Life's Lessons

Crazed man attempting suicide by hot dog ingestion.

By now (age 74) I should have learned a lot of useful information about how to live a successful life. I could die at any moment, and so the wisdom I have will die with me unless I write it down and offer it to my readers, most especially my own son who never reads this blog but surely will after I'm dead, and feel sorry he didn't when I was alive. Oh well, can't change that. Anyway, as I have done before, I will now list the things that are essential to enjoying this precious and fleeting time we have each been given here on Earth.

1. Take care of your body as it is the vehicle you wake up in every day and spend all your time inside. If you ruin it by making it sick, you will suffer greatly and miss out on much of the good stuff in life. This means eat well, exercise often and never knowingly ingest poisons. (For a list of poisons, see below.)

2. Avoid toxic relationships. It's so much better to go through life alone than stuck with people who drain your spirit by constantly criticizing your every move, denigrating your ideas and generally making you feel like an idiot, although I do maintain that nobody can make you feel like an idiot except yourself.

3. Learn how to control your thoughts. As thoughts are mere fantasy, they often run amok and destroy that desired state of grace called "peace of mind." Controlling them can be achieved in many ways, although I have found that having a mantra and repeating it when your thoughts turn negative does the trick.

4. Drink your coffee black. If not you will waste valuable time, adding up to days or even weeks over the course of your lifetime, running out of cream, or when dining out trying to find cream that isn't spoiled, or having to use that powdered coffee "whitener" or who knows what else. This is especially true for foreign travel. Just drink the damn coffee as God intended!

5. And speaking of God, belief in a Higher Power makes the whole thing so much easier to bear.

Poisons:

Killer Cheeto.

cotton candy
funnel cake
blueberry bagels
cyanide tablets
deep-fried chocolate covered Oreos
laundry pods
candy apples
Windex
caramel apples
peanut brittle
toilet bowl cleaner
Ben & Jerry's ice cream
cinnamon buns
white bread
Cheetos
bleach
hot dogs
formaldehyde
lead paint
cigarettes

Buy American

The older I get, the less I care about trivia. And what I have come to understand is that most of what occupies most of us, most of the time, is trivia. Take, for example, getting a flat tire. Usually it's a royal pain in the ass but one that is fleeting and requires little beyond elbow grease or, lacking that, membership in AAA. The spare gets installed and you are on your way.

Not when you own a BMW. An expensive BMW that's got all the bells and whistles. Like it senses when you drift over the painted yellow line and gives you a little buzz in your seat. And the speed you're driving is digitally projected onto the windshield, alongside the speed limit for whatever road you are currently on. Cool, right? But God forbid you get a flat tire, like my husband did last Friday. That's right, today is Monday and he got a flat last Friday and his fancy-schmancy car will be ready tomorrow.

In the interim I had to go rescue him after he had his car towed (there's that AAA membership) to a Ford dealership two miles from our home, where they ultimately could not fix it because A, there was no spare tire and B, there's some kind of special tool required, made in Germany so you know it's authentic.

So today my husband, who I had to drive to work this morning and then pick up later to get his car from the Ford dealership, drove his BMW, flat tire and all, the twenty or so miles to the BMW dealership, after which he had to procure a rental car to drive himself home and then back there tomorrow to pick up his car with its flat tire fixed.

Those Germans. Somehow they managed to design and build complicated train lines leading to death chambers where they gassed millions of people, but changing a flat tire is a whole big deal.

I Am A Racist

"Racist" has become a label that implies you are worse than a murderer, a rapist, a kidnapper or a sexual predator. It is now hurled about like a Molotov cocktail to destroy your worst enemy. It's the most heinous crime in America. This is crazy. And worst of all, I've grown tired of hearing about it and so has everyone else, except maybe for Al Sharpton since it's how he earns a living.

If blacks in America want the same considerations granted to all Americans, then why do they label themselves as African Americans? And why have they chosen to adopt fantastical, foreign and nonsense-sounding names instead of the names everyone but them uses, and in fact they themselves used for many years?

I know these very questions will make some people think I am a racist, but guess what: I might be one. Of course I notice race. I can see, can't I? I can tell immediately if someone has black or brown skin. Am I supposed to not see? While a person's skin color does not tell me much else about them, I for sure know when they are not white. So alright already, I guess I'm a racist. Okay, fine. Sue me.

Cleaning Out Your Friends List

It's not just on Facebook that you have to periodically clean out your friends list. It's necessary in real life too. Last week I dumped a couple, and now this week I'm letting another one go. It's very empowering to not let people treat you like toxic waste.

The Downside of Masks

It's hard to breathe in those things.

