Today's word is Mo-ron

             So, I promised to try to write a blog every day, but I find that my life isn’t exciting enough to keep that promise.  Seriously, I knew this, but I thought I could keep up the illusion for those who didn’t know with wild exaggeration and some twisted facts.  I was wrong.

But you know, I learn something new everyday.  That’s what I’ve been doing too.  Learning stuff.  About myself.  About other people.  About the way things work and what makes things happen.  I’m big on learning things. 

I guess that’s why stupidity is my biggest pet peeve.

Recently I started an argument online.  I know, big surprise, Jo starting an argument.  But you know, I was bored and I was in one of those moods where I just like to be annoying.  However, it’s really hard to have an argument with a stupid person.  It’s more like an exercise in frustration.

Here is the “conversation” which were comments on local news story about two brothers who got in an argument and hit each other over the head with baseballs bats.  Both charged with assault….both taken to the hospital for treatment.  The italics are my added commentary not in the original stream.  I kept all the original spelling for your amusement.

Idiot #1:  ghetto at it's finest

An actual intelligence:  Sorry BUT this has nothing to do with being "ghetto"... More like it has everything to do with these people just being plain old stupid.... (Some people I tell ya.. just need to watch the kind of words they use, OR rather use them in the proper context..)

JO:  ghetto is actually a noun...

Idiot #1:  freadom of speech, I can say whatever I want, so can you, so can anybody, which they choose to.  (OMG, this is just too easy!!!)

JO:  apparently we also have the freedom to misspell things and misplace modifiers and dangle our participles in public  Nice line that…dangle our participles in public.  Quite proud of that one
An actual intelligence:  [Idiot #1],  first of all why are you being so defensive? All I said is that what those two men did to each other has NOTHING to do with being "Ghetto", it only has to do with them being stupid. Obviously you are one of those types that THINK that all black people are “Ghetto”…Now, here’s a question.  If this had been two white men who were brothers who got into an altercation would you have made the same comment you did?  Yea, I think not.  So take your “freedom of speech”  B.S. and shove it seriously…
Idiot #1:  [actual intelligence]  i'm not being defensive.  (uh, actually you are being defensive just by denying it)  It's just a comment, you don't know the reasoning behind it. It's just a word, what about someone saying oh that cracker or someone saying the n word. Someone is going to get mad or offended by what someone else says no matter what it is. It is FREEDOM of speech. You think all the capital letters were just so I could see she had her spell check turned on this time?

Actual Intelligence:  Well... stop being ignorant and try using your freedom of speech for good and not to downgrade people... That's what grown, educated people do...

Idiot #1:  [actual] didn't know I would get jumped on by a comment. Lady, you’re on facebook.  I'll take my educated self somewhere else instead of defending what I write on wall because two people decided to be stupid and seriously hurt themselves with a baseball bat

JO:  [actual]  that was well said. I don't know about you, but I'd like to know the "reasoning" behind the comment. Apparently, there is some reasoning which would make it an okay statement? I would like some clarification on that.  Yeah, I know, I can be a real bitch
I still must insist that no one can “be ghetto” although one could possibly live “in a ghetto”.  However Sandusky doesn’t have a ghetto so that statement in and of itself is a fallacy worth mentioning.  Educated people do not spew vitriol in the form of slang and then defend themselves with vague innuendos and poor grammar.  [Idiot #1] perhaps a dictionary would be in order.

Idiot#1:  foolish people makeing a big deaL over a comment neither of them had any reasoning behind the comment or the wording. Gett over yourselves someone call the frickin’ grammar police before my English teachers of years past rise up from their graves.

Jo:  ‎*Making doesn't have an "e"
*get only has one "T"
I just asked for the reasoning, so you can "educate" me on when it's okay to use a noun as an adjective to disparage an ethnic group you know nothing about
If you're paying for an education, you should copy this discussion and take it in to your educators to demand a refund  I checked out her facebook profile.  She’s a criminal justice major…nice use of ghetto in that case.  Hope her future employers don’t see this.you should copy this and bring that in to your educators to ask for a refund.

[Actual]:  We are foolish, yet you still can not answer my question. If the story would have been about two white men getting into an altercation would you have made the SAME comment? You are the one who seems quite foolish. For the fact that you used the word "ghetto" when speaking of these two men, why exactly are they ghetto? A ghetto is a place, so maybe if you were educated you would know that to use the word "ghetto" to describe people is quite ignorant. LoL...

Idiot #1:  yes I would have I would have called them ghetto as well, everyone can act the same way  oh, I hate when they start to back track, I smell the blood and I get all craaaazzzzzyyyyy

Idiot #2:  I used to work with both of these gentlemen and they are both very nice men. I think that situations such as these can happen in ANY family. You never know when you may snap and lose your temper or do or say something we may regret. So while we can maybe chuckle at this story for a hot second (now that we know they are ok) We must remember the real tragedy here is that these men are brothers. Let's just pray they can hug it out.   Yep, completely normal behavior to be fighting over laundry and someone gets a bat.  Glad I’m not in this one’s family…just saying

Dangerous Idiot: OMG...ladies ! I am sure there are both black and white people living in the ghetto, and as for names..I am Italian, and they call us Dago's, and wop's, and whatever else they can think of lol....I don't care, I am proud of my Italian heritage, so I just laugh and go on That seems to be nothing other then slang, as you hear "thats ghetto" everywhere, especially on TV, and right or wrong, it is just whatever you make of it, as it is not going to stop...just slang, like every other slang word...

Idiot with two cents too much:  Our Constitution does NOT grant us the privilege of saying anything we want any time we want. You cannot yell "Fire" in public if there is no fire. But that is only the tip of the iceberg. Think about it!  there's always one in every crowd isn't there?  One of these people?

