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So shhhhh: we are down to HOURS before we board an airplane, bound first for Niagara, then days later, Ontario. Jonathan and I will stay at the Niagara Sheraton with a view of the Falls where we plan to ride the Maid in the Mist!

Oh stop, not that kind of ride. The mariner kind. We’re doing a pre-wedding vacance and viewing the Falls from the ship, Maid In The Mist. Before I continue ‘speaking over your head’ let me teach you of all things nautical. This vessel is named “maiden” because, as pirates know, all ships are female, although no female may board a pirate ship – and although Maid In the Mist endured many a seafaring journey, ours will not be her Maiden Voyage.

But that is not what today’s post is about.

Today’s post is about how I can FIT inside my Mother Of The Groom dress, after it went missing for 48 hours.

I am not kidding. 

Recall Glinda, the Good Witch Seamstress Hoarder who took my dress last weekend for alterations? Her job was to hoist the mainsail, batten the hatches and shiver me timbers, remember?

After being unable to get Glinda to answer her phone six times on the day my dress was due for pick-up, or 22 times the day AFTER, Jonathan and I drove to her house.  

I was the one who broke into it.

I am not kidding.

She didn’t answer the doorbell or my knocking or the shouting-out of her name through the screen door.

Glinda doesn't lock her doors because Glinda is a hoarder and can’t find her door-locks.

After knocking and ringing and shouting, I eventually ‘pushed’ the screen door to see if it might open. When it did, I peered around like a guilty home invader because that is what I was.  But I decided to pretend I was the star investigator in an episode of CSI.  I even brought along a scarf to wrap around my nose to mask the smell of de-comp.

I was also ready to write out a check to the decedent’s family for alterations -- but I  didn’t know Glinda's last name (it is White. She is Glinda the White) -- then I’d plow through all the Hoarder Rooms until I found my dress, feed her 37 cats because God knows how long Glinda’s been dead, then spirit myself and the dress to the gangster-getaway car Jonathan was idling magnificently, at the curbside.

I couldn’t have been more proud of him for being my criminal accomplice.

As he waited for me to rouse or unearth Glinda, he crouched all low-down in the seat... wearing a hoodie -- one arm on the steering wheel doing the gangsta lean.  His friends Melinda and John had just sent him an early birthday present and they went PERFECTLY with his crime spree:  sleek mirror-finish sunglasses.

Having never been a mother of the groom before, I did not realize the depths to which a mother will plummet to acquire her missing dress. Lifting a car off a crushed toddler? Foreplay. I'd have lifted Glinda’s Hoarder House off its foundation, rummaged through her bloated, leaking corpse for my dress, then dug out her nail-beds for trace-evidence of blue fabric proving she had, in fact, hoisted its mainsail and battened its hatch.

Turned out this was unnecessary.

Glinda finally answered my signature-screams in her squeaky I GUESS I FELL ASLEEP [by my cocktail-trough surrounded by 70 cat skeletons] Voice ... "Yes yes yes I'm coming" and anyway – the POINT is that she didn’t even notice my hair.

One of the surprises in this post … shhhh … is only PARTLY my amazing nuclear blue rhinestone infested sleevless strapless backless floor-length slattern-dress.

The other is my hair.  I had it shorn … like a sheep … then dyed to match my plutonium dress.  No, really!  Just not in blue.  I dyed it plutonium platinum, jet-black, neon mauve, with lowlights of ash, cherry and oak.

From the out-of-doors, onlookers viewing me breaking into Glinda’s house would have seen the back of my head.  Here is an action-shot captured by my husband from the getaway car using a telephoto lens.  It is blurry because I am busy breaking into Glinda’s house.

The last time Glinda saw my hair, it was two feet long, light brown, with a few highlights.

It is now the color and length of a disco calico cat.

Once I realized we’d dropped off the dress in a heat wave last weekend -- so I'd put my hair in a ponytail with beige clamp -- I forgave Glinda for not noticing my new cut and color.

After I retrieved my dress and forced Glinda to study my hair, she told me she, herself, had ALSO just cut her hair!  Only she meant this literally.  With pinking shears.  Bent over her sink. 

This, in fact, was the reason Glinda was unconscious when I tried to rouse her by phone and by rattling her foyer door and screaming her name at the top of my lungs.

You probably recall that Glinda the Seamstress has magical breasts that grow a sixteenth of an inch, each week, since the day she got married 45 years ago. She is like Rapunzel. So when she stood back up, she kinda lost her balance. 

Fortunately, she fell into one of her piles of hoarder prayer rugs and was uninjured.  But while she was down there, she decided it was pretty darned comfy, so off she went to a different hoarder room to nap on other prayer rugs.

