A Tale Too Dumb for The Twilight Zone

I wear glasses. I have since I was about 10 years old. Yeah, I was one of those dorky kids that got called "Four-Eyes." Don't get me wrong, I wasn't dorky because I wore glasses. I was dorky because I was a dork. The glasses just made it easier for the mean kids to settle on a nickname. 

In high school I switched to contact lenses, which wasn't the transformative moment that movies and TV would have us believe ("Why, Molly, if you'd just take off those glasses and let your hair down, you'd be beautiful." Not how it works outside of "The Brady Bunch" and softcore porn.) But it did make me feel a bit better about myself, which led to having a smidge more self-confidence, which helped me find my own personal style, which...you get the picture. True beauty, like flatulence, comes from within.

Just ask Marilyn, who I'm told was a fan
of beans.

Fast-forward to the present day. I gave up on contacts years ago because lenses to correct my astigmatic eyeballs would be hella expensive and also I'm too lazy to take care of them properly (the lenses, not the eyeballs...although probably them, as well). So I wear glasses every day. And I don't like my current frames. I mean, I really don't like them. They resemble the glasses Michael Douglas wore in "Falling Down," and I don't know why I thought that was a good look for a middle-aged woman.

My crew cut looks better, tho.

I had different frames a few years back. I hated those, too. Guys, I'm so bad at making decisions. I'll try on 30 pairs of glasses at the store, second- and third- and eighteenth-guess myself, and ultimately go with something that feels safe and unremarkable...and doesn't suit me at all.

This, by the way, bodes SO WELL for me trying to buy a home.

"OMG, it's perfect." - my dumb ass, probably

But the frames I had before all of those...I loved them. I really, really loved them. When I look at photos of me in those glasses, I look so good. And not just because those photos are almost 10 years old. I'm probably less cute now than I was 10 years ago, but not that much less cute. 

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

For quite a while I've wished I could take those frames back to the store, get new lenses put in, and be happy. But I can't. Because I lost them.

I don't throw old glasses away. I'm a pack rat. I still have 3.5" floppy disks and external hard drives that don't work with any computer manufactured in this century. Don't get me started on mixtapes that I lack a device to play them on (on which to play them...skip it) and that by now would probably sound like lo-fi whale calls if I did. 

And are as fragile as my ego, to boot.

Yet I somehow managed to lose these remarkable frames. Oh, I've searched for them. Every time I stumble across an eyeglass case - in a desk drawer, a closet, a random box of memorabilia - I check it out. It'll be an old pair of mine, or an old pair of Precocious Daughter's, but never THE ONES. They're just gone...

...is what I thought until a few days ago.

One end of my kitchen island is home to a random assemblage of stuff. It's not a trash heap of impenetrable layers. I can see everything, and if there's something there I actually need, I can put my hands on it right away. I do mostly ignore it on a daily basis, because I'm good at things like that.

A few days ago I was tidying up a bit, and my eye fell on a glasses case sitting among the random items on my island. I've seen it before. I've opened it before, hoping my lost frames were inside. Which they were not. They abso-fucking-lutely were not, any of the times I looked.

Except a few days ago, they were.

Now, I'm a fan of "glitch in the matrix" stories that proliferate on the internet. They're good for a shiver down the spine, like reading a ghost story or kicking a heavy object in the middle of the night (bookmark that for future post, btw). But I don't really believe they actually happen, or that they can't be easily explained away.

So the glasses were undoubtedly there the whole time, and I didn't check the case because I assumed I had checked it previously. That's all. 

But they weren't. They just weren't.

Look, it's far easier to believe that my resident ghost slipped them in when I wasn't looking, or that the very fabric of reality unraveled just enough to allow their passage between alternate planes of existence, than to admit that I'm as foolish and addled as I feel after making my discovery.

Me, now.

To whatever spirit or force or cluster of fried brain cells returned my old glasses to me...thank you. This makes me happy. 

If you wanted to return my youth, my 26-inch waist, or my unblemished liver, I'd be OK with that, too.

My Coat of Many Cookies

A long time ago, in a marriage far, far away, my mother-in-law gifted me a black London Fog trench coat. It did not come with three raccoons pretending to be a person, but it was still really nice.

You can get this awesome pin
from strikegently.co, and honestly
you should. (Not a paid endorsement.)

I don't know exactly how long I've had this coat. Twenty years, at least. Possibly 25. I don't remember if I got it before or after Precocious Daughter was born. 

