Does anyone like endings? They seem to just stress us out and make us reach for a big, stiff hey, hey watch your language, buddy drink, I was gonna say.
If you’re over the age of nine months days, you know that they are a huge drag. Can you ever feel happy about an ending? Well, possibly a few people can, I guess…
But we’re not talking about them. Pay attention.

We non-paying customers seem to voluntarily head straight into things that seem good or enriching or fun, but clearly have an ending. Relationships, vacations, chocolate chocolate cake…but my best example for pretty much everything is television.

Pick a show you love. Watch it. Think about the characters in your off-time you do that, too, right?. Get involved. Guess what? Canceled! Even those stalwart classics that we thought would never end, do , I’m looking at you As the World Turns.
Yes, we’re completely bummed and left with a big, empty feeling when our show is done.

And yet, what do we do?

Thanks to Netflix, not only do we start watching shows again, we pick shows that we already know before we even watch Episode 1 have been canceled.
And frankly, no matter how many times I watch that Firefly series, knowing it will end, I nonetheless feel surprised and ripped off when I get to the last episode.

So, what do we do with that? We mourn, we pace around, we vent, we grieve, we vent we polish off that bottle of malbec, we shake our heads at the injustice, and then like a strung-out addict in a filthy, back alley with two dollars, a friend and a rat scurrying across our ankles, we go back to search Netflix for more.
Surely, this time we won’t be disappointed…

Got any new (or “new” old) shows you’re watching this fall?

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But every now and then one pops up from the outside, directly in your face.

And what is a blog for if not to vent about idiots? I mean, really, I could lose my blogger membership card if I miss this opportunity.

Here’s my most recent idiot encounter:

So, I’m taking another improv class in a complex scheme to avoid housework, taught by him here, and one of the students is a guy who’s been in a couple of other improv classes with me. We won’t name names, but let’s just say his name rhymes with “gall.”

We hadn’t been in a class together for at least six months, I’m a little nervous about not censoring myself like I do to live in my world, and Gall sits down next to me.

Hey, how’s it going, Gall? I say.

Oh, great…been seeing some plays, this and this… Have you seen those?

No, I’m doing good getting here, ya know.

Do you have kids?

Yea, I have an eight year old.

YOU have an eight year old?? Sheer shock at this modern medical miracle began to register on his old face.

As I see this I start to think, just how old do you think I am??

Have you ever thought of coloring your hair? I mean, you could look at least ten years younger!

Gee, Gall, have you ever thought of penis enlargement surgery?

Well, actually, some people compliment me on my silver hair…

He rolls his eyes (!) in a you’re-gonna-believe-that? and that my wife left me? look.

Mind if I ask you a personal question because I have no social chip in my head and I’ll keep going until you shoot me?

You mean another?? I say.

How old are you?

I’m 39, or possibly just barely 45.

[Audible gasp] I hoped thought you were at least 55 and single!

I grab my right hip.

Do you think I need to go on a diet, too, and get rid of this, you fr*&%#in idiot??

I confess, face-to-face, I am a relatively sweet particularly when sober Texas girl who gets speechless at others’ less-than-polite commentary. Hence, the improv classes.

What do you do with these people when they pop up??!

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It starts off with a gorgeous image, a vision of calm, peaceful order and an appreciation of community and the natural beauty in all life.

You imagine you’ll have lovely, relaxing chats with your friends and neighbors.

As the natives declare they’re BORED get restless, you quickly realize you have a big, white target “X” on your back.

You scramble to entertain the enemy your kids with music and fun, perhaps an outdoor concert.

But even the littlest soldiers revolt.
(with the very littlest fighters yelling, “BANG,” instead of firing an actual gun)

Before the actual altercations began, you fashioned yourself the guy with the biggest, loudest gun on the field, but, alas, you need to fix a martini a reality check.

In the end, your fate turns out more like the band.

And your living room, strewn with popsicle sticks dead bodies that no one is picking up…

If you’re lucky, some summer camp instructor angelic vision will come to pray for your soul.

What month is this? September, right? Whaaa?

Do you have war on your hands or a peace treaty?

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Then, two days into it you realize you have serious crankiness issues.

And not just with the kids, but with yourself.

We were going to make art books. Instead, we are making ice cream runs.

We were going to go to the beach. Day 1, we got the bottom of our foot scraped by barnacles and are “never going back to the beach again!”

We were going to read, read, read. Instead, we are marathoning Phineas and Ferb.

I guess there is still too much time to correct course, but each summer I forget my margarita recipe the uphill battle from the year before. Same soldiers, different battlefield…

So, how’s your summer going? Are you doing what you intended to do?

And most importantly, do you have a good, strong cocktail recipe to share?

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I’m sure you’ve heard about that doll, the Breast Milk Baby, and I read a few articles on parent reactions to it.

(Hey, it’s got a pacifier! Some parents would object to that!)

