As I was saying right before my nervous breakdown...

It occurs to me that, in my insecurity, I have collected a largish bag of former friends. They are former friends because they turned out to be selfish jerks, one of whom collects friends like most pudgy, yuppie Type C mothers collect latte recipes. I was awfully excited when she approached me with friendship, as I have always been too much of a loner, and my family did a number on me like you wouldn't believe in terms of reinforcing my general un-loveability.

This was due to any number of reasons, one of which was that I didn't want to wear mid-calf length tweed skirts with bobby socks and saddle shoes and blouses with peter pan collars set off with a cardigan sweater. My mother spent the better part of her life trying to bring back the early 1950s...GOD only knows why. She freaking LIKED the "let's have a cocktail party, I'll make rumaki, hang on while I take a few Miltowns" way of life. She thought I should blaze the fashion trail and bring back the great days of high school fashion.

Something like this:

The problem with this was that I started high school in 1968. Something like this:

My hair was better though. I didn't wear my glasses, which is why I wear bifocals today. My mother wouldn't let me wear bangs, otherwise my hair looked rather like Marlo Thomas in "That Girl." My mother and I fought constantly over my fashion sense. Which, now that I think of it, was rather ridiculous, because I went to parochial school and looked like this most of the time:

Yes, contrary to popular belief, that's what most Catholic schoolgirls look like. They do not even remotely resemble the schoolgirls featured on the cover of porn boxes. They don't smile - they're stuck in Catholic School - and they're always disheveled.  They hold hands because it's comforting to know there's someone else out there just as miserable as you are.

My parents told me that I had to stay in Catholic school because I wasn't made of sturdy enough stuff to make it in public High School. Seriously. have you even BEEN through Catholic School?

Anyway, I spent my off hours in jeans and sweatshirts and P.F. Flyer's so that entire struggle over me not wanting to wear my MOTHER'S hand me downs was actually moot, except on free dress days.

Anyway, suffice it to say that my mother did a number on me. She used to make up stuff about me and tell her relatives about it, oh, she was tearing her hair out about her horrible, incorrigible daughter. I never did ANY of the stuff she claimed I did, I was too nerdy and frightened of my own shadow. But a quite kid who played baseball and did, basically, what she was told to do wouldn't have helped my mother's cause; painting herself of the long suffering mother with a willful, headstrong kid. I've never been sure, but I have my suspicions that this scenario was one she convinced herself was true in order to justify the juice glass full of ice and straight vodka that was her constant companion throughout the 50s, 60s,k 70s and most of the 80s.

LORD, what she did at my wedding shower! Not that my in-laws to be helped any, but that's another story.

Anyway, I have a feeling this is why I have three actual friends and a worn road littered with people who have gossipped about me, used me, drained my bank account for their home based businesses and then spread the "fact" that I am a drunk, bi-polar psycho when they tired of me. You doubt this? I still have phone numbers...

So...if enough people treat you bad, you will, in spite of those three people who treat you as if you have value, eventually have the nervous breakdown you so richly deserve. And so that's what I did.

It was a beaut, although it could have been better. I didn't throw anything, but I cried non-stop for three days, until the Paxil kicked in. I spent 5 weeks in bed, watching old movies, staring out the window, sleeping and periodically dragging myself out to buy groceries or take one of the kids somewhere. The hubster is concerned, but confused, he has no idea what I need but he has, it appears, decided that I have a legitimate issue going on.. My doctor asked "what took you so long?" I dream about the house I lost, lost because we got swindled by Wachovia and weren't lucky enough to be the evicted former owners of a piece of property that was sitting vacant for a year. THOSE people got their homes back. We weren't so lucky. We get settlement checks every now and then. These former friends are the ones who claimed that people like me were just greedy, over reaching lazy oafs who wanted to take things that they weren't entitled to.

I hate that worst of all. We weren't greedy, and we both worked. If wanting a home of my own, one that I was able to make the payments on until the hubster and I were BOTH laid off makes me so, well, there's nothing that I can do about it. In my mind, falling into an arm with a neg am and being robosigned to boot makes me, well, maybe it makes me gullible, or uninformed. But I don't think it made me greedy and I guarantee that I did NOT set out to tank the personal economy of the privileged, arrogant stay at home moms and gay bears who claimed I did.

This does not stop my dreams though. In my dreams, I'm home, I have air conditioning in the summer and a back door I can let the cat out of. On quiet afternoons I can hear the birds singing in the holly tree outside the dining room window. I hear the sound of kids playing on the middle school playground a few blocks north. I have a yard to water and a place to plant the red, white and blue petunias on Memorial Day week-end so they will grow to the riotous mounds of patriotic color at the base of the rose border by the Fourth of July. On hot days I throw a tri-tip on the grill outside when I get home from work. I can put a load of clothes in the washing machine in the evening, after 9PM if I feel like it. I have my half bath off the bedroom - the one with the white bead board wainscoting and the margarita greet walls and  my shower with a door instead of a spring rod and a vent for the steam so that I didn't have to fight the mold I now battle daily.