(As an aside: PDaughter turns 25 today. I've made the conscious decision not to devote an entire post to it, mostly because she's a whole-ass adult and entitled to more privacy than I afforded her when she was under my roof and easy blog fodder. Suffice to say she was a sassy 10-year-old when I first introduced her here, and now she's halfway through her 20s. Yes, I feel old, thanks for asking.)

Anyway, if you've ever owned a London Fog trench coat, you know that they last forever. They're well-made, well-wearing, and don't ever go out of style. 

Exhibit A.

What they can't do, however, is physically increase in size as their owner, well, gets older and fatter. My trench coat, which was a bit large on me when I first got it, no longer closes comfortably over my various middle-aged body parts. And so, several months ago I embarked on a search to replace my beloved trench.

I had two criteria for a new coat - just two: It had to have a hood, and it had to have a removable liner. And I guess there was an unspoken third criterion: It couldn't cost the equivalent of a car payment. I don't have a car payment right now, and I'm not about to spend that kind of money on something that doesn't even have cupholders.

This has been a surprisingly difficult quest. It's taken months. I just couldn't find a trench coat that met my (I thought) pretty basic requirements. I was reminded of an old Sesame Street skit where a lady is shopping for a blue furry coat. First the salesperson shows her a coat that's furry but not blue, then one that's blue but not furry. Just as she's about to give up, along comes Cookie Monster, who of course is furry and blue. Delighted, she ends up wearing him out of the store, and yeah, that's actually pretty damn weird, isn't it?

Well, the other night I finally found my Cookie Monster. I took the drastic step of going to the mall (which was a pretty sad experience, a topic for another post) and combing through the coat racks at various brick-and-mortar stores. And at last, there it was: Lining, removable. Hood, present and also removable. Brand: London Fog (which wasn't a requirement, but still a score). Color: Classic Columbo tan. Buttons: All able to close without making muffled groaning sounds.

The price was...OK, it was more than I was hoping to spend. On the other hand, when I amortized it over the next 20 years, it was almost ridiculously affordable. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So I finally have a sweet new three-season coat (ain't nobody wearing a coat in Texas in July, and it doesn't rain anyway). It only took six months and a pile of my disposable income to find it. But it's almost perfect. If only it came with cookies...

Think of Someday. Because It Will Be Here...Someday.

 Let me just say: Genetics are a strong thing in my family.

LOL, I love random image searches.

I resemble my family. Like, I look like my parents, and my Precocious Daughter looks like me, to the point that Facebook has actually tagged photos of her as me. In other words, if any generations of my family engaged in hanky panky, you wouldn't know it by looking at us. 

Baaaaa.

So today, I took a shower, and then proceeded to do...nothing. I didn't do my hair or makeup or anything. I put clean clothes on my clean body and said "good enough for a Saturday." As one does.

Then, an hour ago, I wandered into the bathroom and caught a look at myself.

And I noticed that I resemble my late grandmother.

I've noticed this before. It's not a big deal. I do resemble my father's mother. As I said, there's a lot of shared looking-like in my family.

But today I noted something else. I'm not sure why, but you know, the universe puts stuff in our head sometimes, right?

My Gran, I randomly thought, was 55 years old when I was born.

Guess who will be 55 years old in just under three months?

Guess who?

I'm going to say this again for those in the back: IN THREE MONTHS I WILL BE THE SAME AGE AS MY GRANDMOTHER WAS WHEN I WAS BORN.

And I saw that in the mirror. I saw the woman who is me who looks like her own grandmother.

I'm, uh, not about to become a grandmother myself. I have but the one child, who is in graduate school and as far as I know is having as much unprotected sex with male humans as I am (that would be none).

Yet when I look in the mirror I see someone who has Gran's eyes, and her naturally pursed lips, and her soft round cheeks.

And it's me.

I'm neither happy nor unhappy about this. It just is, you know?

But for those of you who are younger than I am, this is a thing that might happen to you in the future.

And it's OK. 

It really is OK.

Horoscope Vending Machines and Other Super GenX Stuff

The first thing I want to say about this post is that Allie Cat started it.

She posted a picture of a Starscroll.

Holy shit, I haven't thought about Starscrolls in...35 years? I didn't even remember they were called that. But as soon as I saw it, my powerful GenX memory circuits went into overdrive, and suddenly I was singing "Jessie's Girl" and trying (mostly in vain) to feather my hair.

