Dear Wall Street,
I wanted to thank you for doing your part to make older Americans feel less marginalized. Thanks to your efforts, those men and women who are close to retirement no longer need exit the workforce and sit on the sidelines. What could they possibly accomplish, spending their twilight years relaxing and reflecting? Where’s the dignity in that? Grandchildren get boring quickly. World travel is overrated. Today’s seniors want more out of retirement than a chance to sit back and enjoy the golden years they spent decades saving for. You’ve given them not only the privilege, but also the absolute necessity, to get back out into the workplace and prove themselves—by showing us they still know how to earn money to buy themselves food and medicine!
You recognize that today’s elders don’t want to slow down! They want to be on the move—working and earning income just like regular Joe forty-something Americans! If you’re only as old as you act, just think how young and spry your average seventy-year-old will feel when he’s earning minimum wage again—just like he did as a teenager! Yes, an abrupt and staggering loss of the retirement savings they spent years cultivating is just the kick in the baggy polyester pants that today’s vibrant elderly population needed! Soon they’ll be back out in the workforce in slow droves, chasing the American dream again—if they can remember where they left it. Competition between three generations of American workers is just the kind of rivalry that will really drive the marketplace!
Breakfast:
Half pack of peanut butter crackers
Lunch:
Chocolate Peanut Butter Clif Bar
Afternoon snack:
Remaining peanut butter crackers
Half a pack of cream cheese & chive crackers
Dinner:
Last 3 slices of leftover Dominoes chicken bacon ranch pizza
2 Tums (is it sad that I got those out of the medicine cabinet as I heated up the 3rd slice of pizza? An ounce of prevention…is worth a pound of heartburn)
Tumbler of watered-down Dollar Store juice (yes, I water my juice down like an old man. I like a ratio of about 1/3 juice, 2/3 water, give or take)
Glass of wine (mmm, riesling!)
Handful of chocolate chips
Pinch of shame
Apparently spending all day entering data has not improved my typing skills. I tried to go to msn.com and got here:
Sorry, we couldn’t find men.som
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How difficult can it be to find a decent looking pantsuit (or just a suit-jacket!) that doesn’t make me feel like I raided my mom’s closet?
I need to dress for a job interview, not a tea party with my favorite stuffed animals.
Is it just me, or did Target used to sell clothes that you could wear to work post-college? When did it become Boring Wet Seal? If you’re not on the debate team or going to the library to study for finals and hoping to run into that cute boy from history class, it’s USELESS.
Sigh. This is what happens to me when I start temping again. It isn’t pretty, folks.
Not to mention the fact that the dog is used to having a stay at home mom, and today I left him alone for 10 hours. Why don’t we have a cat? From my understanding, you come home to a cat and if you’re lucky it nods in your direction. The dog wraps himself around my legs while quivering in paroxysms of fear and joy.
“PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME!!!! Whatever I did, I’m sorry! I’m SO SORRY! AAAAUUUUGH PANT PANT PANT DROOL.” I can’t even bring myself to meet the terrible shell-shocked look that is still in his eyes.
Eight hours of data entry and no internet make Molly something-something.
Oh, right. Drink wine!
We have plants on the porch in snazzy window-boxes. They include basil, oregano, sage, lavender, a couple of jade plants, a spider plant, a tomato plant, and 2 kinds of mint!
Whenever I think of mint, I recall how my plant-smart friend once told me that unfortunately mint is extremely invasive.
But I can’t help loving our two little kinds of mint for the way they flourish and put out sprigs every which way.
Mint! You have invaded my heart.
Took a trip to Family Dollar today. I will not deny that close proximity to a Dollar Store is a deciding factor when I look for a place to live. For real. I love dollar stores. They make me feel all warm and cheapy inside. Why buy juice for $3.69 at a reputable grocery store when you can get Happeez Brand Liquid Fruit-like Drink for $2 at the dollar store? Why indeed.
They’re a good place to stock up on cheap, disposable home goods as well, for those folks in transition who’ve found an apartment but lack a job– and a dish rack, and a bath mat. Family Dollar will sell you a $1 shower curtain made of the lightest gauzy whisper of faerie wings and clouds; one that becomes airborne and billows to the ceiling, or wraps itself around your soaped up showering form at the slightest hint of a breeze. If that doesn’t give you the impetus to start job-hunting so you can afford a nice $12 dollar shower curtain that obeys gravity, nothing will.