Dangerous Idiot:  You're right, but, like I said, unless you want to fight everytime someone says something you don't like, you will be fighting all the time. Evidently, there is nothing anybody can do to stop it, or it wouldn't still be happening, so, it is just a fact of life, and slang will be around a long time after we are gone. I don't choose to spend the rest of my life fighting over something someone else says, I have much better things to do then worry about words..like they say, STICKS, AND STONES WILL BREAK .....ETC.

Jo:  The idea that someone should just accept an ethnically derisive comment without saying that she's offended, and then to be called a fool for saying so is quite repulsive to me. Actually, it's akin to suggesting that a rape victim just lie back and enjoy it because rape is going to happen no matter what.
Also we’d probably be a lot smarter if we stopped using the television as an authority on grammatical correctness and the bastion of morality.  Sticks and stones will break bones but words will never hurt me—so I better just shut up when someone insults me?  And it’s normal in any family to go get a baseball bat and bash someone upside the head to settle an argument?  What are you people smoking?
Frankly I’m offended by someone who can’t argue without making a personal attack.  But I suppose I’ll just sit back and take it like a good little morally bankrupted, brainwashed television whore.

Jo:  And ghetto remains a noun.

Dangerous idiot:  I am not saying you hhave to accept it, I am saying do you have a solution to the problem? You can't compare a rape victim with a name. Arape victim has a lot of thing she can do, like report it, go to hospital, police called... blah blah blah….What’s with the baseball bat? Where did that come from? …blah blah blah…I’m a well-educated nurse…blah blah blah…You are reading things into what I say.  I never called you a brainwashed television whore.  I never attacked anyone personally.  To be honest I’m rather stunned by just this…the stuff I edited out was a long diatribe about being proud of your heritage and just letting people say whatever they want cuz it happens in every country…ahhh!  Even paraphrasing the stupidity irritates me!

Dangerous idiot:  I don't want to argue about this all night, I have a life, and I am sure you do, too, but, those people that say things to offend others, have a lot to learn, and if they say something like that, that might offend me, why should I drag myself down to their level? I know they are wrong, but, if there is nothing I can do, except keep it going, and making more trouble, I am to consider the source, and probably laugh at them. Not because it is funny, but because some people just don't know any better, and I am better than that! It’s easy to laugh when you have no clue what in the hell is going on.  This is why I am deeply suspicious of happy people---ooh!  Another blog topic!

Jo:  where did the baseball bat come from? seriously? I did not compare a rape victim to a name. I said telling someone they should accept being wronged and not speak out is akin to telling a rape victim that they can't do anything. It's an analogy.  Analogies compare two things.  In this case, I compared the pain of a verbal violation to the pain of a physical violation and suggested victim reactions to that pain.    (did my own blah blah’s against her blah blahs because the frustration was clearly setting in.  mostly it was about her comment how everyone acted like this all over the world and how I was certain that she’d gotten this impression from watching too much television since I’m sure she’s never been out of Ohio)…which brings us to the brainwashed television whore comment.  That was sarcasm.  Another high-browed concept.

Dangerous Idiot: I compared the rape victim to the word ghetto. AHHHHHHHHH!!!  I misunderstood you about the bat. Of course you can speak out, but what's that going to solve? People get shot over less than that these days, and is it really worth it?   Blah blah blah   Oh, sarcasm is bad, too.  Yeah, but it lets me call you a whore without you really getting that I called you one.  So it’s actually more fun then bad.

Jo:  you compared nothing, you commented on my analogy  seriously, I now have to explain to her what she did because she doesn’t understand that she didn’t compare anything merely commented on something she didn’t understand, which is actually my entire point....actually, nevermind. you have nothing to apologize for. You didn't insult me. Everything is rainbows and puppy dogs. Thought I’d add in a little more sarcasm.

Dangerous Idiot:  Well, that is kind of bittersweet~~but everyone has their own opinion, and that was mine, whether it be right or wrong, I feel that would be my decision, if the occassion should ever arise. I just think two wrongs never make a right, but, again, that is my opinion. Peace... you know, we don't even know each other, we might have been good friends?  She’s right about one thing, this is why people get guns and shoot.  But not other people.  In this case, this is why someone would shoot themselves.  And friends?  Really?  Not only is she an idiot, she's delusional.
Jo: you're opinion of yourself reaffirms my opinion of humanity.   Finishing with some more sarcasm.  I’m on a roll.

Dangerous Idiot ‎:)  

A smiley face?  I call her a whore and tell her that she’s reaffirmed my opinion that humanity is getting stupider with each passing second and she offers up a smiley face.   Sigh.  The worst kind of idiot is one who has an education and thinks that just because they know one thing, they know everything.
“The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.” – Socrates

I've had it up to here with this snow

This morning while driving to work, I had time to think about the meaning of life.

I had this time because the car in front of me was driving ten miles an hour and I was first in a ever elongating line of festering road rage.

The car was driving ten miles an hour because it snowed last night.

The roads were clear, but this guy/girl/asexual moron had left most of the 4+ inches of snow on his car.  He (a pronoun I will use because it makes me think all is right with the world, although I confess that I don’t know if the driver was male, female, or alien) had cleaned off a rectangle of about 3 inches by 5 inches right in front of his face.

Even at 10 mph, I was the only person for miles who was forced to drive to work in white-out conditions.  Meanwhile, the crackpot in front of me was leaning over the steering wheel scanning the roads through the small opening in the windshield.

I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge the guy too much.  I hate scraping windows.  When I had to do it, I cursed every minute of it and I swore that I’d have a garage.  And not one of those garages that people never put their cars in…a real garage that used for what it is supposed to be used for.  I have a garage, but I didn’t have a great morning.

The morning I had made me even more pissed off about the guy who was too lazy to brush the extra snow off his windshield instead of hoping defrost would take care of the 4 inches….or maybe his perspective on four inches was off (more circumstantial evidence that this driver is a guy, they’re often, in my experience, unable to judge inches properly).

