Suddenly, and Without Warning

I want to kill half myself. Is that possible? Just take half a dose of lethal pills? Cut only one wrist? How does one go about it? It's just that one of me is great and the other one sucks. And the one that sucks is ruining everything for the one that's great.

It's too boring to go into, and besides, everyone has the same problem. All those pathetic souls who say they're giving up smoking, but then they buy a pack of cigarettes. or they're going on a strict diet right now and th en go out for pizza and ice cream.

I wonder why. Is it Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden? Are we still feeling guilty for that one? I certainly can't think of anything else that would make so many people with such potential, i.e. almost everybody, settle for lives half-lived, and at their own doing.

We all think we have so much time to do the things we say we want to do. But then it ends. 

Trump Is Not the Problem

Yesterday a 16-year-old boy in California killed two classmates and wounded three others before shooting himself in the head, on his birthday. Meanwhile, every last one of our elected officials is focused on how to kick our president out of office, a subject that has occupied them for the last three years and which nets nothing.

It’s time we impeach every last one of the dodos currently in office and start over with people who are not imbeciles. Maybe then we can work on finding ways to end teenage drug addiction and depression and keep our kids, also known as tomorrow’s adults, from ruining our country.

I Know the Whistleblower

My computer died yesterday, right in the middle of a sentence. I took it to the Apple store to see one of those geniuses they have there, but there weren’t any around. Apparently my situation required the attention of a Texan Specialist and will be gone for at least a week. Sad news as I am stuck with this inferior thing called an iPad on which to write my blog. This takes all the fun out of it, especially since there’s such a fun topic available to write about: The impeachment proceedings concerning our president, a.k.a. Democrats

Democrats talking on the phone to the whistleblower.

Gone Wild.

It’s not as sexy as College Girls Gone Wild but a lot funnier. For example, the head guy behind the whole thing swore that he did not know the identity of the so-called whistleblower, but somehow I do. That cracked me up.

Beware of 5G

It's snowing here in Maine today and ice covers everything, keeping me inside. Amazingly, it feels like just a few days  ago it was hot as hell with mosquitoes everywhere, keeping me inside. Things are going faster and faster, too fast if you ask me, and yet not fast enough for some people.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a special section all about 5G and how it will speed everything up. And despite reading as much of it as as I could stand, I remain virtually clueless about what the heck it is and why we need it, except that China has it and we want to beat them at their game. All I know is that it's really, really fast.

Shorthand for "the fifth generation" of cellular network technology, the application of 5G will make every device work faster and enable geeky tech types to discover cool things, like new beer flavors. And hackers will be able to hack your accounts more quickly. Really, I learned that.

I already hate 5G and want nothing to do with it. Heck, I don't even drink beer.

Eating Outside the Box

My husband and I spent this past weekend out of my comfort zone and it was indeed a jolt to my system, lulled as I am by the slow pace of Maine. Pittsburgh is a lot bigger than Portland, so naturally there was a ton of traffic everywhere, much of it either going up a hill or down a hill or over a bridge, crossing one of the three rivers that meet in that city. There were also a ton more people than I am used to, hundreds and hundreds, or maybe thousands of them dressed in various arrangements of black and gold pants, shirts and hats in preparation for Sunday's big football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the LA Rams. Team spirit wafted through the downtown streets, getting thicker and thicker the closer you got to the stadium.

Alas, it was not on the menu.....

One experience I shall long remember involved dinner out. Our friends had gone to great lengths to book a table at Poulet Bleu, "Pittsburgh's hottest new restaurant." They were diligent enough to score a reservation on a Saturday night. I was excited to try one of their allegedly superb chicken dishes, especially the exotic blue chicken, which is what the restaurant name means in English. Now that would be something to write home about!