Starscrolls were these little rolls of paper crammed into a cardboard tube a bit larger than a cigarette. The scroll contained the monthly horoscope for your star sign. Which was a very big deal when I was a kid. Nobody is sure why today. The horoscopes themselves typically were less entertaining than working the scroll out of the tube and then trying to roll it up tightly enough to fit back inside. Which probably was easier if you (unlike me) were used to rolling things.

Anyway, Starscrolls were commonly sold on the counters of drugstores or dimestores (and if you don't know what a dimestore is...ugh, look it up, junior). Or from one of these amazing vending machines, which I had totally forgotten about until I found a picture of one on Google.

You could find these machines in the entryways of
supermarkets, or in the area of the record store
just before you got to the drug paraphernalia.

Well. Allie Cat's post sent me down the rabbit hole of nostalgia, aka Pinterest. Soon I was a dozen pages deep into other people's memories of the 70s, which corresponded eerily to mine. Seriously, if I'd known how much I had in common with my contemporaries while growing up, I may never have become the disaffected teenager and emotionally stunted adult I turned out to be.

I'm not sure that's how I would have wanted it. Still, interesting to ponder.

I started saving images to a folder called "Nostalgia," thinking they would make a good blog post. And then I realized there was a more interesting narrative unfolding. Of the images I was downloading, some were simply warm fuzzies: products, activities, fashions that I readily and warmly recalled.

But others were true recovered memories: shades of my past that I had completely forgotten about (about which I had completely forgotten...whatever) until I stumbled upon them via Pinterest link. Those hit me particularly hard. The intensity of those memories was every bit the equal of the others; but they also carried the joy of rediscovery, to shamelessly rip off an old Journey song.

Those are the ones I'm going to share here.

No matter what generation you belong to, you could write a post like this. This one happens to be mine.

Avon Pink Bubble Bath: It's not so much the product itself, which was, you know, just bubble bath. It's the iconic bumpy pink bottle, and even more than that, the memory of the Avon lady coming to your door, of perusing through the little monthly catalog, of placing an order with your hard-earned allowance and then waiting for it to arrive. Amazon has kind of rendered laughable the ideal of the Avon lady. But pretty much everyone had Avon products in their homes in the 70s and 80s.

Tickle Roll-on Deodorant: I never used Tickle myself. I think my deodorant-wearing days probably began with something prosaic like Ban Roll-on. But I remember the ads for Tickle. Nobody had ever really advertised this particular product with trendy colors, mod packaging, and the idea that preventing armpit odor could be fun and sexy. Tres Seventies. I remember feeling grateful when solid deodorants came out, because roll-ons always made me feel sticker and more gross than underarm sweat itself. Alas, Tickle remained an aspirational product for me.

Avon Solid Perfume Pins: Back to Avon. They used to sell these cute plastic pins (some seasonal, like the above, some simply whimsical, like snails or owls) that had a small compartment of solid fragrance on the reverse. Adorable, and I totally had the bunny, and I think my grandma had the Santa. Here's the thing about Santa. In 2017, can you picture marketing, toward children and matrons, a likeness of Santa whereby you pulled a string between his legs, causing all of his limbs to flex and spasm? Were we that jaded - or that naive - in the 60s and 70s? I don't know. But if you didn't delve too deeply into the psychosexual implications, these were adorable.

Body on Tap Shampoo: Hair care was a huge freaking deal in the 1970s because of disco and Farrah Fawcett and Shaun Cassidy and "Werewolves of London." The motto of the 70s is frequently portrayed as "If it feels good, do it." Actually, it was "If your hair doesn't look good, fuck you."

So shampoos and conditioners and whatnot sought to carve out a unique niche for themselves in the very competitive hair-care market. That spirit brought forth Body on Tap, a shampoo that declared itself "beer-enriched," as if suddenly beer was a centuries-old elixir for split ends and limp roots. No matter; it was very novel. Underage girls wanted to use it, because it supposedly contained (giggle) BEER. Girls of legal age (18, believe it or not) wanted to use it to demonstrate how sophisticated they were, because BEER. My sister and I (both decidedly underaged) used it for a while. I remember it smelled nice, but other than that, it was freaking shampoo, no better than Prell or Clairol Herbal Essence or anything else on the market. Still, at some points in your life, feeling grown-up enough to pour beer on your head is a pretty big deal.

