Signs of the times

Aside from finding out there’s nothing really wrong with you, the best thing about going to the doctor is you get a chance to read the kinds of magazines you’d love to subscribe to, if only to put them on your own coffee table to look like you’re an intellectual. On a recent dental trip, I had the privilege to indulge myself in Archeology Magazine. It brought back memories of when I was a child and wanted to be an archeologist. It was a short-lived aspiration. As soon as I learned those folks often lived for months on end in tents with no “real” toilet, I moved on to another career goal.

One of the reasons why I still enjoy the study of archeology is because of the way modern historians interpret artifacts, texts and even graffiti on ruins to learn about a society. For example, there is plenty of graffiti in the ruins of Pompeii to suggest that not only were the inhabitants there on the lascivious side, they enjoyed their drink and defecated just about anywhere.

I don’t remember reading anything on how archeologists interpreted road signs in ancient Rome, but on a recent trip, I couldn’t help but wonder what post-apocalyptic historians might deduce from our street signs of today.

For example, there is a street sign near my neighborhood that says: Opposing traffic has extended green. I think I almost ran the red light there a few times before I figured out what it meant. What will historians think it means? Will they wonder if we met up at that intersection to have pro vs con debates and the opposing teem gets a longer time on the grassy area next to it to speak?

After seeing this sign, will they think we’re a careless lot:

I rather think someone in the factory got it wrong. Shouldn’t it be Done More Drinking Street? Will historians think the sign maker was drunk when he made it?

Or, will they think the deer were once literate when they stumble upon these signs:

from Jamie Lee/Staten Island Advance (http://www.silive.com/westshore/index.ssf/2009/09/deer_now_a_driving_danger_in_s.html)

There were all sorts of those as we drove through up-state New York. Sometimes the deer crossing would be for the next 3 miles at others for the next 10. How do the deer know how large their cross walk is? Do they get in trouble if they cross before the sign? If it says Deer Crossing Next 1 mile, do deer gangs challenge new members to walk across at 1.1 mile?

My favorite sign of all times is one we saw in a window:

Which, if I were an historian stumbling upon this amidst the ruins of our culture, I would shake my head in awe over that fact that we knew just how messed up we were.

Who sleeps anymore?

One of my favorite people ever is Oscar Wilde. So perhaps it is only fitting that I feel like one of his quotes, with all due respect to Jerry Seinfeld, rather sums up this blog: “I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” I get to come here and post things that usually keep me up late at night, things that are usually about nothing, and few of you hold judgment against me for doing it.

And while I haven’t been blogging on a regular basis lately, don’t think I’ve been sleeping more (nor that actual, useful thoughts have been plaguing me). In fact, while life has taken away some of my blogging time, it has continued to give me plenty of fodder. Alas, I’ve read if a post is over 350 words, y’all just don’t wanna plod through it. So, in an effort to get caught up on random musings about nothing, here in one post are the seeds of several thoughts that I’ve been mulling over come 3:00 a.m.

First, a blinding light of clarity hit me in Target: The reason why gauntlets came back in style a few years ago (I think the young people call them wrist-warmers) is because you cannot text in gloves. So there is reason behind fashion! See? Now, if only I can figure a way to justify stiletto-heeled boots . . .

But clarity is always soon clouded over in my muddled little brain, because I just don’t understand why all my skin care products contain alcohol to preserve them and keep them looking new, smooth, and to hold their shape, while, regardless of the amount of alcohol I drink, I’m still aging, getting wrinkly and falling apart.

And thinking about alcohol brings me to yet another question: why is it when I make a vodka infusion with an entire pineapple and a pint each of strawberries and blueberries, it does not count toward my recommended daily allowance of fruits? And if it does, does that mean can make Bloody Mary with V8 juice and say I’m having a salad?

In a different vein . . . On a recent visit to see a relative in the hospital for a gallbladder issue, we had to go to the Cardiac Failure Unit to find him. Aside from the fact that I’m pretty sure the gallbladder and heart are two separate organs, I was a bit confused as to the name of the wing: Cardiac Failure Unit. If you were a patient being wheeled into an area destined for any kind of failure, how hopeful would you be for your future? Was that really the best they could come up with? Why not be a little more straight forward and write “so long sucker!” on a Post-it note and slap it on the door?

