Wanted: Opinions - What Would CUSS Readers Do?

As I'm editing the proofs for Off the Beaten (Subway) Track (now also sold at MTV's online store!), I discovered that the publisher set aside a page for a dedication in addition to the acknowledgments that I already submitted. I want to dedicate the book to Husband. What do you think of the following options:

1. To Husband. There's no one like you in the world.

or

2. To Husband, my favorite unusual attraction.

I think two is clever given that the book is about unusual attractions, but I fear that it could come across as sleazy, weird, or creepy. He sometimes is easily embarrassed, although after being with me for 13 years, his threshold has risen dramatically. The first one thus seems safer, but I hate playing it safe. At the same time, I don't want to do anything that will make him uncomfortable.

I'm not asking Husband which he prefers because I want it to be a surprise. (He never reads CUSS, so I'm not worried about him discovering my plans.) What do you think?

WWCRD - Health Edition

Welcome to the latest edition of "What Would CUSS Readers Do? (WWCRD)," a periodic direct solicitation of advice for thorny life situations that I am facing. Today I throw out the following:

At the end of last week, I mentioned that I scheduled bilateral breast MRI, but it was canceled because my health insurance denied the request. I called the doctor's office to talk about what to do next, and his receptionist told me that he would not appeal the decision as he did not have time to sit around waiting to talk to someone on the phone. This irritated me greatly, but my annoyance was further inflamed into outrage when he didn't call me back to discuss my other options and then I got a letter saying that my claim was denied because some basic information (my age at first menstrual period, my age at first live birth, number of previous breast biopsies including the pathology, and my ethnicity) was missing. I decided that I needed a new doctor.

Probably everyone can agree that a new doctor is the correct solution thus far. The dilemma is whether I should go back to the first breast specialist I ever saw or start all over again. The first doctor was excellent. She specializes in working with women under 40 who are diagnosed with breast cancer, and was very aggressive in her approach with my situation. I also liked her personally. Why did I switch? Well, she is affiliated with a Catholic hospital. On a basic level, I am very uncomfortable receiving treatment while a figure of Jesus nailed to a cross watches over me. More importantly, I do not agree with the religious values that inform the decisions of these medical institutions when it comes to how my treatment is determined. I don't ever want to be in a situation where my health could be gravely impacted or I could even die because the Pope decided he spoke to God and it was ordered to be that way. Sometimes good doctors are hamstrung by church policy, and I am fearful that if I wind up in some bizarre situation, I would be worse off for going with an excellent doctor because the hospital won't allow her to perform a procedure that benefits me.

The odds of some weird cancer/reproductive situation are slim, though. Am I overreacting? If you were in my shoes, would you go to the doctor at the Catholic hospital, or would you just start over and try and find a completely new doctor?

More Man Hating

Welcome to the next installment of "What Would CUSS Readers Do?," except that this is more "What Do CUSS Readers Think of..." Lately, I've had a few depressing conversations with single female friends about their problems with dating. All of my friends are smart, they are attractive to varying degrees (none are hideous or even merely ugly), and each one is talented. According to one friend, this means that she is at a disadvantage because men do not want to date smart women. Her proof is that a friend of hers (a guy) very sadly told her that he is the only one from his circle of guy friends who found intelligence to be a desirable quality in potential female partners. I was horrified to hear this, and immediately used my anecdotal evidence to counter his anecdotal evidence - all of my friends who are married are married to their equal, or even to women who are smarter than they are. My friend shrugged. I silently thanked my lucky stars that I found Husband.

Yesterday's New York Times had a column by Maureen Dowd (who usually annoys the crap out of me) that stopped me dead in my tracks. It opens with the story of a woman who is a doctor married to an econ professor at Columbia. When they met, the woman's granny told her not to let him know how smart she was. The couple found that advice anachronistically adorable, and got married after she proposed to him. The prof went on to conduct a two-year study with another econ professor and two psychologists of Columbia students' dating preferences. Here's what he found:

“We found that men did put significantly more weight on their assessment of a partner’s beauty, when choosing, than women did. We also found that women got more dates when they won high marks for looks.”

