My idea of Hell is to be young again. ~Marge Piercy

I made the mistake of watching the American Music Awards. Maybe it was the sound guy, who should have been fired, if in fact he was responsible for the sound on the show. Maybe it was the cable feed or our non-flat screen TV. Maybe it was just that I'm just too old to watch these shows anymore.

I've become my mother: "Turn down that noise!"

The show seemed to be divided in half: people I had NO idea who they were or folks I knew and I was sorry to see where they were in their career. Which only made me feel older.

Janet, while kicking ass and working like a dog on that stage! But she lipsync'd her way through a medley of her hits. It hurts me to see her fall prey to the "fake mic" movement.

Lady GaGa - FA-Reak of nature! I have no idea if she sings well, cuz I was too busy wondering if her costume was put together the same why I built my corpse for Halloween this year.

We fast forwarded through the one that caused us to say, "Who the HELL is that??" So I don't even know if they sang well. I'm old and grumpy. I can't waste time trying to wait to find out.

And since the entertainers I like sounded like ass....why bother with the ones I didn't know.

Whitney....oh dear, dear Whitney. I haven't liked you since "Be My Baby Tonight". You kooky, cracked out, has been. She was trying. She at least was really singing. The problem seemed to be that the band was playing one thing and she was singing another. I could be wrong, but there wasn't much proof otherwise.

J-Lo's routine was tight and fun, but she was fake mic'n it TOO! (and she stepped on a sweaty guy and slipped...but that big ol backside of hers acted like a bumper and popped her right back up on her feet!)

I was waiting for Adam....the Lambert! The showman with the wink and the nod. They were teasing it his routine going into the breaks: edgy, radical, racy.

Looking past the terrible sound, which haunted every singer that night, his was a walk through a sex den, made up of his band and dancers, on stage!

I'm no prude. Believe me!

But really....it was too much! Simulated blow jobs, tongue probing make out sessions, crotch grabbing, and what he wasn't grabbing there was a face going into it. And then the last note...you don't have to end every song on a tongue-draggin'-on-the-floor note that goes on well after the music stops. It makes it awkward for us watching. We start asking, "Doesn't he hear the music is over? He's just wailing with his tongue hanging out in the air like that."

I was uncomfortable.

In the shot of the audience, they were all on their feet. But it seemed more like they all were trying to leave to beat the LA traffic and someone locked the doors, rather than a possible standing ovation in the making.

I hate to admit I'm too old. I hated when my mom didn't get The Go-Go's. Couldn't she see the genius behind them? They could kick Peter, Paul and Mary's butt any day of the week. As times change, now I have a feeling that the Three 6 Mafia could gun down The Go-Go's and use their skulls for smoking crack.

The evolution of music isn't pretty. And getting old ain't no fun. I'll stick to my greatest hits albums.

Yes...I said 'ALBUMS'!!

time, time, time....See what's become of me...

Could you have even guess...when I wrote my last blog on the 17th, I would STILL be waiting for my car?

I SURE AS HELL COULDN'T!

This is the thing, I took my car in cuz there was a metal 'clunk' and they said they couldn't FIND a metal 'clunk'. So they let me drive a broken car for 4 days till the sway bar snapped (whatever that is) took out my CV boot (which I'm sure is important, whatever that is). It sounded like I was dragging 20 pounds of scrap metal behind my right tire.

While it wasn't a waste of my $240 for my rotors and oil change, they never got what really was broken till it was so damaged, it is still in the shop! (of course if my folks had let me take auto shop back in high school in the 80's, I could be doing this myself.)

"We have to order the parts."

I guess that's what happens when Saturn is set adrift in the bailout wake left by its parent company, GM. You know the guys...they took a private plane to DC to ask for money to help them out. Congress asked them, "Well, what's you plan?" They all shrugged and congress said, "Next time you come...have a plan."

So they decided to "carpool" this next time, since it kinda made headlines about the whole pesky private plane thing. Ya...they carpooled in an ESCALADE! One of the biggest, gas guzzling, eco-hating cars on the road.

