Why Lie?

Everybody lies all the time. Big lies, little fibs, white lies and whoppers -- I've heard them all. Suddenly, this year, I got tired of all the liars and simply removed them from my life. Things are so much better now!

The one remaining liar I have yet to jettison is myself, and that's the hardest. I can't simply unfriend me on Facebook or stop returning my calls, and I see me all the time. I am me.

I lie mostly to myself, constantly promising I will eat better, sleep more, get more exercise and stop lying to myself. As for lying to other people, I do it mostly to avoid hurt feelings, like when asked if I like a new haircut I say of course even if it's a disaster, or say someone's grandchild is adorable even when he/she/it looks like Rosemary's Baby. I also lie about politics all the time, but that cesspool of bottom-feeders deserves little more.

So why do you lie?

Damned If You Do......

Who knew? Turns out I am risking my life writing this blog every day. Even worse is watching the news at night. That's according to The Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, which published a recent study that found, "Sitting and watching TV, especially in the evening, has got to be one of the most dangerous things that older people can do."

Okay, that's it -- from now on I am going to do everything standing, except of course for sleeping and using the toilet. Otherwise, I'll be on my feet.

But wait! I read the results of a different study on WebMD that found standing five hours a day contributes to significant and prolonged lower-limb muscle fatigue, raising my risk for chronic back pain and debilitating muscular and skeletal disorders. What to do, what to do?

Maybe I'll just stop reading.

The Place for Oreos

Since his work deals with agriculture, my husband often travels to middle America and comes home singing the praises of Walmart, which is very big out there. This has always struck me as odd since I have never set foot inside one of those big box stores and in fact considered the chain inferior in ways I couldn't quite pinpoint. So today, being a rainy washout for other activities, we went to a nearby Walmart here in Maine for me to have a look. Right away I was unimpressed and deemed it "nothing special." That is, until I wondered if they had any Oreos -- it was that kind of day -- and found the cookie aisle. Indeed they had some, more varieties than I knew existed. Stunned, I was compelled to document my findings with the photos below.

Film Review: DUNKIRK

The cast of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands, and their hats.

If you like real war, or even just video games about war, Dunkirk is for you. Featuring tons of human misery, massive amounts of gunfire, countless sinking ships, dozens of bombs exploding, and several truly harrowing underwater drowning scenes, the story of 400,000 soldiers trapped on a beach in France with the Germans at their backs during World War II will either turn you on or make you nauseous. (I was in the latter group.)

The minimal dialog is mostly unintelligible for the garbled British accents. The music is loud and foreboding, which is only appropriate since it accompanies what you see onscreen. (See preceding paragraph.) None of the soldiers have names and they all look exactly alike, so you never really get to know anyone. This is actually good since when one of them gets killed you don't care at all.

I hated this film from the moment it started and couldn't wait for it to be over. Now I can't wait until next February to see it get like 17 Academy Award nominations. I predict Best Picture for sure.

Failure to Communicate

Like 1 in 12 men worldwide, my husband is color blind. I suppose this is a drag for him, but really it's more my problem than his. He is constantly asking me to help choose shirts and jackets and pants that "go together" when we are dressing to go out, a service I willingly perform, yet is no help at all in telling me whether the red I used in my latest painting is too pink or not pink enough, or what color to paint our house. (I've got it down to lilac or goldenrod.) And while it's certainly better than if he were totally blind and needed my help in even more ways, he's not, so the problems I confront regarding his visionary deficits rise to the top. And of course when Mitch tells me he loves my latest hair color, his compliment is, to put it bluntly, worthless.

I've come to understand that just like color blindness, some people are language blind. For example, yesterday a young woman behind me at the supermarket checkout was busy cooing to her infant, hidden inside a baby carrier. I leaned over to take a peek and saw what looked like a perfect little doll straight from the Mattel factory. With huge, literally baby blue eyes, and flashing a big, toothless grin, he didn't make a sound but, like a dog wagging its tail, his kicking feet telegraphed his obvious delight. I complimented the woman on her beautiful child and asked, "Is he always this happy?" She smiled and replied, "I don't know, this is my first child."

I smiled in return and spent most of my drive home wondering what she possibly could have thought I had asked.