And, finally, according to the county where I live, I am not allowed to throw away partially-used cans of oven cleaner in the regular trash because it is too toxic for the landfill — TOO TOXIC FOR THE LANDFILL. Instead, I must hold on to it until a designated date and deliver it with other “household toxic wastes” to a specified location. Why is oven cleaner too dangerous for a landfill, but apparently safe enough to use in my home and immediately bake cookies in my oven afterward?

So there you have it folks, some of the miscellaneous ramblings about nothing that have been keeping me up at night. What’s keeping you awake?

Nice!

For some reason, over the past week or so the subject of being nice has been popping up into conversations with me. I went to a writer’s conference last weekend, where the vast majority of attendees were women and people kept remarking, with a tinge of surprise in their voices, that they couldn’t believe how nice everyone was. A few other moms and I were agonizing over why 9-year old girls just can’t seem to be nice to each other. Headlines were filled with not-nice election-year behaviors. Anti-bullying missives came home from school. And my mother-in-law and I had a discussion about how being nice seemed to have a relative meaning, based on according to what part of this country you live in.

At first I found all the “nice” mentionings a bit coincidental, but since I am a little on the self-centered side, I started wondering if perhaps people were dropping hints.

I used to know I was a nice person, because people used to tell me. I don’t hear that exact word much anymore, but people do often express gratitude to me for my support, help, shoulder to cry on, email to e-vent to, etc. Is that what you say about nice people my age? Or are they offering positive reinforcement for behavior they’d like to see more often instead of the bitchy side that is sometimes evidenced here on this blog?

To try and clarify things, I looked up “nice” in my American Heritage dictionary. Here’s a synopsis: “1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature. 2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance. 3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness. 4. Of good character and reputation; respectable.”

Yes, well . . . I guess the good news is the folks at A.H. neglected to qualify their definition by time limits. That is, they don’t say “pleasing and agreeable in nature at least 98.7% of the time” nor must one have a “pleasant or attractive appearance 75% of the time” in order to be nice. Perhaps that’s my saving grace. After all, I do stop to help strangers, offer to take photos of people when their arms don’t seem long enough to get a self-portrait, and have good parking lot karma because I always return the cart, come hell or high water, or even lightening flashes, to its rightful place. All those are signs of nice behavior, are they not?

On the other hand, I can be catty at times. It’s just that the world gives me so much fodder, it almost seems disrespectful not to acknowledge those gifts with some kind of snarky, humorous (in my opinion anyway) remark. I’ve also experienced my fair share of Schadenfreude — but who doesn’t enjoy a head-lining story about an anti-gay Republican senator getting bad press because he likes to get close to his male interns? And, with my windows rolled up so no one outside my car can hear me, I often yell and scream at idiot drivers who cut me off in traffic. Those behaviors rather suggest I’m not nice, right?

Perhaps. But, let me share the end of that “nice” definition in my trusty dictionary. The last entries read: “Obsolete. a. Wanton; profligate. b. Affectedly modest; coy.”

Ooo! I think that means I’m an old-fashioned nice girl after all.

The Bliss of Ignorance

I have a friend whose skin is so healthy and beautiful that I would hate her if it weren’t for the fact that she’s also nice and funny. I can forgive any form of perfection as long as the bearer is nice and funny. Anyway, she happens to work at a cosmetics counter in a large store at the mall (coincidentally, as she had healthy and beautiful skin before she took the job there).

This past Saturday she invited me to attend an event at her store where I’d be educated on skin care and the line she represents. I went and was educated.

After I showered Sunday morning, I found myself sitting before my vanity mirror somewhat frighted by what I saw: large pores, deep wrinkles, dark circles, and redness I’d never noticed before. Thankfully I’d purchased products to remove, repair or at least conceal it all. It had all the makings of an ego-destroying moment but I couldn’t help but laugh at how I got sucked back into the human obsession to make things better.

What some might call a pride in ingenuity, I’m beginning consider an unhealthy compulsion. We are all in a constant, almost frenzied, quest to turn everything into a problem and fix it, whether or not it really is a problem. And at what cost? I’ll tell you what cost: the joy, happiness, stress-free zen state a life of acceptance has to offer along with stronger, healthier egos. And if that’s not good enough for you, loads of cash and energy to boot.

Think about it — my son just informed me that “they” are re-making the Star Wars movies in 3D, which rather suggests someone somewhere found a problem with the original Star Wars films and decided they were no longer good enough and needed to be improved. But, the reason why Star Trek was so very faboo in the first place is because it was a NEW epic adventure tale of a NEW fallen hero created with NEW technology.  The 3D versions might be fun, but really, they will be yet more Sci-fi 3D flicks ~yawn~ that will make us all feel like saps for preferring the originals.

