When hinges creak...

Yeah, yeah, I haven't been around much. Goodtime Mommy gets the blues sometimes. I thought of posting the blues, as I'm in a very hot and friendless state lately. The hubster and I drift on different seas, it saddens me that he doesn't want to share the things that give me pleasure. It also pisses me off that he thinks dancing in public while one sings the theme song from "Growing Pains" is unseemly. I find it perfectly normal. Sometimes I think his greying hair (which has been greying since he was in his 30s) has turned him into a fuddy duddy. I, on the other hand, see myself as embracing life. Others see me as a lunatic. I suppose that, between the two of us, we comprise one whole, normal, moderately enthusiastic boomer.

Anyway, this last week has been one of those "take a deep breath, haul it out of bed and get it to work" weeks. The week-end wasn't a LOT better, although a friend of mine had an extra couple of tickets to the Sing-A-Long "Sound of Music" at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday and I went and took one of the boys. It's sort of like the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" for traditional theater people. We hissed the Baroness, cheered when Maria and the Captain FINALLY figured out what the rest of us had known all along and screamed "Don't come out yet" when Christopher Plummer emerges from behind the shelter of the tombstone. The Bowl provided party poppers which we all pulled when Maria and the Captain FINALLY kissed, shooting streamers over all and sundry.We yodeled through "The Lonely Goatherd". We all turned on our cell phone lights, held them up and swayed while we sang "Edelweiss". Eighteen thousand people in an outdoor amphitheater, singing and swaying with their lights in the air.

It was enchanting.

The hubster announced the following morning that he hadn't any interest in attending something like that as he was NOT enthusiastic about being part of a crowd of eighteen thousand people who had come together to mock something.

It was already a bazillion degrees in the apt when he let loose with that one and it didn't go over well. Just saying...

Well, I've been worrying about the fact that the blog has been empty for a week. Of course, the fact I only have three readers mitigated my guilt over the lack of updates. I also figured that posting about how much life sucks isn't exactly something that brings people back.

And then...this morning came.

Someone dear to me sent me (via another board) a post made by someone on the board that banished me, and many others, to the Interwebs Molokai. Not only was I declared unclean and ferried away, they THEN nationalized their oil fields, so that only those with a golden ticket could pass. So this is now super secret stuff, things the general public are not allowed into without showing their passports and visas.

Someone in this super secret society wants to know what other people are putting in their Halloween candy bowls. Holy Cow! No WONDER this club is now ferreted away, available only to those members who have been approved.

WHAT ASTONISHING INFORMATION! No WONDER it's been locked up!

And, just to add insult to injury, I'm privy to what the poster is putting in HER Halloween treat bags.

In the first place...BAGS? It's obvious this woman has no children in her life. Biological, adopted, nieces, neighbors, none. Because if she did, she would know that, on Halloween, hoards of children, teens and adults show up at your doorstep. THEY have bags. YOU just toss candy as fast as you can into shopping bags, little plastic pumpkins and pillow cases until they leave and the next marauding band shows up.

But noooooooo. Not this self-styled holier-than-thou and richer too. She just loooooovvvvves to post about her cooking skills and how her entire week's menus are routinely ditched because the local "God, we're rich" Farmer's Market has a cache of organically grown and natural bat guano fertilized black current leaf (I googled it, there IS such a thing)while she posts nasty things about the rest of the pedestrian members who work full time, come home and manage to get a meal on the table for their families, a healthy one if they're lucky and one that will just fill them up if they're not.

Well, there's an entire list of what she has mapped out to buy, to mail order (can't mail order for the chocolate yet, apparently it's too hot or it's only in season in months with an "O" in them or something) but there is a complete breakdown of what must be two dozen different items, all of which will be organized and then put into various gift bags, then to be doled out according to the apparent age and financial status of the night visitors.

Bags are being assembled for toddlers, children, teens (and these seem to be divided by sex as well, one assortment for boys, one for girls) and a super special bag for pre-teen girls who will get a bag with several items including some little plastic glow stick bracelets.

