a trip like that)? Plus, there’s the whole thing about BODILY AUTONOMY, in which I believe very strongly — and I had not given him permission to remove anything from my body but the implant. And finally, if I’m honest, part of my frustration over the whole thing was self-directed, because the surprise of it all kicked me straight into fawn mode, so that I actually chirped out a THANK YOU to him for removing something from my body without my permission, neglecting to even consider my actual feelings about it until they jumped on me in the car on the way home. This (in a general sense) is something I’m working on, and so I felt kind of chumpy as a result of how quickly my people-pleaser default setting got activated.
I wrestled a bit with some lingering back-and-forth feelings about it for awhile that afternoon, but after some conversations (among them one with my SIL, a former paralegal and current nurse, who provided some practical, logical considerations that validated my feelings about it, but also made it possible to view the situation without the Lifetime movie lens), I was able to bless and release the whole thing.
- The day AFTER I got the drain removed, I was an idiot in the name of love, and accompanied my elder son, who had recently scored a spot on his school’s varsity wrestling team, to Parent Night — the annual “open mat” practice where parents are invited to attend AND PARTICIPATE.
When he first started wrestling a couple of years ago, he joined late in the season, AFTER the Parent Night practice had already occurred. The following year, Parent Night got called off due to bad weather (disappointment ensued).
So this year, he was ready. He’d (literally!) been waiting years for this moment. AND it was my last chance to grant him this particular wish (it being his last season of high school wrestling), so your girl jumped into some leggings, hauled her ass to the high school, and made a valiant attempt to wrestle her beloved boy, who has a good 7 inches and 60 pounds on her — not to mention being almost 38 years younger and a million times stronger.
Needless to say, I failed.
Miserably. So miserably.
Boy wasn’t even TRYING and I tanked.
At one point, he tried to throw me a bone by starting us out in referee position and giving me the more advantageous placement. But I still couldn’t budge his ass, so I hoisted MY ass fully onto his back in an attempt to use my whole damn self to roll him.
He deftly swooped my whole damn self over one of his shoulders and flung me supine onto the mat.
At another point, I tried to take him down from a standing position; as we locked forearms, I pushed and twisted with all my little might, putting all my weight forward and raising onto my tiptoes . . .
. . . at which point he, seeing my center of gravity was all the way forward, gave my arms a near-effortless tug, which sent me splatting prone onto the mat.
It was NOT PRETTY, y’all — but it was SO MUCH FUN! I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard. By the end of the hour-long practice (in which I was — ahem — one of TWO parents who actually participated; the other mom who took to the mat had been a wrestler herself as a kid, but HER son kicked HER ass too (cutting her far less slack than I got from mine) . . . but I digress), I knew there was Tylenol in my immediate future . . . but I did not anticipate that it would take WEEKS for the soreness of the ribs I bruised to go away!
(Karma apparently had my back, though; the kid is currently on a break from wrestling while HE recovers from bruised ribs of his own, incurred during a subsequent practice. I’m hoping he gets back in there soon, though, because I DO love to watch him compete, and besides — Santa just brought him new wrestling shoes!)
At any rate, aside from a TEEEEEENY WEEEEEENY bit of sensitivity when my younger kid crashes his head a little too hard into my left-side ribcage for a hug, all is well with me health-wise, and I’m looking forward to maybe focusing on something ELSE in 2026!
Reliving in our eloquence another auld lang syne
And speaking of 2026 . . .
OK. I have to be careful how I say this.
You know how ever since the end of 2020, meme-based sentiments have been popping up in late December that basically (yet humorously) say, Well, this year’s been a pool of bloody, splattering shit, and it can’t march its raggedy ass out the door fast enough? And even some about We thought LAST year sucked big, bacteria-crusted donkey balls, but last year is now holding this past year’s beer?
Well. Despite my chipper demeanor, I gotta say, I have felt those memes deep in my SOUL these past few years. To recap:
- 2022: Cancer diagnosis, start of treatment, and concomitant loss of hair and color. (Although I gotta say, y’all, it’s only in retrospect that I look at photos of myself from that time, and think, “Crap on a cracker in the moonlight, I looked SICK!” At the time, I thought I looked basically like me — just bald and browless. But now, looking back, I am given to understand that I also looked pale, puffy, exhausted, and just plain unwell in addition to giving Kojak a run for his money. Which I still think is important to have documented, because it allows me to feel hella pretty NOW, even when I haven’t bathed in a day or two, and it would take a top-of-the-line combine to detangle my hair . . . but I digress.)
