What do I miss most by being allergic to several foods? Cheese of course. Ooey, gooey, runny, stringy, yellow, white, orange, marbled, sharp or mellow. Cheese. I miss cheese. I lust after cheese in a very unfulfilling and childish way. Cheesy novels and TV shows just don’t cut it for me, and neither does a cheesy comedian. Not even the cheesy smile of Nathan Fillion can take away the curse of being a cheese lover in a cheese-less unforgiving world. Oh I admit to the occasional cheat when at someone else’s home. Isn’t it rude to turn down that lovely bit of cheesy goodness when they’ve bought it just for you? Okay so maybe they didn’t buy it just for you, and it was there anyway. Maybe they even bought it just for them, but there it is winking and flirting outrageously. As soon as it catches my eye, I begin to waver. Sometimes I can be firm and stodgy as a kingergarten teacher in Siberia and ruthlessly turn away from it. Other times, I am like the mongol hordes ravaging and attacking. To be sure my ravaging is usually a bite or two, but it’s still something I shouldn’t be doing at all. My will power, or maybe my won’t power can hold up to almost everything but cheese. There is just something about it that I like, and it goes with so many things. All I have to do is see or hear the word cheese, and I am already fighting with myself. It’s like yawning: if someone else does it or I even see the word, I begin acting like someone in a sleep deprivation center. Just attach the electrodes and let’s get it over with. As a matter of fact, I am yawning as I write this. My sons would crack up whenever I fell into the yawny abyss and would repeat the word endlessly until I either collapsed in a stupor or clouted them verbally in their little ears. Perhaps a good smack would have been even better, now that I think of it, and yawn.

Cheese, at least, doesn’t make me yawn but it is rough on my system, and causes many of the same problems that gluten does, albeit in a milder form. Still, I can get tingling and swelling in my hands and feet from too much dairy of any kind, and it fries my brain circuits. When I bought my VitaMix so I could easily make my own dairy free milks, I thought that would cure the problem, but it didn’t. Good and easy as nut milks, rice milks, and soy milks can be, they are not real milk, and they do not come from a brain challenged creature, like a cow, a sheep, or a goat. I’m not particularly fond of cows, and I know you don’t get chocolate milk from a brown cow, but I like cows because they provide milk, which is the basis for cheese, chocolate milk and ice cream. Strangely enough, until I gave those things up, I could take them or leave them, and now I spend way too much time thinking about them and sulking over lack thereof. It doesn’t diminish the quality of my life or make the sun fail to rise and set, but it does annoy me! It further annoys me that I can’t tolerate goat’s milk, but since it’s so much more expensive, and I don’t like the taste, I’m not really that annoyed.

I have made peace with the non-milks and the un-milks, and actually enjoy hazelnut or almond milk on my occasional bowl of cereal, and I have used them in baking with good results, but until now, the cheese part of the equation remained unsatisfied. There are vegetarian cheeses on the market that are okay, but the problem is that most of them contain casein, which is apparently, the real problem for me and a lot of other gluten intolerant people. The two allergies quite often go together, and I am sure I am not the first person ever to be annoyed by this. I have heard that the molecular models for casein and gluten are remarkably similar, so perhaps that is why. Casein is what gives cheese the ability to melt, among other things, so if you want to melt nondairy, casein-free cheeses in general, you get a stretchy, orange or whitish blob of unforgiving and unwilling material on your pizzas or mac and cheese. Forget grilled cheese. The real problem with a lot of nondairy cheeses is not that they don’t melt well the first time, although in truth most don’t, but that if you reheat it, it looks so bad you won’t ever want to eat it again. It will have stolidly molded itself into an unforgiving orange or white shape like a freeform broken toy. It would also be a real jawbreaker the second time around.

Enter Daiya brand cheese. It is vegan and totally delicious, although if you can eat dairy cheeses, you might not like it as much as I do. I will say that my husband who can and does eat anything, thoroughly enjoys a pizza or grilled cheese made with Daiya. You can buy it in blocks or in small bags of grated cheesy shreds. It tastes good to me cold or warm, and when you make a pizza or a grilled cheese, it does just what it’s supposed to. It melts, and it isn’t plastic or stringy, it’s just cheesy and delicious. It tastes wonderful, and it has sharply curtailed my cheese cheating ways. Some people complain that at nine something a pound, it’s expensive. A lot of dairy cheeses cost the same, so it’s a moot point for me. I can’t eat dairy, so at any price, Daiya is a bargain for me. It comes in cheddar or Italian flavors, and is now easily available in most larger cities, or by mail. Now that I can just walk into my favorite specialty chain and buy it off the shelf, it’s even easier, and I can always have a bag or block on hand. I haven’t yet seen the blocks in the shops, but I keep small blocks and slices in my freezer and all is well. I now have my cheese yearnings mostly under control. I am still hoping that Daiya or someone else makes a CheezWhiz substitute, because let’s face it, all the ones I have found previously were, to put it politely, awful. I have a recipe for one that is made with nutritional yeast, pimentos, canned beans and a few other things. When I tasted it, it had a sharp, kind of odd taste, but so does regular CheezWhiz. It falls short on texture and mouth feel though, but it is an acceptable alternative. Still I live in hope that some company does make one that is closer than the one I currently make.

With Daiya cheeses and Udi’s wonderful bread products, I don’t feel at all deprived. My freezer is full of pizza crusts, bread, and bagels. It is worth the price and the lack of room for other things. My dessert island list is short and sweet. If I could only choose two things, I would choose Daiya cheese and Udi’s gluten free breads and bagels. I could survive quite well and happily. If I could pick a third thing, and I will, damn it, I would like the dessert island to be a tropical island instead, with a furnished cottage with electricity and a charming stream. If you’re going to dream big, you have to pull out all the stops. It would also be lovely if there were fruit trees and bushes around the back and sides of the cottage. It would also have electricity, internet and DirecTv access, and lots of lovely books and magazines, that an obliging bird or pilot would drop off weekly. I suppose you are thinking that if I had all that, that I could call for a rescue, but why would I if I already had everything I wanted and needed?

If I had all of that, ten pound bags of almond flour, a full pantry, grass that never needed cutting, and my husband, what else could I possibly want or need in my list of three things? Well, I suppose I would throw in visits from my babies and grand-babies, and not another living soul on my island. Not ever. Don’t ask me what three things I wanted, because I am quite sure that I would take four and it would get totally out of hand. Things just happen, and who am I to prevent them if they spoil me?

When I was growing up, my mother had a habit of referring to the upper classes as “not like you and me”, and she was right. Today, politics is littered with the upper classes, and their dreams of a socialist Utopian state. You would think that people with money would want to hold on to their money and not see it go down the drain, but there are two fallacies with that argument. One is that it isn’t their money. In large part, it is usually inherited wealth that they did nothing to earn, other than to have their hands out when a relative died. They are several generations removed from the person or persons that actually accrued their wealth. The second fallacy is that they will suffer from their ever more draconian laws; they will not suffer because they will be the ones making the laws, and they always manage to exempt themselves from everything that they foist on other people. Or at least, the think tanks, the lobbyists and the lawyers who make the laws, will be their class as well, and they will all be automatically exempted from the laws that they vote for. It’s easy for them to vote for the laws, because as several people such as Nancy Pelosi and Chris Dodd have said, they have to vote for the laws and pass them so they know what they are voting for. Once they do, all hell breaks loose, but there is no stopping the policy princes from making ever more repellent laws and smiling at the havoc they are causing. Ignorance is bliss when you are trying to create a one world socialist government, and all you have to do is be willing to do nothing, except to do what they tell you to do. There used to be a basic assumption that the United States was a classless society, but the last sixty or seventy, or even eighty years, have proved the fallacy of that idea. We are engaged in a vicious struggle of class warfare with the upper classes and with the useful idiots that believe enough of their nonsense to elect them time after time.