I figured all the hub-bub was mostly media created on a slow news day. Real people wouldn’t object to such a basic concept, right?

But after reading a local Facebook friend’s poll that asked if his friends would buy such a doll, I guess I was wrong once again.

Stunned is how I felt reading the 40 comments about how “creepy” and “gross” that sounded, how little kids don’t “need to be exposed to such things at such a young age”, and even that it “might encourage earlier sexual behavior.”

*Blink*

Are you people for realz?! A doll that holdontoyourhat doesn’t come with a bottle and pretends to be fed from a mother?! This is outrageous??

No, I’m outraged that so many in our society wring offensiveness out of a basic, healthy, mammalian behavior.

God forbid young girls (and boys, right?!) learn at “an early age” that boobs have a purpose slightly more important than bouncing in a wet t-shirt on a beach in a reality show.

Yes, Virginia, my girls had a job and they did that job well!

We’re not all livin’ on a farm anymore, and all our pets are fixed, so just where is a kid going to stumble onto casual viewing of breastfeeding? Maybe at their house (if they’re not an only child like mine), maybe at a park, but mostly nowhere.

And is breastfeeding sexy? How will donning that toy bib and holding a plastic doll up to the flower nipple inspire hot, lascivious thoughts? (I’m talking about the intended use of a suckling doll, people; don’t go all Deliverance on me now!)

News flash: If you’re really breastfeeding a baby, then you are sleep-deprived, undernourished and overtired. Yeah, that’s hawt.

You wanna complain that dolls should not have specific functions, like walking, talking, pooping, growing hair, or breastfeeding, and that kids should to pretend that Ken has a wiener their dolls can do all those things. Fine. I hear ya. I’m all for imagining you’re on a hot beach with a sweating Paolo and margaritas wild characters and crazy story lines.

But object to this doll for these other reasons? Laughable. A disgrace to mammals everywhere.

What do you think about a breastfeeding doll? Do tell!

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Oh, sure, they come and go. And come back again with a vengeance and waaaaahhh-where’s-my-mommy??.

So, here’s my perfectly and desperately reactionism thought out answer to grappling with these Godforsaken, incessant tempests:

1. Go to google.com
2. Click images
3. Enter these words, in this order, “baby animals.” (I will not, repeat, not be responsible for what may turn up if you flip the order.)
4. Sip Grey Goose with twist of lemon while scrolling down.

You’ll get the likes of this:

We’re all good, now, yes?

No guarantees, but it might work for fights with spouses, filing taxes, enforcing bedtimes, cancellation of your soap opera, crash of stock market picks, running out of coffee, school field trips, flight cancellations, and shrinkage of your favorite cashmere sweater.

Yes, I feel better already. *sssslllllurp*

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The 4th here was great. And I have a video of the fireworks we saw in our little Bainbridge Island harbor to prove it.

Ah, yes, it was lovely. I even ran my second 5K that morning and managed to move around afterwards to see our local parade. *insert chirping, happy birds*

Little did we know the following day we’d have this in the backyard (& for weeks to come):

Evil, irregular hedge growth, you ask?

Don’t I wish.

That, my friends, is what you get when your husband falls off the ladder while trimming a giant hedge. And breaks his leg. Badly.

Worse than that last time, three years ago.

And I ain’t gettin on that ladder to finish the job! I have more important things to do, like ice bag refilling, pillow fluffing, and food preparation for the hubs.

The hubs, a rugged Alaskan, calmly said immediately after while leaning on his good leg, “Um, honey? I think I just broke my leg.” In response, the kid and I did our best Keystone Cops impression, scrambling around, bumping in walls and screaming WHAAAAATTTTT??!!!!

And what a silver lining that he’d broken his other leg three years earlier because being the hoarder pack-rat that he is, the hubs still had the crutches.

Now our summer is f#^*$ up, on painkillers topsy-turvy.

To add salt to the wound, while in downtown Seattle for the hubs’ CAT scan the following day, I got this:

Yes, I put 2 quarters in an apparently to everyone but me broken meter and found that little gem ten minutes later.

I swear, it’s enough to turn a person to drink. Oh, wait, I already am at 8am now do.

I just have to ask–

Universe, what did we ever do to you??

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This is my Public Service Announcement for women out there younger than I am.
See, I give back but no, you can’t have my old tea kettle. I might possibly need it.

Without further ramblings ado, I present to you, My 7 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Woman in Her 40′s, a.k.a, Cougars Still Get Hangnails:

1. Your libido went to Fiji without you. Sure, you were lusty in your 30′s, just like they said you would be, but if, like me, you married in the middle of that decade, things change. I mean, honey, if you offer me Super Fudge Chunk ice cream every night, even I’m going to be not so interested anymore. Maybe if I had to hunt for that dessert pint in bars, office parties and churches, then….

Corollary: you want your husband to go to Fiji, too, and leave you, in the words of Nancy Wilson, another old broad, A-LONE.