- 2023: Continued treatment, jettisoning of tits, and the beginning of some ROUUUUUUGH and recurring personal drama (which, despite my deep stakes in it, is not mine to share; just know that it’s the kind of shit that rearranges all your guts and spits you out feeling like a tender, gooey-fresh baby chick that also happens to be packing nunchucks and a mace).
- 2024: My mom’s death after her month-long HOSP- stint (first -ITAL, then -ICE, with a single day at home in between), followed by my employer jettisoning ME, more fresh baby chick stuff, AND ALSO recurring boob infections (resulting in the yeeting of the troublesome implant) during a highly traumatic presidential election.
And don’t get me wrong; miracles both small and mighty buoyed my ass like little magic mofos during those years — but that doesn’t mean I didn’t sometimes feel like I was sitting in the VIP seats at the world’s shittiest shitshow, with a lap full of burnt popcorn and my shoes fused to the floor in a pool of sticky.
But I digress. The point is — and here’s where the careful part comes in — that yesterday, I realized something: for the first time in YEARS, I wasn’t ending the year thinking, “Well, THAT sucked; PLEASE, LAWWWWWWWD, let this coming year be better!”
To counter the recap above, 2025 graced me with some lovely mojo:
- In the midst of a summer made absolutely fantastic by myriad (and seemingly inconsequential) things, I LANDED A JOB after just over a year of unemployment. And not just A job, but a job I actually WANTED (and currently LOVE), which is a luxury for which a 50-something gal dares not hope after being jobless for a year.
- MY KIDS, y’all. I’m trying to make this post shorter than my usual novel, because I know y’all have blackeyed peas to cook — but I have to sing about my boys, because they have both blossomed in ways that make my little heart sproing in 3D from my chest:
Boy the Elder is in his senior year of high school, and he — while riding the rollercoaster of college applications, working as much as he can, participating in two orchestras, and dating a lovely gal who lives more than an hour away — has managed to KILL it so far. He rocked six As and a B this past semester, with a schedule that included three AP classes . . . but that’s not even the best part, which is that he has done it INDEPENDENTLY, without anyone having to check Parentvue with change-of-underwear frequency and constantly ride his ass about missing assignments, test corrections, extra credit opportunities, unexcused absences . . . NONE OF IT. I mean none of it AT ALL. He stayed ALL UP ON IT in a way I never would have thought was possible a couple of years ago, when we were mired in planner books, Excel sheets — and, at one point, a giant whiteboard erected in our living room — to help him keep track of his schoolwork. So even if he’d wrapped the semester with a lower GPA, he still would be SO golden in my eyes, just for that.
(OK, I know I promised some brevity, here, but can I just take a moment to say that Parentvue and similar schoolwork-monitoring apps are just fresh, oozing carbuncles of stress? I know my Gen X is showing, here, but I think there is something to be said for the days when you could fail miserably on an assignment or test, and — provided you pulled your shit together and skidded, sweating bullets, into a B by the end of the semester — your parents would be none the wiser about how your class grade spent three solid weeks in the fifth circle of hell after you fuckin’ TANKED that Dante paper.
But now. OHHHHH, now it’s all out there, and it is BAD for your blood pressure (especially if you’re an OLD parent, like me). One day, your kid has a solid B in a class, and the next, it’s a D+ because of ONE missing assigment. The drama is REAL. But I digress. Moving on . . . )
My younger kid, known by pretty much everyone as a mini misanthrope, has become SOCIAL. Now, don’t get me wrong; I completely understand being largely satisfied with ones own company (the apple doesn’t fall far), and I friggin’ LOVE this kid IN PART because he does not give a flying FUCK. So I have been fully onboard with letting him be the cranky old man he’s been since birth. But I also now stand utterly amazed and thrilled by his ability (as a 4th grader!) to take the reins of his own life and be like, “Nah, know what? I’ma change up some shit.”
Friends, that boy has burst into this school year with a new attitude: he joined four clubs, collaborated with two friends on a GROUP Halloween costume, started asking for playdates (and sleepovers, which we have not done yet, because I’m not sure he’s sufficiently overcome his issues with other people’s feet to make that a good time), and got invited to four birthday parties this past fall! (Not gonna lie, though; if I’d known there were going to be FOUR of them, I would have shown a bit more restraint when it came time to purchase gifts for that first birthday kid. As it was, when that first invitation rolled in, I thought, “When is THIS ever gonna happen again?” and spent a little more money on gifts for the kid than I would have with, say, my elder kid (who went to like eight birthday parties a week at that age, so we imposed a strict per-gift budget). And now I’ve set an unfortunate precedent. But still. CLUBS and COSTUMES and BIRTHDAY PARTIES, y’all!)