My morning started with a snow plow.  Well technically that’s not correct.  It started with a dog barking at the yellow flashing lights going through the house.

At 2 am.

Thank you snow plow driver for being thorough and going up and down the street five or six times. Because I might have been able to go back to sleep after one barking frenzy.  Oh and thank you more for coming back at 5 am and making the run down the street again.  I’d just gotten back to sleep.

So at 5am, I’m up.  I pull on some old sweats to let the dog out of her crate and take her out.  The dog was halfway to the door when the cat knocks the lamp off the end table.  There’s a flash of white light, the fleeting thought that those stupid spiral bulbs are filled with mercury, and then total blackness.

The cat charges off down the hall, the dog thunders after her.

I move cautiously through the darkness and turn on another light, stepping on a rawhide bone which scrapes up the bottom of my foot and makes me scream. 

Yeah, I scream and the dog is more interested in chasing the cat.  I could be attacked by the Manson family and the dog couldn’t care less.  She’s got the cat trapped in the bedroom.

So I clean up the glass and fix the lamp, then get the dog outside.  I’m out with her.  I have a fenced in yard, but when there’s snow on the ground, the dog prefers to play and I need to stand outside to make sure she remembers what she’s there for.

I’m standing out there, in the dark.  Trying to close my eyes and take a standing up cat nap, when I become aware that the dog is having an unusually fun time and the tennis balls are inside.

I squint in the darkness, not wanting to open my eyes completely lest they be frozen in the frigid air.

The dog is throwing something white up in the air, jumping on it when it hits the snow and throwing it back up.

Snow doesn’t act like that, I think, trying to figure out what she has.

The dog notices my eye contact and runs over to me with her white toy –

 OH DEAR MOTHER OF GOD!!!

She’s got my granny panties from the hamper in the bedroom.

I reach out to grab them the dog jumps back.  Her head goes down, her butt sticks up in the air, cropped tail whipping back and forth so fast, her entire ass might take flight at any minute.

“Maggie, DROP!” I command, trying to keep the hysteria and panic out of my voice.  I reach forward to grab my granny panties.

Maggie runs away, my pants dangling in her mouth, she looks over her shoulder to make sure I’m following. 

“Maggie.  Drop!”

She runs at me, then passed me before I can catch her.  She bounces around butt up again, head down, eyes looking into mine, my underwear in her mouth.

At this time I should pause and mention that I’ve lost some weight recently.  My old clothes are too big.  I make a lunge for the dog.

She lunges for me.  Seventy pounds of playing Rottweiler puppy.

I take a step back. 

In a freak accident, the heal of my boot catches on the cuff of my sweats. 

The motion of my body pulls the sweats easily off my hips.

It’s 6 degrees out.

I’m in my underwear.

My dog has another pair of underwear that she’s tossing up in the air like a juggling act.

My sweats pool around my ankles.

My boot is still caught in the cuff.

I fall.

Backwards.

In the 4+ inches of snow.

Wearing only my underwear.

The dog thinks this is fun.  She gets to close.

Now we’re playing tug-o-war with my underwear in the snow and I’m slowly freezing to death.  There’s snow on my butt cheeks.

And I still manage to get my ass up and retrieve the ripped fragments of my dignity from the dog and change clothes again, and go out front to shovel the drive way.  And be on my way to work.

Only to be stuck behind some guy who didn’t even bother to scrape off his entire windshield.

When he stops at the light, I grab my scrapper.  Throw my car in park.  I march up to his car.

It IS a guy.  He looks at me from behind the ice shield covering the driver’s side window.  He’s wearing mittens and a fuzzy hat that covers his ears and one of those bubble jackets.  He’s got a big steaming travel mug filled with coffee in his car.  I think he’s frickin’ sweating.

His eyes are big and round as he stares at the long brush and scrapper in my hand.

I can see myself in the reflection of the ice because the sun is coming out, glistening over the fresh looking snow covering his stupid foreign car.  I’m gripping a blue scrapper two thirds the length of my arm with a bare fist, knuckles white, fingers already bluish.  I forgot my gloves because I was running a little late this am.  There’s a crazed look in my eye.  The wind is tossing my hair around my face.  I am not smiling.

I raise the scrapper.

The man leans back, his mouth opens.  He struggles to take off his mittens…a hand warmer pack falls out.

I stare at it for a moment.

He fumbles for his cell phone.

I lean over the front of his car and use the brush snow into his little port hole, blinding him.

I walk slowly back to my car.

The light turns green, but doofus can’t see that.  And he’s afraid to come out of his Honda hybrid.  I pull around him.

Hell, he doesn’t even know what color my car is.  He’s never seen it; can’t see it.

The cars that had lined up behind me, follow.  It’s like a parade.  I imagine the drivers behind me cheering in their cars as we resume normal speed.  Puffs of breath forming in the air in front of them.

I can imagine the cops showing up.  Finding one guy.  Warm.  Toasty.  Waiting for them.  I can’t imagine they’re going to be too happy about being called out in the cold to find someone who maximized their time in the warmth with sheer laziness.

“Did you see the woman’s car?” No, I couldn’t see anything.  “Did you get the license plate when she pulled in front of you?” No, she buried me alive! “Did she say anything to you.”  Nothing.   But I think I heard her mumble something about having snow up her ass and having to deal with a jackass.

Just make up your mind already!

It’s snowing again.  One of those half assed snows where you get just enough to slick up the roads and mostly cover the grass, but there’s still grass there.  Like Mother Nature can’t make up her mind about whether (get it? weather) she should let it snow or not. 

Of course, that’s my luck.  Even Mother Nature can’t make up her mind.