He continued: “By contrast, intelligence ratings were more than twice as important in predicting women’s choices as men’s. It isn’t exactly that smarts were a complete turnoff for men: They preferred women whom they rated as smarter — but only up to a point ... It turns out that men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.

“When women were the ones choosing, the more intelligence and ambition the men had, the better. So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.”

Cry. So it seems that because I choose my friends and my friends choose their partners based on better qualities than the average asshole, my anecdotal evidence is smashed to pieces of loneliness and broken dreams on the cruel rocks of male stupidity. As CUSS readers, you are clearly intelligent people. I'm curious what your experience has been in selecting a partner of the opposite sex and your friends' experiences.

Are You a Serial Killer?

Husband told me that he read that nearly all serial killers have the same answer to the following question:

A woman is at her mother's funeral when she notices an attractive man who is attending. She would like to go and talk to him, but first she must deal with the well-wishers and other people who went to the funeral and want to speak with her on their way out. By the time she is finished with the niceties, the man is gone. She never gets a chance to find out who he is. A week later, she kills her sister. Why?

Posit your theory in the comments* and later I'll reveal what the typical explanation given by a serial killer is.

*Unless you know the answer 'cause you heard this before. Don't be a wet blanket when it comes to demented fun, please!

Paging Planet Earth

It's no secret that I often function as though I am on another planet. However, unlike the folks at The Wall Street Journal, my planet is not Uranus. I'm not sure where my planet is. It is very likely not even in our solar system.

I seem to mentally relocate to the home planet when I haven't slept well in a few days. Oddly enough, when I get anxiety attacks not only do I find up with acid indigestion, but also insomnia. Thus I slept poorly last week, hung out on the home planet, and got confused about all sorts of earthly details, which brings me back to Uranus.

Des pointed out that Uranus is, in fact, still a planet. This confused me, as I was sure that within the last year or so some planet was downgraded from planet status to moon status or the like. It turns out that the degraded planet is Pluto. Uranus is safe! Whew.

After making this crucial mistake and starting rumors about Uranus, I was relieved when the acid/insomnia died down on Friday and I fell asleep at a normal time. My journey back to earth from the home planet was rudely interrupted at 8 AM by enormous noises emanating from the apartment above where my body slumbered peacefully.

My eyes flew open. "What the fuck? Are those assholes moving furniture around at 8 on a Saturday morning?" I thought to myself and looked over at Husband to see if the rumbling/scraping sounds woke him, too. Husband appeared to be unconscious, so I waited a few minutes. Loud banging and dragging sounds continued. It was time to put on some pants and shoes and go upstairs to ask the fuckers what the fuck they were doing moving their fucking furniture so early on a steaming Saturday morning.

Long story short, I was still half-asleep and not entirely mentally there when I rang the doorbell upstairs. A woman in a robe answered. I meant to introduce myself and calmly ask if they were moving furniture and if so, could they please wait another two hours or so, as I really need to get some sleep. Instead, I slurred something like, "What you doin' movin' furnitures around at this hour?"

The women apologized and said her trundle bed was stuck, but she didn't realize how much noise it made. I sort of felt bad then for bothering her, and I think I introduced myself at that point, which was totally awkward and then slunk off to go back to sleep. When I woke up an hour later, I was not sure if I dreamed the whole incident or I actually went upstairs to question her about the morning's activities. Evidence of my actual journey was found when I noticed my jeans and Crocs in the dining room, where I must have stripped them off and abandoned them before I staggered back my room and fell into the cushion-y softness of my bed.

Later, Husband wondered why the people upstairs began drilling at 8 AM. So he did wake up from the noise.

"Didn't you wonder where I was?" I asked him.

"Huh?" he replied. "You weren't in the bathroom the whole time?"

I felt better that I am not the only one in my household who sometimes resides in other worlds.

The Gathering of the BlogHers

Those of you not traveling to Chicago for BlogHer need not be jealous. There was an announcement on the news that the kitchen in the Grand Ballroom at Navy Pier was just closed by the Health Department for vermin. Guess where us hungry bloggers will be meeting and eating? Gonna be interesting, that's for sure.

On the other hand, Chicago has plenty of great eats. Des, Alex, Count Mockula and I plan to eat deep dish pizza on Friday night. I have almost convinced my parents to come downtown and join us. That's right! If you'll be in Chicago and want to eat pizza with me, you can meet the people who produced me. Many of you are members of the Mom Reisman fan club, and this is your big chance!