Fashion Rule #1: Never Be White After Labor Day

The lunatic ladies on the left continue to hate Melania Trump, seizing any opportunity to excoriate her out loud and in print. The First Lady's most recent sin was boarding Air Force One, bound for Texas with the president to view the devastation after Hurricane Harvey, in stiletto heels. This blew a lot of people's minds, although admittedly small minds, like the teeny one inside the fashion editor at The Washington Post who declared Trump's footwear an obvious example of a self-aggrandizing lack of compassion, writing, "Trump is the kind of woman who refuses to pretend that her feet will, at any point, ever be immersed in cold, muddy, bacteria-infested Texas water."

Yet Melania's decision to change into sneakers mid-flight and arrive in Texas appropriately shod still did not win the approval of the obnoxious Robin Givhan, whose petty, self-righteousness sickened me most mornings back when I lived in DC and read her column over breakfast. Melania's sneakers were just too damn white for Ms. Givhan's taste, giving rise to her observation: "There was no suggestion that Trump would be flat-footed in the muck. She is the kind of woman who may listen empathetically to your pain, but she knows that you know that she is not going to experience it. So why pretend?"

I'm just guessing here, but perhaps it's not only the sneakers that are too white to ever garner Ms. Givhan's approval. (The fashion maven is shown at left wearing sensible flats and a colorful shower curtain.) Face it: Melania will never be as black as ex-FLOTUS Michelle Obama, thus she'll never never do anything right. So why pretend?

Trending Now: Racism

An alert came up on my Facebook page about a rally to be held in downtown Portland tomorrow evening. It is being called Say NO to Racism, and supposedly if you show up there and hold a lit candle you will somehow display to all the others assembled there that you are against racism. Personally I am against racism and while I am in favor of lit candles, I am against attending rallies where I might get maced in the face (happened once, not fun) or run down by a madman (or madwoman or madthey) driving a van, so I will not be there.

Hattie McDaniel, Best Supporting Actress 1939

Instead I will stay home and be against racism in my kitchen while I cook dinner for myself and my husband, and later maybe take in a movie. But you can be damn sure it won't be Gone With the Wind, which is now being pulled from theaters nationwide because of its alleged "racial insensitivity." The 1939 film, beloved by thousands, maybe millions, for decades, and which earned the first Oscar ever awarded to a black actress (see photo), is now, all of a sudden, considered racist.

Racism is quite popular these days. It's everywhere, in places you never even suspected. Actually, anti-racism is even more popular. Either way, I would say the entire state of Maine is racist, being the whitest state in America, so simply by living here, my racism is implied. Throw in the white skin covering my entire body and I totally suck. In fact, I should light a candle and hold a vigil for myself and pray I don't burn in Hell for eternity just for staying white all these years. (If it's any help, I have never seen Gone With the Wind.)

LOL

Although I have long suspected it, I finally got 100% definitive proof earlier today that my adult son does not read my texts, he simply responds with non-committal words like "Cool!" and "Thanks!" so I will go away and leave him alone. This realization is both depressing and freeing, the former because I gave birth to him and it was a long, hard labor with no drugs and I deserve better, and the latter because now I can say anything I want without fear of reprisal. (Ditto this blog.)

Comfort Food at 30,000 Feet

Ever since my first commercial jet flight (at age 22) made an emergency landing in a fallow cornfield outside of Frederick, Maryland and necessitated my exiting the aircraft (along with all the other screaming passengers) via an inflated rubber chute, I have been what you might call "a nervous flyer." However, despite that unhappy experience I have flown literally countless times, up, down and across the country and over the pond, although I am never happy about it and always assume a dire outcome. So I was cheered when I spied an article with the headline, "Airline creates 'mood food' snack box to help calm nervous passengers."

I learned that under the tutelage of an esteemed Oxford University professor, Monarch Airlines has recently begun serving a mood-food snack box specifically designed to calm jittery passengers. Here's what they get: First, a dish of echinacea and licorice ice-cream to help reduce symptoms of coughs and colds. (Yum?) Next comes some lavender/green-tea flavored rice cakes to aid relaxation and counteract jet lag, washed down with herbal teas to avoid bloating. (Yuk.) Finally, sort of like a dessert, there's a umami seaweed biscuit and a caramelized bar covered in umami mushroom and tomato powder. (Barf.)

