Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Easy Money!

Okay, so I will give any of you up to a gajillion dollars if you will break the news to Robin that my new car is a little bit very much flooded on account of that I opened all the windows and the sun roof yesterday afternoon on account of The Very Funky Bad Smell that showed up in my brand new car on account of my driving home from the pool 3 mornings a week in a dripping wet bathing suit on account of the showers at the pool being, basically, marshlands of slime, hair and you-don’t-want-to-know-what, and yesterday was a beautiful sunny day so I thought I’d air out my new car - the one we just had to spend a couple grand on to fix and replace the parts that were a little bit crunched because of the STUPID BACK UP CAMERA that is more confusing than helpful and Robin forced me to buy it because he claims I have no spatial perspective and also, Robin was watching me back in to the driveway which made me nervous on account of his screaming (“STOP!!!! STOP!!!”) and that vein in his neck was popping in and out like a motherfucker, and so it wasn’t my fault I crashed into the wall.
Anyway,
It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday and I’ve only been living in Oregon for 24 years (and only because Robin wanted to move here. Please remind him of that. I gave in and we moved to Oregon because he wanted to) so how should know that it would rain all night? Rain? in Oregon???
And I was distracted when I went to bed because I am really falling behind in High Holydays preparations and learning the new music on account of Poldark and videos of baby elephants, and of course, there’s THE BOOK to work on.

So everything in my car’s interior is soaked, thanks to the stupid sun roof that I didn’t even want because the sun doesn’t hit my face so what’s the point, but the Toyota salesperson seemed so sure I’d like it so I said okay, and now I think I’m going to have to hide the car in the woods and just go the Toyota dealer and ask the salesperson to give me another one just like the old one, the way I used to keep replacing goldfish my kids won at the Purim carnivals when they died a week later ( the goldfish. Not my kids. Oy, spit three times and swing a chicken to the East) and now I’m freaking because it only coast a buck to buy a goldfish back then and even if I switch to non-organic produce and I cancel my New Yorker subscription, I will still be short a few dollars for a new car and I just don’t know how I am going to hide that or distract robin until I can pay back our joint savings, and WHY OH WHY OH WHY didn’t I give him that blowjob last night when he pointed out that he had just showered?????? That would have been smart on my part. 
But I didn’t give him a blowjob. Because Poldark.
#drstrangemon

Writing Is Hard

Working on the new book with Claire.

 

8am, Facebook Messenger.

Claire: Are you available to work on the book this morning?

 

9am, Facebook messenger.

Claire: Are you there?

 

10:20am, FB messenger.

Ann:  Yes, this is a good time to work. Are you still there?

 

1:45pm, FB messenger. 

Claire: Yeah, I'm back. I'm here now. 

Ann: Great. Meet me at the Google doc.

Claire: ok

 

2pm, Google Doc titled, "the edits"

Claire: Hello? Where are you?

 

2:21, FB messenger.

Claire: Hello? Where are you? I'm at the Google doc.

Ann: So am I. I don't see you here.

Claire: I'm in red font.

Ann: There is no red font.

Claire: Wait, which Google doc are you on?

Ann: the one we titled, "Newest draft"

Claire: Ohhh, I'm on, "the edits".

Ann: Ohhhh, okay, I meet you there. Stand by.

 

3:10pm, Google doc, "the edits"

Ann: Sorry for the delay. Are you still here?

 

3:55pm, Facebook messenger

Ann: Hello?

 

4:05 pm, Google doc, "the edits"

Claire: Sorry. Are you still here?

 

4:14pm, Facebook messenger

Claire: I'm here. Meet met at THE EDITS.

Ann: On my way.

 

4:16, Google doc, "the edits"

Ann: Hello?

Claire: Here I am!

Ann: Shit, hold on. 

 

6:30pm, Facebook private message

Claire: Are you okay?

Ann: Yeah, sorry. I got distracted. Are you available to work?

Claire: Only for a half hour or so. 

Ann: Okay, meet you at Google docs.

 

6:34 pm, Google docs, "the edits"

Claire: What were we working on?

Ann: Um...

Claire: Okay, let's each read through what we have already.