I had floors that I could dust, they weren't in the greatest of shape but they were clean instead of the brown, cheap acrylic carpet installed over even cheaper padding that reeks of cat.

I miss my life. I hate what the people I thought were friends did to me. I value the friends who stood by me, and that's a fact. I am full of resentment at the way I've been treated, and even more at myself for allowing myself to be treated like that. All those people I gave money to to help them out...let's see...there was the literally thousands I pumped into someones scrap book business...both in purchases and in becoming one of her sales people, because I thought she was a "friend" and wanted to help her get a leg up.

The down on his luck writer who was recovering from a heart attack and was about to be evicted...yeah, I handed over close to two grand to him, paid his back rent. Where was HE when I needed a couple of HUNDRED back on that to make my mortgage? "Oh, gee, sorry, I'm broke." FUCK HIM. He showed up to help us pack. For a couple of hours. He rambled on about his glory days, wrapped some mugs and graciously allowed me to buy him lunch before he went home because his back hurt.

The girl I used to work with who was in SUCH financial trouble, there went another $1100. Don't even know where she IS now.

So there...you can all rejoice now because you managed to put me on Paxil and Xanax and Lisinopril and disability. You managed to send me back to work before I was ready because disability doesn't pay that well. You can all throw a party and drink domestic champagne while you celebrate my collapse.

Enjoy it while it lasts, my former 'friends'. Everything that goes around, comes around.

New Directions, or the ever shrinking Deb

So, here we go again.

Much has transpired. Too much, perhaps, but much nonetheless. I have considering reconnecting with my self-centered self these last few months and, finally, I have the strength to it. You see, before, I would say something, something like "jeez, what a spoiled little girl that woman actually is" and three people would send me e-mails saying "how DARE you, I'm never reading your blog again, EXCUUUUSE ME!"  Well, in spite of everything, that kind of thing hurts my feelings. Because somewhere between the "who the hell ASKED you to read it?" and the "Go fuck yourself" there was actually a very non-confrontational woman who just wants people to like her.

Now...this brings me to my hiatus. Vacation. Absence. Okay, nervous breakdown.

It started way back when. Probably about the time I learned to say "Mama" and unleashed the psychopath my mother was but I digress. More recently, it started the Saturday morning last summer I couldn't sleep.

I was sitting in the unholy mess that is my apartment, at the desk, screwing around on the computer. I was staring at a large pile of laundry I had sitting in the living room. It was there because I had decided, for some unknown reason, that if I stacked it up in the chair it would end up clean, folded, and would have put itself away. No dice. I looked at the laundry, I looked at the lame ass farm I was tending and thought, "what the hell, laundromats open at 5am." I grabbed the bags, headed to the car and ended up at the local mold factory of a coin op (now closed, btw). I went there because it was in a shopping center that contained a supermarket, a CVS, a nail shop and a Western Bagel store. Yeah, the bagels were a prime motivator.

So...I did six loads of laundry, sat outside and had an onion bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee, and loaded the car. It was 8:15 am. Pretty sure no one was up, I drove around the long way, aimlessly cruising the streets, enjoying the warm morning and dreading the heat that would be here by 1 pm  I cruised by another shopping center. There was a supermarket, a Starbucks, a cut rate hair cutter, another nail shop, and a Weight Watchers center that hadn't been there a month ago. I turned in, parked, and walked in.

I had spent the entire time I was savoring my toasted bagel thinking about the fact that I was killing myself. My weight had gone up to astronomical proportions, my eating habits were abysmal, I hated myself, my life, and I waddled. I would lie in bed at night wondering how long before my own weight smashed my heart.

My old leader was there. Registration was free. The program was changed. And I was ready.

I drank my water. I ate fresh vegetables and fruits, I kept track of what I ate and how much. Slowly, steadily, I began to shrink. I found I was now trotting down the stairs in the morning, dead center, no hand rails needed. I had lost 20 pounds by Thanksgiving and I was wearing new jeans, a size smaller. I ate sensibly at Thanksgiving, relishing the company. I had pie, I lost half a pound that week, not a lot but I was in good shape.


As Christmas approached I found myself not keeping scrupulous track of my food intake. I went to my meeting and was down .8 of a pound. And I panicked. I was struck with an indescribable terror. Instead of accepting the fact that my weight loss WASN'T as high as it is normally instead of trusting my instinct and my logic and being pleased that, in spite of my carelessness I had acquired enough good habits to keep myself moving in the right direction my emotions were telling me something was dreadfully wrong. I spoke to my leader who said the loss looked perfectly fine but told me to go see my doctor and assure myself that I was as healthy as she thought I was.

