No More Inside Voice

What is with kids these days? Also, GET OFF MY LAWN!

Seriously - the screaming. Enough. You want to play outside and scream bloody murder? OK - here's your bloody murder - happy to oblige.

We are *surrounded* by screaming kids on all sides. Across the street, both next door neighbors and the neighbors behind us. All. Have. Screaming. Fugging. Kids.

It's not a fun, gleeful scream of joy - it's balls out screaming like their heads are on fire and their tiny hands are exploding in front of their eyes. I'm currently shopping for a high-powered tranquilizer rifle if you know where I can find one.

I remember when I was little and played outside. There was no screaming unless my brother Peter was stabbing me in the eye with a red hot poker, which only happened a few times.

When my brothers and I played together, the only screaming was from our mother if we were getting too close to the flowers or about to break a window.

Even when rocketing down the incredibly safe Slip 'n Slide®, hurtling straight into a hedge of sharp juniper bushes, there was no screaming. Crying maybe, but no screaming.

When my brother fell backward & broke his wrist, there was no screaming. When he slammed his knee into a sprinkler head and split it wide open, there was no screaming. When he fell head-first out of the pine tree and onto the driveway, there was no screaming.

So, it would seem, kids today are total pussies that have no imagination and so little intelligence, all they can do to express themselves is scream. What a joy they must be to live with.

Fugging Hormones

Boy, is it fun being a woman in her early forties. All that's missing is the funnel cake and the Main Street Electrical Parade.

Every month something else changes - nothing is stable anymore. Just when I think I've adjusted to the new routine, it changes again.

There used to be a predictable schedule - recognizable events, which now are a jumble and occur at seemingly random times of the month.

No longer can I expect my face to asplode with fantastic zits a week before The Bleed - now it happens throughout the month, whenever it feels like it.

The Bleed starts, stops, then - Surprise! - returns for a day or so just in case I was starting to miss it.

No longer am I moody and depressed for just a few days before my period - now it's pretty much throughout the month. Most days, if I didn't have to leave the house for work or other critical reasons, like for coffee, I'd never change out of my fleece robe.

Now, in just the last couple of months, I'm having trouble falling asleep at night. Me. The one my family was certain had narcolepsy, the one who could sleep anywhere (and most of the time still can).

When I get into bed at night, tired and sleepy and happy to indulge in 7 hours on the Tempurpedic, I lie there wide awake. Thinking about nothing. Just awake. Not asleep. Not even close. Sometimes for over an hour.

And the newest event I'm not at all pleased with - one morning a few weeks ago I woke up soaking wet. That was neat. I'd been swimming laps in bed. Or maybe I'd just peed myself. A lot. All over. What a lovely way to start the day.

This is just straight up bullshit. All of it. I don't want any part of it.

I am not Suzanne Somers with limitless access to personal physicians who can administer delicious bioidentical hormones in the perfect amounts to stave this off for however long. That would be nice... I wonder if Blue Shield covers that.

For now, I stand in the vitamin aisle at Trader Joe's reading the back of the Estroven package unwilling to put it in the basket, thinking Not yet... I'm only 43... I can't need this... yet...

The Other Ply

Money's been a little tight lately so I've hit the sales & looked for discounts everywhere I can.

For months I've been buying cheap toilet paper, trying to find something between a Sears catalog and billowy quilted cotton pillows hand sewn by tiny fingers in developing nations.

It wasn't so bad - exfoliating is good, right?

Then I had a photo gig at a ginormous house owned by a very successful realtor. Before leaving I asked to use the bathroom.

Oh how I'd missed the billowy quilted luxuriously soft cotton pillows hand sewn by tiny fingers in developing nations. It felt so nice, I couldn't go home to the Sears catalog sitting beside our toilet.

Never again will I go back to rough hewn ass scratching rolls of tree bark. Life is too short to use cheap toilet paper.