Garbage Can-dy: Oh, sweet Jesus. This was a punch to the gut. I LOVED this stuff. Essentially, it was a small plastic garbage can filled with Sweet-Tarts-like candy, but in the shape of, well, trash. Soda bottles. Chicken drumsticks. Fish skeletons. Tin cans. Appetizing, right? But the thing was, the little plastic trash cans were pretty adorable and came in different colors. And if you were one kind of kid, you could save your spare change in them when the candy was gone. And if you were another kind, you could hide your weed or pills in them.

I was the former. Because of course I was.

Last one for tonight: Impulse body spray. WHOA. The first "fragrance" I ever wore was Avon's Sweet Honesty. (Holla if it was yours, too.) Then I graduated to Impulse. Not nearly as douchey as today's Axe is for young men, Impulse was a bit more innocent; if you're OK with your daughter wearing Bath & Body Works body spray now, you'd be OK with Impulse. It was a budget-friendly, drugstore-available precursor to actual cologne/perfume. I loved it, because to me it always smelled a little hippy-dippy, which I was totally into at age 13. If Impulse were to be re-released today, probably I would pick up a scent or two.

That's enough repressed memories for one night. What are your long-lost memories, GenX (or Y, or you know, whatever?) I really want to know.

Kickin'

I told you yesterday would be a 20-hour day. And so it was.

Well, it was for me. For Precocious Daughter, it was a 24-hour day. She got up at 2:00 a.m. Saturday and went to bed at 2:00 a.m. Sunday.

Just thinking about it.

But Karate Tournament 2015 was awesome. Her whole team did a great job, snagging several first-place finishes. PDaughter herself placed 4th in both her events, which makes me very proud, as the competition was so, so fierce.

Chuck was there, guys!!

It's a pretty terrible picture. But look, it's totally Chuck.

This weekend, I learned that I'm too goddamned old to sit on plastic high-school bleachers for seven hours. My lower back is killing me.

Still, completely worth it.

I also learned that I can still spend a day with PDaughter's dad and have a good time. Also, that I can spend a day with PDaughter's dad and realize we're done.

And it's OK.

My kid took a wicked kick to the face yesterday that turned her skin beet-red and knocked one of her contact lenses back into her eyeball. She took it with a smile and gave her opponent a big hug after the match.

I love her so much.

Today was pretty much a recovery day, you know?

I hope your weekend was as good as mine.

What Would YOU Do?

Yesterday I told you about my upcoming high school reunion.

Class of 1985, when we all totally,
no lie, looked exactly like this.

And I said that I probably will not be attending the reunion. But that there was also one circumstance under which I might consider it.

Here it is.

Last year, when Precocious Daughter got contact lenses, I wrote about it. And I told a kind-of-semi-not-really-related anecdote about a guy on whom I had a massive crush in high school: Erik L.

Erik was popular, talented, extremely cute. He barely knew I was alive, because I was none of those things. I got over my crush (OK, I moved on to other, equally unrequited crushes), and after high school Erik L. faded into a vague memory of someone I went to school with but never really knew.

And then I grew up to be Jennifer Garner. LOL.

Flash-forward to maybe six months ago. My darling Drummer Boy had posted something to his Facebook page, and several people had "liked" it. 

One of them was Erik L.

I was like:

Yeah, Drummer Boy and Erik L. were Facebook friends. Considering that Drummer Boy was several years ahead of us in school - and didn't graduate from our high school - I was rather dumbfounded by this strange coincidence.

So I asked him - you know, all casual-like - "Sooo...how do you know Erik L?"

And he said, "We're old friends. How do you know Erik L?"

Ummmmm.

Ummmmmmm.

There's a small part of me that would love it if Drummer Boy escorted me to my reunion, and Erik L. was there, and I could be all like, "Your old friend Drummer Boy is cool, right? Well, he thinks I'm cool. And hot. And we're together. Because sometimes crushes turn into something else. By the way, I loved it when you played 'Blackbird' on your guitar in the theater room in 1983. Turns out I'm more into drummers, though."

Right?

Snap.

Or maybe I should just move on.

I would love to show up at my reunion with Drummer Boy on my arm, though. Because he is smokin'. Also, kind, smart, funny, friendly, and personable. And smokin'.

Not that I need validation from a bunch of random 40-somethings.