Turns out there was no blue chicken, or chicken of any kind, on the menu -- not even in the standard white. And our 8:00 pm reservation got us seated at a table at precisely 8:50, a.k.a. ten minutes to nine, better known as "almost bedtime." There was a table for us, it's just that the people who occupied it before us were still in residence. They had finished their meal and paid the bill, yet remained, sitting around gabbing and oblivious to the huddle of hungry patrons waiting in the vestibule, staring into the dining room longingly like orphans in a Dickens novel. According to the restaurant's host,  suggesting they leave would be "rude." (I thought making us wait almost an hour to be seated was rude, but hey, that's just me.)

Now we're back in Maine with winter approaching, and since all the tourists have fled we can get into any restaurant at any time, no problem. Alas, nobody offers blue chicken here, so fulfilling that dream will have to wait. Oh well, there's always plain old dependable red lobster.

Aging Disgracefully

I just saw a picture on Facebook of a friend from high school who had a facelift. Naturally she looks fabulous and a lot younger than I do. All the comments are about how great she looks. Nobody mentions why, including her. That's stupid; do people think she sold her soul to the Devil, or maybe started some new kind of juice fast or diet regimen?

Despite the transparent duplicity, I'm jealous. My husband says I can have one any time I want. This is his way of saying I am turning into an old bag and he's willing to pay dearly for it to cease. Since he's 11 years younger than me, one can sympathize.

But I can't do it. Not only could I die during surgery, and what a dumb way to go, but it seems so frivolous, especially since my own sister is gravely ill in the hospital after having her entire colon removed in a midnight emergency surgery.

I guess I'll just have to shrivel, wrinkle and wither until the end. Although that rubber cement idea isn't half bad. (See illustration)

Why People Kill

Like most people, things drive me crazy. Ordinary things that happen all the time. It's a wonder I haven't yet gone on one of those shooting sprees they have these days, except I don't have a gun and wouldn't know the first thing to do with one if I did, and besides I cry bitter tears when I kill a bug which I do only when absolutely necessary, like it's right there in plain sight on my pillow as I'm getting into bed at night and my husband is out of town. (This happens more than you might imagine since our house seems to be the chosen destination for ladybugs and crickets looking to escape Maine's harsh winters.)

Anyway, the thing that drove me crazy most recently was a simple trip to the grocery store. I was in good spirits when I arrived but a raving lunatic half an hour later when I left. The problem was that other people were in the store, and as we all know, many of them can be total assholes. Today the Bow Street Market was rife with them.

There was the grown man who actually slammed into my shopping cart, repeatedly, so as to alert me to his presence. Apparently he could not get past me, and rather than saying something he resorted to brute force. I looked up from studying the kinds of tea available -- sadly they were out of Tension Tamer -- to see this Cro-Magnon just standing there, pushing his cart into mine again and again. "Are you mute?" I asked him. He shook his head no. Not exactly proof although apparently he was not deaf. Whatever, I pulled my cart over to let him pass, but my lighthearted mood had been darkened considerably.

What is it with people? Why not say a pleasant, "Excuse me?" instead of just standing silently while I'm lost in thought and oblivious to your presence, waiting for me to look up and then expecting an apology -- like I'm the one who did something wrong? I mean really, doesn't everyone have a larynx?

The same exact thing happened two more times while I was shopping. Seriously. Not the cart crashing but the standing silently with a pained expression, expecting me to have eyes in the back of my head. By the time I was leaving the store I was fit to be tied, whatever that means, so I was immediately livid when an old lady (and by that I mean older than me with white hair and old lady clothes and especially old lady shoes) suddenly stopped dead in her tracks to put on her gloves, and believe me it was not glove weather today, it was actually quite balmy, but anyway she stopped right in the doorway of the store so nobody could enter or exit until she was done. What is that? I wanted to hit her over the head with my umbrella, which I did not have with me, it being a nice day as I mentioned earlier, and probably wouldn't have even if I did. But I wanted to. Instead I got safely inside my car, locked the doors and screamed for a few minutes.

People. They're the worst. I tell you, it's a wonder more random shootings don't occur.