A lot of the people that vote for the socialist Utopians are misguided and think that the people they are electing sincerely want to help people. They are voting for what they consider social justice. Redistribution of wealth is legalized theft, and it is not justice, or very social. It does not raise the poorer classes, it lowers the middle classes, where strangely enough, most of the political classes’ support comes from. Rich people and poor people have one thing in common that in general you don’t find in the middle classes: hatred. In large part, if you have no money or have too much, and your standards are low enough, you feel entitled. Entitled to do anything you want, and entitled to have anything you want. The ruling political classes make sure that the fires of hatred and class warfare are ignited in time for every election cycle, to ensure them the maximum result, which is more ruling class politicians flooding into state and federal offices.

They are in large part, from the upper classes, or the newly wealthy who have learned the system, gone to all the right schools, done all the right things, and know all the right people, because no one else has the time or money to be so wrong and so misguided. They are joining a tight insular circle that knows exactly what it wants, and what that circle wants is to destroy everything that is not like them. They don’t like people that earn wealth and work hard; they are presuming that people seek wealth and attainment merely to be like them, which is ridiculous. Most people work hard for their families, to give them a better standard of living than they had, to give them a better start at life. The only people who like money for the sake of money, are people that have too much money, or have none. The people that earn money are the real producers and the grease that turns the wheels of government. You would think then, that if that were the case, that the ruling classes would not be targeting the ones turning the wheels, because that would be logical, and it would be fair. There is no logic to class warriors. They want to beat down the upstarts who presume to work hard, and who want to make a difference. The political ruling class doesn’t like that idea. They want bigger government to hang on to the power that they have, and because power is hungry, it is always seeking something or someone to devour. Once power gets hungry, it seeks to devour everything and everyone that gets in it’s way. The strange thing is, that by and large, the middle classes are the ones that keep charities going, and are the ones that do the good in society. It is not the ones who preside over expensive dinners and balls at five thousand a ticket. Those dinners and balls have overhead, and are designed to look as though they ruling classes are doing something that they are not doing. If you buy a five thousand dollar ticket, five thousand dollars does not go to that charity. What it does do, is ensure that you get your picture on Page Six, and in Vogue, Town and Country and in the society pages of your local newspaper. Very little of that money goes to help anyone, but it does help to prop up the image of the ruling classes, and the political classes. Charity these days is about social justice, which isn’t social, and neither is it justice, in any sense of the word. It is about a cause that sounds good and noble, but is just about filling time and looking good.

To be fair, they do have two ideas: one is that everything is Bush’s fault, even though they have controlled congress and the country since 2006. Essentially there is no difference between Bush, Gingrich, Kerry, Obama, etc. because they all come from the same place and believe the same things. The second idea is that they have to lie about who did what to whom, because they are the ones doing what to whom, and it’s inconvenient for them if you know that. A third guiding principle for them is that people that disagree with their ideas are racist, because racism is part of the class warfare they are waging against society. That in itself is racist, to assume that the have-nots are all from a particular class or classes, and need protecting from everyone else. The only thing that minorities have to fear is political systems that assure them that they are downtrodden and can do nothing to help themselves. The politicians tell them that they are being preyed upon by the unscrupulous, which is actually true. They are being preyed upon by unscrupulous politicians who want a big reliable voting block, and they are being preyed upon by their own “leaders”, who are a large part of the problem. If you really were a leader that cared about your people, you would make sure that they were educated, and you would not perpetuate a system that keeps them as largely non-functioning parts of society. You would want them to rise above where they came from and you would want them to have a bright future.

This is not just our country, it is every country. The dirty and not so secret, news flash about socialism, is that it does not work. Constant spending with lower levels of money coming in bankrupts a country, but this is an inconvenient truth, and is largely ignored by social engineers. There is no right and wrong to them: it is all about the idea, and what they want. They are corrupt, stupid, and arrogant enough to think that even though no one else has made it work, it doesn’t matter. They can make it work, because they are the right people, from the right families, and the right schools, who hang around with all the other right people, who think the same way that they do. So they keep spending, and keep attempting to manipulate everyone who isn’t them, because they don’t think that anyone else is good enough to be allowed admittance. They don’t want anyone to make a difference because they only allow their brand of difference to be on the menu.

If they really cared, they would control trial lawyers, they would ban lobbyists, they would write their own bills that were not loaded with pork. They would revere and love the constitution and this country for what it was and can be again. They would stop making laws through activist judges who overturn the will of the people, in favor of making laws for the right people. They would follow the laws of this country and stop trying to enact laws that other countries have enacted that failed. But that isn’t what they want, so it will never happen. They will rail against the other party or parties, but they will only be railing against themselves, because that is all that exists these days: them and people like them. A house divided against itself can not stand, but it doesn’t stop them from railing against who they are at all. There is little choice, but if you find it, vote for it. If A and B are equally bad, why should we vote for either one? Why not C or D?

The middle classes are a huge annoyance to the ruling political class because middle classes traditionally believe in family, God, and country, and in freedom. All of those things are anathematic to the political class. They want to replace your loyalty to God, country, family and freedom. They want to be your new God, your new family; they are the boyfriend that beats you up but that you will take back again and again because there is no where else to go. They want to change your reality and give you their version of reality, and force you to like it. Everything they are doing is in aid of that. The money they are spending is not helping anything, but it is destroying the country we have and love, which is what they really want. They want to remake this and every other country in their own godless, loveless image.

They are basically running against themselves and lying about each other, and the formerly free press is their trained lapdog that exists only to do their bidding, because it is full of true believers, whose bosses happen to be part of the ruling class, or close enough. True believers and useful idiots will succeed in changing the world into what the ruling political classes want, but what they get will not be what they thought it was. The laws will be increasingly harsh, and the penalties for nonconformity will be even harsher. One man will step out of anonymity into the spotlight, and he will control the whole world. That is what the system is working for. It sounds crazy to normal people, but that is what the world’s ruling political classes really want: a world that is controlled by them for the good of them, and not for anyone else. The one world dictator is of course, an idea whose time has almost arrived. People can get behind ideas, especially if the idea is packaged nicely and seems like a really good idea. If it seems like it will benefit them, that is the idea that they can be sold, along with a bill of goods that they didn’t sign up for.

We are told that the social engineers are working overtime to make this a reality in our lifetime, and there is no reason to disbelieve that. Bible prophecy scholars tell us that the coming one world government will be led by a cruel, powerful man who is a homosexual, which may be why there is such a huge push to promote that lifestyle, and to make it a crime to speak out against it. The unforgivable sin to the ruling politicians, is when people speak out against something that they have declared to be good, so they are taking steps to rectify that. As a Christian, who believes in the unerring word of God, I disagree with the homosexual lifestyle and that choice, but that is my choice to make, and yours as well. Free choice is the power God has given us to decide for ourselves what we will and won’t believe. You can disagree with my choice, and I can disagree with yours, and you can refuse to believe God’s word, but it doesn’t change God’s word. It also doesn’t change the fact that when we exercise free choice and decide on the merits of an idea, that it is our choice and we must not choose arbitrarily. Regardless of what we choose, we do not have the right to hate those who are different from us. We may disagree with each other, but it is still our right to choose. God said hate the sin and love the sinner. If you look at the current government, you can see that there are plenty of sinners to love! We all sin and fall short of the grace of God, but at least most of us are still trying. Most of us still believe in doing the right thing and are pained when we don’t. Our betters in the political class, have long since given up the struggle and have come to see merit in their own downfall, and insist that we see it too. That is a real problem for people who have a belief system and believe that there is right and wrong. Mostly though, it is a problem for people who willingly choose the wrong thing and resent people who do the right thing.

The fact that the future one world leader is a homosexual will not make him inherently good or evil to the average person: it will be but one facet of his personality, one of his calling cards. The fact that he will be a person of immense power and cruelty is what should concern everyone. He will rule with an iron fist, and he will deceive everyone. We may see this man in our lifetime, or our children or grandchildren might, and regardless of when he comes, we will all be powerless against him, because everything that allows this man to seize power is already in place , or will soon be enacted. If you value freedom, God, family and country, be very careful what you wish for, and for whom you cast your votes. Some day you may wish you had been more careful, and more aware. It is a strange fact that when people say they come in peace, what they are really coming for is to wage war against you and your way of life. Don’t surrender, and don’t ever give up. The future is at stake, and that future is called eternity. I know where I will spend mine. Do you? Choose well, and choose God.