What do you think, Drunkards?

An Historical Perspective

I'm watching "The Simpsons," primarily because I was too lazy to turn off the TV after the Packers-Lions game (Go Pack!!! until next week, when I hope the Cowboys kick your asses.)

The Cowboys destroyed the Redskins today.
Except I hate "Family Guy." So I'm conflicted about this image.

The plot is something silly about Bart refusing to eat broccoli. Whatever. I can't believe that this comedically rich topic hasn't been tackled in any of the previous 110,462 episodes of "The Simpsons," but OK. Anyway, the show began with a scene of Bart and Milhouse watching videos on YouTube. They are delighted that they have officially viewed "every testicle fail video on the Internet."

That triggered something in the hamster wheel that is my brain, so I clicked the mouse a few times. And I confirmed what my tired old brain had been thinking:

When "The Simpsons" debuted in 1989, the World Wide Web hadn't been invented yet.

Tim Berners-Lee, adorable nerd and creator of that whole
"www." thing.

Younger readers, read that again: When "The Simpsons" first aired, there was no World Wide Web. No HTML. No HTTP. Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer at the large particle physics laboratory CERN in Switzerland, concocted the whole glorious mess that today brings us 24/7 sloth videos and anime porn. But when "The Simpsons" premiered as a weekly series, it contained nary a mention of online gaming or Tumblr, because They. Didn't. Exist.

Also: In the 1995 episode "Radioactive Man," which is totally one of my favorites, Comic Book Guy is seen criticizing the upcoming film adaptation of the titular comic book on various online newsgroups, including alt.comics.radioactiveman. And if you don't know what Usenet newsgroups were, I have a pretty good idea of how old/nerdy you are.

(Disclaimer: I was quite active on a number of newsgroups in the 90s. I never said I wasn't a nerd.)

However, I am (marginally) cuter than Comic Book Guy.

So now it's the freaking 21st century, and nobody thinks twice about the World Wide Web any more. In fact, I've been mocked by my own child for habitually including "www" when I browse the Internet. Old habits for old ladies, I suppose.

I prefer to think that the fact that "The Simpsons" predates the modern Internet says more about the age of the TV show than about the people who were there to watch it from the beginning.

Don't harsh my buzz on this, people. Go watch some "Supernatural" animated gifs or something, why don't you.

I'm Too Old to Think of My Own Blog Topics, Apparently

Yesterday, Michelle at Rubber Shoes in Hell wrote an amazing post called "9 Things I Am Too Old For." She's on your blog feed, right? You read her stuff, right? Because if you don't, I will totally wait while you add her.

Victor Habbick/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But, like, I don't have all day.

Long story short, I'm stealing her topic. Hey, it's my kid's birthday; I don't have time for original thinking, and also I age a decade for every year older she gets, so at this point I'm decrepit. You people are lucky I can still type. I may short-circuit the keyboard with my old-lady drool at any moment.

graur razvan ionut/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I just took this selfie.

But I digress. Michelle wrote this funny and wise list of things she's outgrown (including uncomfortable shoes and finding the good in people). I'm not feeling particularly funny or wise, but here are six things I feel I'm just too damn to deal with any more. With which I feel I'm too damn old to deal. Whatever.

1. Being afraid of disappointing other people. People have been telling me (explicitly or implicitly) what I should do and what I should be for just about as long as I can remember. And my terror - not too strong a word - of losing the approval of others has paralyzed me my whole life. I'm too damn old for that nonsense. If I keep it up, I won't have any life left, and the person I'll have disappointed the most is myself. Screw that.

2. Being afraid, period. I have a ton of fear in me. Always have. I'm afraid of change, of anger, of being poor, of losing control on an overpass and plunging over the side. I am, let's face it, more than halfway through my life, and none of the things I'm afraid of have managed to destroy me. So it's time to outgrow that destructive emotion.

3. Dieting. The only times in my life that I've successfully lost weight are when I've been consumed by bigger matters than food: Love, illness, caretaking, depression. In fact, I've learned that focusing on what I eat is probably the least effective means of controlling what I eat. There are so many other facets of life that deserve more effort and attention than the size of my thighs, and when I tend to them, I find that either my weight takes care of itself, or I just don't care what size I am relative to the current fashion. It's just food; it's not that bloody fascinating.