I’m really tired of all this wishy washy crap from people.  My patience started running short on this with politicians.  At this point, I don’t really care if they make a right decision or a wrong decision; I just want them to make one.  No more studies, no more research groups, no more committees to discuss things, and no more consultants.

When I was a reporter, the city hired a consultant to tell them how to run the police station more effectively.  After tens of thousands of dollars, the consulting firm issued a report that determined the following:  since the police department receives most of its phone calls during the day, they should concentrate on keeping a larger number of deputies on duty during the day time business hours.  So all this tax money was spent on a moron who couldn’t figure out that sometimes crimes happen at night while people are sleeping and they don’t discover them until morning….so maybe, we want our cops on the streets at night when the crimes are actually happening, rather than just responding after the crimes are done.  I propose that perhaps the city could have just realized that keeping the city safe involves more patrols at night.

I’m currently the president of a charitable group.  We try to set meetings.  Wednesdays are good for one person, but not good for another.  The second and forth Tuesdays are bad for another.  And we hate Mondays.  But Fridays aren’t good either.  So I just pick a time and say screw it, screw it all.  Show up or don’t show up.  I’m not dealing with your schedules.  We waste too much time trying to accommodate everyone.

So, imagine there’s a swarm of killer bees larger than any swarm ever seen coming straight for your town.  Some of your neighbors are packing up to run.  Some of them are duct taping all the ventilation points of their homes.  You’re standing in the living room in front of an open suitcase and a roll of duct tape.  You see the merits of both actions.  But you just can’t decide.  So by the time the swarm hits, you’ve got half your house taped off and half your suitcase filled up…you’re dead.  To be fair, your neighbors who duct taped up all the ventilation points of their homes are dead too…they suffocated.

But you have to give them credit for actually doing something.

Do you want to go down swinging or do you want to go down staring at a fast ball going straight down the center while you balance a bat on your shoulder?

All I’m asking for is a decision.

Oh, and it doesn’t count as a decision if you take it back a couple days later.

Let’s all make a resolution for this new year.  No hopping back and forth between lines in a grocery store trying to guess which one will be faster.

If I ask you if you want to help feed the homeless over the holidays, don’t say “maybe.”  Go ahead and say what you really think:  “Sorry, I can’t stand the sights and sounds of all those toothless derelicts slurping away at running mashed potatoes and dripping gravy over their greasy chins, or picking at turkey bones with six years of crude caked under their fingernails.”

Which brings me to my theory on the cause of all this indecision.  It’s all about political correctness.  We worry far too much about what other people think of us.  I’m not gonna think less of you because you think the homeless are mentally ill disgusting and should be in secured wings of hospitals where they can be helped rather than out on the streets where all of us can see them.  I actually think some of them are fairly gross myself.  See.  We can all make a decision and have an opinion without hating—even though some of us are too close minded to face the fact that our opinions may be wrong and some of us are too afraid to make a wrong decision.

I think Gandhi once said that “People fail by indecision.”  Okay, he didn’t.  I just made that up.  It was a choice.  I made it.  It didn’t go over well.  I can face that.

What I can’t face is someone not being able to decide if they’re going to repeat that quote tomorrow or not.  For crying out loud, plagerize it.  It’s not like Gandhi’s going to rise from the dead and sue you for attributing a quote to him that never really existed.

DO IT!  Don’t think about it.  Don’t talk about it.  Don’t agonize over it.  Ease the stress of your life and just pull the trigger (not literally of course).

I can tell you that the day I made the decision to kick my husband out of the house was the best day of my life.  The five years before that I thought about it and never did anything about it, were the worst years of my life.

So do it.  Whatever you’re thinking about.  You want to ask someone out?  Well, so what if they say “no”.  Like that’s gonna hurt.  So what?  Or think about it and never know what the answer might have been.

It’s your choice.  Make it.

Why are you reading this?

I know I’ve gotten old.  They said on the news that we’re going to have four inches of snow overnight and I thought, “Crap, I better get to bed early because I’ll need extra time to shovel.” 

Seriously, what the hell?  When did I grow up and get all responsible and stuff?

Okay, to be fair, I spent ten years trying to be responsible and grown up.  But let’s face it, it didn’t work for me.  Or if it was working, I was constantly being told that it wasn’t.  Either way, I’d pretty much decided that I was just gonna be me.

However, from time to time, I have these intrusive thoughts.  Sometimes, they’re just random, mundane thoughts like the snow things.  Other times, they’re more intrusive.

For example, the other day, I had a customer.  His hairpiece was on crooked.  We talked about finances and I’m sure I said the appropriate things, but all the while, there’s this voice in my head saying:  “Do you think he knows?  Does he always wear it like that? Should I tell him?  How does it say on in that exact position without sliding off?  Why would someone ever wear something like that?”

It’s been said that I don’t have a filter, that I say anything without regard to the consequences.  That I’ll ask anything.  That’s far from the truth.  You may think I am saying whatever pops into my head, but to be honest, I censor about 90 percent of my random thoughts.

I confess, these things usually come in the form of questions.  Not always, but I’d say about 80 percent of the time.  Somewhere along the line, I’ve learned not to ask so many.  Perhaps my parents yelled at me one too many times.  Or perhaps after so long I’m just embarrassed that my mind doesn’t really work like other people’s minds.  Answers that seem simple to others elude me.  Which is probably why I ask all the questions I do.

But I don’t ask all the questions I want to.  Why?  Who? What? When? Where?  How?  I want to know what makes people tick.  I want to dig into their brains and find out why they make the decisions they do.  Simple decisions and difficult ones.

Especially for stuff I don’t understand.  I want to know why some people are capable of depravities that turn my stomach and why other people can’t face a drop of blood on the sidewalk.  I want to know why my brother would go to Toft’s when we were kids and look at those dozens of ice cream flavors and always (ALWAYS) choose vanilla.  I want to know why I have friends who are bird fanatics and friends who are terrified of birds.  I want to know why a person who believes something doesn’t want to accept that others can believe something opposite and still be a good person.