2. You may want to “friend” Clairol a little sooner than planned. I realize now (yes, now that my totally gray head stares me in the face in a menacing, no-way-out way) that hair coloring is a little like miscarriage among the female community she did not just say that, oh, but she did: it’s happening all the time, all around us, but no one is discussing it. Granted, miscarriage is a terrible, terrible loss to experience, I know first hand, but for some, the thought of letting their gray hair grow out is possibly more traumatic since it’s SO VISIBLE, like, to the Calvin Klein underwear boys you may meet world.

With my gray hair getting even longer, I now get “Oh, I’d stop coloring my hair, if it’d grow out like yours… To which, I cough out “A-*bullshit*-hem!”

3. Regardless of color, your thickest, most lush hair will be in your nose. Or, possibly, the bathroom drain.
Or, if you’re lucky to have a great spouse like mine to point out such things, both.

4. Your eggs joined a nunnery 8 years ago, and any of them left fraternizing with cute, horndog spermy guys are not exactly “upstanding community members.” Really, thanks so much, Mr. Dr. Gyno, for never annually warning me of my ovarian expiration date and always not discussing how a hearty sneeze or a toilet seat or both at once! could impregnate a girl.

But I’m not bitter. Bitterness totally is is not part of this list.

5. You might be able jog, if you haven’t yet blown out your knee, but “ripple effect” will have new meaning. Let’s just say, there’s a reason, thank the Lord, full-length mirrors are stuck on walls and doors on the INSIDE of homes. Moving on…

6. Your period goes to one of two extremes, the house guest who’ll never leave and blares Wildfire at 2am, or a tiny, timid mouse who surprises you each month by still coming around for a small slice of munster. I can’t really elaborate much more on that without expanding beyond the “family blog” category that the Hubs likes to imagine declares this blog fits.
Still, I’m not bitter.

7. You may start blogging. Over and over again. Hey, you’ve been warned.

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Turns out, there are lots of writers on this island, speaking and attending the events. I guess they are attracted to the lack of anything interesting to distract them peacefulness and inspiring natural beauty here on Bainbridge Island.

What’s my job? I post the flyers for their monthly writer’s talk. It is very brainy work, and practically makes me a community organizer, well on my way to the presidency.

Sure, running around taping and tacking flyers to bulletin boards and windows sounds easy enough, but NO. There is a certain skill, a certain nuance, a certain mafia wars to the job.

Bulletin board space for advertising is limited, and this island probably has the highest per capita rate of nonprofit organizations in the universe, although Martians, I’ve heard, tend to favor the nonprofits, as well, what with all their freezing temperatures making shelters so important.

Every month I’m in the trenches, macheting space on the boards, tossing the ads for events I deem unworthy – who really needs to see those Kratt Brothers again?. So you can imagine my chagrin when I realized a poster I put up 24 hours earlier had been taken down.

That’s just not right. Like a vampire on werewolf property, someone’s gonna get bit. Writers may not be as entertaining as tap dancers or opera singers (well, maybe not the opera singers…), but we are still part of the creative arts and deserve a spot on the board.

Without writers, where would that leave all those hit tv shows, like Top Chef, American Idol, or Project Runway? Oh, never mind.

Still, I’ve been wronged in the turf wars! I’ve been trying to come up with a revenge tactic ever since.

I’d totally plaster ALL their windows with dozens of flyers in retaliation, like a hit and run, but unfortunately the flyers do identify the group, which defeats the necessary anonymous part of “hit and run”…

Plus, that would probably use up all the flyers I have which I am, hello, supposed to be distributing like a good little babbo. You know, for the writers.

And I can’t really boycott this offending group because I already bought tickets for their next performance. And told the Kid about it. *ahem*

This really highlights the problem with living in a small community where people have to do stupid stuff, like work it out or find a consensus or get better at not getting caught.

You’re devious. What’s a good revenge?

I’m not afraid to whack a guy with my piece. Or at least inflict a paper cut with a flyer.

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And we do have our share of domestic violence.

So, I guess it was just a matter of time before road rage appeared. This morning I read about an actual incident of road rage here on our little green rock.

Road rage is a weird concept here, unless of course you’re trying to make the ferry. I’m not sure what the appropriate saint medal would be for protection if you don’t drive 50mph in a school zone dawdle in front of a soccer mom trying to get the 9:40am ferry to hit the downtown Nordstrom sale and be back before school lets out. But I’m pretty sure you’d need some kind of protection.

That’s why it’s so weird that two guys pull over and break out in a fist fight on a Monday night. Burned out from another wild President’s Day weekend?

Well, they obviously failed to read this sign:

Some do-gooder person put a bunch of these up around here more than a year ago.

And this is the first account of road rage I’ve heard of, so they must be working, yes?

It was probably too dark to read it last night.

Are you raging lately? The only rage I feel could be aimed at the public schools for having a 5-day weekend….

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