And, like with Boy the Elder and his GPA, the outcomes of the situation (in this case, the clubs and parties) aren’t the best part! The best part, as I mentioned before, is that he took the reins, made a decision about how he wanted to roll, and worked hard to make it happen. How do I know? Because you know those questionnaires the teachers have the kids fill out to share with parents at parent teacher conferences? Stuff like, “My favorite part of school this year is [BLANK],” and “Something I’m really good at is [BLANK]”? Well, one of the questions on this year’s form was, “Something I’m working hard at is . . . ” and my dude filled the blank with, “being social.”
I MEAN. There is not enough verklempt ON THE WHOLE-ASS PLANET.
But at the risk of digressing further, I’ll wrap this bullet up here and say that I’m utterly chuffed at how my kids are OWNING THEIR LIVES — taking charge of their own shit, bustin’ out Beat It-style dance moves in the face of their biggest challenges, and whipping those sunzabitches into compliance à la MJ (even if one of them has a WAY cooler jacket . . . I SAID WHAT I SAID).
It hasn’t been perfect (for example, Boy the Younger has asked me to attend each of those birthday parties WITH him for “emotional support” (yes, HIS words), which can get a bit awkward at this age (by which I mean both his age AND mine) and which has burned “SIX SEVVVVVen” into my brain for eternity), but it has been been pure glory to watch. It’s fuckin’ inspiring, really, because if a coupla kids can do that shit, HOLD MY BEER.
- Overall, aside from a couple of colds and a wrestling injury, my health has vastly improved; as I think I mentioned in a previous post, after the results of the 2024 election, I started walking on a near-daily basis for my own mental health . . . but that turned into a concerted effort to drop some weight (which could either be attributable to the steroids that came with the chemo, or to my overall tendency to stress eat . . . or both). From there, I made an attempt at running again, which WAS going well until about a month ago, when the combination of colder weather, surgery, the holiday twirls, and pure laziness knocked me right off that wagon (I have made two attempts to climb back on in the past week, and both were pretty abysmal and left me dragging BEHIND the wagon, clutching it with one hand and taking in mouthfuls of gravel, but hey, baby steps . . . and hella digression). Now, I have some work to do to get back onboard, but I’m ready.
- As bonus, the weight loss has expanded my wardrobe, because I can now fit back into clothes I haven’t worn in more than a decade (well . . . I COULD; some of them might be a little tight again, due to the aforementioned tumble off the running wagon, AND the fact that in addition to stress-eating, I also joy-eat, sadness-eat, nervous-eat, excited-eat, need-to-focus eat . . . basically all emotional occasions call for snacks in my book . . . but again, I’m still clinging to the wagon with one hand, so all hope is not lost).
ANYWAYYYYYYYYY, what I’m trying to say is that things this year have been . . . better. GOOD even — and not in a “Good if you close one eye and squint the other while sitting in a massage chair with a mouthful of cotton candy” kind of way, but in an actual “Things are kinda working out for me” way.
Thing is, I know (I KNOWWWWW) that on a global level, the dumpster fire flames are rising higher than ever for a lot of people — a few I know, and many I don’t — and in far worse, more frightening ways than I suffered on the absolute WORST of days over the past few years. And there’s really not an end in sight to the bullshit that’s causing that trauma (y’all know what I mean), so Lord knows some of that shit could end up coming for ME (I’m thinking of prohibitive healthcare costs in particular, but I’ve learned over the past few years that there is room in my life for all kinds of horrible surprises, so I don’t want to speculate) — so I’m not about to wrap up this utter failure at brevity to spout some annoying platitudes about how the universe operates, just because I’M over here digging my life right now.
Still, I gotta say that for me, PERSONALLY, 2025 has been enough of a ray of sun peeking through the clouds, that I’m looking forward to seeing how 2026 shakes out, not from a “hell, it’s gotta be better than last year, right . . . ? RIGHT . . . ?” perspective, but from a “wouldn’t it be enchanting if this streak of glory continued for a minute?” point of view. And the good thing about the past few years is that even if that DOESN’T happen, I’m feeling a bit more confident in my ability to survive some shit — and to find little bits of joy in the process.
Like y’all. Y’all are some of the bits.
Y’all and this jacket (come on — SO much cooler than MJ’s):
May 2026 temper the chaos with joy and the difficulties with caffeine.
Love you guys!