I don’t get it.  Why?  Why don’t I get it?  Why does it happen?  Why can’t someone answer?

I’m asking myself a lot of questions too…it’s not just others.  I want to know why I don’t believe I can do this 5k thing.  I want to know how I will feel if I do manage to do it.  I want to know how someone who is bright and intelligent can choose to marry a man who spends a decade chipping away at her self esteem and telling her she can’t do anything, all why he lies on the couch and does nothing.  I want to know how to make sure I never fall stupid in love again so I don’t get hurt and so I don’t surrender my soul trying to make a chronic complainer happy.  I want to know what happens next.

I watch couples in the store, at Cedar Point, on the islands, and I wonder what it is that makes them a couple.  What do they bring to the table for each other?  I once saw a horrendously obese couple waddling out of a restaurant with a baby in a carrier and I wondered….how did that happen?  Is he that big?  What are the logistics of a thing like that?  I watch wrestling and that guy they call “the Big Show” with his hands the size of basketballs and I ask “Is he proportional?”

I wonder why some people think abortion is wrong, but killing doctors is okay.  I want to know what happened to a person who loses his mind.  I want to know what it feels like to loose control.  I want to know what it feels like to be in complete control.

I’m full of questions.  When I’m talking to you, there’s other parts of my brain that are constantly working.  It’s compartmentalized and usually it doesn’t seep out; usually I listen and hear.  But sometimes, I lose track.  I apologize.  I don’t know why I do that.  I can tell you that you will never guess where that part of my brain is going.  It could be that the color of your shirt matches the background in one of Raphael’s paintings.  It could be that I just wish I could have the personality trait that you’re exhibiting; what would it be like if I could say that? 

People are fascinating.  I don’t know why.

Believe What You Read

Today a friend called. She’s read my first 4 blogs. Her reaction: “Does anyone one like proofread this? You know, for accuracy?”

I pause for a long minute before I respond, cautiously. “Accuracy?”

“Yes. Accuracy.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, you are NOT 28.”

I pause again for a long minute. This time because I’m thinking: That’s it? That’s the only inaccurate thing you found?

To be fair to the friend who called, it wasn’t the only inaccuracy she found. But, it got me to thinking.

Far too many people believe what they read. I experienced it when I was a reporter writing for a newspaper and I find it on the social networking sights. And now, after only 4 days of blogging, I’m finding them on my blog.

For example, I got this email. “What size are your feet? I wear a size 10. If someone tried to sell me clown shoes to run in, I’d sue them. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

So, let’s take into account the source of your information here, okay? I am a really crappy liar in person. The only place I can lie is on the computer, where I’m not making eye contact. I’ll say anything on this little box…ANYTHING. And you know what, don’t believe a word of it.

For example, when I promise that I’m going to try to run a 5k this year. Don’t believe it. I’m actually sitting behind my computer right now devouring an entire box of Oreos and washing them down with swigs straight from a bottle of Jack Daniels. In fact, over the years, I’ve managed to gain so much weight that I’m not going to run a 5k, but I am going to get into the Guiness Book of World Records as the world’s heaviest woman.

Seriously, it’s bad. When I sleep at night I roll myself onto my side-by-side king-sized mattresses because one mattress just won’t do. The mattresses are on the floor, too. They used to be on a bed frame, but the metal bent like spoons at a Uri Geller event (take that obscure reference and Google it). For tops, I just use Navaho tepee canvases. Bottoms are a little more difficult, but I find that if I use two full size fitted sheets and sew them together properly they make fine slacks. The fitted sheets are the best because I can use the elastic as a waistband.

Anyway, as I was saying, the internet is a series of tubes which do not wash away excrement because the EPA hasn’t approved those tubes for plumbing purposes.

I’m often shocked by what people believe and what they choose not to. Worse, I think our society is breeding the belief that it’s not okay to question someone. We should be able to question things and we should be able to disagree without calling each other names and hating on each other.

Of course, that’s the utopian society I have dreamed up here in my head, trapped inside my house like I am, unable to fit through the doors of my house. I am, in fact, the Augustus Gloop of my generation.

Of course, this is after I climbed Mt. Everest without oxygen and swam to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. In my twenties, I accomplished quite a bit of athletic feats. They begged me to try out for several Olympic sports – both summer and winter – but I really wanted someone else to have a chance at glory. I’m quite modest that way. I mean when they wanted to give me the United Nations Humanitarian Award in 2000, after I single handedly rescued a native tribe of Amazons from a ruthless logging company in Brazil, I said told them to just leave the publicity out of it, let the tribe live in peace again. After all, they’re the ones who’ve protected the City of Gold which Coronado searched for all those centuries ago and they’re the ones that keep the aliens from making livestock out of the rest of us. They deserve their peace.

So, in short, remember that everything on Facebook or in this blog or in my emails is probably a lie. Everything except this blog because I’m trying to make a point.

It would be longer, but I have to drive my antigravitational device which I use for getting my 2500 pound body over to my encrypted CIA computer and give some advice to a black ops team stranded in the Congo. And I’ve gotten a little lazy and I haven’t yet finished my alien autopsy for the Air Force.

It's a dog's life

           Maggie’s got a rough life and today was more trying than most.  She’s been thinking about writing her own blog, but without opposable thumbs, the words all run together and no one can make any sense of what she’s trying to say.  Good thing for all of us.
           Good thing for me.  I hate rhyming stuff.  I HATE rhyming poetry.  And if I had to listen to everyone say “Hey, does your dog have a blog?” all day, I’d lose my grip on my thin tether to reality.