My daughter and I are ADD. When I was a kid, “they” said I was spirited and flighty, but there was no problem in that as long as I had a chance to run around like a lunatic periodically. My daughter, however,  is a problem, and you wouldn’t believe the time, money and stress (but alas, no running around like a lunatic for her) that is going into “fixing” her. There are results, improvements, if you will. But they are minimal, and I can’t help but wonder if we’d just let her go wild every now and then,that maybe she’d be able to concentrate better when she had to sit still.

And look at what we’re doing with Mother Nature. Here in suburbia, we are all obsessed with “improving” the natural state of our yards by insisting that grass actually grows into nice, green lawns. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I let my yard be taken over by crab grass (it would be so very easy, but to save myself from the local lynch mob, I’d probably have to rename it the “Emerald Spreader” or something). But the stuff looks like it would fill in all the bare spots rather nicely that turf grass fails to do. Seems to me I’d have a thick mat of green that would stand up to running feet, dragged lounge chairs and the occasional car tire on my side of the drive way. Do you know how much money I’d save if I just accepted crab grass as normal and not a problem? How much time and energy I’d get back by not fighting it so much?

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

And look at Barbie! Feminists rail against Barbie because next to her, little girls begin to think they are too fat, too ugly and too not-normal, and yet Barbie continues to preside over a top selling toy empire. Barbie might be the epitome of where the human desire to find problems, fix them, and become “something better” leads us — “they” did the statistics and found out that if Barbie was a real woman with dimensions to scale with the doll, she wouldn’t have enough body fat to menstruate. Yes, girls yearning to look better, to fix all their “problems” are aiming to look like something that couldn’t be a girl (so, does this mean that Barbie is a Drag Queen? Hmmm . . .).

My point is (and I do have one somewhere in this rambling), we would have more time, more energy and even more cash, while living with less stress and healthier egos if we were not so damned set on finding problems to fix. If we’d just allow ourselves to wallow in a state of ignorance, one where “they” are not telling us there’s something wrong with us, then maybe we’d all be a little happier.

Social Networking

Not that I want to hound a theme to its grave, but I’m just not done with yesterday’s rant.

As a good little writer this morning, I finished skimming through a bunch of blogs from popular people in the publishing industry. One of my favorites is literary agent Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown. This past Tuesday he asked the question: Does Social Media Help Sell Books? and took a poll. 51% of the respondents claim they do not rely on social media to encourage their book buying habits, 37% said yes, it does, and the rest were a joke answer.

There was plenty of anecdotal evidence for both sides of the poll in the comments, some of which was a little shaky — e.g., a woman who answered “yes” because she gets 30 to 45 hits a day on her site, so she feels it must be working. Does she think those are all different people each day? That none of them, not even good ‘ole mom and dad, visit her site more than once a year? And that each and every one of them are buying her book?

What I found heartening is that I’m not alone. Many others are where I am: overwhelmed by the immense amount of time and energy that goes into successful social networking (keyword: successful). Kelly Ann Jones made a comment here yesterday about how hard it is to find time to write because she’s too busy with her social networking. And I know of a YA author who has an extremely successful Facebook page, complete with competitions, etc., where she gets thousands of visitors — but she hasn’t even finished her first book yet. Perhaps if she’d been able to put that energy into the book, it’d be done (and then she’d be where I am, trying to figure out the damned query letter).

But let’s go back to Bransford’s post — think about it. Who responded to his comments? Mostly authors (published or still trying), i.e., people who are more likely to spend time on social media to begin with (after all, they must if they are to sell themselves, right?). So you’ve a bunch of book-minded internet-junkies answering a question about whether or not social media sells books. Hmmm . . . One would think all the answers would be “Yes! Yes! and Hell yes!” but it’s only half. I find that amazing! I mean if only half of them are buying books that way, what about the rest of the reading public — you know those people who just like to read and have absolutely no interest in writing, editing, publishing, or otherwise wall-papering their bathrooms with rejection slips.

I would love to see real, verifiable, survey results about how effective social media is at selling books. Does Joe Public rely on blogs, Facebook and Twitter to tell him what makes a great read? I don’t know a single person in my non-internet, non-social media life who has bought a book because it was hawked on Twitter. Nor have I bought one because of that. However, I do know several “normal people” who buy books because Amazon suggested it (because they bought a similar one on-line or via their Kindle) — or they continue to find new books in Barnes and Noble when it rains and they’re looking for shelter.