Here it is, almost August, and I have yet to embrace the pandemic as a way to find the inner me. Early on I had such enthusiasm! Painting my bedroom -- two coats -- gave me such satisfaction that I planned other home improvements. But as the months wore on I grew complacent and, dare I say, disheartened, and now do little every day but complain about all the things missing from my life.

This is ridiculous of course since very little is missing. The occasional concert or night out at the theater, travel to another country, shopping for clothes? Hosting dinner parties for friends? Big deal. Those experiences are all fleeting, lasting only as long as my brain can hold a memory. Still around are the beautiful yellow walls in my bedroom, making me smile every day. Home improvements are forever, and surely a much better use of one's time than traipsing around foreign countries eating exotic foods and taking selfies.

So starting today I shall pick something major that will improve my living space, something that will still be here when and if this pandemic ends, maybe never. And when that's finished I'll pick something else. Let's see, should I paint another room? Clean the entire house from top to bottom? I know -- paint those damn basement steps; I've been wanting to do that for ten years. Maybe move whole rooms and use the kitchen as the master bedroom? Certainly it would be convenient for late-night snacking.

Apparently being stuck at home so much has addled my brain a bit. Must be that damn face mask preventing me from getting enough oxygen and leaving me gasping for air. (See photo.)

Scary Things

A police car set aflame by a peaceful protester.

Some people are true independents. For example, they may think the show "Hamilton" stinks and only made it big because most of the the cast is black and Founding Father George Washington is portrayed as a black man and, well, if you don't love it then you must be a racist. After all, it's the least you can do.

They also may like Senator Susan Collins and possibly voted for Ross Perot twice and also sent money to the Obama campaign and loved George W. Bush and worked as a staff member of the Democratic National Committee. Yes, there are people like that.

Anyway, as a registered Independent who did not vote for Trump in 2016, I might have to this time just so America does not go up in flames from fires set by all those "peaceful" protesters armed with slingshots, explosive devices, rocks, clubs, stones, gasoline and the occasional pistol. Now who goes around with all that stuff if their plans are to protest peacefully? Lunatics, that's who. And I may be a baby, but I find them scary. Even scarier are those Democrats who, in their blind hatred for Donald Trump, consider the arrival of government aid in the form of boots on the ground aimed at halting the violence and preventing more to be the onset of "martial law."

Also scary is the recent attack by a great white shark here in Maine that killed a woman visiting from New York City. And Covid-19. And very high temperatures breaking records everywhere. And thunderstorms. And of course poisonous spiders, snakes, varicose veins and getting too fat for your clothes. (Actually, my clothes.) But I can't vote against any of those things and I can vote against the Democrats. After all, it's the least I can do.

The Prime of Life

I'm not gonna lie, getting old is a drag. Despite what you read about those 85-year-old marathoners, for the average person things start going downhill when you hit seventy.

The worst part, almost, is that all your peers are getting old too, so even if you work out at CrossFit with a personal trainer twice a week and eat a healthy diet and look reasonably fit and stay current with the latest trends, someone you care about is either half-dead or on the way. Or else they need to have a body part replaced, have lost their libido, can't eat spicy foods and say "What?" after everything. Some of them, in fact a large majority, have few remaining teeth of their own. Seriously, it's not pretty.

So I'm wondering how it is that we have to choose between two men in their seventies --one closer to eighty -- to be President. You'd think the person running things would be in the prime of life.

Sunday Funnies

My neck is still sore from reading the New York Times earlier today. Get it? The paper is so slanted, you gotta twist yourself into contortions to swallow a lot of the drivel contained therein.

Really, I try. I approached the horrid Maureen Dowd in a genial mood, armed with a cooling glass of iced coffee and a full stomach after a tasty lunch. But still, when she writes that the greatest thing about Alexandria Whatever-Whatever (AOC) is a video she posted of herself dancing to rap music -- something about being a "boss bitch" -- and that's what's been missing from Congress, I almost barfed. Next I read about how Margaret Sanger's name is being removed from the very thing she invented -- a Planned Parenthood  clinic -- because she had talked about "eugenics." (Meaning those people who can't afford to raise children, many of whom are black and poor, should not, and thus abortion is appropriate for them.)

The entire editorial section was just "TRUMP SUCKS, BIDEN GOOD."  Even the formerly hallowed magazine, which once offered columns featuring interesting recipes, medical advances and ethical dilemmas, was today all about the alleged CLIMATE CRISIS that may or may not be happening.

I can remember when that newspaper told the truth, and nothing but the truth. Now it's all just their truth. And the crossword puzzle isn't that great anymore either. IMHO.