A typical day for Maggie starts about 5 am.  That’s when the house is the quietest and when the people who go to work super early haven’t left yet, the drunks have managed to make it home, and the people who work night shifts aren’t off yet.  Which is of course why Maggie barks.  Why bark when no one can hear you?  A good bark at 5 am can wake up the neighbors when the windows are open in the summer and is guaranteed to make me jump out of a deep sleep with my heart pounding so fast that there’s no chance of getting back to sleep.

After a bark or two, she relaxes and sighs and waits.  She’s still curled up in a ball in her crate when I lift the latch on the cage and let her out.

She blinks at me a few times and yawns as if I’ve woken her up and as if she’d been prepared to sleep until my alarm goes off.  She stretches out her legs on her way to her chair, where she promptly goes back to sleep. 

I end up standing there in the middle of the living room, in my pjs, wide awake.

Maggie opens one eye and looks at me.  I think she rolls that eye before she closes it again, but it’s too dark in the living room to be sure.  After all, she just plans to wait until I fall asleep on the couch before she gets up again.  Frustrated that I haven’t remained at her beck and call, she sticks a cold nose on my face to wake me up so I can take her outside.

Patiently (ha) she waits for me to layer on the winter coats and the boots.  Some people can just open a back door and let their dogs out.  I have to at the very least walk through the cold sunroom to the door. When I open the door of the sunroom to the outside, Maggie leaps through it.  In the snow, she bounces around and tosses her tennis ball around—oh no!  I lost my ball!  OH LOOKIE!!  I FOUND IT!!  IT WAS RIGHT HERE…IN THE SNOW.  LOOK..IT’S LOST…I FOUND IT…OH NO IT’S GONE AGAIN.  Without the snow, we chase rabbits and squirrels out of the fenced in “territory.”  Sometimes we bark.  I’d worry about waking up the neighbors the one of them has this little West Highland Terrier who just yaps non-stop all night long.  Maggie understands that West Highland Terrier’s are annoying and should be considered food. for Rottweilers.
Back inside, after taking care of business and looking out the gate to make sure no one is on the street,  Maggie next has to bother herself with making sure her water is fresh.  No self respecting dog would drink stale water that’s been sitting in a bowl all night!

So I change the water and clean the bowl.

What? the rottie’s big brown eyes ask me.  No ice cubes? You expect me to start the day with water that doesn’t have a couple of ice cubes rattling around in there?

I’m almost happy to be off to work where the demands aren’t so great.

Maggie spends the day in a crate.  You’d think that’d be upsetting.  It’s not.  She has another bowl of fresh water in there, a few bones, a blanket to chew on and rip to shreds until it gets replaced, and the radio.  She used to have the television to watch and she would watch Fox News all day, but we got a new high definition television and Nancy Pelosi in HD has ruined Maggie’s indoctrination to the conservative nation.  So now it’s just the radio and the rest of the comforts of home.  I wish I could have left my exhusband in a crate while he was not working all those years.  Then at least the house would have stayed clean.

Maggie hangs out until a little after 5 pm, barking at the strange noises perhaps catching a mailman off guard.  Once I found a pile of mail fluttering around on the porch..  Maggie has her moments, but mostly, she's living the life of a middle aged, unemployed stoner.

At 5 she pretends to be happy to see me.   It’s really quite an effort.  Especially since she’s so weak and that food bowl is empty.  And when it’s filled, well, that’s when the good smells are in the kitchen and why the hell would she eat dog food?

She lies on the kitchen floor watching intently in case something falls and she’s forced to rush up and grab it before I slip on it and hurt myself.  She’s VERY fast.  No 5 second rule here.  Besides, she's saving my life by knocking me over into the stir fry.

Sometimes the doorbell rings.  The idiots who do that understand very quickly that we DO NOT stand on the porch.  We stand back on the drive way.  Twenty feet back.  If we’re trying to sell something, well, perhaps next time there will be no doorbell ringing here.  All white flashing teeth and barking:  hell, people hardly ever notice the docked tail whipping back and forth with the entire back end.

We go for a walk—after my dinner, before hers.
We watch some TV and we chew the crap out of a rawhide bone.  Ripping dead, dried up cows into little pieces of gooey rawhide that sticks in the shag carpet adds traction if Maggie decides to chase the cat.  And it’s satisfying for her when I step on them after they’re dried back up and sharp and I scream.  She prefers animal planet, but she’ll tolerate travel shows, NCIS and House.  Sometimes she’ll even let me watch what I want to watch.

Every night we head to the computer room.  She’s got a big pillow here.  When she isn’t ripping apart bones and hide, she’s dictating what I should write on my blog.  It’s exhausting.  Which is why, now, at the end, she’s sleep on my feet (or she’s chewed them off, I no longer feel them) and I am through with tonight’s blog.  I’ve worked like a dog to get it done.

Clean up in the Aisle to Hell

There’s a stomach flu going around.  Almost everyone I know seems to have had it—except me.  But I’m not feeling so great today.  I took my lunch hour at the end of the work day (a perk of working for family) and went home, took a nap.

Then I figured I should probably get myself something to eat.  Something bland.  Something easy.  Chicken soup.

Of course I have no chicken soup because normally I make homemade chicken soup.  However, when you’re feeling a little queasy and a little drained, you just don’t feel like making chicken soup from scratch.  My mother suggested I go out to Panera Bread and get some from there.  My neighbor suggested I go around the corner to the little home owned place and see what their soups were.

But, I decided I was going to the grocery store.

Brilliant.

First off, let me say that at 6:15pm all you people with school age kids should be at home having dinner and finishing homework and settling down for school tomorrow.  Those of you with preschool kids—the same.  Old people, well let’s face it:  this time of year it’s dark out at 6:15 and you really shouldn’t be on the roads.

