First, a question for the day: Where is Paul Reiser now? What's he up to these days? Mad About You is still one of my all-time favorite TV shows and Paul Reiser is no small part of that. He's one of my favorite comedians. My brother also had a good friend through high school named Paul Reiser (but he pronounced his last name "Reece-er"). I would love to digress and tell the story of how my dad met that Paul Reiser's then-girlfriend-now-wife while Dad was standing in his undies in our hall, but that's for another time (maybe he was actually in some work-out shorts?) Not that Paul Reiser -- I know where he is now.
Paul Reiser wrote a book entitled Couplehood that my wonderful husband, knowing how much I loved Paul Reiser AND how much I love to laugh, gave me one Christmas early in our marriage. He also wrote something really sweet in it that I won't share here but I really needed to re-read right now in the height of life's craziness as well as a busy season for him at work. I laughed all the way through the book, being a relative newlywed and understanding all that he was talking about. Parts of it really stuck in my brain.
A week or so ago people were (again) making fun of me for my constant applying of lipstick. Moving to the desert has not helped this habit. My lips are constantly dry and I may as well put some color on them while I moisturize, right? Someone teasingly asked me if I sleep in lipstick. Well ... I hate my lips to be dry!! So, yes, I do! One friend rolled her eyes and asked, "Oh, do you wake up all fresh and put together?" And I wanted to quote the entirety of the following from Couplehood:
It's The Face. Something scientific happens to your face when you sleep. You go to bed normal, you wake up -- you have no face. The features have gone away while you slept. I think it has to do with the earth's rotation. As the earth revolves, facial features move with it, so that while you sleep, your face is in Europe. Because there are only a finite number of faces, and if the Europeans go to work with no face, it looks bad for them. So this way everybody gets a shot.
I think it's all nature's way of keeping us humble. At night, you're thinking of your problems, you're thinking of yourself. "How come this didn't work out? How come I live the life I do?"
You wake up, you look in the mirror, and you go, "That's why! I have no facial features and a T-shirt with orange juice stains from 1983." It gives you perspective.