When people tell you who they really are, (and if they talk long enough, they will do just that), then you should listen, and you should believe them. Have standards and principles, and don’t fall for anything and everything. When someone tells you who they are, pay attention, because if you come back later and complain that they told you the truth, it makes you look like ignorant and foolish. It is a strange thing, that while people don’t mind looking evil, they do mind looking foolish. Perhaps if people paid more attention to good and evil, being foolish wouldn’t enter it to it.

Ah, Monday Monday, why does everything that annoys me look that much bleaker on a Monday? One could argue that it’s the beginning of a long week, some being longer than others, and that once it has ended, we are back to our own selves, instead of forever being the curmudgeon at the door of the future. I think being a curmudgeon has gotten a bad rap, and that there are times we should be annoyed with life in general, and life in it’s minutiae. But then perhaps that would be buying into the whole thing, and I don’t buy out or sell out when it comes to living.

Monday is just the unfortunate day that arrives after Sunday. If you’ve had a wonderful weekend, you are sour and bitter that it has ended, and that the rat race has begun in earnest. If you’ve had a bad weekend, then you are feeling gypped and cross that you had two lovely days that should have been more than they were. I had a sick husband, so I alternately fussed over him and scolded him. I did not get to go shopping for his birthday present yet, even though the big day was two plus weeks ago. He needs a chair that he can get in and out of, without a lot of strain on his back. The chair he currently favors, is one that he has broken from years of relentlessly flinging himself at. Some people are sitters and some are flingers. I think it is cruel and vicious punishment to subject a piece of furniture to someone flinging their full weight into it. My husband is a slow and methodical man when it comes to thinking of doing anything, but when it comes to doing it, he is action man. He attacks furniture without any conscious intent to do it irreparable harm, and yet, that is the unfortunate result. He doesn’t hover. He hones right in on where he is going to sit, and then more or less falls sideways at it with great rapidity. The idea that I have to buy furniture which he is then going to torture, is almost more than I can bear.

Some people were raised by wolves who insisted n their having good manners, and some people were raised by hyenas who were never home, and just left their off spring to get on with it. After a man hears something daily, like please don’t throw yourself at the furniture, he ignores it, and it just gets worse. This is somewhat like standing on a volcano intent on erupting, and massacring a village of helpless savages in 5 B.C. There really isn’t anything you can do. If you marry a man over the age of five, his character is set, and there are things he will do, just because. In my husband’s case, it is attacking hapless home furnishings and then resenting them for breaking after a decade of use and abuse. So it is time to go and buy something else for him to enjoy tormenting. It just hasn’t happened yet. Every time he has a day off, he finds endless reasons to not go out and do something. It usually involves sleeping all afternoon so he can’t sleep at night. After all these years of marriage, I am more familiar with the back of him than the front of him. I would know that butt anywhere, but the face might confuse me, unless I saw it attached to a side that was flinging itself into a chair, at a 75 degree angle.

The yard work did not get done, but he did trim the tree that was intruding on the neighbor’s yard and garage roof, and our own as well, so that was a win. The weather was lovely but hot, and we have had a week where the humidity trumped everything that the air conditioner was trying to overcome. When you are hot just sitting still, that is a problem. Moving around of course is worse, so I suspect that until September, the famous chair will not be bought. It’s hard enough to buy groceries, let alone a chair or some other large purchase, when the slightest movement overheats him.

I don’t mind heat as much as he does, at least I didn’t until he gloatingly reminded me that it was the hottest July on record. It may be for other parts of the country, but here, it just seems mostly normal. There is certainly more humidity, but no record breaking heat that I have noticed. Nonetheless, it hasn’t stopped him from enjoying the miseries of summer. His family has the peculiar ability to rejoice in, and decry things at the same time. My mother would have called it enjoying being miserable, but I’m not sure that’s what it is. I think they just like to annoy and mock people that aren’t like them. He doesn’t invest in stocks, but every time the market falls, he seems to take gloomy delight in it. His family isn’t prone to illness other than a good rousing case of the flu, but epidemics almost bring a smile to their faces, and make them happy for days at a time. It’s a strange thing, because they truly are very kind and likable people. They just have this thing about relishing misfortunes and disasters.

Not merely satisfied with observing disasters, they cheerfully enjoy forecasting disasters. I don’t think my sister-in-law has ever forgiven me for making her brother a married man. She predicted that it wouldn’t last when we were dating, because he wasn’t the marrying kind. Clearly he was, since he was the one that wanted to get married, while I was the one wanting to get away. She has given up predicting that it wouldn’t last, in favor of cheerfully remarking that she can’t believe we are still married. But there is a mournful glint in her eyes that says otherwise. I expect she thinks we stayed married to spite her.

Spite has nothing to do with it. Why leave a man who is constantly introducing new elements, like furniture, into your life? Now if I could just get him to attack the stove and dishwasher without injuring himself, I would have it made. Then there is the dryer, that spews lint all over the basement every time it is turned on. It’s a veritable winter wonderland, and the tropics at the same time. The heat is enough to fry an egg, because the basement is very hot when the dryer is on. It makes me shudder to think of the electricity it eats up while it is snowing lint and fuzz. Which brings me to the subject of tomorrow’s rant. Politicians. I could start on them today, but you don’t want to read two thousand words at a time, or maybe you do. I just don’t want to type them! It would also force me to come up with a new subject for tomorrow.

I truly hope that everyone has had a blissful weekend, and that no furniture was injured or maimed in your humble or luxurious abodes. But even so, feel free to buy a new appliance, a fetching little love seat, a matronly Queen Anne chair, or a quirky umbrella stand and hat rack. I will be wishing you well, and wishing I were with you, as I calculate my chances of moving the mountain of resistance that is my husband, to the furniture store, during the vaunted, “hottest July on record.” I expect that if I distract him with enough lurid tales of natural disasters, and keep him moving, I can at least make it to the car. All is fair in love and furniture purchases. At least it is at my house.

Whenever you get a new pet, the shop is full of advise on how to treat your new animal friend. They always advise you to keep the little ones on a regular schedule, and not to confuse them, if at all possible. They also tell you never to give the animal more attention initially than you can continue to give it. Animals have a certain level of expectations after awhile, and they want what they want. Doesn’t it also make sense that what works for our four legged and feathered friends also works for our human friends and companions. That was a rhetorical question, so no interrogative punctuation there, if you please.

Unfortunately, in the arena of human emotions, we all think we know everything there is to know. Nowhere is that more ridiculous than in the area of expectations. Somehow, during the dating period, women, (and it nearly always is women, because men don’t think that far ahead) there is the huge expectation that the man will change. Maybe, but not on this planet. If a man is time challenged when he is in the first throes of romance, what on earth makes you imagine that after a long courtship and marriage, he will magically change, and be on time? If a man loves football, baseball, or whatever, he is not going to give it up just because you put a ring on it. Why should he? We are always sure we can change things we don’t like, if only. If only he would just give a little, if only we could just find the secret that would make him change. If and only may just be the saddest words in the English language, or any language for that matter, because between if and only, are a lot of days, weeks, and years of unreal expectations.

If your partner has a bad temper, will he suddenly become phlegmatic to the point of imbecility? If he spends too much money and doesn’t believe in saving, will he suddenly change? If he is extravagant and madcap, will he suddenly become a model of thrift and rectitude? If he is quiet and spends a lot of time with his computer, will he suddenly decide that you know everything and spend all his time pressing your buttons for his inquiring mind, instead of staring at a flickering monitor for hours on end? As an internet addict, I can tell you that is ridiculous, and so can my husband! For someone who loves knowing things before everyone else, the internet is like Christmas, magic, and endless supplies of mind candy, all rolled into one. Certainly there are times that I can’t find what I want, and it vexes me, but in general I am full of interesting (to me) little snippets of information that I can’t wait to impart to him. He knew I was addicted to being a smarty pants before we married, and he just let me get on with it then, the same as he does now. It is much the best course, because I love the sound of my own voice, and there is no stopping an egomaniac anyway with the gift of gab, anyway.