I hadn't been to the doctor in years and I wasn't about to go now. He would yell at me for not being there in years. I knew it. He would give me bad news. I gained weight between Christmas and New Years which should have made me feel less scared. I got back on course and made 26 pounds. I couldn't bring myself to celebrate, to shop a little, to pat myself on the back. I didn't realize I was on the way to a personal hell.

It was a scant week later when a co-worker, new to the job, working for my supervisor and acting with a pushiness and arrogance I was unused to told me I was to meet her at 4 pm so she could supervise me while I cleaned out a storeroom. I told her I was busy (this was true). She demanded an accounting of just what was so important and when, exactly, did I expect to be finished. She explained to me that I didn't do anything that was very necessary and I was to meet her at 4. I said, fine, whatever you want. Se told me SHE didn't appreciate my attitude as she was taking time off from her busy day to help ME.

And I imploded. I began crying like a child (no, not in front of the size 0 bitch). I couldn't stop. Several people expressed concern, as if they actually liked me. I ended up in the HR reps office and, an hour later I went home for the day. I can only imagine what happened when the HR rep called my boss and said I would not be back that day. I hope Miss New Found Authority crapped a brick.

The next day, a Friday, I broke down and went to my doctor. He hugged me while I continued to cry, said I had every right to melt down, gave me several prescriptions, took some blood and referred me to a therapist. I went back to work five weeks later and 8 pounds heavier. I slept all day and stayed up all night, breaking the monotony with peanut butter and butter sandwiches at 3 am. Yep, that's right...peanut butter and BUTTER. I made mac and cheese and pot pies. I let the cat pee on the carpet and the dishes pile up in the sink. I went out only when necessary and didn't enjoy myself. I stayed in bed and watched all 31 Days of Oscar on TCM and "Kit Kittridge: All America Girl" on HBO. I watched it about seven times in a row. Then I watched a movie about a girl who's father got laid off and her mother went back to work and her teacher thought she was incorrigible and then her father got a new job and they were going to have to move and her aunt got married and the kid saved the day. I watched it three times in a row. I don't remember the name but Sandra Oh was the teacher. I was glad my last name is not now nor was it ever "Oh".

I went back to work because we needed the money. I am still fragile and a bit slow to fire up, but it's coming around. I went back to Weight Watchers and began to take the weight off again. My doctor encourages this by saying I am so pretty. If I didn't know he was Jewish I would think he was a nun, they used to tell me stuff like that. Have you even SEEN my nose? It's not a nose, it's a beak.

I started back slowly but the weight is coming off again. I am okay with that now. It has made me vulnerable though, and there is less to hide behind. I now know my job is unfulfilling, my mother was controlling, my husband so detached as to be non-existent and I am lonely. There is more to go. I wonder how I got to be pushing 60 and been so afraid. Not of life. Of myself.

There is 100 more pounds to lose. I took my first step at 9 months (I walked early, my sons walked at 9 months as well)  and the journey I started then is just beginning. For me anyway.

Rewind

Lord, I have been busy, doing what I have no freaking CLUE. But, it seems, I haven't had the wherewithal to put pen to paper, or however one describer the act of self-analysis called blogging. As if anyone much does it anymore, like so much nowadays, blogging has fallen by the side of the road, much like me. I used to have a friend who spent a lot of time going though friends like that, I used to joke that we needed jackets.

I was watching the news, the big news is the USC/Notre Dame came coming up this Saturday night.
I don't talk too much about USC as my husband and his family used to announce, out loud and in front of me, that they believed Trojans eat their young. They all thought this was high comedy, just too hilarious for WORDS.

I WENT to SC. As did my step MIL who, while hardly on my list of people I want to show up for coffee this morning, didn't deserve crap like that either. I eventually stopped mentioning I'd even GONE to college and hoped my spelling ability would speak for itself. I stopped following sports because the hubster refers to football as, let me see, I don't quite remember it exactly, it was something like 11 grown men chasing an over inflated pig bladder around a field or something like that. He thinks THAT'S funny too.

I LIKED going to USC. My husband would assert, again publicly, that USC stand for the University of Spoiled Children and that a USC degree means you can extort and embezzle all over the world and I would sort of curl up and die, something that seems to have stuck with me lo these 30 years later. It took me 20 years to realize that actually Bruins (from cross town rival UCLA) do NOT talk to people like that, they respect the USC Film School we admire their theater department, they talk about the  extraordinary Annenberg School of Communication at USC and the groundbreaking school of gerontology and Trojans have no end of respect for the UCLA Medical
School and it's world class hospital. Bruins used to come to our fooball games and we used to go over to their basketball games and before the SC/UCLA football game they would put guards around the round little bear of a mascot that stands in their quad and we would wrap Tommy Trojan in protective hefty bags and keep a 24 hour guard around it and it was a good time, a really good time. And none of us could stand Stanford.