Despite my wide vocabulary and love of sushi, still I had to look up the meaning of umami, which turns out to have nothing at all to do with raw fish. Instead, it refers to a category of taste in food other than sweet, sour, salt, and bitter, corresponding to the flavor of glutamates, especially monosodium glutamate. (Yikes.) Okay, so I guess won't be booking any flights on Monarch.

Instead I'll stick with the usual suspects and continue to rely on my very own mood foods, which include one 5 mg. Lorazepam swallowed just before entering security and a Bloody Mary immediately upon boarding, followed by a stream of blatantly unhealthy snacks. These include but are not limited to a package of Chuckles, countless bags of those mini-chocolate-chip cookies and flavored popcorn and Sun Chips -- I love those -- that the flight attendants hand out, a black coffee and perhaps a bottle of water, and if it's a long flight to Europe, another Lorazepam and maybe a glass of red wine to wash it down, but only if there's turbulence. Otherwise, tomato juice. (No ice.)

That usually does the trick.

It's Hard Being Human

After picking up my friend at the airport, we stopped for lunch on the way home. On the drive I heard all about her trip, asking more and more questions to get the whole picture. Once at the restaurant, having ordered and while waiting for our food to arrive, I told her about my own recent brief excursion to New York, even though she had not asked about it or about anything at all, in fact. Nevertheless I soldiered on until, sensing a subtle lack of interest on her part, I ended by declaring the few days my husband and I had spent visiting our friends as "a great time."

I said that because A, it actually was a great time and B, it's what you say, unless of course you had contracted food poisoning or encountered a destructive tornado or someone in your group had died. You just say "I had a great time," and leave it at that. But my friend, in all sincerity, asked, "What does that mean? How do you even have a great time with people?" Her question alerted me to the realization that she and I had never had what could be called "a great time" together, and possibly she never had a great time with anyone, and maybe that's why she asked.

Coming up with an answer wasn't easy. More and more these days, spending time with people you actually enjoy is a rare and almost indescribable pleasure. You know it when you see it, but in our oh-so-politically correct culture, when even a casual friendship places harsh demands on the participants, it's not that often. Now you've got to feel the same about politics, race, religion, climate change, food additives, free speech and gender issues, and God forbid, if you don't see a neo-Nazi hiding around every corner then you must be one too!

Say the wrong thing and suddenly there's tension in the air. The slightest hint of a difference of opinion can turn a smoldering ember into a huge, all-consuming firestorm of hurt feelings and misunderstandings. It's literally exhausting, making me suddenly comprehend that true friendship is exhilarating, and that makes all the difference.

Redefining Friendship

One of the few tangible perks of aging is that you finally stop tolerating other people's bullshit. Here at the start of my eighth decade in my current human form, I have honed my standards to a fine edge, concluding there is little reason to pretend admiration for someone you secretly dislike simply for the sake of harmony. Besides, it's not fair to them.

What triggered this musing is a recently resurfaced memory of my closest friend from my early thirties until my mid-fifties. At the time I found her funny, irreverent, refreshing and entertaining, but now I look back in horror at her often blatantly disgraceful behavior. This included a two-year affair with the husband of another close friend of mine that I was forced to silently condone, making me a willing accomplice and thus feel personally ashamed through osmosis. Also, she consistently kept an open bottle of red wine in the fridge (bad enough in itself) for six months and would actually serve it to her guests, and reused the same strip of dental floss for a whole week, discarding it every Sunday. Her lame defense for both was, "Money doesn't grow on trees," yet she came up with enough of it for a facelift, so go figure. I finally pulled the plug after more than twenty years of biting my tongue and have never regretted it.

Lately I am much quicker to pull the plug. Almost as soon as I find myself thinking only negative thoughts about someone, that's it. Unlike in my youth when my home was a revolving door for reprobates, miscreants and delinquents of every stripe, these days sluts, liars, addicts and the just plain unprincipled need not apply. The downside is that I spend a lot of time alone, but the upside is knowing that the friendships I do maintain are with people I strongly value and deeply respect.