After thirty plus years, I know that he will never be on time. I know that if he looks at the clock and it says 3:00, that in his mind it is still 3:00 when he gets home at five, six, or seven. If he likes a story, he will tell it to me over and over again with an expectant look on his face. No amount of surliness on my part will persuade him not to tell me the story that I have begun to know better than he does. There is nothing worse than having to prompt someone to help them finish telling you the story that you didn’t want to hear in the first place. No amount of snarky remarks will deter him from his perceived duty as a husband. He remains convinced that it’s a great story, and that I am dying to hear it. Dying, yes, but not from delight. In the same way, he knew I was impatient, with a hair trigger temper before we married, and just stolidly sits while I rant and rave. After all, for him the worst is over. I stopped throwing the china and breaking things years ago. I stopped slamming the doors some six or seven years ago. It was getting too expensive to keep fixing the frames, and frankly, I was boring myself. I do not look back on my youth with fondness and wistfully say, “Do you remember the time I called you an SOB and broke five of the blue willow pattern cups, and locked you out of the bedroom for three hours?” I am more likely to cringe at remembering lack of control and past vile behaviors. For his part, he is not a mean fellow at all. He appears laid back and speechless when he is upset, but that isn’t always the best way to gauge his mood, since by nature he is a taciturn man at the best of times. If someone were bent on proving that opposites attract, they would have to look no further than my house, to know that it is true.

I do not really think that we pick our opposites because they complete us, I think it is more a matter of someone different being more interesting than the devil we already know. To live with someone like me would be too exhausting to contemplate. By the same token, he appears to like being gingered up on occasion. It is nice to be with someone who doesn’t go into a tizzy at the drop of a hat, as I do. After all these years, I have become more balanced, and somewhat quieter. My temper is less likely to explode and keep the home fires at an uncomfortable temperature for hours these days. Instead I am given to rapid and unscheduled expostulations followed by silence or leaving the room. If he is lucky. At any rate, a volcano does burn itself out eventually, and so do bad-tempered people if they really care about those that they love. I hate to be boring, and constant temper tantrums are boring, and no longer dramatic: they are silly and irritating.

I found the man of my dreams many years ago and spent the ensuing years plaguing him and trying to make him the man I thought I wanted. Luckily for me, he was having none of it, and remained true to himself and who he was. His smile can still stop my heart at fifty paces, and his gentle soft eyes can always say what his mouth does not. Despite the rigors of living with someone who fancies themselves endlessly fascinating, he remains a very dear and loving man. He will never be on time, and sometimes I don’t see as much of him as I would like, but at long last, we truly understand each other, and celebrate those differences. Change is possible, but it may be you that changes, not the person you are trying to change. Sometimes that’s okay, because sometimes, that is where the change needs to happen. We would not have it any other way…..

I like readers, and because I have so few of them, I like them even more than the average blogger. What I don’t like are spambots trawling away for keywords, and no matter what I write, I seem to attract them. It’s annoying to have to clean out the spam filter more than once a day, and those pesky bots will strike again tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrows without end. Whoever wrote those program should be strung up and beaten severely – preferably by their own programs. Over and over again. They should have their dubious posts indelibly printed across their faces while they sleep, so they can never appear in decent society. Which of course would be places where spambots are not liked or welcomed. Like a badge of shame, their words would be imprinted in bright indelible red ink, the better to see your perfidy my dears.

I suppose the title of this post alone will generate a not inconsiderable amount of advertising spam. I will be offered free recipes, programs to stop the stuff, and obviously, I will get more phony baloney pretend posts. I especially feel a disconnect with ones that tell me how helpful they find a rant that is apropos of nothing. Then there are the ones that tell me they were looking for song lyrics and stumbled upon my blog. At least the last part is true. You would indeed have to stumble and take more than one wrong turn before you ended up here. I do comfort myself with the knowledge that a post about spam will probably not garner any of those! How many songs about spam can there be, other than the odd novelty number? To be honest, I have never heard of even one paltry jingle about canned pork products. If this were fifty years ago, I would not be surprised to discover that there was at least one, or possibly even two of them, but fortunately, advertisers are somewhat more sophisticate now, so we are spared jingles, at least. It seems to me that Barry Manilow got his start writing advertising jingles back in the seventies, and look how that turned out.

No matter how many sites we sign on to, to avoid advertising we don’t want, and no matter how many numbers we call for the same reason, we can’t avoid them at all. The internet is still the last bastion for people that want to annoy us without fear of reprisals. Fortunately, the Nigerian spammers generally leave me alone, although since the last election, we are assaulted on a daily basis with “news” about the Kenyan scammer. That is quite a different matter, but at least here I manage to avoid him and his doings. Why is it that we have to keep signing up for people not to annoy us?! Shouldn’t once be enough? Why do we have to keep signing things? It would make more sense to have to sign off if we changed our minds. I don’t know any logical or illogical people for that matter, that suddenly wake up, and ponder what is missing from their lives, before deciding that they need junk mail, spam and irritating telemarketers. No one could possibly feel fulfilled and cheerful at having to shred junk mail, clean out the spam trap, and hang up on pushy people that won’t get off the telephone. To be honest, on occasion, I actually do enjoy being blisteringly rude to people that won’t shut up after I have politely told them I am not buying what they are selling. What is it about the word no that makes them think I am teasing them, and secretly mean yes?! This is not junior high, and I do not sound like a tease when I say no. I sound like a very annoyed person who has answered the phone and wishes that I hadn’t, and who further wishes that the person on the other end would just shut up and go away.

After a month away in March, I came home to find that my husband had saved all the mail for me. It was bad enough that he ignored the two bills that we don’t pay online, but even worse, he saved the junk mail. Not only does he pretend that he doesn’t know how to check voice mail, he claims that shredding junk mail is too much bother. It’s a bother for me too, but it isn’t bad on a daily basis. It took me several hours to shred a stack that was a good ten inches high. My shredder was exhausted and shut itself off several times. My husband was smart and shut himself off so as not to be bothered with it at all. I didn’t tell him that, since I am trying without success to do the opposite. Sometimes I think that I should hire a spare husband when I leave, just to get the things done that my husband can’t be bothered doing. It wouldn’t be a difficult job. He could pop by for ten minutes or less every M-S. Some days it would be even less than ten minutes, but knowing my husband, he would befriend the spare, and I would end up paying overtime while wondering why my cupboards were even more bare than Mother Hubbard’s. There would be twice as much junk food spilled on the floor and in the cracks of the recliners, so maybe a spare husband isn’t the answer either. There is no maybe about it: it is definitely not the answer!

Generally I save my worst scorn and the most vicious remarks for people who fancy themselves clever by saying that the last thing they will ever do, is to ask me to buy something. I tend to rely on one tried and true closer for them, by saying that the last thing I will do is hang up on them, and then I hang up on them. No matter how often I have told people to take my name off of their lists, they continue to think that I am not serious, and continue to call. People like that deserve anything that their hapless victims throw at them, up to, and including threats and swearing. If they are really unlucky, they deserve my husband, who can drive anyone totally mad in five minutes or less. He is a charming, intelligent man, and is extremely amusing. He is also a nightmare for the unwary who get him on the phone. He does vague better than anyone I have ever met, and if you don’t know what vague is before you talk to him on the phone, you will most certainly know what it is after he is finished with you. I find that the worst offenders are brought to their knees and remove our names from their calling lists without being asked.

If only I could bottle and sell vagueness, I would be rich beyond my wildest dreams, but with my luck, my husband would refuse to cooperate and wander off to find any junk food he might have missed in my absence. He would find it too, and then he would find a movie he has already seen five times, and there would be an end to my get rich quick scheme. So maybe I should just shred the junk mail myself, and shut up about it. It’s not a perfect plan, but what is?