In short, we co-existed back then, and still do. If you want film, you try for USC. Theater: UCLA. Medicine is UCLA, Dentistry is USC. The students and alumni have always been on board with that. It's the people who didn't actually GO there that aren't. My FIL claimed to have graduated from UCLA, he had alumni license plates. I remember how he got them too, he went into the office waited until they got really busy, claimed to have graduated and needed a new alumni license plate frame, when they couldn't find his records he claimed to be late for a business meeting on campus and the flustered student worker, now very busy and with people lining up finally just gave him the damn things.

His obit skirted the issue a bit and stated that he attended UCLA after graduating from Los Angeles City College. I don't think he graduated from LACC but I did explain to my kids that I had no doubt he attended UCLA, I'm sure he went to a couple of basketball games at Pauley Pavillion over the years and, as we knew, he had gone to the alumni office.

What my FIL and the hubster never realized, or realized and didn't care about, is that the years of constant ridicule took their toll on me and, eventually, left a hole in me where that part of my identity and my general glee as summer gives way to autumn and college football gears up is gone. But this Thanksgiving morning the news talk here in the Los Angeles area has turned to football. UCLA upended USC last week, which happens occasionally although not often, and all eyes are on the long standing SC/Notre Dame game this Saturday. SC was ranked #1 at the beginning of the season and now, Notre Dame is in that position, SC is off the radar. And the newsman was talking about a column this morning in which the writer reminisced about the 1964 US/Notre Dame game and how the underdog Trojans upended the top ranked Irish in a HUGE upset.

I know. I was there. I was 10 and it was my first football game and I had to prove I knew the rules and the object of the game before my parents would take me and I did and they did. We sat at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on that autumn Saturday after Thanksgiving and I waved my Notre Dame pennant and remember Jack Snow and John Huarte tearing up the field and Notre Dame played the first half and USC played the second half and SC played a little longer and won the game.

Oh, how I remember those wonderful days, the days when I was what I was and not what I was expected to be, the day when I could watch football and play baseball and just be the hoyden I was as a young girl 48 years ago. And yes I remember where I was when I heard Kennedy had been shot, I was in Geography class.

FORTY EIGHT YEARS AGO?   Crap. I'm going back to bed.

School Days

So, like Billy Idol who liked dancing with himself (and the possibilities are rife with that) I am writing for myself. Okay, it's cheap therapy I suppose. So yes, it's been lo these many months now (and people who know me can vouch for the fact that I really talk like that. I say shit like "Lo," on occasion. We don't say things like "Lo" or "Prithee" often enough. There are perfectly good words, used rarely and only by those who quote Shakespeare on occasion. I quote Shakespeare on occasion. Only on occasion because I haven't committed a lot of Shakespeare to memory. I've learned just enough to make myself appear erudite without having to pay it off.

Doing this usually depends on who you're speaking to at the time. That is the key. The other day, I said "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." and just let it hang. I said this to a theater major. The fact that said theater major was now an accountant didn't matter, she could finish it and did while I gave the appearance of someone with a functioning brain, something I was beginning to despair of.

I went back to school ago, online. I want to get a Master's, I'm not sure exactly why because, for some reason, the explanation "Because I want one" seems to annoy people. It annoyed my father, who informed me just today that, at my age, it wasn't as if I could utilize such higher education to any career purpose. I countered by telling him it would look better in my obit if it said M.A. after my name instead of "Bitch on Wheels."

He was unimpressed.

Well, anyway, back to school. I had initially enrolled at Brandman, the on line division of Chapman, some sort of church run school. I have to fill in some blanks, I was last in college at a time with the slide rule was hip. This was my first inkling that maybe something was wrong. The adviser set up an education plan with me and my third semester what set aside for filling in my math requirements. The set me up with a statistics class.

Statistics? For an old on line lady who's last math teacher was Euclid. And I flunked. But, before that I had to take some state mandated English class which was a new requirement. And this is where I started to unravel. The first assignment was to post a brief introduction of ourselves on the message board that suffices for a classroom environment when one is an on line student. I posted a brief introduction. The teacher said it sucked.

I didn't take this well.

He said I had no voice as a writer and it would "behoove" me to learn how to write because I would never succeed in life without that skill. I pointed out that this chatty, fragmented train-of-thought style WAS my voice, particularly when the assignment is "Introduce yourself" and not "Discuss why Mitt Romney is not a twit. Please provide ample citations and outline your thesis." The teacher than told me I had no skills as a writer and it would, again, "behoove" me to learn to write properly. You know, like him. He said I couldn't spell or punctuate. I said "punctuate this" and then suggested he bite me. He then wished me a "blessed day."

We did not part well.

Now, ever since 1975 I have given many people the same advice when they were involved in something that they did not like. The advice, btw, comes from "A Chorus Line." A character is describing going to the High School of the Performing Arts and her teacher is a jerk who constantly berates her. She goes to Church and prays for guidance and, unlike most of us, she got it. As the song goes a voice came up from the bottom of her soul (and out through the top of her head) and said "This man is nothing, this course is nothing, if you want something, go find a better class."