Granted, it could be a sign of my age and the age of the people I know. Maybe twenty-somethings do buy books because of Tweets. But, since the market does show that the majority of book buyers are women my age, (and my book is aimed at that target audience) I think that means Twitter is a waste of time for me (though I feel guilty saying that, as if I’m knowingly doing something wrong). Hail Mary . . .

Who has insight into this? Who thinks it’s worthwhile to spend hours, hours they cannot put back into their life, on social media networking in the hopes of selling a book? Hours not spent working writing books, short stories, essays, poems, etc. Is it effective? Do you have stats to prove it?

Curious Queries

I started this blog because I call myself a writer and it seems that’s what writers should do: have a blog.

If you’re a writer who wants to be published, you’re supposed to blog, as well as be active on Twitter, be social on Facebook, comment regularly on other blogs, read the professional publishing blogs religiously, post regularly on sites such as shewrites, participate frequently over at authorsden, and set yourself up at bookbuzzer, jacketflap (if you’re doing the YA and children’s lit thing), and others like them. You should also keep up to date through RSS feeds from galleycat, publisher’s weekly, and shelf awareness.

After breakfast, you need to read and memorize everything put out by Writer’s Digest and Writer’s Market, as well as read plenty of short story magazines so that you know what they’re looking for, and read lots of books in your genre. And then, you need to research agents to know who is looking for what and who is selling to whom.

At some point, you should write a book.

I did it a little backward, I wrote a book first, and now I’m muddling through all the other “should do’s” on the list. I seldom sleep between 2:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., and yet I still can’t figure out how to fit it all in.

Of course it doesn’t really matter, because I can’t get my bleeping query letter perfected. Oh yes, there’s that, too. Can’t believe I neglected to put that up there in the first paragraph.

If you want representation, you need to write a query letter to agents to “pitch” your book. I think it’d be easier to grab my lips and pull them backward until I turn my myself inside out. Vaginal births of mammoth babies sans an epidural seem less painful. Juggling spit-balls of fire from Satan over a sleeping baby would probably be less stressful.

I finished a book of 86,628 words. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has fleshed out characters. All the themes that were introduced and sub-plots that were brought in come to closure. The story arc follows the traditional paradigm I was taught in writing courses: (part 1 raises central question; part 2 begins with turning point and has the protagonist pursuing a goal; part 3 is another turning point, climax and resolution). I know it intimately well. I can practically tell it to you orally word by word without the text in front of me.

And yet I can’t write a 250-word sales pitch for it. What gives?

I think the bad side of technology will do us good.

I love the New York Times. I really do. I don’t read it on a regular basis, in fact I don’t read it at all. My father-in-law does, from front page to the last, and he regularly emails me links to articles that he thinks I’d be interested in. And usually he’s right. Lately, many of the articles have been dealing with the effects of technology on our minds and hence our relationships.

It all started with an Op Ed piece by Steven Pinker. He posited that the burgeoning brew-ha-ha over how technology is short circuiting our brains is a bunch of fluff (only he says it with more mature words and scientific techno-babble). He set off a small maelstrom of letters to the editor by people upset over what they perceive as the downfall of intercommunications because we’re all de-evolving into a Twittering species. They fear humans will lose their ability to fully connect, to be social beings, and to develop fully-functioning interpersonal relationships.

It makes for interesting reading. I always find it fascinating when people find yet another reason why we’re all going to hell in a hand basket. I’ve never found one of those reasons or theories to hold water at the level of drama and fear the discoverers hope to engender. The thing is, it seems to me that just about everything goes in cycles.

Remember when malls started popping up all over the place? There were people (anti-mallites?) who hated them and said that they were the beginning of the downfall of the current western civilization. They said we’d never spend time outside again. Our children would grow up without the benefit of sunshine. That it would only lead to the devaluation of natural and green spaces. I didn’t quite believe it. I figured we’d get tired of being inside all the time and eventually would start building old-fashioned shopping centers with open spaces, prizing our trees and grass. And, lo, we have. I’ve been to them in Florida, Texas and here in NJ. I’m sure they’re just about everywhere now.

And I’m sure one day, we’ll be tired of dealing with the rain and snow and want only in-door facilities. Let’s face it, we’re never happy for long.

Which is why I think the fears of how the current trends in social media are destroying our interpersonal communication skills are all for naught. I believe all the new avenues of communicating via a phone, computer, iPad, etc. is fascinating to most people for a while, but then they’ll want the old-fashioned face-to-face chumminess of their past soon enough.