I do have my limits though. I was dismayed to learn that the Family Dollar near my first apartment in Boston carried a Family Dollar Brand Pregnancy Test– a bargain at $3 a pop. (No pun intended. Ew!) Anyhoo, I would not trust a $3 pregnancy test not to do one or both of the following:
a) actually MAKE me pregnant or
b) then give me a crazy bat baby.
“Mom, where did I come from?”
“The Dollar Store.”
Nobody wants to have that exchange. Some items are best purchased at your local CVS.
So before moving to North Carolina, I tried to set up some sort of job working for Obama’s campaign, but one of the places I contacted would only take me on board if I relocated to New Hampshire to work on the campaign there. Damn it, I was just IN the northeast! I wanted to work for change in North Carolina!
Well, who’s a swing state now? Apparently it’s neck-in-neck in NC– a few scant weeks after I moved here. I’m sure this is all because of me.
You’re welcome, America.
If Brian didn’t want the kind of girlfriend who would force him to watch The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, he would not be dating me. End of story.
PS it is so sad! And French! And subtitled!
PPS I cried at the end. He did not.
At this point I think it’s been fairly well-documented that I want to crown Sarah Palin as prom queen and then dump a bucket of moose blood over her at the Vice Presidential debate.
Fortunately, I don’t have to watch alone tonight. Brian is going to be home late, and I was worried that if I spent 45 minutes watching the debate by myself, I’d bite my pants in half and drink all the bourbon. Luckily I found a local town where they’re showing it in a movie theatre. A movie theater! Full of similarly tweaked-out liberals! What could go wrong?
I’ll let you know what happens.
Studies show that when chocolate tastes like ashes in your mouth, you’re less likely to overeat!
With poverty and unemployment on the rise and a devastating economic crisis threatening our society’s very foundations, the thought of the grim future ahead is pushing many Americans into the depths of despair. So why not drop a few dress sizes on your way down?
Readers, if we know you, you’ve been through your fair share of hard times. Chances are you recall those miserable days through a haze of listless melancholy. What you may not remember is what you ate during those difficult times—probably because food had lost its appeal. As a matter of fact, right this moment, depressed people all around you are shedding pound after pound because in their abject misery, not even eating seems worthwhile. Why let those savvy sad-sacks have all the fun and look great in the latest fashions? We’re here to help you attain their level of miserable apathy—just in time for bathing suit season!
A key inspiration for this diet plan comes from the life and ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, an influential French philosopher (and you know how skinny the French are!) Sartre—or, as we like to call him, “The Thinking Woman’s Jenny Craig”, knew that life was a never-ending struggle against the paralyzing self-annihilation which comes from complete acknowledgement of the futility of existence. You’d better believe that man could suck all the fun out of a piece of birthday cake. But he wore a size 6 smoking jacket until the day he finally escaped the crushing agony of the responsibility of existence.
In one of Sartre’s most popular works, entitled “Nausea”, he wrote in detail of his character’s fear of being touched by inanimate objects, because of their indifference to him. Inanimate objects made him sad! The very walls around him made him want to toss his existentialist cookies! The guy was a pro. An unfocused but ever-present feeling of nausea is a great way to cut calories. And you barely have to change your lifestyle—just modify the way you view the world around you and your responsibility toward it, and we bet you’ll see proven results within weeks! As your grip on reality loosens, so will your jeans!
Readers, we know how unhappy you are, deep down. Try as you may to forget it as you go about your pointless daily routine, you know that existence is ultimately nothing more than relentless suffering. To be alive is to be constantly teetering on the edge of madness as you contemplate the futility of being. Still see the point of eating breakfast? Maybe you should go bikini-shopping instead.
Keep in mind that your efforts may be derailed if you do not dig down until you find yourself in a place of complete and total misery— that is, if you are merely unhappy. Unhappy people tend to seek comfort in food—and they often find it there, if only temporarily. A box of chocolate-glazed donut holes will offer at least a few moments of lingering solace to a person who has merely had a rough day. If you are following this program correctly, however, donut holes will be unable to move you. In fact, the very concept of donut holes will be devoid of significance, except inasmuch as they represent the missing part of a donut, which reminds you that your capacity to find meaning in life is also missing. You will be aware that the glaze which obscures them is only their way of hiding their pain from the world. There is nothing tasty about it, because it is a sugary coating of lies.
Now you’re thinking like a size 2!
I Heard Tell 