I've told this story and given this advice for years and I decided to take it myself. I found a better class. I still have to take lame ass English, but I discovered that the lame ass English I was taking is NOT required lame ass English. My current lame ass English involved writing a paper over the course of eight weeks, using various multi media and getting peer pressure  reviews. It's okay. Not hard, except that the paper is to be a paper about a happy memory.

Well, okay, I can dig up a few. BUT...it has to involve someone that I am then going to interview about said happy memory. And THAT'S the rub. I'm almost sixty. These people are dead.  I mean, who can't come up with a happy memory involving grandma? Me too. Now, talk to grandma about the circus. Sure, the median age of my classmates is 17.9. I'm freaking OLDER than their grandmother's.

I was going to make one up, including the person, but now I find out that photographs are involved. Well shit. NOW I have to find someone in the photo box and make up a life history for them, and then come up with a happy memory I had with them and then do some sort of interview. Kee-Ryst

It's not that I don't have said memories, I could probably call up one to use in case I ever need a Patronus. I was happy when my boys were born. Unfortunately neither one of them is much of a conversationalist on that particular memory. I thought of the time my dad sneaked me out of the house after I'd been grounded by my mother and took me to the circus. Now, to this day I remember the absolute wonder of all three rings going at once.AMAZING!  My father doesn't remember that. Seriously?

Maybe the time my fiancee dumped me for a guy? In the long run it worked out for the better, although I have no idea where he is now so there does the interview thing again.

Maybe the day I told my first English teacher to eat me? I have the emails, which might suffice as the interview portion of our program, no picture tough. For some reason I imagine he looks like the older, dissipated Richard Burton, because none of the 17 years olds in the class will recognize him.

So yeah, I'm soliciting happy, media friendly memories. Like the time crazy Uncle Clint started yelling at the furniture...

Oh, by the way, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." is from The Scottish Play. Just thought I'd mention it.

Walt must be spinning like a lathe...

Yesterday was my birthday. It was also the hubster's birthday. We celebrate this like we celebrate all important days we share...our anniversary, Christmas, Thanksgiving...we ignored it. He doesn't speak to me and, in turn, I do not answer him. He never wished me a happy anything, sulked the entire time we were together and waited anxiously for me to give him a ride to someplace else, which I did, gladly. It was a business visit for him, but the business was interrupted with a birthday cake and much merriment. He told me to look on his Facebook page, as pictures and good wishes had been posted. He seems to have forgotten, however, that he "unfriended" me on Facebook, and told me so, because he didn't want his friends seeing me on his page.  Superficiality is not one of the nicer traits he got from his parents. BTW, I found the can opener. Don't ask.

This left me with a birthday and no one to care about it. I was casting about for free things to do. Okay, mostly I was looking for places where I would GET things for free. I remembered Disneyland used to let people in free on their birthdays so I went looking. I know, I was 99.9% sure that Disney would give away Jack Shit, but I looked anyway.

I found that Disney, aside from warmly giving people the aforementioned Jack Shit, has raised their ticket prices. Again. For the second time this year. If you want to take your three year old to Disneyland, and said 3 year old also wants to go across the Esplanade to see Lightening McQueen in Cars Land (built because both the movies sucked and Disney was looking for a way to squeeze as much money out of a franchise they're beating like a dead horse, with about as much success, but it's at California Adventure which is a waste of a good parking lot anyway) you will have to fork out $119. Yep, $119 for a three year old. It will cost you $119 to get your three year old into a place that is too big for him to toddle through, too hot for him to safely stay outside in for more than 20 minutes, too mature for him to go on the majority of the rides (sorry...attractions) and too expensive for him to eat anything except the cheerio-o's in the sandwich bag you smuggled through the gates in your pocket because Disneyland expressly forbids anyone from bringing in their own food for fear they'll lose that 7 bucks they charge for a freaking TURKEY LEG from a cart.

Now, if you really LIKE being ripped off by a rat in shorts, you can buy an annual pass. Oh, Passport. Other theme parks have passes, Disney is special, they have passports, which, I guess, are supposed to remind one that when one goes to a Disney "THEME" park, one is going to an exotic land where only DINKS and rich people live. 

Now, like an idiot, I Googled for information about Disney prices and such. Google is my friend, or so someone used to tell me, ad nauseum I might add. The problem with Internet searching, Google or no Google, is that your first two links will be paid ads and the next two pages will be crap that the bots find in blogs and on message boards which, while they feed the not inconsiderable ego of writers everywhere, offers little in the way of practical information like "How the hell much does it cost to get into freaking DISNEYLAND?" I discovered, finally, that it will cost you $649 to give your three year old a ticket good for a year.

SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE  DOLLARS FOR A THREE YEAR OLD.

Of course, that price includes parking, so it's justifiable.