Oh, yeah, old people, get on me for that comment.  On my way to Meijer’s a woman in the turn lane went straight and nearly killed me.  She had a big huge Cadillac Escalade with a blue handicapped parking pass hanging from the rearview.  She looked shocked when I slammed on my brakes just before turning into her path, her face lit up like the Grand Canyon at dusk by the glow of the new Cinemark Theatre sign.  (get it, Grand Canyon, wrinkles in a person’s face…that’s my artistic side coming out right there).  She had a quizzical look on her face like, “Oh my, that woman in that tiny little car nearly turned right in front of me without looking.”  She’ll probably go home and call her friends and tell them about the horrible night adventure she had and the little blue car who’s stupid driver nearly got flattened; like it was my fault.  Like it’s perfectly okay to drive straight when the little green arrow is pointing left.  This is why we have road rage, by the way, but that’s a theory for another night.

I get to the parking lot to find it PACKED.  Cars popping out of aisles, fighting over spaces.  Someone screaming at me because they couldn’t get into a space fast enough and someone came from the opposite direction and got the one they had their eye on from 50 yards out.  I parked far away from the crazies and hurried in...for 1 can of chicken noodle soup.

To say the outside parking lot was packed truly gives no justice to the chaos inside.  Two twenty-something guys jumped in front of me to make sure they grabbed a cart.  Who says chivalry isn’t dead?  I manage to weave my way through the crowds stopped right in front of the door to arrange their kids and their purses in the carts before setting off to shop.

I walk down the main corridor at the ends of the grocery aisles.  I need aisle 11—soup.

At aisle 3, frozen foods, I’m tackled.  Two kids have leapt out of the ice cream and garlic bread in front of me.  I collide with a small, old woman who can barely see over the cart.  She slips out of her furry purple slippers and falls into a display of 75% off candy canes.  The candy canes smash when they hit the ground into peppermint flavored dust and skitter across the other side of the corridor where a woman tries to run her cart over them, but ends up cussing because “What the hell is under this damn wheel of this damn cart?”  The mother of the two kids looks up—briefly—from the frozen pizzas and says, “Boys, stay out of the way now.”

I put my head down and keep moving forward.  Clearly, that’s the only way.  At aisle 5, ethnic foods, I find an abandoned cart blocking one side of the corridor and two women talking on the other side.  One of the women looks up as she continues her leisurely chat in front of generic refried beans and makes eye contact with me.  Her eyes say, “I’m not moving and we’re here for a while.”  I can see the flow of traffic has been diverted between the Pepsi and the Christmas ale into oncoming traffic as other shoppers avoid this roadblock.  I plunge into the fray and nearly have a head-on collision with a severely obese man driving a go-cart.  He’s wearing goggles, has a nitrogen tank strapped to the back of his scooter/go-cart.  I have to step onto a wooden palette to avoid my second collision of the night.

Finally I make it to aisle 11.  Which is clogged with people manhandling the soup—10 cans for $1.  A split pea admirer has her cart in front of the chicken noodle.  “Excuse me,” I say, “can I just grab a can of—“

“Wait your turn!” she snaps in a voice that cannot be her own.  I am suddenly reminded of Linda Blair in The Exorcist and the split pea soup they used for special effects.  I take a step back.  I wait my turn even as my stomach whines and my gut starts to crap.  I’m really not feeling well.

I get my one can of soup.  I weave my way through jewelry and baby clothes.  It’s like a back road of serenity to the check out lines.  There are four lanes open.  Four.  Normally this would be okay for 6:30 on a Monday night.  I mean, this is when the single people without families are supposed to come out and get their stuff done in peace and quite.  Not tonight though.

I pick a line.  It doesn’t matter which one.  They’re all slow and everyone in front of me has a cart full.

I clutch my one can of soup and close my eyes for a moment to dream of an “express lane” where the store doesn’t put their slowest clerk, where people can count and know that if they have more than 10 items (without bundling things up and saying, “well the boloney goes on the bread for sandwiches, so that’s really one item”) they have to go to another lane.  I can hear kids screaming, parents threatening, a possible case of child abuse in Lane 3.

The old lady in front of me has forty cans of soup.  She lays them on the conveyor belt one-by-one, straining to reach them out of the cart. 

I must have sighed because she stopped and looked at me.

As our eyes met, I recognized her from the Escalade.  I can’t tell you how she beat me here or what twist of time and space allowed her to load up with soup before I got my single can.  But it was her.  I saw recognition in her eyes too;  they widened, their watery, cataract blue magnified behind thick glasses.  “You!” she said in a hard, harsh voice full of accusations, just as I’d suspected.  I hear a snort behind me.  The woman in the purple fuzzy slippers is standing there with her hands on her hips, there’s nothing but cold hatred in her eyes.  It’s gang night at Meijer!  Shit (which with each twist of my intestines is becoming more of a possibility if you know what I mean.)

I glare at them and realize I've got nothing to lose but my lunch.  I grip my can in one hand and lift it above my shoulder  “Listen, I’m going to buy this can of soup and I'm gonna do it before either of you get your stuff.  If either of you say a word, I’m gonna puke on your groceries and beat you to death with those slippers.”

Boobs with Shoes

Today I discovered the truly shocking fact that when jogging a woman with larger than C-cups could face bouncing of 6-7 inches.  As if the idea of running a 5k didn’t scare me enough already, now I’m faced with the fact that while attempting to accomplish this New Year’s Resolution I face multiple concussions.  Nothing like getting to be a real athlete the old fashioned way, by getting your brains rattled around.

Seriously, I’ve been talking about this 5k thing and the advice I get from my runner friends is 1] get good shoes  2] get a sports bra, you need a sports bra or you’ll die for sure.  Maybe this is why I never took up running.  I mean, who wants to run while getting punched in the face all the while?

