HEAR ME roar . . .

I am so sexy right now, I can't stand it.

Is it the Old Navy grey athletic shirt I'm wearing? Noooooo. Is it the damp hair, lying limp against my head after my post-workout shower? Nooooo. Is it the pink and white flannel pajama bottoms I have on? Nooooo. Maybe it's the granny glasses I put on after taking my contact lenses out. Noooooo. Oh wait, is it the pesto sauce from dinner stuck in various places in my teeth? Uh, no.

It's that my voice, on the verge of petering out completely, is husky and catchy, in kind of a Stevie-Nicks-gone-Asian sort of way.

I'm fascinated by the fact that I might lose my voice. It's such a strange sensation to open my mouth and force air through my stomach and vocal chords, to have absolutely nothing come out. It's sheepishly awesome to sing along to the CD in the car, and hear that cool husky quality in myself ... too bad my range has now become limited to all of three notes. Go any further in either direction, and I start to sound like a choir-boy-gone-puberty. It's just not pretty.

And losing my voice sucks. It's happened to me only twice before -- unlike the girls in high school who were always losing their voices, for whatever asinine reason -- and each time, I hated it because yes, I have that one day of sounding sexy beforehand, but being mute afterwards is miserable and NOT sexy. And it HURTS like HELL. And I have to be OBNOXIOUS to be HEARD. And then people LAUGH at me and shopkeepers think I can't speak ENGLISH. And then people STILL look at me like I have some COMMUNICABLE DISEASE, which I DON'T, I just lost my VOICE, STUPID. And then the DOGS come running because the air out of my throat vibrates at some INHUMAN decibel level. It's really quite dreadful and most lacking in sexual allure.

But until that awful day of muteness arrives, I am going to sing simple songs to myself, just so I can think I'm as cool and awesome and and sexy and eminently recordable as Stevie Nicks. Purrrrr.