But even if I’m wrong, I’m still not concerned. I know, if indeed it is a sign that we’re headed toward an intellectual decline, not everyone will be going down with the ship. Throughout history there are always survivors of technical revolutions, right? So the way I see it, the people who will be bred out of existence because they’ve lost the ability to communicate in ways that require more than 140 characters, might just leave us with people who have something of substance to say. People who can only talk in the bullet points of a PowerPoint presentation, are not exactly my kind of people, so I doubt I’ll miss them. And people who think they really need to take the time to update their FaceBook status with things like “I woke up this morning” or “I’m bored on the train right now” will probably not be missed by anyone. If those people are left unable to breed, is that really a bad thing? As long as we’re able to keep the vowels in our alphabet, I’m sure the rest of us will be just fine.

So technology, bring on the brain damaging effects. Perhaps the herd needs a little thinning.

I love you like a dog

Yesterday, the New York Times featured a Well Pet blog by Tara Parker Pope called “What Pets Can Teach Us About Marriage.” Ms. Pope was reviewing a previous article from PsychCentral where clinical psychologist Suzanne B. Phillips explores the difference between how people relate to their pets in contrast to their mates. Phillips poses the idea that we could have better relationships with the humans in our lives if we treat them the way we do our pets.

A couple of her ideas include always giving your spouse a rousing, happy greeting. Never holding grudges (even when the furniture is destroyed). And forgiving quickly and easily instead of taking mistakes personally.

Hmm . . . I greet my husband when he comes home, usually with a “hi” or something a little on the calm side. But honestly, I don’t think he’d want anything dog-like from me. I mean at my weight, if I jump on him, uncontrollably wagging my rear end, I’m sure I’ll knock both of us down. And what good would come from that? What if he puts me in a crate for a time out? What if he shoves me outside while he changes clothes, leaving me with nothing to do but dig holes and chase squirrels? How will I get dinner cooked?

I do agree that grudges are never good to hold — at least for long periods of time. And I think I practice what I preach. We did have a dog who tried to eat my dresser (twice), and we forgave him both times. We knew it was part of the whole separation anxiety thing and that we left him alone for too long before he was ready. The thing is, as with most poor behavior of dogs, the mistake was our fault and we knew it. It’s very easy to forgive people (and animals) when they do something wrong because of something we did. Honestly, I believe that if my husband ever chewed on the corner of my dresser because of something I did, then I’m sure I’d be quick to forgive and forget. Otherwise, he’d be on his own and I probably would hold a grudge.

Moose in a yarn mess -- a forgivable moment

I do think Dr. Phillips has a cute idea: maybe if we give our spouses unconditional love and acceptance the way we seem to give our pets, we’ll have better relationships. But I also think maybe she’s forgetting there are a couple inherent differences between humans and pets (and it has nothing to do with the fact that we have thumbs, or maybe it’s partly to do with that).

First, ultimately, we are responsible for our animals’ behavior, whether or not we consciously admit it. We train our animals, we teach them what proper behavior is, what we expect from them, etc. We take on that task because we cannot trust them to think for themselves or rely only on their instinct. If we did that, we wouldn’t love our animals so much (nor would we allow them to live in our homes or sleep in our beds). Have you ever seen feral dogs and how they live? They don’t care where they do #1 or #2, in fact they like to roll around in #2. I don’t know of many humans who would unconditionally accept that behavior on a continual basis.

The second difference is they cannot talk, read, or write letters of apology. Their only avenue of communication is via their physical body. And since we cannot read their minds, we have to admit that there must be times when we misunderstand them. Think about it, what other way can they say “I’m so glad you’re home because I’m really, really hungry, so hungry I was about to get in the trash even though I know you’d be mad at me” besides running up to you with that maniacal, happy look in their eyes that says “Yes! Yes! Yes! You’re home! This is the greatest freaking thing that has happened to me all day!”

Stuff and more stuff

My poor blog has been neglected lately. As has my dirty laundry (and I don’t mean that as a metaphor, though that has probably been set aside, too), my house plants, my good intentions regarding my diet and those mysterious piles of “stuff” that build up in my house — you know the ones. They start out with a small piece of paper, perhaps a piece of junk mail you want to toss in the recycling bin in the garage when you have the energy to take the extra 10 steps to do so, but within a week, like an asexual thing it breeds with itself and produces a pile of . . . of . . . of . . . stuff.