Fantasy News For Sale

Hey people, listen up: it's not just FOX News that's faux news -- it's all of them. CNN sells its own mythology hammered out at the daily news meetings, as does MSNBC, The New York Times, and all the rest too numerous to name. I'm so tired of hearing that FOX is the only bad boy when they are all the same. It all comes down to whose fantasy are you willing to support?

One of those peaceful protests in Portland.

Yesterday marked the end of a four-year friendship I endured with a woman who instantly believes everything she hears from the left-leaning media, never allowing anything from "the other side" to slip into her tiny brain. After all, there's just so much room inside some people's heads.

Oblivious to the fact that there are two sides to every story, she blindly accepts the pap delivered by Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow and all the rest of the folks who now are bolstering a doddering old fool who stretches the truth, doesn't know where he is half the time ("Arizona is one of our greatest cities!") and wasn't much good when he was young and energetic. Her pick for president was and still is Marianne Williamson, because "she knows important things about life." She has never watched FOX News.

She knows someone who knows someone who lives in Portland, Oregon who told her that the protests there are mostly all peaceful and it's only that Trump made things worse by sending in law enforcers.

My ex-friend doesn't read books as a rule, yet she rushed out and got the new puff-piece putdown of Trump scrawled in no time by his niece (who is still pissed she never got invited to Mar-a-Lago and hated Ivanka when they were growing up because she was so much prettier than her) and swallowed it whole. So now she thinks she knows everything there is to know about the President. She thinks putting a Black Lives Matter sign in her front yard means she is not racist, even though she's never had a black friend. But no matter, she now tells everyone, repeatedly, that black journalist and CNN contributor Van Jones is "a visionary."

The problem in America is the laziness of its citizens who don't do the work and instead use Cliff Notes to cram for the final exam, which in this case is our election in November. No wonder this country is failing.

Southern Charm, Aside from the Calories

A recent pastime of mine during this Covid lockdown which prevents me from attending the symphony or live theater is watching a daily online cooking class given by a woman in Alabama. On Facebook it's called Cooking With Brenda Gantt. She is completely adorable, and her down-home conversation mixed with a refreshing dollop of good old-fashioned religion offers me a glimpse into a positive lifestyle I have never personally known, having been born and raised in New York and living for 30 years in Washington, D.C.

The only down side is that Brenda makes food that could kill you. Or me, since I had a heart attack in 2017 and am now counted among those with heart disease. Alabama has the sixth highest rate of obesity in the nation. That means out of 50 states, there are only five with fatter folks. So I guess that means they like to eat, and I'm not talking carrot and celery sticks.

One recipe Brenda made sounded promising: Cabbage Casserole. I was excited since I love cabbage and it actually sounded healthy. I was wrong. It starts with cabbage and onions, and that's the last we hear of anything that won't have you calling 911. Added to those lovely vegetables were the following: one can of condensed cream of chicken soup, one and a half sticks of melted butter, one cup of mayonnaise, one cup of grated cheddar cheese and a full stack of crushed Ritz crackers. (Just writing these ingredients is making me slightly ill.) Brenda suggested serving this casserole along with a nice ham and some fried potatoes.

So watch Brenda's videos for her sparkling personality, charming southern accent, valuable cooking tips and look at a simple life untainted by politics and the pandemic. She's a real up! Just don't eat her food.

LGBTQ, My Ass

I just filled out the 2020 census online. I was surprised and/or gratified to find that our government is either so far behind the times or so plugged into reality, depending on your point of view. A question regarding gender offered two choices: Male and Female.

Ha -- I thought so! So much for the 58 genders identified by ABC News, a list of which follows.

• 
  
• Agender
• Androgyne
• Androgynous
• Bigender
• Cis
• Cisgender
• Cis Female
• Cis Male
• Cis Man
• Cis Woman
• Cisgender Female
• Cisgender Male
• Cisgender Man
• Cisgender Woman
• Female to Male
• FTM
• Gender Fluid
• Gender Nonconforming
• Gender Questioning
• Gender Variant
• Genderqueer
• Intersex
• Male to Female
• MTF
• Neither
• Neutrois
• Non-binary
• Other
• Pangender
• Trans
• Trans*
• Trans Female
• Trans* Female
• Trans Male
• Trans* Male
• Trans Man
• Trans* Man
• Trans Person
• Trans* Person
• Trans Woman
• Trans* Woman
• Transfeminine
• Transgender
• Transgender Female
• Transgender Male
• Transgender Man
• Transgender Person
• Transgender Woman
• Transmasculine
• Transsexual
• Transsexual Female
• Transsexual Male
• Transsexual Man
• Transsexual Person
• Transsexual Woman
• Two-Spirit