A FUNNY THING HAPPENED

Yes, a funny thing did happened to me on my way to old age! I got distracted, sidetracked and ended up poked away in some hermitage on The Redneck Riviera. How the hell did that happen? Now, many years later here I am in a spot I never thought I'd be. I really didn't think at this stage of my life I'd be alone. Lately, I have laughed at myself for being such a loser. Here I sit typing away about love and life when obviously whatever formula I had carefully devised for successful relationships hasn't worked.

My head is full of stupid idealistic notions and all those notions have accomplished is to keep me isolated and alone. I think my plan royally backfired! I wish some of the married people out here would tell me the secret of success, longevity and of finding the right match for myself and where to search. I know people say as long as you're hunting you won't find what you're hunting for. Maybe so, but what about the last five years I haven't been hunting? Am I so defective and grotesque that the thought of being with me makes men run for cover? Does my independence work against me by causing any potential mate to feel unwanted or unneeded? Am I demanding? Not really! Actually, I'm low maintenance and I think this might be something that has worked against me also. 

You see, I had this foolish notion that the best things in life are free and love needn't be an expensive adventure. After all, they say money doesn't buy love. Also, I’ve never been a materialistic person. "Stuff" just doesn't impress me. I was always more impressed by what was inside a person than by what they owned. I think this is another flaw in my outlook on life. Am I a vain person? No, not at all! In fact, people look at me as a diamond in the rough. I guess I should have spent countless hours at the gym and thousands of dollars on make-up and saved my pennies to buy a pair of implants. Somehow, when I looked in the mirror over the years, I never saw a person who needed make-up and the hard physical work I did all my life seemed to keep me in pretty good shape. 

As for the implants... well 40C seems ample enough for me and since I never had a career as an exotic dancer, I never felt the need to enhance what mother nature already gave me. So what's wrong with me? And how do I fix it? Or do I just let it be and keep right on believing the right person is going to love me unconditionally and accept me for who I am when that has never happened? What are the odds at this point that the remainder of my life will be spent alone? I think statistics are starting to work against me here! Being a few standard deviations from the norm makes me at high risk to be an old maid. It's off to the nunnery for Mildred! The person I have deemed as being "okay" must not be. I wish I could see myself through someone else's eyes and then I'd know what to fix. 

It's hilarious that just recently I thought the metamorphosis was complete because I had emerged from a difficult time in one piece. Now, I’m beginning to think the metamorphosis has just begun and the road ahead of me is unclear! It sounds to me like I'm a prime candidate for a mid-life crisis! Now, all I need to do is find a suitable one...one worth the time and effort of doing. Knowing me as I do, I have no problem believing something will come my way and pique my interest...and probably be a total disaster (my specialty)! So let the fun begin! 

Gratitude statement: I actually am grateful to have lived this long to be faced with what to do with the rest of my life. 

EROTICISM AND THE WALMART SHOPPER

I hate crowds! I also hate shopping! I guess that not only makes me unAmerican, but also the atypical female. Sometimes I used to go grocery shopping late at night to avoid the crowds. Very late one night, I went to Walmart where I encountered a middle-aged couple ahead of me in the checkout line purchasing 3 items. I made the following observations about the couple: 

 1. They were a well-dressed, affluent, middle-aged couple. 

 2. They were obviously enamored with each other because they made frequent passionate public displays of affection (PDA) 

 My smile turned to utter delight as I became mentally captivated by the 3 items they purchased. To this day I often wonder why any couple would come to Walmart at 2 a.m. to buy a roll of duct tape, a reclining lawn chair and a can of whipped cream! No, I didn't follow them home, but I have to admit I was tempted! 

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful for having a keen power of observation and enough sense to know when to leave well enough alone! 

The Definition of Confusion

When my children were still in school, they used to visit their grandparents on school holidays. I would drive halfway to Pensacola to meet my mother and place my children in her care. The first few days always seemed like bliss and then the house gradually seemed way too quiet. By the time I would pick up my children, I was more than ready to have them come home again. I welcomed that deafening chaos.

My mother was always rather rigid while I was growing up and had a very diplomatic way of handling punishment. If the guilty party didn't confess the first time when we were asked who did it, we all suffered the consequences. As I grew older and eventually became a parent myself, the woman who raised me seemed to change. She got soft in her old age! Had I broken her spirit? Possibly! But each time my children would rave on about the fun-loving person who they perceived their grandmother to be, I knew it wasn't the same person who raised me. My mother was proof that aliens do exist! Ask anyone from my old neighborhood! They knew my mother was a force to be reckoned with. Her voice alone could raise the dead.

Each time my children would go for a visit, it took weeks before I could straighten them out. My mother waited on them hand and foot and made them do nothing but fun things while they visited her. When they came home sassy and quite lazy, I would want to pull my hair out. One time while driving home, my children seemed quite mesmerized by a joke book one of them had gotten while in Pensacola. One of the visiting rituals was to take my three children (her angelic grandchildren) to Hawsey's, a used bookstore and let them each purchase a large paper bag full of books to read.