 

6:40pm, Google docs, "the edits"

Claire: Did you finish reading it?

 

6:42pm, Google docs, "the edits"

Claire: Hello? Hello?

 

7:30pm, Google docs, "the edits"

Ann: I'm here now. Sorry. Hello? Are you there?

 

8pm, Facebook messenger

Claire: Are you there?

 

9:20pm, Facebook messenger

Ann: Are you there?

 

10pm, Facebook messenger

Claire: Are you there?

 

10:50pm, Facebook messenger

Ann: Are you there?

 

11:25pm, Facebook messenger

Claire: Are you there?

 

 

 

 

 

Everything is so fucked up everywhere.
I am going to live in my head today; raising my teacup elephants in my backyard, rescuing every single dog and cat and elephants and horse in the world that needs rescuing, reuniting every single incarcerated child with their parents and inviting them to live in my house as long as they desire, waving my magic wand and eliminating plastic crap from the rivers and oceans, redistributing resources and wealth and power in this country according to each one's ability and need, and sending the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
And then, after lunch, I am going to bitch slap Mitch McConnell until he cries and pees his Depends.
In the evening, I will watch "Poldark."
#Tuesday
#drstrangemom

the next big thing

Claire and I are working on a new book. 

This is how it happened:

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to her on FB that since Trump became prez, I have not been able to write anything.

This isn't technically true; I've written a few things, but not much. And, truth be told, I didn't write much when Obama was president, either, or Clinton or Carter. My dearth of work is not necessarily tied to Republican administrations.  I am simply not a particularly ambitious writer. Or blogger. Or person. I made the statement to Claire because I was bored, just blowing smoke outta my ass on FB. I had run out of things to say. You know how it is.

Although once I said it, I liked the sound of it. I blame Trump for my languishing career. That it isn't true makes it even more Trumpy.

The actual shit he does is so much worse than anything I could even blame on him, anyway. 

Claire liked the whole blame Trump for writer's bloc thing, too, although it isn't true for her, either. I mean, she puts out, like, forty novels a day. Still, it pissed us off that Trump could succeed at the (alleged) ruination of our (alleged) creative (alleged) productivity. Fuck that shit. His Russian bloc versus our writer's bloc.

So, we decided to do another book together. Because fuck Trump. If my career is going to languish, it sure as fuck isn't going to be because of Fuckface (Trump. Not Claire). It will be because I like watching TV and thinking about clothes.

Collaborating with Claire is one of my most favorite things in the world. And if it wasn't for that pesky issue of having to actually write something, I would collaborate with her every day for the rest of my life. 

We work together, separately, on our Google doc drafts - she, in L.A., me, in Portland. Google Docs is an awesome way to write because we can each see what the other is writing, as they are writing it. And our favorite thing to do is to figure out what the other is writing and finish the sentence with something immature, like, "between the sheets."

Oh. My. Gawwwwd. How we laugh. We laugh and laugh for hours at our hilarity. 

We have missed two deadlines so far.

A few years ago, Claire and I co-wrote some fiction. That wasn't as much fun for me because we traded off writing chapters and characters, and we couldn't fuck around with each other's sentences that way. Although sometimes I would sneak into Claire's chapters and add random shit like, "Wouldja play me a cock-a-doodle-doo?" in the middle of her character's sentence.

Woo boy, talk about hilarious.

Claire is A Serious Novelist and I try her patience. I don't really know the rules of grammar and I make up words, and typos make me laugh so I leave them in, and it's a lot of work to find the apostrophe key on my keyboard so I never use contractions even though Claire points out that in real life people speak in contractions so I need to write dialogue that way.

But it is hard. So I do not do it.

And she patiently highlights my uncontracted verbosity, deletes it, and writes it correctly. I imagine her long-suffering sighs. I'm like a naughty monkey that she's been forced to work with, side-stepping my banana peels and looking the other way when I present my butt to her on FaceTime.

So this time, this book, I am going to rein it in a little bit. I owe it to Claire. I love her so much.

I can see that I've already started getting on her nerves, however, because I keep forgetting to use the "tab" button instead of the space bar. This, evidently, has cost Claire countless hours in repair of my capricious formatting. The last time I did it, she reminded me IN ALL CAPS that the DIFFERENCE between the space bar and the "tab" key is....blah, blah, blah.