Really?

No self-respecting adolescent would be caught DEAD actually wearing a glow-in-the-dark bracelet. I'll give TEN BUCKS to the first person who can produce a pre-teen girl who would voluntarily do such a thing.

Okay, she lives in a very rich neighborhood, on the water I believe. Now, I'm not complaining about that, it's hotter than hell here and I wouldn't mind living at the beach myself. But I also live in an extraordinarily rich neighborhood. Granted, I live in the part reserved for poor people who rent old apartments without air conditioning or washer/dryer hook-ups but hell, we all have the same zip code. My neighborhood goes all out on Halloween, btw. Fog swirls low on village streets, dancers are hired to dance Thriller on rolling front lawns decked out as graveyards, "Young Frankenstein" is running on a 60" HD TV from someones balcony, turned towards the street, 'natch, and Bugatti's are backed out of garages to make room for the haunted mazes. Andy Garcia gave me a candy bar last year. So did one of the Disneys. And now you can Google where I live. It's okay, I'm listed anyway. Guess what? Not ONE of these people handed out age profiled goody bags with appropriately counted out toys and treats in each one.

They were throwing Snicker bars into bags as fast as they could. Of course, for all their money, these people also have kids, dogs, jobs and LIVES. I've passed them on the street, exchanged "good morning" with people I recognized (koffkoffDenzelWashingtonkofffoff) and we exchange these pleasantries because we're NEIGHBORS. NOT because they're rich, you effing snob. Oops...yeah, I digress.

Anyway, I was laughing my head off at the list of toys and treats and how they would be divided and allotted and handed out in neat little gift bags and all I could think of was "DAMN! I'd PAY for that kind of spare time." I'm pretty sure Martha Freaking STEWART doesn't go to all that trouble and she puts on a hell of a Halloween. Know why?

She's too effing BUSY to start dividing the trick-or-treaters into age appropriate groups.

Now, why did this particular story turn my life around this morning?

I thought about it. It's hotter than hell and we have, for all intents and purposes, no a/c and the sweat (and yes, it's SWEAT, perspiration my ASS) was literally running down our faces last night. The hubster is turning into a crotchety old man who dresses WAY too conservatively. My younger son is home only to eat and sleep most of the time. The older son has disabilities that cause me worry. My job isn't very satisfying and my apartment looks like a toxic waste dump because no one with testosterone has any idea how to hang up a jacket on anything except the back of a chair. I have no car. Yet. I've starting selling Avon. The hubster hasn't found work yet.

But after I stopped laughing and finally caught my breath it hit me. In spite of her exotic herb garden and her mail ordered plastic spider rings, this woman has WAY too much time on her hands. And while she was sitting in her all too snooty home probably setting up spread sheets to aid in the assembly of her Halloween bags a month in advance I was sitting on my ass between a friend and one of my sons, drinking what she would most likely consider an inferior red wine from a plastic glass and eating chicken salad I made from a non free-range Costco rotisserie bird dressed with Major Grey's chutney from a jar, Best Foods Mayo and store bought curry powder while I belted out "Do-Re-Mi" with 17,999 other folks who were not planing their Halloweens yet either.

Last night I fell asleep, starkers and sweating on top of the bed clothes and the hubster made not ONE joke about harpoons this morning. The kid who mostly shows up to eat and sleep treated us to malts last night. He's going to get his Bachelor's degree this June. My older son is going to the bank (on a bus) today to get some money so he and I can go play Bingo at the air conditioned Elk's lodge tonight. I bought two hats, which I wear, and I'm going to take a free ballroom dance lesson tomorrow night.

And I remembered that life is FULL of ridiculous people who plan Halloween bags and take themselves WAY too seriously. I think it's God's way of giving the rest of us a good belly laugh every now and then.

Either that, or I'm bi-polar and no one ever noticed. Either way, I'm good with it.