Vituperative Phase

Okay, take some time off!

Stop reading my blog for a couple months while I work through this nasty phase. I'm mad at the garbage man (who won't collect my leaves). I'm angry at the roofer, (who took the final payment, but didn't finish the roof). I'm frustrated with the doctor who can find nothing whatsoever wrong...each and every time I take the ailing child to him. Most of all, I'm peeved at the muffins that I make each morning which seem to be contributing to my muffin waistline silhouette.

I think that I can trace it all back to the day that I discovered a pencil that wasn't really what it appeared to be--and life (and my posts) haven't been the same.

So, take a break, drop my link and sometime early in the next year, sign on again and maybe, just maybe I'll be nicer, life will again be funny and I will again be polite company.

Maybe.

Up Over the Hill

Oh, the old days, when Grandpa would send us up the hill to move the antennae while he yelled directions from the living room. We would sit under blankets draped over the screen so we could watch Saturday cartoons.

Now we’re promised that digital conversion is easy, and virtually free. $40.00 coupon for a $49.99 gizmo that will improve the TV experience. So I did it, I signed up and bought into the converter—now I get a vagarious mix of nothing at all on most channels, most of the time. As they promised, digital is all or nothing.

Now I’m stuck with the rest of America, paying for all the extra things to make this “easy transition” work, antennaes, boosters, or basic cable, ($30,000 over the course of my remaining days.)

I’m mourning the convenience of analog, but I do look forward to reverting back to sending the grandkids up the hill.

Piqued over a Pencil

This is not intended as an April Fools joke; it is not a magicians trick. Some innovative pea brain has exceeded simple and basic design and in their inventiveness, have created what military personnel in their most polite moments call a (foul word meaning upgraded until it exceeds practicality).

That means someone took something that worked perfectly well and improved it beyond practicality and useability. That person should be treated as if, indeed they were in the military and summarily shot.

For the record, the pencil cannot be improved upon for any cocamamie nor assinine purpose.

Don't.

Just don't, as there are some of us who treat pencils that appear to be pencils as if they were indeed, pencils and we sharpen them!

Now that I've sharpened it and rendered it useless, and ruined a perfectly good pencil sharpener, I take the time to get out my magnifier and discover the truth about this tool. It looks like a pencil, it feels like a pencil, and obviously someone else discovered that it tastes like a pencil.

But it is not a pencil.

And in hearty response to my son who says, "Well, Mom, it does say right on it..." I respond... " I AM NOT IN THE HABIT OF READING MY PENCILS! ! !" Perhaps on the side it should state: THIS IS NOT A PENCIL!

Note that it's even encased in wood so that it would have the same nibbleability.

Perhaps it's purpose is camouflage for the military... for when they need a writing tool, but really can't run the risk of being caught with a pen on them. That's it! It's an invention for top secret use! It's in disguise.

That also explains its total and complete lack of viable useability.

Happy Face

It's 6 a.m., and as the timer dings, Aidan pops open the microwave and says, "Hi!"

I look through my blur and reply, "What?"

He said, "I like seeing a happy face smiling out at me first thing in the morning."

That would be the mug, not me.

Mad about Gas!

I'm so mad! My tank is empty and I have to get gas.

And in spite of the (almost) two dollar a gallon price decrease, I am stuck in the same predicament that I was one month ago, gasless and dreading the fill-up.

Gas prices have me conflicted again. In spite of the high price, I was torn between the good that a high price would have on the environment, making people aware and working toward better, more efficient modes of transport, but now that they are so low, again I am twisted.

My problem should be the lack of consumer concern when prices are good. But it isn't.

I dread getting gas because just as soon as I do, the price will drop another nickel and there I'll be with a full tank, frustrated again, knowing that always and forever--no matter the price,

I will always have paid too much for gas.

Cake Wrecks

Okay, check this one out! I laughed and laughed.

http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

thanks, jenna's friend (I'm stalking again...)

If It Made a Difference

I love election day! I anticipate it with bated breath. I love to pretend with the rest of the world that there is some drama playing out. I tell myself that this is as exciting as a great sports matchup and can’t wait to see just how the brawl will turn out.

I’m picturing the day after, and the candidates moms waiting like good parents until the battle is over so they can pluck the two apart and smack their heads together and send them on their way to write the apologies for the poor sportsmanship they have shown one another. I pretend there is some comeuppance to be had. It makes me feel better.

It’s partially my fault, as I must encourage it. Somehow, the battle is fiercest because I am such a prize. I am the beautiful prom queen to be won by the player who manages to knock the other out of the running and convince me to select them.

But, in reality, I’m the ugly stepsister, who they are not worried about winning over at all. My 10 year old learned yesterday that he has spent the entire school year consumed with making the right choice. He has researched every issue, every part and parcel of the entire rule book front to back, and yesterday he found that voting is a fluke, that his game was thrown long before he ever gets to play.

Maybe a good conk on the head is what all of us need. It seems to work for them. They turn about and manage to play together again tomorrow as if nothing ever happened.

My 18 year old daughter repeats the internet quote, “Pshaw, Mom!” If our votes made any difference, would they let us do it?”

So go vote! Vote!

or don't.

In the big picture, it's all the same.

For Mature Audiences Only

The phrase "M" for mature themes" means gratutous sex, violence and abuse. This designation assures the world at large that only mature audiences will tune in. The ratings board has evaluated exhaustive advertising studies to assure that.

They must have also discovered some sort of coping mechanism that turns on automatically when we mature so we can stomach filth. Is it that same thingy that makes us incontinent at that same phase?

I'm coming up on the grandma age and still the M stands for morally repugnant to me. I can be immersed in the middle of a PG movie, book or television show and gratutous stuff (used to get an R rating) comes on and I still have to fling it away or turn it off.

Perhaps the thingy that kicks in to render us "mature" is desensitization. We've been there and we've done that, and we think that kicking up a fuss really wouldn't work anyway.

So I just go on holding it all in and that means I can start looking forward to the next phase of maturity, the constipation age.

(Hey, the title warned you didn't it?)