It is hard. So I do not do it.

And anyway, it's not like working with Claire is perfect, either. 

When we have been working for a long while, she always says she needs to take a potato chip break. Which is cool, even laudable.

But she eats only ONE potato chip. And she's done.

ONE potato chip. 

I just ate EIGHT potato chips while typing this sentence. 

Yeah, so I misuse the space bar. Sue me. Claire eats one potato chip and then gets back to work.

I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers for my crime. Claire would hang for hers.

Okay, back to work.

I'm going'to use all contractions eve'when the words can't be made'into them. Claire's going'to laugh so'hard.

 

 

 

Radishes In The Clusterfuck

 

My radishes are not doing well.

Actually, that's not true. I have no idea how they are doing. I don't know What To Expect When You Are Expecting radishes.

 

I really need to read up on them. But Facebook gets in the way. I gotta check it first, you know, to see if I have any new views on the blog. (Spoiler alert: I don't.)

And then I read the headlines in the news about the most recent assaults against humanity perpetuated by the Republicans. I note that more humanitarians got arrested for bringing water to thirsty people. Water. Water.

 

And after that, who gives a fuck about radishes, right?  Who gives a fuck about anything? Why bother? 

 

Such is gardening in the time of the Clusterfuck.

 

The opposite of Republicans is a vegetable garden, so I garden with fervor because my psychological health is at risk. These past years (what has it been since Trump arrived? Ten years? A hundred? Forever? I have no sense of time anymore) have whittled my soul down to its nubbins. I am pretty much just vitriol and Facebook.

And my relationship with Facebook is so dysfunctional; I hate it, I resent every minute I have to spend with it but I'm staying until I find a better social media platform. Faking orgasms so they don't break up with me first.

 

I added radishes to my garden this summer because I eat a lot of them and I figured I'd save some scratch by growing my own. This, of course, is never true. Nobody actually saves money by growing their own vegetables in suburbia. The money I have spent on the four kajillion of those little stake clips alone could have purchased my produce for the entire months of May and June. But I'm in it for the emotional benefit.

 

I am quite the taskmaster in my garden this summer. Probably all the built-up impotence I feel when I read the news. Classic transference. I can't get rid of the money-grubbing, racist, homophobic Nazis in this country so I am uber controlling with the  plants. I'm ruthless. Produce the vegetables now or I toss you into the compost. It's a total Arbet Macht Frei situation back there amongst the patio furniture and water features.

But the radishes. I can't toss them.

 

They are growing all cattywampus and shit. The leaves look unrelated to each other and are unattractive, to boot.  And they seem confused as to which way to grow. But I can't rip them out.

 

I had weird dreams the past two nights. The first one was that I had a newborn baby who needed to be fed but I kept losing it in an auditorium, and the second one was that I was carrying my dying mother around my house.

 

I don't think those dreams were about my radishes. 

 

But still. 

 

This morning, I went out to the garden and gave them some nice, fresh compost, the batch from salmon skin and coffee grinds. And I watered them. And I gently poked around in the soil to make sure the newborn magenta babies attached to the leaves were snug and fed.

 

And then I started to cry.

 

Because maybe we are the hungry babies and the dying old women and the confused cattywampus radishes just trying to survive in these unbelievably harsh conditions. Trying to carry on despite the climate change, despite being weeded out, despite being unattractive. Maybe we need someone to bring us good compost, build up our nutrients, you know, pat some hazelnut shells around our roots so the Republicans can't crawl up our scrawny stalks and eat us alive. We need to survive until we are big and strong enough to take back the fucking yard and bring back sanity and intelligence and ethics. 

 

The Trumpster minions and apologists and secret supporters won't be able to grow in our good soil. Let the worms have them.

 

And Mitch McConnell? He will swim with the fishes emulsion.

 

A Ridiculously Long Rant In The Wake Of The Muller Report Based On Nothing But My Own Opinion

It's been nearly impossible for me to blog since Trump.

