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miracle workers
08/23/2009 = 01:05 PM

"You have such beautiful skin," said my manicurist.

I had to look behind me to see whom she was talking to, and she laughed, and I realized she was talking to me.

Furthermore, I decided to have the hairdresser (yes, I finally broke down and started having my hair cut professionally, even though all I ever get is a trim, because the arthritis in my shoulders is kind of getting a little worse) do my eyebrows, because they keep a database as to your preferences, allergies, birthday, husband's name, kids' names, number of teeth, et cetera, and I thought this would be easier than telling a new girl what I want each time I get touched up.

So when my hairdresser leaned me back in my chair, I said, as I always say to each new person who has to put hot wax on my face, "Don't be freaked out by the flakiness in my eyebrows; it will get a little red, but it's not catching and you're not hurting me."

"What flakiness?" my hairdresser replied, and did my eyebrows without further ado.

Almost exactly a year ago, it was not me. I. Whatever. I was not the one with nice skin, is what I mean.

Not only was I starting to get the wrong kind of wrinkles (I'd always wanted laugh lines, but what I was getting was baggy eyes and pain lines around my mouth), but I had a horrible patch of red, scaly dry skin around my eyebrows and across my cheekbones and nose. One of those incredibly attractive symptoms of being chronically ill.

Not to mention, my hands were always painfully dry and wrinkly, which was kind of the icing on the cake; go try to put a topical arthritis pain-reliever on cracked skin. Two words: "yee" and "ouch."

However, a little over a year ago (August 8th, 2008), That Man of Mine and I showed up, exhausted, overheated, and badly in need of showers and sleep, on the doorstep of my sweet babboo Andy, who took us in and let us use his roof, his guest room and common rooms, his fridge, his shower, his light switches ... the man and his wife saved our sorry arses from homelessness, is what they did.

About three weeks after we got to the desert, I was ambushed in the supermarket by a faith healer who prayed to Jesus to heal my dry skin.

A little less than three months after that, I got a job with the company of chocolate brown package delivery trucks, and a week or so after that, I was ambushed again, this time by an Israeli woman at the outlet mall, who gave me samples of Dead Sea products and converted me, not in a religious sense, but in a "maybe there is a moisturizer that will actually work on me" kind of way.

Here we are in August of 2009. Both That Man of Mine and I are gainfully employed and living in our own tiny but serviceable apartment, and I am in the process of being transitioned from my current position in the organization to a more technical department (with a higher pay rate).

I have been smoke-free, despite wanting a cigarette most days, for just over seven years (official anniversary was August 18th).

My health is not the greatest, but neither is it as bad as it can get (and has gotten), so there's another plus.

And my face is smooth and free from scaliness, and while my hands are still wrinkly when I first wake up, they look young again after I get out of the shower and put on the Dead Sea lotion.

If I hadn't been sure myself, there's no way I would have been able to sneak it past my manicurist and my hairdresser.

I have said many times before, and will say many times again, I'm sure: I have to take little miracles when I get them.

This is especially true in a universe where

• my loved ones either die or get cancer
• I lose a long-term job and then get foreclosed due to a realtor with a nonexistent business ethic (but before any government bailouts are put into play)
• My dad has to live in a senior home because he needs more care than my mother can provide, and I'm too far away to help or even visit
• That Man's mother is still in the hospital and one of his best childhood friends is terminally ill
• my current position (which I must continue to maintain till the training period for my new position begins) consists of speaking to
  • old men and unmedicated women who think I am an absolute asset to the company but are completely without credibility to pass this opinion to any powers that be
  • sane people who hate me because their deliveries are late through no fault of mine.

Where was I?

Oh, right. Miracles.

Here is where you may expect me to say that I now believe in the power of prayer.

Actually, I believe in the power of prayer about as much as I always have: it's a fifty-fifty proposition and the odds never change.

Yeah, I'm grateful to the the faith healer in Albertson's, because she obviously believed very fiercely that she was putting in a good word on my behalf, and in this instance, I beat the odds about a millionfold, getting a lot of miracles for the price of one prayer for dry skin.

If I ever run into her again, I'm going to tell her she's on the right track, and maybe I'll even ask her to pray for something else for me, like a cure for finding baseball cards in the kitchen drawer when I'm looking for a spatula.

(He really has improved a lot with putting things where they belong, but old habits die hard.)

But seriously?

I believe more in the power of people than I do in the power of prayer.

When things have been particularly hairy over the past year and a half, I have had so much genuine, material support from family, from friends like Andy and his wife (who is a saintly woman to have put up with annoying intruders in her home for as long as she did), from virtual strangers on the internet who paid me to write for them, from complete strangers who prayed for my dry skin and gave me lotion and, eventually, a job and a place to live.

Not to mention strangers whom I have still never met, the ones who saw my book on Amazon and bought it just because they thought it would be good to read.

Whether or not you choose to believe in a higher power, you can't ignore that not everyone with whom we're sharing this planet is out to make our lives more difficult.

I'm still not convinced that life has meaning, but since we're here, some of us have been doing what we can to make the rest of us a little less unhappy with the whole "being here" thing, and to those people, I say I hope you accept this pat on the back and the heartfelt thanks for the miracles you have wrought on my behalf.

And now, lest we die from an overdose of sugary glurge, I will close with a dose of brain confetti, since the most important piece of my life, which I did not lose when everything else fell apart, was my sense of humor.

Did you ever stop to think that there now exists a whole generation of kids who think Tom Hanks was always a movie star and wouldn't believe us if we told them that, the first time most of the world ever saw him, he was in drag?

I don't care if I don't have a purpose in the Universe. Sometimes, I just totally love it here.

Tags: miracles

drinking: diet dr bobo (generic dr pepper)
listening to: Alice in Chains, Black Gives Way to Blue
things i wish i'd asked that faith healer for: weight loss and a big jackpot