When Did I Grow Up?

          I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but somewhere along the way I became middle-aged.  Of course, I don’t think of myself that way.  I mean, I plan on living until I’m 150, so really I would need to be seventy-five to be considered middle-aged.  That is my logic, at least.  However, the kids think I passed middle-age twenty years ago and have reached assistant living age.

We Should All Wear Diapers

          When a catastrophe happens such as the theater shooting in Colorado or if someone notices that people are overweight and lack control of their eating habits or are too lazy to exercise, Big Brother and its apostles tend to give knee-jerk reactions and wish to implement extreme measures.  At times, I wonder if they even hear the logic they seem to believe to be sound as it spews from their mouths.  I worry about people that are so zealous in their beliefs that they don’t see the flaws in their thinking.

Stand Up!

          All those who wish to live longer, please stand up!  No, really, get off your tush and move around.  You’ve been told your whole life that parking it on the couch will cost you in the long run and now they’ve conducted research to prove it.  As a matter of fact, sitting down could rob you of two years of your life.  They have even come up with a name for it - Sitting Disease, which I am sure they spent tons of money on just in order to create that perfect, original name for this life stealer.

Almost like Christmas

          It’s the middle of summer, which means the stores are about to be flooded with decorations and the shelves stocked with bargains that will make me as giddy as a five-year old.  It’s about the only time of year that I don’t mind being dragged by the girls into stores where parents allow those kids that could be poster children for birth control to run rampant.  I’m not talking about Halloween or Christmas, although those are a close second and third to my all-time favorite shopping periods.  No, this is the time of year for Back to School sales!

Out of the Nest

          My first fictional “baby” was sent out of the nest this past weekend.  Circle of Justice is actually a story I wrote almost twenty years ago, and which I have rewritten every year since.  Well, okay, I admit that was an exaggeration.  There were several years that I kept it hidden in a file cabinet or buried in a desk drawer believing it not to be ready to be viewed by the world or even my mother.  It wasn’t just that the story wasn’t ready.  The truth is, I wasn’t ready, either.

They Don’t Mean It

          They don’t mean it.  It’s not intentional.  They have their lives to live.  It’s what we’ve raised them for.  We wanted strong men.  Women.  Adults to go out into the world and leave their mark.  To begin families of their own.  Careers.  Dreams.  We wanted them to be able to stand on their own two feet.  To do more than survive.  To thrive.  We wanted them to have lives of their own.

           They don’t mean it.  To leave us behind.  To experience those moments in life that we’ve dreamed of them experiencing without us.  They just got caught up in the moment.  Lost in the excitement, the rush of achieving.  They don’t mean to live their lives without us.

It Doesn’t Fit in the Box

          As I was forced to clean out the garage the other day, I began filling a box with stuff that would be sold cheaply at a future yard sale, which would then allow me to buy those expensive drinks on our next cruise.  At first I was wondering where all the miscellaneous junk came from as we had already had a yard sale a year ago, and found it ludicrous that so much had been left over.  Besides, I knew that what we had not sold had gone to Goodwill.  No leftovers.  Did the girls go out and buy more stuff just so we could have something to sell?  I suddenly went and checked my office to make sure they hadn’t stripped my shelves of knick knacks when I wasn’t looking.

          The yard sale should really be called a driveway sale because that’s where everything is going.  I’ve worked too hard to get my yard to resemble real grass to have it trampled by grungy looking people searching for next year’s Christmas gifts.  But I digress.  I digressed on purpose, to be honest, because I’ve always wanted to say, “But I digress.”  Still, I digress again.

Supersize Me!

          I didn’t see it in the news, because to be honest, I find the news rather depressing and would rather watch Gilligan’s Island in case they ever manage to get off the island.  Besides, I’m not a fan of newscasters trying to tell me how I should think.  I have the girls for that.

          I remember when reporters used to do just that, report the news, and left the opinionated commentary to Andy Rooney.  Now, everyone has an opinion and if the public doesn’t agree with it, then shame on them.  They are obviously not of the intelligent enlightened class.

          I don’t feel bad about not knowing what’s on the news, either.  I had a friend several years ago that didn’t know that a hurricane was going to hit us and most of the town had already evacuated.  Most people tend to go about their merry way, not really caring what the overpaid guardians of special interest groups are doing.  Of course, then they try to screw with my Big Gulp and like everyone else I’m outraged.