When birthdays roll around, I tend to like doing them up big; if you live in my house, the day starts with breakfast in bed, and your presents. If you were in school when the big day fell, you got a mom-approved skip day, and could do anything you wanted, just to show how special you were and are. Now that the fledglings are no longer fledglings, but full-fledged adults with lives of their own, I miss out on a lot of the celebrations. Oh sure, I glance around at the Amazon wish lists, and listen for not so subtle hints, but I no longer have the power to give you a day off and spoil you with love and a mountain of sugar and time to spend on whatever gives you joy. You get your presents on time, and you might even get them early. Because you are related to me, you will even open them early, because none of us are very patient when it comes to fun. We want it now, or even better, we want it yesterday or last week, or if we are really lucky, we want it last month. Last month is better, because then Mom feels guilty that you have nothing to open on the big day, and sometimes sends you another present. That is always to be hoped for. Sometimes Mom even writes up a post just for you, to let you know that you are still special, wonderful, beautiful, and deserve a day off.

Sometimes life intrudes, as in a spectacular sinus infection, or a huge battle with the allergies. I have been traveling frequently, and I was at home the last three weeks, and felled by an epic battle with pollens, trees, nature in general, and whatever else wants to have at me. It has settled down considerably, but I did spend over two weeks in and out of bed doing very little. As little as possible, if I am forced to be honest. Posting fell by the wayside of my life for nearly five weeks, and every day I didn’t write something, I felt as though something were missing. I also felt as if I were on a perpetual birthday, a cosmic, epic, amazing, humongous skip day to spend doing what I wanted. Most assuredly, I did not want to spend it sneezing, coughing, and living in the netherworld that lies somewhere between living and that other thing we do, when we aren’t living. I didn’t mind spending it traveling, because the destination is always a delight, but being sick is no picnic, and we never go any place with it.

Yesterday I noted with alarm that it was nearly a week since my daughter’s birthday. There are daughters, and then there is mine. She is the prototype for daughters everywhere, or at least she should be. She is child, sister, friend, mother, conscience, comedian, consigliare, and pure love. She loves me as I am, but prods me to be better. She is wise and silly, beautiful, a pure ray of light in the son-shine of my family. It is lovely to have sons, and it is quite lovely to have a daughter. She is bright, beautiful, speaks several languages, and is fluent in the key of life. When life turns upside down, she is there to soothe, cajole, and comfort. She is the woman I would like to be if I ever grow up. I think I know already that I will never grow up, and I will never be her, but I accept my limitations, and I accept that she will always be one step ahead of me metaphysically speaking.

She can slap together furniture or electronic equipment, she can cook and bake like a pro when she wants to. She can rock an outfit and a pair of shoes like nobody’s business. She has her own style, and even if someone else wore the same thing, they wouldn’t look even half as good. She knows that the best accessory is the right attitude, and she wears it with distinction and just the right amount of insouciance, and flair. I am not a clothes person, and she puts up with my decided lack of style without a single reproach. Periodically she will hint that people my age are past blue eyeliner, four inch clogs or the other wreckage of my youth. My knees told me about the clogs, actually, but she can take credit for my jettisoning the blue and lavender eye pencils. I like to kid myself that I am an idea person, and I can’t be bothered with fashion and the cultural iconography of life. I don’t care what the hot colors are, because for me, they will always be red or purple. Her clothes never wear her, she always wears the clothes with style and just that little something extra. Her mind is the same way. It is always working, analyzing, constructing and deconstructing words and life. As hard wired as she is for intellect, she is also wonderfully hard wired for silliness. She makes me laugh hysterically, and then laugh again, with just the turn of a phrase. All of my kids have that ability, but where her brothers have sarcasm and drollness down to a fine art, she has a knack for screwball comedy and outrageous silliness. She can ride the bus of sarcasm as far as anyone, and she can turn a phrase as neatly as any wordsmith, but I prize the silliness that leaves my stomach aching as tears stream down my cheeks, and I breathlessly beg her to shut up. Of course she won’t, because she has a thing about getting the last word in. I know when we have contests of shooting insults and silly puns back and forth, that she will leave me in the dust, and laughing until I cry.

Her home is decorated carefully and with thought, and she lovingly accessorizes it with a wonderful husband and baby. Like everything else in her life, they are perfect, and human, and wonderfully clever. They are also very nice to look at, and they put up with me, so I am honor bound to admit that they are perfectly perfect and delightful. She can turn any house or apartment into a home, and make you feel that you never want to leave there.

Of all the things that she does well, and there are a long list of things that she does well, the thing that she does best is love. If you are ever in the trenches and you need someone, she is there with advice and a nicely turned phrase to put the smile back on your face, and the hope back into your soul. If you wait long enough, she can get your soul to tap dance and make your heart sing. No matter how far she goes, she is always there for the people she loves, and for the people that love her. If the very thought of her makes you smile, and makes your heart do a happy dance, you are one of the lucky ones that know her. It is impossible to know her and not love her. Oh sometimes she is cranky, as we all are, and sometimes she won’t answer her phone, and sometimes you just have to stay out of the way when the crankiness strikes, but that’s a small price to pay for someone who is outrageously wonderful 99.99% of the time.

I love you more than I can ever say, and every day I love you more. You have enriched my life and made it more logical, and a lot more fun. You have made me love myself, and you have helped me to know that life isn’t always a battlefield or a contest. Sometimes it just is, what it is. Birthdays shouldn’t be celebrated just one day of the year, we should celebrate those we love every day, with enthusiasm, love, and gratitude. We should never let life get so overwhelming that we lose sight of what is really important. The people that populate our lives are precious and irreplaceable. Today, I celebrate my daughter in a special way, because she is a wonderful, loving, intelligent, clever, beautiful woman and because I was speechless and off the grid on the big day. So belated happy birthday wishes to the gift that keeps on giving: my wonderful daughter. No matter how old she and I become, she will always be The Baby, and she has accepted that with grace and resignation, and the realization that sometimes The Baby is more than just a baby. The Baby is the last one and is special in a bittersweet way. The Baby will always be The Baby, and he or she is the end of the old dream, and the beginning of a new and wonderful adventure. If you are really lucky, your baby will always be just a hug and a phone call away, and they will love you like nobody’s business. They will make you think, laugh, cry, and think again. They will enrich your life, and make you realize that they are The Baby, because you can never make another one, when God throws the mold away. All you can do is say thank you, and be amazed at your luck, and congratulate yourself on being smart enough to realize that.

She is brave and fearless, and doesn’t ask why, she asks why not, and just gets on with the business at hand. No matter what kind of hand she has been dealt by life, she has succeeded where others would have walked away shaking their heads, and cursing the fates. Her voice is soft and cheerful, because when you’ve really arrived, you don’t have to shout about it. You just have to smile and get on with it. When you have courage, charisma, and the world’s best giggle, you are in a class by yourself, and she is first class. Happy Birthday Baby. You are the light in the window of our lives, and we are lucky enough to bask in the glow of your heart. We will never be the same, and we aren’t complaining.

Where have you been tiny men? You have left us and come back again. Your cheeks are rosy with sleep and wonder, your lashes sparkling and damp with star dust. What sweet secrets are nestled in the rise and fall of your chests, when you are called to dreamland? Where do you go and what do you do? Do you dream of people you know, a bottle of milk, a snuggly toy, or do you dream of golden streets, choirs of angels, and the bliss of a peaceful silence full of silver notes and music? What do your rainbows look like, sweet princes? Do you do great things, or do you sleep so deeply that a dream is naught but a memory so ephemeral, that is only half remembered when your eyes are still shuttered with sleep? Where do you go and who do you meet when you are two feet tall? Do you slay ogres, or do you even know what one is? If you watched the news, you would know, little men. It is perhaps a great blessing and a source of satisfaction, that you don’t. It is always preferable, when living in a nightmare, not to know what it is. Nightmares have a way of lingering, and never leaving us. Then you would know that you couldn’t wake up, because the dream was reality.