It usually happens on the kitchen counter right beside the door that goes into the laundry room. Another one often forms on the landing spot where the stairs turn. There’s a spot on the hearth that collects and collects and collects. There are others, too numerous to catalog here.

Right now my entire desk is covered with one–don’t even ask me where my coffee cup is. I can find it, but it’s probably a dangerous location for it to be.

Honestly, I think I found the inspiration behind The Trouble with Tribbles episode of Star Trek — remember those furry things that were born pregnant or something? I can picture it: a script writer with a serious case of writers block in a studio so filled with wadded up paper balls that he couldn’t find his typewriter. It looks as if the paper balls bred . . . and poof! The Trouble with Tribbles.

If only my mess would be such inspiration.

I tackle my self-breeding piles every Friday morning. I have to as it’s the day I pay bills and usually, especially, in the piles on my desk, there’s something that needs to be paid. I read, I pay, I respond, I file, and then I’m amazed at the mountain of trash that’s produced from it all.

My desk is always beautifully neat and tidy when I’m done. And I vow to never let it happen again, but for some reason I have a tough time remembering the vows I make to myself (my husband, I’m sure would be relieved to know as bad as my memory gets sometimes, I never forget my vows to him).

my desk on a light Friday morning

I’ve read organizational materials out the wazoo. I’ve taken time management training classes for various jobs. I’ve heard that mantra “only touch a piece of paper once” so many times it has no meaning to me. That kind of stuff just doesn’t seem to function well with my limited amount of working brain cells, which I’m guessing are piled up in random spots inside my skull.

I love systems. I create them all the time to prevent chaos from forming around me. And then I forget I created them and, well, chaos forms around me, particularly in little piles all over my house. But it’s only for limited times, as I usually get it all cleaned up before cocktail hour on Friday nights. So I guess that means I have my priorities right, right? Whew! I’m so glad I can stop worrying about it all then.

Still complaining after all these years

So my lovely husband has started reminding me lately that I’m still complaining. He has a point — I am still complaining, but I gotta say, life has the deck stacked against me.

It’s not that I want to complain; I really don’t. There’s just so much shit going on around me that it’s hard to make a comment about anything without it sounding like a complaint. My allergies remain so severe that all I want to do is take a hand-rake and rip out my eyes because they itch so much and there are days I sneeze so frequently that I’m afraid to drive as I might lose control of my car. My PMS is so bad these days it’s telling me I’m peri-menopause, actually it’s shrieking it to the world with me completely unable to control it. There’s oil spilling out in the gulf and all that is happening about is fingers are being pointed instead of someone shoving them into the hole to plug it up (that metaphor was a stretch, I know — I’m talking about the boy with his finger in a dyke).

And I’m getting old. It’s official. I’m officially getting old. Proof came with his latest comment a few minutes ago, “boy you’re sure complaining a lot this morning.” All I wanted was for his help in making the text on the emails in my in-box look bigger. No, I didn’t rearrange my desk. I just can’t seem to see what’s in my in-box like I used to. I’d love to say that the entire world is using a smaller font, but I have a feeling that’s not so true. So he changed the resolution and yes, the letters are bigger, but now they’re fuzzy. All I said was, “thank you, but now they’re blurry.” And oops, I did it again. I complained.

What’s a girl to do? Should I remain mute? The only way that’d be possible would be if I completely alienate myself. And the odds of my butt exploding and blasting me into the milky way are better than thinking my kids would leave me alone in my room undisturbed for longer than 30 seconds. But I could try. I could lock myself in my bedroom with nothing but good literature and vodka. The thing is, if by some miracle of miracles and not a screamed “MOM!” is heard, I’ll sit around reading and drinking all day, which on the surface sounds ideal, but eventually I’ll have to pee and when I stand up after all that lounging, I’m sure I’ll be stiff and sore. Add a little drunk into it and soon enough I’ll be saying (complaining) “Good Christ, my neck hurts. And my back!”

Shall I go to some island paradise and relax in a hammock while polite and obsequious waiters feed me delicious foods and ply me with umbrella-laden drinks? Yes, that’d be nice and one would think complaint free. But, it couldn’t last forever. Eventually I’ll be bitching about my credit card bills. Resorts ain’t cheap you know.

Tell me, what’s a girl to do? I’m still giving it the old college try–I keep re-starting my week of living complaint free. ~sigh~ it’s just that life gives me such fodder. God it’s hard–and that’s not a complaint, just a comment about something I’ve noticed.