Before all this happens, however, my mom and I are heading over to the infamous Graceland Cemetery to spend a few hours today. Many of Chicago's biggest names currently reside there, and the cemetery plays a fairly interesting role in one of my favorite books, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. (It is an amazing book about the 1893 World's Fair and America's first known serial killer.)

On an unrelated note, but something that is irritating me to no end, I am reminded once again that I should not bother going to concerts. Generally I don't like live musis, as I like to hear songs the way that I know them by heart from CDs, MP3s, or the radio. Still, every five years or so, I am compelled to attend a concert. I went to see Madonna in 2001, and Prince in 2003 (or so). Hated both concerts. This year, I was super psyched to get tickets to see The Police on Aug. 1. Of course, then it turns out that Dr. P will be in town that night, which means that I will be anxious for the concert to end so I can see her. On top of that, I signed up for an eight week online course on travel writing. The first lecture was tonight at 10 PM EST. I completely misunderstood and thought that meant the first online chat was also tonight. No, stupid me. The first fucking chat is on - you guessed it - Aug. 1. So now I am going to miss that unless I miss the concert, and look like an irresponsible idiot. I don't want to miss the concert, as Danger Doll said it rocked the house when she saw it in her home state a few weeks ago, although I fear that I will hate it anyway because I am a dorky loser like that and something will probably upset my conservative musical tastes, most likely a poor rendition of "Roxanne." I am totally stressing over this, which is ridiculous.

Out of curiosity, at this point would you go to the concert or find someone else to take your ticket? (And, as an aside to the aside, if you live in NYC, we have an extra ticket regardless of whether I flake out or not.)

Conundrum

Who would have thought another situation which requires the input of CUSS readers would present itself so quickly? Yet here I am with an important dilemma that requires the thoughtful recommendations of what is clearly the most intelligent readership in the blogosphere.

As I was dressing yesterday, I came across a pair of light pink Victoria’s Secret low rise underpants in my underpants/bras/slips drawer. They looked vaguely familiar, but not so much so that I automatically knew they were mine. I took them into the living room, where Husband was fooling around with his 15,000 MP3s.

“Are these your girlfriend's?” I asked, knowing full well that they were not or I wouldn’t have asked.

“No, she doesn’t wear that brand,” he said, not even looking away from the monitor.

“Seriously, do you recognize these? I’m not sure if they are mine.”

“Then how’d they get in your drawer?”

“I was thinking that they may have been left in a washer or drier that we used, we didn’t notice them, and they got lumped in with our stuff.” It is definitely one of the risks of using a building-wide laundry room. In the past, we have definitely wound up with socks that don’t belong to us.

He thought about it. “No, I think they are yours.”

So, dear readers, what would you do? Throw them out? Wear them, thinking even if they are not yours, at least they are clean? The fate of my butt and crotch is in your hands….

When the Dark Side Calls, Do You Heed Its Voice?

Here's a new CUSS feature: What Would CUSS Readers Do? (WWCRD) Sort of like my favorite evangelical reminder to consider what Jesus would do in a given ethical dilemma, WWCRD will present a moral situation in the hopes that trusted CUSS readers will weigh in with their excellent guidance.

Today's WWCRD? thorny question is:

Let's say that a beloved friend/family member is driven out of her cushy summer housing by an utterly inconsiderate roommate who keep her up all night by talking loudly, watching movies, slamming drawers, and keeping florescent lights on, among other problems. The roommate's not evil per se, but your loved one is still tormented by her annoying actions. Beloved One and others are extremely inconvienced by moving out, but its the only option left other than killing Inconsiderate Roommate.

If you were helping Beloved One move, would you give into the tempation to blow your nose into a Kleenex and stuff it behind the OCD Inconsiderate Roommate's pillow? While "cleaning," could you resist spraying Tilex into OCDIR's vase of fresh roses? Would you have other evil schemes, like getting a homeless man to come into a cup and then dumping the contents into OCDIR's Coach handbag, or is that going too far?

I confess to none of these dastardly doings, but am curious to hear from you, dear trusted readers.