I suspect that in your magical kingdoms, there are few ogres. Perhaps a stray cat, a barking dog, the discordant symphony of cars, the blaring horn of a truck, the crash of thunder, a loud laugh, a sneeze, or a tummy ache inform your list of horrors. I only know that when your sweet eyes open and your day begins, that it is all forgotten when you smile. It must sometimes be such a relief to be too young to have words to ponder sorrows. It is enough to live in the moment and be full of joy over the smallest things. There is a wealth of golden promises in the treasures of sweet loving sunlight. There are symphonies unheard by other ears, in the dainty crystalline sounds of rain drops dancing on the windows of your house, and knocking on the doors of your imagination. Come out and play sweet knights of the faraway kingdom called tomorrow. There are dreams in daytime, and sometimes those dreams are best of all.

The joy of a beloved face smiling down at you, the security and warmth of a pair of loving arms are among the greatest joys in the world. They cost you nothing, but sometimes those smiles and arms traveled many miles, hopes, and wishes to get to you. Those sorrows and yesterdays are all forgotten and banished, as they look into the cherished immediacy and dazzled wonder in your large, soft eyes. Past struggles are nearly always vanquished by present joys.

When you are outside, do you look at clouds and think of dancing to the tunes of fairies and angels? Do you know any? I’ll bet you do. Are clouds merely something that is, or are they places to go when you take a journey? Do your small soft feet patter noiselessly through the soft cool streets of clouds? Do you bounce and laugh as you force rain onto the earth with your dancing heels and flashing toes? Have your ankles ever sunk deeply into a cloud, while you thought that life could be no better than it was at that moment?

I wonder if there are sorrows when you return to earth and the real world. I wonder if birds talk to you and you understand them. I wonder if some day the birds will continue to talk, but you will no longer hear them. On those days, most assuredly, birds do cry. They have lost you to the world as it is and must be. A world where you hear sweet snippets of song, and feel the kiss of a soft breeze on your rosy cheeks, and think nothing of it. A world where you are focused on today and tomorrow, and yesterday is all but forgotten. Yesterday is a box of endless delights and laughter, but it is tightly locked, except for flashes of memory. A certain smile, a sound, a bright color, and then the door closes. It doesn’t make you sad, because there is now, and it is good . Now is a place of promise and security, a place where you are loved and you don’t know cruelty, sorrow, or the mocking voices of bullies. May you never hear those ringing in your ears, small knights of the promise of life. May all of your tomorrows be golden and covered with the love you take for granted now. How wonderful to live in a world where you are loved and treasured always.

Maybe someday, small travelers, you will help to make the world a place of love and understanding. Maybe your world will believe in dreams that come true, and know that a word that is given, is a promise that is kept. Maybe in your tomorrows, and the world of your future, the symphony of life will play out endlessly with no intermissions, no long lines, and no need of a season pass that you can’t afford, anyway. Maybe those dreams that your small, drowsy minds craft every night, are the building blocks of a wonderful tomorrow. Maybe some day your smiling faces will embroider billboards and magazines. Maybe they won’t, but maybe there is no need for two dimensional smiles, when the world is filled with real smiles and the joy of living well, with honor. Maybe the streets will be paved with rainbows, and the birds that you once talked to, will speak again. Your voice will be as soft and sweet as theirs, and you will trade secrets and dreams with them once again.

Where ever you go and where ever your dreams take you, always know that there are people who love you for all the yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows of your lives. Life is precious, and your lives are especially precious. Your life is a promise of the future, and immortality for those who gave you life. Gold and silver are lost, stolen, and tarnished, but flesh and spirit live on forever. Some day little men, when you are as old as me, you will look down the vistas and roads that your lives have traveled, and you will remember the times that love was unconditional, and a wish was a deposit in the bank of life. If you are very lucky, you will see eternity and love in a pair of large soft eyes rimmed with lashes as fine and long as strands of pure silk made in heaven, by the sure and loving hands of God. Just as you now know the love and security of your family, may you some day know the love and joy that comes from true communion with the one true God of the universe. When love and faith are joined, they can work miracles, and move mountains. When you are walking with God, you never walk alone or need to fear the dark. A promise is always honored and remembered, and tomorrow holds no fears or sorrows.

May your days be long and fulfilling, sweet drowsy babies, and may they always be filled with love and wonder. May life always be a sweet dream with happy endings, and may you always live happily ever after with the beautiful princess in the kingdom of love. The kingdom where you never have to wake up, because the dream has become the reality, and all of your tomorrows are filled with loving wonder and the promise of more tomorrows, that are just the same. Some times when you least expect it, tomorrow arrives to embrace you, and it fits like a glove. In the immortal words of Spock, live long and prosper. In the mortal words of your loving grandmother, live well, and prosper, always. If you live with love, then you have already won.

Dear consumer, please find herein, a new statement of benefits, by which the party of the first part, us, is better than the party of the second part: to wit, you, the customer. The Party of the first part claims the right to use and abuse you in any and all circumstances. You are in serious trouble, lady, mister, kid, etc.: If your credit card payments are late, (and your payments are always going to be late because we won’t enter them until three days after they were due) you are in serious arrears. It doesn’t really matter when you send them, because this is just a benefit that we maintain specifically so that we can extort, that is, charge you, any and all reasonable, but mostly unreasonable sums for doing business with us, the duly authorized representatives of Bozos And Shysters Incorporated.

All purchases up to the amount of $250.00 are automatically covered in case of loss or theft. If your purchase is destroyed in a natural disaster, it is not covered. If your purchase is stolen, it will not be covered. If your purchase mysteriously disappeared, tough tchotchkes, because that isn’t covered either. if your purchase disappeared or was stolen from someone who was holding it for you, including items on hold at department stores, that isn’t covered either. If your home and purchases are destroyed in a terrorist attack, fire, or act of God, that isn’t covered. If your new pet is stolen or destroyed, that isn’t covered either. You may be wondering at this point what is covered, but we don’t know that yet. We only know what isn’t covered. Resale items aren’t covered. Old and new clothes aren’t covered. Dishes aren’t covered. You’d better appreciate that horrible pun because we used the money you paid us to hire a hack comedy writer, so you wouldn’t think that we were totally without feelings, humor, or sympathy. In point of fact we are, but it wouldn’t do for our new friendly public image if you were to think so.

Antiques and collectibles aren’t covered. Furs and jewels aren’t covered. If someone breaks into your home and steals something you’ve purchased, it isn’t covered. If you’re walking down the street and a car jumps the curb mortally injuring you in the commission of a crime, we aren’t responsible. You may, however, be legally responsible for being in the way of the criminal, at the discretion of the court system. If you are held responsible for causing your own death, your survivors and inheritors will be promptly arrested and stripped of their personal possessions and your personal, possessions to benefit the criminal and the bank holding this credit card. It is not correct to suppose that we will be driving those cars; we will strictly deal with duly designated and authorized assassins to part you of your hard-earned cash. It will then become our hard-earned cash. Do you know how difficult it is to find, train, and retain people that enjoy their work?

Bridges are not covered. Acts of nature are not covered, unless it is a bank or credit card company defecating on you. That is always covered, for the business, but not for you. A propeller falling off the airplane, subsequently causing the plane to fall from the skies and thereby crushing or killing you is not covered, except in the case of a claim by the airline industry. Sexual devices or blue pills are not covered, and they are never covered when we tell you to to take your pills or sexual devices and go blank yourself. We, however, are covered by reasonable discretion and the laws of disclosure when we tell you to do just that.

If your groceries are stolen and you starve to death we will not cover that. Crab grass, pollen and sudden death overtime in football and baseball games are not covered unless you are rich and a season ticket holder, preferably one that has a box and invites us to games for free . Pac Man Jones is not covered, but all the potentates and all of the presidents’ men are. Richie Daley is covered, but Peyton Manning is not, because he’s a big boy and almost rich enough to take care of himself. We just haven’t told him that yet. We’re not afraid of honest men, just those others; the ones like us. The ones that lie to you are so much like us, that you can’t tell the difference. If you’re not honest, you have nothing to fear from us.