And when they got to DC, congress said, "Do you have a plan?" And they said "Um..we just thought you'd give us money. We got rid of the planes!"

So they got sent home AGAIN, to do their homework.

Therefore, it shouldn't surprise me that Saturn has no parts stocked at their facility anymore. And I shouldn't be surprised that, after over-nighting two parts, only one came in. And when the second one came in the next day, it was the right model number on the box, but the wrong part inside the box.

But that doesn't take the sting away from the usual pleasant man I usually deal with, turning on me like a cornered rat.

"So that means you have to have my car for ANOTHER day?", I said.

"Yes"

"Well I think for every day you have to keep it I get $100 knocked off." I giggled to lighten the mood.

"Um...NO!"

"NO?? NO? Mike...THAT'S not very good customer service!" my giggle turned to a nervous chuckle.

"Go complain to GM. They can't ship the right box."

"Um...heh....OooooooKaaaaayyyy then. Thanks??"

CLICK

I'm so glad that I'm going to be handing them close to $1000 for my repairs in a time span of two weeks. I guess with service like that, at those prices, you don't need bail out money. You clients will take care of it for you.

So fly your planes GM! Drive your Escalades! Bend your loyal customers over and tell them to cough!

Where is that number for the local Toyota dealer? 51 mpg in a Prius sounds REALLY good right now.

"Come ON! How much is it going to be??"

It's the eternal struggle: No money....that's when the bills come. A broken appliance. The roof caving in. Water pipe breaking in the backyard. Car problems. The last item is my current problem.

My sister, the high priestess of lovable kooks, often times tells me that what you say out loud has power. If you say "I'm terrible at remembering names.", you will be. She's always telling me to take it back, or pushing the invisible "eject button" on her forehead to get 'evil' thoughts out.

Putting it all together, I figured out, you actually 'will' the trouble upon yourself.

At the first sound of an echo in my bank account, I start to worry about what could go wrong. Just last week I managed to keep $21 in my account for five days, so I wouldn't bounce anything. Everyday looking on the computer, praying that I could make it work till payday. Feeling the eternal pain of needing money, but not having anywhere to get it.

At the time I had some car problems, that I was also putting off, till I got paid. Then I pulled out of the driveway and BAM! Something came loose in a violent manor. I knew I couldn't put it off. And sure enough, the thoughts came tumbling from my furrowed brow, "Here we go...this is going to set me back so that I can't get out."

I CURSED MYSELF! If only I had pushed my eject button in time!

Sure enough, the cost was too much for me to handle, so I opted to fix one thing and not another. The dealership didn't see the severity of what was to come. Then four days later I was limping along the road with metal on metal crying so loud from my right wheel, pedestrians looked at me.

Now the cost is estimated at triple the amount of the original fix!

OY!

My new mantra will be: Money is free flowing and headed towards me. Large, bags, of cold, hard cash.

I won't be hitting eject on that one.

The Pant Parade

I'm a big grrl. I've always been a big grrl. And when I say "big", I mean...I'm 5'11" and have shoulders like the football lineman, that I was. Plus I have some pounds on me. Therapy couldn't cure a childhood of "But you have such a pretty face.", from my grandmother. Or "I worry about your health.", from my mother.

I've been pretty good about getting up at 5ish am and working-out, at least four times a week. I've built up to an hour work-out, from just 20 minutes, when I started this at the end of September.

While the scale hasn't shown it, things have been fitting different. I've been feeling a lil better about myself. Kind friends have told me, "Well, you ARE building muscle. So you shouldn't even look at the scale."

Scale or no...the true test is the "Pant Parade".

In my closet are two shelves worth of pants that I either enjoyed at one point OR never had the chance to enjoy. (cuz they just didn't fit) Since my 'ol reliable' jeans were not to be found (which, by the way, are now fitting very loose about the waist) I grabbed the flashlight and headed for the shelves of doom!