In order to find this I ended up wandering through other websites and message boards. I came to the conclusion that people who populate these boards are mindless twits, largely bigoted against those who work hard and live from paycheck to paycheck and probably a lot of other people as well. I was, frankly, stunned at the arrogance and self-righteousness I was reading. Couples who have chosen to share their over privileged lives, not with children, the poor, the abused or the persecuted but with their cats, were opining with out and out disdain about the complete and utter fairness of what appeared to be a monumental price hike which is going to shut out those of more modest means by explaining that no one has a right to go to Disneyland, it's a gift given only to those of status who can afford it. If your three year old wants to visit Cars Land and you can't afford the price of a ticket please just shut the hell up because Disneyland is a place for the rich, powerful and gifted and you, obviously, don't qualify.

The fact that Disney peppers television, billboards, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers and toy stores with advertising designed to show your three year old that the only thing worthwhile in life is to dream of going to Disneyland and thus break their parents hearts when said parents are not well off enough to afford a $1200 dollar Saturday for their family of four (and God HELP you if you have to travel to get there) is certainly NOT Disney's way of extorting money from you because you can lock your kids up in a cage where no social interaction can possibly take place, or, perhaps, move to Lancaster PA, don black coats and hats and sell $1200 dollar quilts to unsuspecting tourists, thus removing the temptation known as a Disney ad. You can also get a cheaper pass which does not include parking (actually a good thing for that three year old you were considering putting behind the wheel) - or park entry on a whole lot of days one might be inclined to go to Disneyland. Days? Try weeks. But you CAN pay $469 for the pleasure of opening the Annual Passholder's special calendar on the interwebs and saying "nope, we can't use these today..." A bargain, no?

So far, my personal favorite is the comment made saying, in essence, that the price hike was a very good thing because this woman could afford the over $3000 a year it will now cost her family of five to renew their passes and, with all the people who will now be priced out of the place it will make their "experience" better.  Since it will be better she won't complain to Disneyland as much and that will make Disneyland happy because, apparently, Disneyland management spends most of it's valuable time, not crunching numbers to see how high the prices can go before their guest's balls fall off from the twisting, but reading her letters and working out ways to make her "experience" better.
It's a Win/Win.

I don't know about you, but frankly, I don't want my kids anywhere NEAR people like that. Hell, I don't want to be anywhere near people like that.

So...here's my idea. Drive up to Los Angeles instead of Orange Country. Go to Griffith Park. Take the kids, take their friends. Take a picnic.  Take them to the Observatory and show them the universe. Take them to the carousel and let them grab for the brass ring. Take them to the Zoo - it's not the greatest Zoo ever but I remember once standing absolutely enchanted watching a small herd of giraffes run...heads gliding in slow motion, bodies galloping like they were in the home stretch of the Kentucky Derby. Take them to the Autry Cultural Center and show them the REAL Frontierland. Take them to "Travel Town" and let them climb through actual train cars and engines.  Go with them.

Next door to Travel Town is the Los Angeles Live Steamers. Here, on Sundays, you can immerse yourself in the actual Disney experience. Walt's scale live steamer barn, the one he kept on his property in an upscale L.A. neighborhood, is there, looking exactly as it did when Walt used it to house his own trains. Steamer enthusiasts run their trains on scale track here, through scale tunnels and up scale mountains and back again. They will let you ride for free, donations are appreciated.

Parking all over the park is free and you can have an entire Disney experience for less than 10 bucks a head if you like, including the hot dogs and potato salad. Not only that, the pretentious yuppies you don't want influencing your kids wouldn't be caught DEAD in a place that admits everyone.

Now that's a real Win/Win.

All the modern conveniences

About, oh, a million years ago, I decided no stop replacing the electric can openers every few years and buy an old fashioned Swing Away the next time I went to the market. It cost me $3.95. It went through the dishwasher (when I had one), thus eliminating that PITA of taking parts off the electric can opener and trying to scrape the crud off of them. It never broke, it never wore out and it took up absolutely NO counter space.

Four years ago, when we were forced to move (may the bastard who programmed the robo-signing machine at Wachovia burn for that thankyouverymuch) I took the can opener out of the drawer I kept it in, threw it in a box and transported it to my kitchen on the other side of town. Since then, it has resided in the drawer on the left hand side of the sink.

Now, I'm not exactly anal and, as of this minute, the dishes from dinner last night are still in the sink, the dishes from yesterday's lunch are still in the drainer. I know, I know...I'm not Martha Stewart. If I had a kitchen the size of hers I still wouldn't have enough counter space. I work until six, then I go home and start dinner. I finish cooking, yell at everyone to get their own damn food and usually end up taking my own plate to the bedroom so I don't have to watch yet another talent search based reality show featuring little talent but a lot of ego sitting at the judges table. I didn't name the show because it's ALL of them. You know it is.  I'm worried "Wipeout" isn't coming back too. It's summer, the days are longer and we should be watching "Wipeout."