If you go to EUrope, South America, the Middle East, Asia and all continents or countries in between, and you are mugged, robbed, and/or your purchases are stolen, that isn’t covered either. You might, after all, be in league with the foreign nationals that mugged you, robbed you, and stole your purchases. It is a myth that we hire people to steal you blind, since we don’t require any outside agencies to do that. We can do some things very well, and doing it ourselves is what we excel at. We can’t, in point of fact, figure out exactly what it is, that we do cover, because we haven’t hired a fleet of smart aleck lawyers to tell us that yet. If by some chance you pay your bill on time, it legally gives us permission to ransack your checking and or savings accounts for any real or imputed injury to us as a business which is unable to extort the monies we legally wanted and expected to extort from you. What, you thought congress cared about you and your five dollar donations? What we do cover, is our ass, and we do that extremely well. We also take your money and give “donations” to lobbyists and charlatans that would make your head spin. Take your five dollars and go er, whatever. We also donate to political parties so that our gravy train never ends. We help to craft the bills that protect us, and not you, no matter what the lawmakers tell you. They’re with us, making the world a safer place for them and us, but not you.

If you pay your bill, but your neighbor doesn’t, you may be responsible for paying their bills for them through the higher interest charges that we pass on to you. We haven’t yet figured out how we can legally make you pay their bills directly, but up yours, Mister, because we are working on that, as we speak. If you pay your bills online, we can no longer claim to have lost your payment, thus making it your fault. We may have no choice but to pass on higher interest rates to you, because they were accrued through fraudulent practices on your part. Any time that you pay your bills in a timely manner, it deprives us of the ability to charge you interest on any unpaid balances, and that really makes us very angry. It also blatantly constitutes fraud, by our definition.

We will impound your computer if it was involved in committing the crime of depriving us of even more of your money. If while impounding your computer, we see any pretty or sparkly toys that we like, we will, steal, er, impound those too, and set up a trust fund to save the whales of industry. We will collect interest at 200 per cent on the dollar. We will own you forever, bitches.

If you decide to not accept the new terms of doing business with us, you have to call us and inform us of your spiteful decision. Further, you must put it in writing, and send us your first born male child, whom we will train to loathe and despise you. We will also train him not to pay his bills on time and we will go after you for it, until he reaches his majority. If your first born male child has already reached his majority and pays his bills on time, we will just shoot him and be done with it. If you have no first born or other born sons, we will take your daughters, your cars, your houses, your wives, and your new watch that you paid cash for. No matter what you do, you can’t win, so stop doing it.

To recapitulate: under the new rules of doing business, we have all the rights and you have none. We will advertise to Hell and gone, (where we incorporated), about covering all of your purchases up to a set dollar amount. We can replace or substitute a reasonable facsimile of said purchase, or we can refund you the dollar amount. It’s all at our discretion, and we have none. Don’t be looking for anything from us any time soon -we have no discretion: at least none for you, and no money either. This legalized theft is the best gig ever, and we want to thank all of you, the little people for making it possible. We also want to thank you for voting for the world’s most unprincipled scoundrels ever, who are our real constituents. After all, we don’t exist in a vacuum, but by the time we get finished changing the world you will wish you did. Now just go away, please, and stop bothering us. Don’t you have a sale to go to? You know you want to.

I can’t believe this, but I am publicly admitting to watching a soap opera, and not only that, but the worst written piece of tripe that has ever landed in my DVR’s rotation. I flirted with ATWT for years, but this year it is dying a merciful death. I know that a lot of people are flocking back in droves, in a case of too little to late, but it’s rather silly, I think. If bad writing and bad acting, stupid plots, and worse dialogue are what drove you away in the first place, why on earth would you subject yourself and your summer to watching it’s death throes? I haven’t watched it for more than a year, and before that, it was no great love on my part that prompted me to watch it. I used to watch with my beloved mother-in-law, and for five or six years, I watched it regularly. So much so, in fact, that my youngest son and daughter knew who Steve and Betsy were, and what they were up to. That’s a sad admission right there! I was exposing my innnocent babies to fictional life in a fictional town. It was the age of shoulder pads, big hair, bigger jewelry, and prime time soaps. Soaps were everywhere and you couldn’t avoid them. I never did watch the prime time sudsers, because lamentably low as my standards can be, they are never that low.

I would frequently grow weary of the constantly silly and mostly unbelievable plot points and situations that entangled my characters. Mostly it was loyalty to my husband’s mother that kept me watching. We always had something to talk about if we ran out of real topics. As if that ever happened. Irish and German ladies that can’t talk? Nonsense! My own mother gave up soaps when someone committed suicide on the Edge of Night back in the 50s, so my other mom and I took up the slack and leapt into the breach of silliness and fluff. I remember my mother telling us to be quiet because someone had just gone up the stairs. We did that all the time, and didn’t see where it called for silence. “Someone,” she solemnly, and mournfully intoned, “Is committing suicide”. Naturally we had no idea what that meant, so we pestered the information out of her. Being little savages, and curious ones at that, we were gravely disappointed when we didn’t get to see that!

Over the years, curiosity drove me back to The Show, but the pattern was always the same. Watch for a week out of curiosity, get hooked again, watch for several months, bitch loudly about the stupidity of the show, endure it for another few months, and then give it up again. The advent of blogs and chat rooms, and sites devoted to soaps brought out the worst in all of us. We had a focus to share our outrage and hatred with other like-minded people, and eventually, we all talked ourselves out of watching for months, for years, forever. My mother-in-law watched three or four soaps but ATWT was always held in highest regard. That was called The Show, and always referred to that way. The others she mentioned by name, but The Show was always and forever, The Show.

I find it hard to like one dimensional people who exist merely at a writer’s whim. They are thrown into impossible, silly, and unreal situations. They are all well dressed and unrepentantly amoral, which they have to be, or there wouldn’t be a show. Soap opera heroines have high marriage and divorce rates. In real life, the romance really begins after you say I do, and you build a life together. In the reel world, no such luck for the hapless heroines. One or both of the spouses is always cheating, about to cheat, or suspects that they or their partner might cheat. In the small, socially incestuous world of soaps, there are only so many men and women, and they are constantly in or out of love at any given moment, and their affections and disaffections are frequently rotated. If someone isn’t actually cheating, their worst frenemy makes everyone believe they are. No one ever disbelieves the worst frenemy either. They lead a charmed life. I always find it odd that men on soaps are so easily ensnared by frenemies and their lies. A good rule of thumb is that if you live in a fictional town, eventually your girlfriend’s best friend, or your wife’s best friend is going to develop a crush on you and tell you the most outrageous lies about said girlfriend or wife. You will turn to her in bitterness and despair and most likely take a trip down the aisle before you find out that she’s a liar and a backstabbing trollop. Then you will go back to your one true love only to repeat the cycle endlessly.

You will have a child in September, and five months later they will turn into a five year old. Another few months and they are adolescents with minds of their own, and what they really mind is you. You exist solely to thwart and annoy them. They always behave badly before they turn into adults and perpetuate the cycle themselves. In general, soap kids grow form infancy to adulthood in five years or less. While they become older and look very different than they did, in some cases just days before, their parents look remarkably young and attractive. While you go about your young life marrying, seducing, and divorcing as you plot to murder someone, you take comfort in knowing that your parents will be doing the same.

Which brings us to General Hospital, and I wish it didn’t. The show is built around a greasy, bumbling, neanderthal mobster named Sonny. Most people would rightly suspect that a show called General Hospital would indeed be a show that takes place in or around a hospital. I seem to remember that at one time it did, but these days, not so much. The show could be renamed Sonny’s World with no loss of continuity or narrative, since the writers seem to be permanently living in the early 70’s world of gangster chic. The mob was highly romanticized with the advent of the Godfather trilogy. Was there a woman alive who didn’t nurture a secret love for Michael Corleone? Was there any woman under the age of 30 who didn’t think they could change him from tortured, dark, endlessly fascinating mafioso to a boring but loving, domestically inclined businessman?

We all grew up, but the writers seem to be reliving the 70s, even if some of them might not have been alive at the time. I will know soap writers have gone full bore crazy when they bring back leisure suits, white belts and loafers, polyester Carol Brady dresses, and designs from Better Homes and Gardens. The 70s and 80s made that magazine what is it today, and we won’t go there. If I see a plaid couch, I will be sick, immediately!