One after another.....disappointment after disappointment. This pair will come all the way up, but they won't button. This pair stops just below my bootilicious back forty. This pair come up, and buttons, but due to the back forty, are about 2 inches too short. This pair is the biggest, loosest, pair of jeans, but the waist is for a supper model.

Are they drunk when they cut these jeans???

This pair has peg leg cuffs....how long have I had these? They don't button either. This pair pulls up, buttons, but for some reason they put a size small zipper in them. I'm sure of it. This pair fits, snuggly, but I forgot I bought them with these ginormas flaired pant legs. (a trick they use for fattys: if your ankles are that big your waist will look MUCH smaller)

At the end of the parade, I'm knee deep in denim and still standing there, in my Wonder Woman underoos, with nothing to wear.

But ya know.....that one pair...last time I did this, wouldn't come up past my thighs, and now it does! And that other pair I couldn't button last time, now they do! (Even tho they don't zip. But that's a manufactures defect.)

Things don't change over night....right? You know, I'm actually looking forward to the next pant parade. Strike up the band and move off the treadmill...momma still has some marching to do!

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!

"sweetie, if your going to be two-faced, at least make one of them pretty"

Drama! It's everywhere. I can't seem to get out of it. Now I love to watch drama unfold just as much as anyone. Maybe if you put yourself out there to be a spectator, you get some on ya. But JEH-ZUZ! I was knee deep and wading through a stream of it all weekend long.

My weekend kicked off when one of my co-workers decided to start yelling at us cuz we were leaving early. We have this wicked cool rule that, if we make our budget, we get out a lil early on Fridays. It's one of those things that is just an extra lil tid-bit that makes working here better! Especially when you're an office drone and there are NO benefits, other than keeping your job.

So Mr. 2-Big-4-My-Britches sales guy doesn't like this rule. He's made it very clear. He wants someone to be in the office from 8-5 every day to greet anyone that might come through the door (which there aren't any) or answer the one or two calls on a Friday (which they can forward to their cell phones).

His last steady job was working for his dad in retail, so I'm guessing he thinks he still needs to be greeting John Q. Public during store hours. Well not in this day and age sweetie! It's all portable, digital and mobil! Live and die by that crackberry, baybee.

So as he stood there, using his outside voice INSIDE the office, telling me how I should be there in the office while he, as a sales guy, spends most his time, out of the office, with the freedom to do as much personal stuff as he wants.

That clanking you hear in the background is the shackle on my ankle that is tethered to the desk. I don't get to move freely about the cabin.

The other point I tried to break through his Wisconsin fan, cheese wheel sized head of stubbornness, was that while he could work as many hours as he wanted, and get paid for the fruits of that labor, I get paid FORTY hours a week. No more. I could work 80 hours, but they are only going to pay me 40.

So those couple hours that we might earn, to get out of here early, are like gold bars, gleaming at the end of the work week tunnel. And Mr. I-sleep-on-a-mattress-stuffed-with-Franklins is yelling at me that I shouldn't get that reward.

HEY ASSHOLE......BITE ME!

And just try....TRY to get the 150% I give, every day, out of me now. You're the happy owner of 100% at 40 hours a week. And if you think you can do it all...be my guest. If you can't, put it in my in box. I'll get around to it, sometime this week.

“I don't even know him...I'm harvesting all these fantasies about some man I've never even met...who lives in Seattle.” ~Sleepless in Seattle

Fantasy

We got in a very interesting discussion at lunch. Most likely it could have gotten us all fired if the wrong person had come through the door.

Sex was definitely involved....or at least the illusion of sex.

My co-worker can't cheat on his wife in his fantasies. I was aghast! He would have to do this whole back story about how they broke up and he was driven to the arms of some starlet.

No...really!

Maybe it's cuz I'm a creative person. Imagination is my 8-5 job, with graphic design. And lord knows my other activities, being involved in groups that need to raise money, or marketing my women's pro football team, or even the lil one hour radio show, all require some form or imagination at some point.