First thing I did in the car was huff the dress to see if it smelled like rug dust, or prayers, or cat pee.

 Weirdly, it still smelled like Lord and Taylor’s!  Thank you, Lord and Taylor, for smelling like expensive, elegant joy.  Amen.

The dress looks great...  I tried it on at home – there was no room for me to move my arms in Glinda’s house, due to the 6-foot stacks of things like silver tea pots and prayer rugs.  Getting this garment on requires a great deal of arm flailing and shimmying.

In the comfort of my stack-free home, I shimmied it on and it is very clear that in the 35 days since I tried it on at Lord and Taylor, my excess poundage from a sad run-in with Italian Cookies has melted off.

Now, I use the phrase “melted off” tongue-in-cheek. This discredits the hard work I‘ve put in to meet my fitness goals. I have been on a stringent workout routine.  Due to a recent elbow-tendon tear from a foolish choice to skip the warm-up and stretches prior to operating a manual can opener, my physical therapist has me on a brutal regimen where I squeeze a stress-ball SIX times, and place a rubber band around my finger tips and ‘OPEN, close, OPEN close’ ANOTHER six.  I do two sets of each.  Every day.

It has been EXHAUSTING.

Then came “legs.” 

This I performed without the assistance of a physical therapist, which I regret. Eight days ago, I shopped for new shoes for FOUR HOURS and you cannot tell me that marathon runners don’t train by shoe shopping at Marshall’s.  Bending over and standing back up between 40 and 300 times in four hours works EVERYTHING. Glutes, hamstrings, quads, core. 

The actual walking in stilettos for 30 miles was more like ‘the cool down’ -- so I won’t even mention it.

All last week my body was SO sore, it was all I could do to use my stress ball and rubber band.  But I forced myself.  I knew it was important.

Hey, so in kinesiology, I learned that my workouts consist of both “positive” and “negative” forces.  SQUEEZING the stress-ball, for example, is a positive force.  RELEASING it is a negative.  Same with the rubber band.  Some people call ‘negatives’ “resistance training.” 

For DAYS, I have been a positive and negative force and resistance machine.

PLUS, my health and fitness routine involved working out VERY hard to not eat. This is the crowning-achievement in resistance / negative training.

After absconding with my dress yesterday, Jonathan and I resisted the negative desire to buy and eat frosted cat treats at the Pet Store we were at.  We were STARVING. Our spoiled cat Bridgette does not do well being abandoned for a week, so to ply her into not knocking down lamps while we are in Ontario for our son’s wedding, we shopped at a specialty store to get her ‘the good food’ and the ‘best treats’ – and even Swheat Scoops.  Her favorite litter.

Neither of us was prepared for the display of dog and cat cookies. They put Lofthause to shame. 

As I salivated all over the glass counter, the store owner said, “I know. They really DO look delicious! By the way, sugar cookies are on sale next door at Shaw’s!” 

“Oh gosh, we can’t.  We have a wedding in six days so, we’re busy not eating.”

“Ha ha ha…   Being ‘busy’ not eating, I love that.”

She had no idea how much work this is. 

Every time an advertisement for a Whopper or Taco Bell Grande comes on, we had to GET OFF THE SOFA and leave the room.

Bending down to acquire ice to freshen our lime and lemon seltzer beverages involved flexibility and endurance.  It’s better than YOGA.

And shopping for lemons, and slicing them up?  Well.  I don’t want to run on about our collective physique.  We’ll be flaunting ourselves all over Ontario soon enough and I will taunt you with pictures in a week.

Meanwhile, before I go squeeze a stress ball, I want to share one last thing: poor Abby eats what we do so... now I have to alter HER gown.

My nerves are shattered from Glinda so I am going to do these alterations myself.  It’s not for my own dress so I won't get nervous and stick myself and bleed on the fabric.  Although, because I am now a professional felon  –  breaking into Glinda’s house and stealing vinyl Hazmat gloves last Tuesday at Dana Farber  – I can sew up the side of her dress so it’s more snug, and IF I stick myself, the glove won’t permit a breach!

Now that I've boosted chemotherapy gloves, I can probably get rid of the Neosporin and Band-aids in my sewing box and make room for more spools of thread.

Let this be a lesson:  crime DOES pay, I CAN sew, shaving then dying my hair purple, black and white to go with my atomic-blue rhinestone backless, sleeveless dress were GREAT ideas for my first Mother Of The Groom wedding, and combining a rubber band, lemon seltzer water and missing-dress stress CAN result in a tip-top (or 'topsy-turvy') physique in less than 30 days!

See you in a week.  

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