Last night was taco night. It's getting warm here in the urban village and, for some reason, I equate warm weather with taco night. Yes, I'm a gourmet, I got the taco seasoning with the least sodium for the money and store brand shells. I got a rather zippy salsa ranch southwest chili tortilla salad type kit, because sorry, I'm a fair cook but I do NOT like having to start in the second I get home from work and I take shortcuts. Yeah, suck on THAT, Food Network.

My younger son didn't expect to be home until late, so I pretty much planned dinner for 3. He was delighted to find he wasn't needed for the rest of the rehearsal and so was home for dinner. I was delighted for him and glad to see him but also decided to stretch the taco/salad dinner to feed 4 instead of three...one of the four being WELL over six feet tall. Okay, THREE of the four of us are over 6 feet tall but this one brushes 6'9". So I poked around and found an onion, a wrinkly green bell pepper a can of diced tomatoes and a can of diced Ortega chilies and started a pan of Spanish Rice. I actually WATCHED the onions and peppers and rice as I sauteed them and everything was picture perfect when I grabbed the can of tomatoes and reached for the can opener.

Which wasn't in its drawer. It wasn't in ANY of the drawers.  It wasn't in the cupboards, in wasn't in the fridge, in wasn't in the sink or the dish drainer or on the counters. It wasn't in the microwave. By this time my younger son had come out to help hunt. Eventually "Jeopardy!" went to a commercial break and the hubster inquired as to the commotion. "Where's the damn can opener?" I yelled.   He wandered out. "I left it on the counter after I opened a can of tuna earlier." Well, it's not on the counter now. It's not anywhere. "Did you look on the floor?" he asked. This was a serious question, not a joke. I can't fathom the workings of a mind that asks if the appliances, small though they may be, are on the floor. I also don't want to imagine what growing up in his house must have been like, considering the nonchalant way he asked me if I'd checked the floor. I was going to ask if he had considered putting the can opener AWAY when he was through opening the tuna fish instead of just leaving it on the counter but, after 34 years I have learned that there are some questions best left unasked.

Suffice it to say, the can opener wasn't on the floor. 

By now the water I had thrown in with the rice was starting to evaporate. Facing two cans and no opener, I got out the beer opener and proceeded to punch holes in the cans. While this drained the liquid from the can of tomatoes the fruit itself (yes, tomatoes are a FRUIT, DAMMIT!) remained stuck in the can, unable to make it through the smallish triangle shaped hole on the side of the can lid. I punched another one and another one and another one, methodically going around the outside of the can, until I had managed to free the lid from the sides of the can and dump the tomatoes into the simmering rice. I did the same with the can of roasted Ortega chili peppers.

I then started to hyperventilate at the thought of some rogue shard of aluminum peeling off the multi punctured lids and being eaten.I spent the rest of the evening watching my kids and husband in case some piece of metal suddenly burst out of their chests, sort of like the Alien did to John Hurt.

Well, no one exploded, the tacos were good, the Spanish rice would probably have been better if I had had a can of plain tomatoes in the pantry, or at least a can of tomatoes and chilies and onions instead of the can of Italian ones I had, thus making the Spanish rice sort of European rice...Ortega chilies and basil with a hint of oregano. It wasn't bad though.

As of this morning, the dishes are still in the sink and the can opener remains MIA.  We're stone broke or I would have gone and bought another can opener at the grocery store, thus assuring the old one would show up because as soon as you replace something that's been lost, it pops up. You KNOW it, I once had to do that with a pair of Joan Rivers earrings I got from QVC.

And I'm sitting here, avoiding work and looking for recipes to make tonight that do NOT involve opening any cans. I had a lot of good stuff planned for the week-end meals because, well, it's my birthday tomorrow and I ordered a George Foreman grill from one of those catalog outlets which foolishly gave me credit in exchange for an outrageously inflated shipping charge. The grill is supposed to arrive tomorrow and I've got all SORTS of ground turkey and pork chops and chicken breasts, all to be slapped on the grill and served with fresh salad and corn on the cob.

Except now I have to move things around and make turkey burgers without the benefit of a fat fighting grill because I can't open the can of baked beans I was going to serve with the pork chops tonight. 

My father is going to stop by tomorrow morning for coffee, he's on his way to his 60th class reunion which is being held in the town bordering the urban village at 11am. I'm guessing this is the reunion equivalent of the early bird special. Anyway, he will bring me a card and, with luck, a cash gift which I can then use to buy a new can opener. Since it's my birthday I'm going to go the extra buck and a half and get the kind you bolt to the wall. And this is what happens when one turns 58...one looks forward to a new can opener and laundry money.

Oh, and just for the record? America HAS no talent.

"...and all your hammy glory!"

If you open the dictionary, one of those hip type dictionaries that add crap like "refudiate", and look up "Attention Whore" you don't find any words. You find this:

I used to kind of like Donald Trump. Oh, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have voted for him if he were running for recording secretary of the PTA. And he has the 2nd worse taste of anyone I know. I once saw an episode of "The Apprentice" in which he brought the winning team to his home for dinner. I never saw so much gold leaf in my life.  Tacky, really tacky.  Although I know someone who thinks the combination of lime green, orange and turquoise blue is the classiest thing she ever saw. Oh, and there's that acquaintance who spent so much time and money painting her interior a dusty purple and a eucalyptus green. She did this on alternating walls of the same rooms, so the place resembled a very large bruise.