My friend Nancy and I, a fellow “big boob”, went to get fitted for shoes today.  Well, first I broke the air-land speed record on the turnpike.  It was fairly empty on the roads, but I had the cruise control set for 80mph and I was still getting passed like I was some granny in a decades old Caddy that has only 10,000 miles on it.  I couldn’t let that happen.  I mean, I might not be able to run fast or even run at all, but I can drive fast.  Today was the first time I actually missed that V8 Lincoln LS I had a while back.  The days of 0-60 in 2 seconds just don’t happen in a 4 cylander Focus.  I console my depression with the fact that I’m getting 30+ miles a gallon if I stay under 80mph.

But I digress.  Nancy and I go to a place called Second Sole, a place that has people who know about running and know about fitting shoes.  Fortunately for Nancy and I we got the parking spot closest to the door—we’re trying to pace ourselves into this thing.  We walked in and this little girl who possibly weighs 80lbs soaking wet asks if she can help us.  I was too intimidated by the “wall of shoes” to make some smart ask remark like “there’s no helping us” or “you’re a psychiatrist too?”.  To be honest, I’m a coward who talks a better game than she walks and this whole running a 5k thing is really starting to scare me.  Nancy told the girl she’d probably regret it but yes, she could help us.

So we got marched to a bench to sit.  Sitting is good.  We’re good at sitting.  Nancy went first (remember, I’m the coward).  She had to take off her shoes and after the rest of the store was resuscitated and escorted to the parking lot; she was told to walk back and forth so the tiny skinny graduate of the Kent State running team could evaluate her feet.  All of her walking back and forth was making me tired.  Fortunately, the store had a dog as a mascot and I stayed awake by telling her what a good girl she was.  Let me mention that all the shoes Nancy got to try on were cool looking and sleek and made her look like a real runner.

Then it was my turn to take off my shoes.

“Oh,” the girl says.  “You have flat feet.  Gosh, I’ve never seen feet like that.  Did you go to clown school?  Well, just stay sitting there, I’ll be right back, you don’t even have to walk around.”  I think Nancy was secretly envious that I didn’t have to walk; but, she’s always hating on me like that and how I’m better than her and stuff.  Anyway, Miss I’m-Really-Cute-And-Perky comes back with shoes for me.  Strangely, all my choices are clown shoes:  neon, purple, red soles and silver with neon green.   “Clown shoes,” the girl says with a shrug that says “Hey, it’s not my fault that McDonald’s has more arches than you.”  (Note the food reference; it was getting to be lunch time.)

I got the clown shoes with the red soles and neon tops with the silver Nike swoosh.  They feel good.  Sadly, they do not have secret little wheels that come out and a tiny little motor to move me along.  But you can’t have everything.

Then the girl looks at us and says, “Do you need anything else?  You really should get sports bras.”

Sigh.

So here I am.  Sunday night, pulling out a credit card and ordering the “sports bra preferred by Oprah Winfrey.”  Yeah, I know.  It could be worse.  It could be the “sports bra preferred by Fat Albert, Minnesota Fats, and Chow Yun Fat.”

Random New Year Thoughts

Some people have traditions for New Year’s Eve and the day after.  Not me.  There’s never been a trill or a tradition or anything.

I confess that in my adulthood, I’m kind of a sucker for traditions.  I like to add meaning to things these days.  It’s probably a sign of old age, but at 28-years-old, I’m starting a little early with that.

So, last night was a little different then past New Year’s Eve nights for me.  When I was a kid, the ball dropping was a sign that I had about 5 minutes to run to my bedroom and get to sleep.  When I was married, we always talked about going out but doofus didn’t want to drive with “all the drunks” on the road and always said we should book a hotel room or a resort or something.  One year we did go to Vegas, but I was sick and, honestly, by then I was already not digging the fact that only one of us was working and only one of us was interested in gambling – not the same one.

Last year, what I call year 0 in my new freedom, I had a few drinks with some of my tamer friends and then went home to my aging dog and the fact that in a few days my mother would be heading in for aortic valve replacement. 

This year, things were a lot less stressful.  This year I had time to imagine how they got Dick Clark back in front of the camera.  Spray paint hair…check.  Animatronics wired and charged….check.  I imagine the sounds of the doors opening to where he’s kept the other 364 days of the year and I confess the sound effects and the image of this in my head are eerily similar to Dracula with Bela Lugosi.  Dick Clark doesn’t drink….wine.  I get that the guy wants to do this and it’s admirable that he does get out of bed in the morning (at least one day a year), but shouldn’t he retire already?  I don’t want to make fun of the guy, but it’s really hard not to:  stick your tongue out, then without pulling your tongue in start counting backwards from 10….okay…tell me you didn’t laugh, just a little.  Impossible!!

Anyway, last night I enjoyed an evening with good friends.  We played some games, ate some food, laughed a lot.  Each of my friends is unique and quirky and a little “different.”  That’s probably why they’re my friends.  I love them all.  I went home, played with the dog, turned on the police scanner and listened to the cops responding to calls of “there’s a passed out woman in the bathroom at (BAR X), owners request assistance and ambulance.”  Which of course makes me laugh, because I’m mean.  Just the thought of someone spending the first few hours of the new year, passed out with their hose around their ankles and sitting on the john with vomit trickling down the front of their nice “going out” shirt makes  me realize that no matter how much life throws at me…at least I don’t have to wake up in the ER after being rescued from THAT.

Today I put the Christmas stuff up in my attic for another year, cleaned the house, did some laundry, made a Chinese stir fry.  Would have taken the dog to the dog park, but the thought of the mud scared me.  Now, I’m sitting here at my computer writing this blog and letting the weight of my New Year’s resolution crush me.

Yes, that’s right.  Today is the first day of “training.”  I have to get up and take the dog for a walk still….a “brisk five-minute warm up walk” followed by more walking.  Tomorrow I head out to my friend Nancy’s for a few hours.  Have to buy some shoes, possibly some other appropriate running attire as I will be running/walking outside.  Onward to the 5k in July. What in the hell was I thinking?