I have NO problem thinking up a fantasy! A lil music from the iPod helps sometimes, but I can be knee deep in something torrid with Angelina or Lucy Lawless in the middle of the day at my desk, staring out the window.

Funny enough...Not one ounce of guilt that I'm cheating on my girlfriend!

My office pal's issues tumbled through my brain well after we left our brain trust and went back to our respective offices. I came up with, "the stripper theory".

Men go to strip clubs and they honestly believe that every girl, shakin' her money maker, actually wants them. That they have a chance with the strippers. It's something about the male wiring that makes them think that everyone wants them. (don't tell them that those girls could care less and really just want to get it over with so they can make their next house payment)

A seriously married guy, like my co-worker, would feel guilty cuz there is something in his DNA that he thinks his fantasy girl would really WANT him!

Myself, being a insecure female, like most women, knows that not only would I never land a young Suzanne Pleshette, from "The Birds" days, but she would NEVER be interested in someone like ME.

So imagine away, I say!

A non stop parade of brunette beauties lined up at my door, taking numbers like at a deli counter. Me, in a Hugh Hefner robe and a fist full of vitamins.

Cuz in my head, they all desire me!

They fight over me, in fact!

"Don't fight ladies! There's enough of me for everyone. Or better yet....why don't we all just come in for a drink...mmmmm??"

Thank goodness for my wonderful imagination and low self esteem. It gives me something to do around 3pm in my work day when I can't concentrate on work.

I gotta go....P!nk is on my iPod and she and I have some unfinished business to "discuss".

Rosie Colored Glasses

When I found out Rosie was going to have her own XM radio show, I put into motion the effort to get a receiver that I could actually record her show on. Lo and behold, I found a Skyfi3 on e-bay for $19.99. It was refurbished, but I took the chance, seeing as they are somewhere around $200.

I got my radio in awesome condition and then realized I needed the cradle for it. Mine in the car wouldn't fit and the new one had fancy buttons and such.

Back to e-bay!

I actually found a single cradle auction for $5.99! Plus you got the wall adaptor. Such a deal! I downloaded the instructions from online, as the refurbished receiver didn't come with anything other than JUST the receiver.

I found I needed a memory card to keep the recorded shows on.

Back to e-bay!

I found an auction for a 2 gig card...$8. When I got it, I kept getting an error message when I tried it out in the computer. After telling the seller, he sent me 2 more cards. Some mistake in the shipping request sent out more than normal, but not a problem, "enjoy". So I get 3 mem cards for the low, low price of eight smackers!

A co-worker who has Sirius informed me that his boombox he bought for his unit to play at home, worked great at work. Our building was "conducive" to getting the satellite waves. (I now pictured NASA peeping into the girls bathroom for some reason) He also said that for portable receivers like mine, there was headsets with antennas built right in!

You got it......eeeeeeeee-baaaaaaay!

Got myself a pair of headsets AND an arm band carrying case for $12. Seriously!

I ended up getting like a $300 package for under $50!! I totally ROCK and I'm totally ready for Ro!

I know...you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is where you want me to say that I couldn't get a signal or things didn't work. Oh but it does. Like buttah! I've been happily listening to my Rosie Radio at my desk, after I record it in my car. (one thing didn't quite work smooth...the antenna works everywhere in the building BUT at my freaking desk)

She's awesome! Free-wheeling through topics and sounding very comfortable on the air waves. I've been following her blog for sometime and trying to keep up to date. I've been a fan for a loooong time.

It's not often a woman of a certain body type gets face time on TV. When I saw Ro on VH1 I fell in love! There 'I' was; big, funny, loud mouthed girl staring back at me. I still have the collage I made of different pix of her. It hung in my apartment after I moved out from home, a shrine of sorts, that big grrls can make good.

Tucked behind that picture, still, is an email.

Way back in the day, when AOL was something you used for chat rooms and to cuss at, due to crashing all the time, I had heard Ro was a fan. She too would lurk around cyberspace way before it was the thing to do. So in my profile, my hobbies were listed thusly: Music, Movies, Art and searching for Rosie.