4. Delayed gratification. I'm not a particularly impulsive person, and I certainly can exercise self-control when I need to. But I'm so over the concept that self-denial and parsimony are virtues for their own sake. What if I save everything for a rainy day, only to regret that I never enjoyed myself when the sun was shining? If I keep delaying gratification, I'll be too old to be gratified. No thanks.

5. Laziness. I'll never be a clean freak. On the other hand, I enjoy a tidy environment, and I'm willing to put in the effort to not live like Oscar Madison. Chilling on the couch is great, but I've indulged my inner sloth enough to last a lifetime. I'm too old to pretend I don't appreciate a clean house.

6. Acting my age. Younger people try to appear older. Older people try to appear younger. Everybody wants to fool everybody else into thinking they're at a different stage of life from where they are. That's exhausting. What are we trying to accomplish? I'm 46 years old, and society says that I should try to be anything but middle-aged. So if acting my age means not acting my age, then I don't want to act my age. I don't want to act any age. I just want to be me, which means being the responsible mom and sometimes eating a bag of trail mix for dinner. 

So there's that. What have you outgrown lately?

Birthdays Are Getting Old (See What I Did There?)

Tomorrow is Precocious Daughter's 15th birthday.

hin255/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It seems like only yesterday she was in my belly,

being blessed by a random Asian dude.

I'm a bit stunned at how quickly time has passed. She's not a little girl any more. She's a young woman, a high school freshman, somebody's *choke* girlfriend.

Did I say stunned? Angry. So. Angry.

stockimages/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Bad, bad time.

There's not much I can do about the passage of time, or the fact that I seem to have turned into her very own Picture of Dorian Gray, growing older and more decrepit every day while she becomes ever more stunning. Well, I can engage in denial. In fact, that seems like a pretty good option.

Victor Habbick/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Am I a MILF yet?

PDaughter has this week off from school. Tomorrow she's going to the movies with her *choke* boyfriend for her birthday. Like, you know, a date. Because she's 15 and dating. So she's going on a date. 

I'm going to babble incoherently for a while.

Hey! Did you know that original Beatles drummer Pete Best and serial killer Ted Bundy both share a birthday with my kid? Also, Lee Harvey Oswald and Freddy Mercury both died on her birthday. And, um, the first World Cup for the Blind began on the same date, in 2006.

OK, that last one made me laugh. Which is a terrible, terrible thing, laughing at blind people playing soccer. But I really, really needed a laugh. Sorry, blind soccer players. 

Naypong/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Usually it's only the refs who are blind,
amirite?

Anyway. Fifteen. She no longer gets toys for her birthday, or has parties at the arcade. She doesn't even want a cake for her birthday; she wants a pie. That may be more a my-kid-is-weird thing than a growing-up thing. But all I can think of is the birthday when I worked my butt off to make and  decorate a Pokeball cake, and how big her smile was when she saw it. 

She finally got rid of the last of her Pokemon stuff just this year.

Well, except for the little Psyduck figurine that still sits on the passthrough between the kitchen and the family room. 

Maybe she's not changing as quickly as I think.

Happy Birthday, my beautiful Precocious Daughter. I can't think of anyone I'd rather grow old because of.

Short Takes 4: For Younger Women

This one is really short.

It's 2014, and women still aren't allowed to own their sexuality.  It's still up to how comfortable their men are with the concept of a sexually aggressive woman.

I'm sure many of you live with this concept daily. I thought it would be different, but I've been sheltered for a long time.

File it under "Wow," I guess.

Short Takes 1: Middle Age

Precocious Daughter is at an all-day/all-night birthday party, leaving me to fill my time like an adult person.

Which apparently is a problem.

So I'm just going to put up some short posts about random topics throughout the evening. Because my life is just that exciting.

Here's how a bad standup comic would segue into the first one:

You know what else is exciting? Getting old and losing your mind.

Told you it was bad.

Even Rodney Dangerfield doesn't give me any respect.

Earlier today I washed my bedsheets. I took them out of the dryer and put them back on my bed. (Aside: Mmmm, fresh warm sheets.) Then I looked at my comforter and thought, I'll hang that outside for a while and let it air out.

So I took it outside, hung it up, went back in the house, walked into my bedroom...

...and immediately thought, "Where the fuck is my comforter?"

Rare photo of my actual brain.

Do you think I could make that up? Do you even read this blog?

Getting old sucks.

Anyway, I'll post again next time I do or think something dumb.

It shouldn't be that long a wait.