Nothing is funny enough and nothing is smart enough. Plus, there is so much more important shit for both you and I to do other than reading/writing my blog. There is overeating. And gouging out our eyes after seeing photos of Donald getting a woody over Ivanka. Or sitting in the Oval Office.

 

And I'm not writing today because all of a sudden I am funny again. Or smart. I'm writing because if I don't let it out, I really might die of vitriol poisoning. My hope for young people is that they will not someday look back on Trump - the way my generation looks back on Nixon or Reagan or the Bushes - and realize that they didn't know how much worse it could get.

 

I look back on the Crusades and the pogroms and now think of them as mere bummers. My ancestors didn't have to listen to Sarah Huckabee Sanders spin her lies about the Mueller report. 

 

Which brings me to this post.

 

First of all - by way of a general welcome back -  fuck every Republican who is guilty of silent complicity. And, of course, fuck all of the ones who openly support this travesty of a presidential administration. And when I say, "fuck them", I mean, don't. Ever. Never fuck a Trump supporter. Unless you have crabs. Then, God bless. Fire away.

 

Second of all, seventeen indictments. Those who worked most closely with him have been indicted of crimes. Seventeen indictments. (Thank you, Aaron, for pointing that out to me when I was keening and tearing my garments.) That is not hiring the best, nor is it draining the swamp, nor it is anything but evidence that he either willingly surrounds himself with criminals, or he is too stupid to understand what they are doing. Pick one. Or both.

 

Third, even though he may have been able to protect himself from actual criminal activity (MAY have been able) in this one instance of Russian collusion, does not mean he isn't guilty of myriad other crimes on democracy. I heard someone on NPR say (regarding GOP's whiny refrain that this was a fishing expedition): we may not be able to get the whale, but we got a lot of toxic little fish, and that helps clean the water. (Or something like that. I wasn't paying full attention because I was driving. And eating an open-face avocado sandwich. And trying to remember where I was going. Even though I was in my bathing suit. ) And although I am slightly uncomfortable with the image of hooking a fish as something about which to rejoice, when I imagine the fish as racist and misogynistic and homophobic and anti-science and anti-critical thinking and the kind of fish who would, say, put babies in jail, then I'm cool with it. Just like how when I see Mitch McConnell's ugly face I could kick a turtle. (Which I wouldn't. But I would totally kick McConnell. He is one of the few GOP I think I could actually take down. He looks all weak in the quads, whereas my quads are my strength. I have have surprisingly strong abs although they are stealth - hidden beneath my layers of flab. And after I have kicked MMcC's wrinkly ass, I will hurt his feelings so bad that he won't have a satisfying bowel movements for weeks. (That will also be my parting curse on him). I am a Jewish mother. I have powers.

 

And of course, there's the issue of the credibility of Barr's book report. As someone who freely cherry picked through books to make my point in reports throughout my school years, I know how easy it is to manipulate words to create pretty much any narrative. Exhibit A, this post. Exhibit B, my senior thesis at UCSC (I graduated with honors). Exhibit C, my blog. And my life.

 

As for self-care, I commend each of you to stop watching or listening to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. At least, until there is a vaccine against her. I tell you, as sure as being gay causes typhoons, being exposed to SHS will kill you. It's just good science.

 

We cannot put all our hopes, dreams and eggs into that one beribboned basket that holds footage of Trump in shackles, defeated, being led to prison. That would be a wet dream beyond all fantasies, to be sure - and I would happily exchange the one of Dan Rather sitting on my lap while I feed him noodle kugel, for the Trump in prison one - but we must move on.

We have to, instead, peel the rotten layers off of the stinking onion that is his minions and discard each layer. Maybe Mr. Rotten To The Core (remember Crabby Appleton?) is gonna get away with it. I'm almost resolved about that. But every large and small victory, every large and small stinking fish that was caught in Mueller's net, is important news.

 

We live to fight another day.

 

 

 

The Real Housewife of Bethlehem

I'm thinking about Mary this afternoon.

Right about now, she's calling to Joseph to come time her contractions.

Joseph is making himself a burrito.

"Hold on," he says.

Typical. 

"Hey, asshole," she says, "maybe can you focus on me for one fucking second? I'm having our baby."

Beat.

And they both laugh. 

"Good one," he says.