Profiles were a big deal back then. You could search profiles for key words, looking for folks with similar tastes. I'm guessing that's what happened when I got an email, late one night, from a yabadabad0: "Why?"

I answered back smartly..."why not?"

"No....why are you looking for Rosie?"

"Cuz she is awesome. Cuz she is funny. Cuz folks say I'm a lot like......her......"

GULP! I had also read that Ro liked to use zeros in her screen names. And while the screen name seemed like gibberish when I first saw it, it was finally dawning on me.

She had just done the Flintstones movie. HOLY CRAP!

"You would freak if you knew who I was right now." came the next email.

"Oh....I think I got it figured out."

"The things you said.....I can't tell you how happy that made me. Big smiles over here"

I mentioned something about everyone wanted me to do stand up. She mentioned that it's in your blood or don't bother. She also told me to stay in school. I had to break the news to her that I was well above school age.

And she was gone.

I went to a lecture, recently, where the speaker said to pick 5 famous people and get in contact with them. Create a goal list. Achieve that contact.

Well since that "contact" on AOL when it was but email in diapers, I've been on Ro's blog, a picture of me holding a "bring the troops home sign" in her PEACE shirt. She answered my blog request to stop by Rain Lounge the next time she's in town performing at the Turning Stone Casino.....maybe....with her new call in show, that contact is closer than I think.

Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.

After a couple months of putting together blinking headstones and creepy cadavers, it was going to be all for nothing, as the rain came down and the wind continued to blow wet leaves down the block.

We scampered upstairs to put on our make-up and get into costume, so that we could at least be ready to great the drippy, rain soaked, trick or treaters.

As we emerged from the bathroom, with our faces ghastly green, we couldn't believe it! We could see sunlight!

We rushed to the living room, that looked like a Halloween triage unit, and started running things out to the front lawn.

Fog machines, boom boxes, corpse, coffin, misters, strobe lights...check check check!

Being on a Saturday, the lil ones came early. Including some of our littlest fans; our fauxphews. An astronaut and a mailman, as cute as can be.

"Can we come in and see spookytown?"

"Of course!" I said in my British, crone voice.

I ushered them in, with two more neighborhood kids walking up the path. They looked nervous that they would be brought into the house next.

"Oh no.....you stay out here. We have enough children for dinner tonight!"

That whites-of-the-eyes stare is priceless!

Grandpa, stuffed and chillin by the front door, kept me company as I sat on the stoop. Gourd shaker, perfect for casting voodoo spells, hidden by my side. The strobe light at my back, the kids didn't know if I was alive or not. Till I shook my Wiccan rattle and screeched, "Why do you bother the Babba Yaga? What do you want from me?"

Most froze dead in their tracks, many turned on their heel and fled, candy less.

"If you do not come to the Babba Yaga......Babba Yaga will come to YOU!"

I would rise up off the stoop, crouching, then slowly, as I advanced, I would be on my toes, close to 6 feet tall! With my gypsy skirt, it probably looked like I was levitating by the time I got to the kids.

One group of kids hit a car at the end of the drive, diving in, screaming, "DRIVE...JUST GO!!!" I made the door handle before they pulled off, pressing my face into the rolled up window. "The Babba Yaga curses you till your dying day!!!"

Ah the warm feeling in my chest, knowing when they put their heads on their pillow that night, the scene would play over and over on their eyelids.

Our neighbors, not only enjoyed the panic that ran from our house, but started "feeding" us children, "Make sure you see the witch back there....she has great candy!"

The witching hour ended. We hauled our wears back indoors. The living room, once again, looking like the backstage lot of a horror film movie. Lights out, window shut, door locked. We were alone with left over candy, left by kids to scared to reach for it. A reward for a job well done.

Another year of creating sentences like, "He came further up the driveway this year than last....there's always next year."

Yes....yes there is.