Okay, so Trumps taste is the 3rd worst I know. Maybe.

Anyway, here's what I think. They guy made a lot of money. He GOT a lot of money and he made it more and then he went bankrupt and then he made a lot more money and he's got very likeable kids who went to Wharton and seem to be rational. Yeah, I sometimes watch "The Apprentice." I don't LIKE the guy but I don't really object to him like I object to, oh, say Dick Cheney.

It doesn't take a brain trust to notice though, that every time the spotlight shifts to someone, or something else, Donald Trump starts looking like the above picture (which is public domain, btw...at least according to Google) and screaming that the President isn't a citizen. This is bullshit, btw. The guy has been in office for FOUR years...and that's just the office he has now.  Considering how hated this man is, doesn't Trump think that, if there was a way to disqualify him from holding office they would have done it by now?

Apparently not.

Trump has decided that the long form birth certificate, which Obama released a year ago because Trump wouldn't shut the hell up, is a forgery because the State of Hawaii has nothing better to do than forge people's birth certificates. Personally, I was hoping that Obama would personally bring the document to Trump, neatly folded five times to make it easier to deliver.

This was because Trump said that the abstract was proof that the certificate didn't exist because if it was real, Hawaii would have issued the long form. This makes me question why, every time I need to replace a lost birth certificate for one of my kids, the State of California asks for about 20 bucks and gives me an abstract, not a "long form." They don't issue long forms, they issue abstracts. But Trump says that's not how it works, which has me wondering why I don't remember being in Kenya when my kids were born, this being the only possible explanation for my possession of the shorter (and cheaper) abstract. Those drugs must have been better than I remember.

So yesterday Wolf Blitzer did six rounds with Trump, apparently Blitzer thought he could do what no man has done before - make Trump think rationally. Trump, from what I can see, now thinks that back in 1961 baby Barack made known his socialist wishes to be President and make young Donald Trump pay taxes. Five day old Barack managed to hatch a conspiracy with his Kenyan grandmother by which Obama's family placed TWO birth notices in two different Hawaiian newspapers, delivered, I guess, by carrier pigeon. 

When my kids were born there were announcements in the newspapers too. I didn't place them, the hubster didn't place them and none of my non-existent African relatives placed them. The newspaper gets a list from the local hospitals and prints it. Trump is way to busy finding more stuff to gold plate to know that. He is absolutely, positively, 100% sure that parents place these announcements personally. Not only that, it's common knowledge that parents of foreign born children do this in order to guarantee those children citizenship because, as we all know, anyone can legally enter the United States, live a public life and serve in a high profile government job without being caught and deported because someone put their name in a newspaper somewhere. Happens every day.

The press is all over Trump, btw, he makes for good copy. Okay, he makes for readers and watchers. This is the air that Trump breathes - hasn't anyone noticed that he's always fairly quiet while "Celebrity Apprentice" is running and this shit always hits the fan after the live finale?  And why doesn't the press ask him the question that's sitting there like an elephant..."Did you ask to see John McCain and Sarah Palin's birth certificates?" McCain, after all, was born in the Panama Canal Zone, Sarah Palin in LaLa land. Why didn't Trump give a rat's ass about THAT?

Why IS it that Trump and the other six birthers left in the country (all of them in Arizona, I think) only want to see the black guy's proof of natural born citizenship?

And just WHY is it that every "birther" starts every freaking declarative sentence with "I'm not a "birther" but..."   Come on, but upfront about it, we all know "birther" is a euphamism for "bigot" and I'd probably have more respect for those who at least owned UP to it. Not much, but more. Just say you're afraid the black guy is, at any minute, going to don colorful robes and a dramatic headdress, hold one of the girls up in the air while we all gather round and sing "The Circle of Life,"  make you eat chick peas and yams and be done with it.

I also don't know why Obama wants to even BE on the ballot in Arizona, he's not going to win the state and its 11 electoral votes and no one gives a shit about Arizona anyway, it's the Australia of the U.S. It's a lot like a penal colony and every crackpot who's ever believed Rush Limbaugh owns property there. The place is run by Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio, who the hell wants to be on THAT ballot?

Want to know what to do about Donald Trump? DON'T COVER HIM.  The guy can't live without a spotlight. Every time Wolf Blitzer tries to reason with him Trump flourishes even more. Don't send cameras. Don't send reporters. If you're stuck at a Romney fundraiser (like he needs to raise funds) and Trump is there, edit him out of the pictures, jeez, even I can use Photoshop. Four weeks without publicity and Trump's head will explode. With luck - in Arizona.

Can't wait to see what the comb over looks like after THAT.