Since they were quiet on our trip home and this was an oddity, I tried to engage them in conversation only to be told they were reading jokes. That explained the occasional chuckle I heard from the backseat. I asked them to read aloud some of the jokes. My youngest child, Matthew spoke up and said he would read one. Although he was only 7 at the time, his reading skills were quite advanced for someone his age. As Matthew read, I almost drove off the road.

Whats' the definition of "confusion"?
Twenty blind lesbians in a fish market!

What? Now, with glee they started reading more jokes from the book until I asked them where they got the book. In unison...HAWSEY'S! And your grandmother let you buy that? Well, she never screened the books that were bought, so the book titled Truly Tasteless Jokes was easily purchased by my son, Daniel (age 9). When they all went on to recite the dirty little ditties my mother had taught them I knew she had lost her mind or maybe the rules that apply to being a parent were different from those being a grandparent. It definitely was a gotcha moment lovingly given to me by my mother. To this day, my mother just smiles innocently when this story is told.

An example of one of the my mother's ditties:

A flock of birds
Chocked full of tirds
Flew over my father's castle
They stretched their necks
And shit a peck
Then closed up their assholes.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful I don't live in a castle near a fish market.

FEATURED YOYO

Daniel Fogelberg
August 13, 1951 – December 16, 2007
Written by an anonymous fan: "Dan, I finally hugged my father before he left; I finally found peace after lost love; I finally claimed a purple mountain for my soul -- all this because of your musical journey, always more than lyrics and melodies. I finally discovered gratitude and grace. Your music is timeless; your heart, boundless."

Gratitude statement: Sometimes lasting memories are formed under the strangest of circumstances and sometimes people only need to briefly touch your life in order to have a lasting effect on it.

I GAVE BIRTH TO A PRINCESS

This is my beautiful daughter, Princess Christina. She would like to have people believe I hung a porkchop around her neck as a child so at least the dogs would play with her. What a sassy little vixen she is and also she's bursting at the seams from being full of crap! She's talented in so many ways and I truly wish she would see her full potential instead of spinning her wheels like yours truly (I guess this comes from being raised by a mother who had potential, but did everything she could to destroy it).

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful for rubber porkchops because they are reusable!

SEX AND THE KITTY

The past week has been hard for me. The lightbulb has gone off several times and I've found myself saying, "WOW! an epiphany!".
What's strange about these lightbulb moments are that they have come at odd times when I wasn't really engaged in deep thought. It's almost as though some stuff I've kept stuffed down for so long is surfacing because it has no place else to go, but up. These moments are allowing me to see me in a different light.

I think the strangest of the epiphanies is the one concerning sex. Since a very young age I've looked at sex through hedonistic eyes. At times, I've been very promiscuous, but I've never felt bad about being sexually uninhibited. For the last 5 years I've been in self-imposed "time-out." Okay, that time-out came as a result of a broken heart, but nonetheless it has given me time to distance myself from something I always felt clouded my judgment. In my case, sex makes me brain dead. The more I have, the more comfortably numb I become. Sex has completely destroyed my judgment skills and has left me morally bankrupt. Now throw drugs into that mix and yourself have free-spirited, pleasure-seeking junkie!

Can I link my bad behavior to any particular cause? You betcha! But instead of feeling angry, I feel sadness. I feel sadness for all the time I truly wasted on cheap, sleazy sex and thrill-seeking scumbags. I feel regret for all the "nice" men I've known and have never given a chance because they weren't Billy Badass. I always believed nice=boring and for me nice just didn't get it done. Masturbation was more stimulating than sex with a nice man. I can't tell you how many first dinner dates I sat engrossed in pleasant conversation with a perfectly nice man while my head is screaming, "NOT IN THIS FUCKING LIFETIME" as I tried imagining my long legs wrapped around my dinner date doing unmentionable things with them.

What disheartens me the most is realizing that my most memorable personal accomplishment is having a lifetime filled with being self-destructive. Oh, but instead of getting the job done all at once, I felt I deserved a lifetime of being dragged slowly over the coals to kill myself a little at a time. Now, I'm trying hard to find ways to break that cycle. For someone who has always acted on impulse, it's difficult to leap cautiously back into life and then stop myself to ask questions first before I do anything.

Do I really want to do this? Is this the right thing to do? How will it effect me? Those are basic questions that most people have been asking themselves all their life, but those questions are a major thing for me! Being "normal" is overwhelming to say the least! I really didn't realize how far down into the pit I've fallen until I started trying to climb out. Hopefully, what hasn't killed me will only make me stronger. Hopefully, as I peel away the layers of semen-laced crud, I'll see the person others see. And hopefully, as I climb my way out into daylight, I'll be able to forgive myself as easily as I have forgiven others who have caused me pain.

Gratitude statement: I'm thankful for having 20/20 hindsight.