Sonny mumbles and grumbles, and rich as he is, he seems to not know he can buy anything he wants. He greases his hair, profusely, and steps out the front door invariably wearing a hideous purple shirt. I like purple, and at one time a work friend referred to me as Miss Purple, because I frequently wore it. But I do not love the deathly mournful purple that Sonny’s wardrobe people affect for him. It always looks to me like it is growing a layer of hair or grease, or both. It has that horrible sheen that reeks of being washed and ironed long past it’s natural existence. In a way it is a perfect metaphor for Sonny himself. He is out of step with the times, and surrounds himself with a cartoonish hit man with two expressions: dull surprise, and puzzled,angry dull surprise. He also has two buffoons for body guards, an army of former wives, and so many children that on father’s day, it would take a semi to pick up all his presents. At least it would, if any of his children actually liked him. At any given time, most of them are not speaking to him. He hunches his back and lurches around in paroxysms of verbal self-hatred and longing. Everyone shows up to assure him that he is the best dad ever. Everyone but his own children that is.

Sonny is prone to repeating words over and over in a panegyric of self justification, overacting and scenery chewing. I’ll bet the actor’s dental bills are astronomical, since it can be difficult to get scenery, cars and furniture out from between the teeth. He grunts, he stammers, repeats himself, loves himself endlessly, and is always on the hunt for more ways to prove he is the best thing since sliced bread. Personally, I think sliced bread is dry and prone to mold. So is Sonny. He is also prone to taking up with women and impregnating them before you can say, condom. His army of sullen, disaffected children needs constant replenishing so that at least one is currently on good terms with dear old dad, while the rest of them snarl and lurch around in approximations of what passes for familial resemblance and hatred among kids that can’t act.

Most of us have a hate/hate relationship with the show. We hate it, and we would hate having to miss something that we hate so much and can endlessly dissect and discuss. Then there is the Eileen factor. I would never willingly piss off an Aries from Long Island. Unlike Sonny, they are informed, funny, and never at a loss for words!

Thank God it’s Tuesday! I normally say that with less enthusiasm because it is one scant day removed from the horrors of Monday, but this week, I can truthfully mean it. I truly love Tuesday this week, and am planning on loving it forever, but with my attention span and the possibilities of life getting in the way of my life and intentions, I can safely say, that I may not love it forever, and perhaps not after this week. That would depend on what lands in the mix and how it all sorts itself out. My bad awful week started on Friday last week. Doesn’t that almost sound unbelievable and like a bad fairy tale? Friday is supposed to deliver us from the trials and travails of a working week, and land us with a gentle bounce on the cusp of the weekend.

My Friday started with a thunder storm. Generally I am a fan of the sturn und drang of a spectacular thunder storm. It’s cheap entertainment unless your house gets hit by some of it, and then, not so much. I wakened at three in the morning to loud, bashing and crashing noises and a fabulous light show. I guessed that the sleep I had been so rudely awakened from, would not be returning for some time. In my world that means never. Once I wake up for any reason, I rarely can back to sleep. I must have been a bad baby for that reason. What, me, sleep? Seriously? The rest of the menagerie slept through all of it. My husband who was once in a rock band and slept through a few practices, wouldn’t awaken if you dropped a mountain on him. The bird, who is volatile and sketchy when awake, sleeps deeply in the wings of Morpheus, and nothing disturbs her twitter and chirping laced snooze fests. Maybe a cunning cat or friendly dog prowling nearby would awaken her and rouse her fight or flight genes, but little else does.

I noticed that the lights on my modem were out. Not a good sign. I reset it, and it looked fine, and continued it’s gentle winking and blinking of fairy sized green lights. Success. Half an hour later it went down again. Now really, that was annoying and I was annoyed. Not only was I awake but I had already reset the clocks, the clock radios, the microwaves, and the modem. It came back again, a bit tardily, but it was back. The third time it happened, I was reminded of the old adage that the third time is a charm. Once again it came back on while I glared balefully at it. Having watched cats perform the baleful glare for years, I have become quite proficient. Before my very eyes, it gave up the ghost. It died, expired, croaked, took the cowardly way out, went bye bye, broke my heart.

I take modern conveniences for granted and forget about them. I don’t often think about something that is working, but I think of it endlessly when it is not. I called the phone company and was transferred to tech support. Tech support always seems to be a Filipino guy named Bernard. I don’t think that all Filipino males are named Bernard, unless it’s a plot of which I am blissfully or otherwise unaware, so I must get the same guy every time I call. We had a long discussion as these things tend to be. All of silly and generally useless things that he told me to do, I had already done, so that when he said I needed to unplug something and plug it back it, I said that I had and it still wasn’t working. It saves me time and frustration to lie through my teeth and just not repeat the motions. (When I have done something four or five times myself, I will most assuredly not do it again for anyone.) He agreed to send me another modem free of charge and I agreed to send the old one back. It seems reasonable and I have no use for something that doesn’t work, so why would I want to keep it? My favorite part of the conversation was when he said that the phone company was very sorry that we had a bad storm. In fact, what he he said was, “We do apologize for the inconvenience of the weather.” To which I rather acerbically replied, “Unless you are God, you don’t control the weather Bernard.” People in customer service really need to remind themselves that when they read straight from a script, that unintended hilarity is generally the result.

On the plus side, the repairs to the bathroom were finished on Friday, so there was compensation of a different sort, although the plumber did tell me that Home Despot would demand another seventy five bucks because he had to use a bolt cutter to detach the porcelain throne from the floor. He doesn’t get it, the plumbing company doesn’t get it either. They do all the work, and Home Despot charges,extorts, or gouges money left and right for things that someone else is doing. Lovely racket for them, but not so much for the customers or the plumbers. Next time, I have the plumber’s number and I will call him directly for anything I need! He even told me of a different place to shop if I really wanted to avoid the Despot, and it’s internecine and often mind boggling rules. I swear that their business manifesto must have been written by Machiavelli, or some other cunning and equally tricky fellow from those long and deadly days of yore.

Monday the modem arrived and was easily installed. Other than the fact that my phone keeps telling me the line is in use when it isn’t, things are fine. The computer works, and my oldest son was able to get my wireless up and running again. Success! Happiness is when everything works, or you can find someone who will make it work. I deleted some 220 emails that I didn’t feel up to wading through, but at least I had the ability to read or delete again at my leisure, and my beloved Minitor is now able to keep me apprised of news, views, and shoes again. Alright, so maybe not shoes, but it rhymes doesn’t it? I expect you are now wearing the same look that the nun who taught me third grade English did. “Rhyming isn’t everything dear”, she said in deadly tones. “If it doesn’t make sense, why do it at all?” When I told her somewhat reasonably that she had assigned us to write a poem, she took my literal mind as an affront and put me in the corner for ten minutes. Yet one more reason why I never write poetry, if I can help it.

I felt cut off from the world, but my world is well again – at least in the electronic sphere, it is. Everything works, the bird is screaming, the rain is falling, and I have a sense of impending deja vu! When I leave town this weekend, I am turning the modem off, just in case. I don’t really expect it to happen, because although spectacular storms are a regular feature in the North Central and Midwestern states, I have never had an electronic failure before, unless you count DTV getting funky for a bit. I really don’t want to press my luck though, so when it’s time for me to go, it will be time for him to go on an extended nap. Since two of the neighbors are also down, we assume that the telephone pole in the alley was struck by lightening, and passed it on to us. They can’t access the internet at all, but neither have they called the phone company. The woman next door told me I should call for them , since I had already called for myself. I discounted the bizarre logic inherent in that sentence, and I reminded her that her account is in her name, and she needs to call them herself. She seemed put out when I told her that it was her account and that I wasn’t legally representing her, or entitled to. Although she doesn’t have cats, she executed a perfectly baleful glare when she turned and stomped into her house!

What else is new this week? I am going on the grandma summer tour on Sunday, so after Friday, posting will only happen by miraculous intervention, the wit and wisdom of other members of the zoo, or the rapid passage of time. By rapid passage of time, I mean slow meandering blocks of hours, days, and weeks. While life goes on as usual, I will be enjoying some unusual usuals in the form of a bird of a different Feathers. Here’s looking at you, kid!