Mary does a few short breaths through her next contraction. Not bad.  She dots a drop of For Women By Kim Kardashian on her pulse points.

"I'll have Joseph get me a new bottle as a push present." She smiles to herself. This is going to be sweet. 

Twelve hours later, it's not so sweet. The monitor is showing that her contractions are weak. The midwifedonkey suggests nipple stimulation. 

Josephs blanches.

"Stay focussed on breathing," he says, leaning in close and giving Mary a light kiss on the forehead, "you're doing great, honey. Almost five centimeters."

"Gross! Burrito breath," she says, "get the fuck away from me."

He turns away, stung.

"Wait!" She calls him back.

He smiles. She loves him again.

"Is that metric? What the fuck."

 "Ask your baby daddy to do the math for you."

He storms out of the manger. Fuck her, and the push present he was going to get her.

He sends a text:

@wisemen- cancel Hamilton tix. Marys a bitch U were rt. bring shitty gift instd. like myrrh or smthg. haha fuck her. 

The next morning.

Jesus is born. 

God tweets to the world:

@BDaddy, It's a boy! I have given the world the greatest gift of all.

Mary tweets back:

Hey @BDaddy- thanx for the gift. Send Preparation H so the gift will go away and I can poop again.

And all the women in the Twittersphere laughed until they peed. Because Kegels hadn't been invented yet.

And all the men agreed that women aren't funny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Hammer Time

This very morning back in 167 BCE, ancient Jews arose sleepily from their straw mats and exclaimed, "Fuck. It's already Hanukah? This is bullshit. It was Thanksgiving just last week! We're still finishing the cranberry sauce in the fridge! Stupid lunisolar calendar."

And the ancient Jewish mamas jumped on their elephants and rode to McDonalds to get Happy Meals from which they extracted the stupid plastic toys to wrap as gifts for their kids that first night. Because eight fucking gifts.

Robin and I don't really celebrate Hanukah now that it's just the two of us in the house. We light the candles sometimes, like, maybe one or two nights out of the eight, and our gifts are the normal shit we buy for ourselves and tell the other, "look what you got me for Hanukah."

And the other says, "Oh, that's cool. I have really good taste."

And then we laugh merrily, and retreat to our separate bedrooms until morning.

I love the beautiful traditions of my people.

We don't make latkes for just the two of us. It's a lot of work. And we have enough latkes in our arteries to last for a decade of Hanukahs. The real miracle is that any Jews are still alive, at all.

Plus, there's this: The Maccabees were assholes.

They were all, like, if you aren't a religious Jew, you are against us. Which totally harshed the mellow of the ancient cultural secular progressive Jews; the ones who enjoyed a little bit of shrimp in their lo mein, who - if their waitress forgot to hold the B on their BLT-hold-the-B - just went ahead and ate it because it doesn't count as a sin to eat bacon if you got it on your sandwich by mistake, the Jews who snuck in a slice or two of Dave's Killer 27 Seed Wheat Bread during Passover because a week of just matzo is truly the eleventh plague - hemorrhoids. There should be a small tube of Preparation H on the seder plate.

So, about two thousand years ago, Judah and his Maccabees decided that the only good Jews were super  religious Jews. The rest of us were pretty much enemies of The (Chosen) People.  It was - and I apologize to those of you who will not get the joke - Hammer Time in ancient Syria.

So, I'm conflicted at Hanukah. Not a fan of in-your-face religious zealots. Although also not a fan of those who wish to kill them, either. Not a big fan of war. 

So this Hanukah I am going to celebrate being conflicted. The war within.

I will eat chicken for eight nights, because I'm conflicted about not being a vegetarian; I will sign an online petition every night for eight nights, because I'm conflicted about whether or not they do any good; I will let my roots grow out for a week, wear short booties with capri-length pants each day, and I will watch TV shows that feature actors I know are Republican.

And I will feel bad about all of it. Which is really the point. As I often pointed out to my kids, "the important thing is that you feel bad."
(I also wrote a novel with that same title. THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT YOU FEEL BAD. Which was rejected. Three times, even after I took the agent's notes and did the rewrites. I feel bad about it. Which is the point of the novel. Irony stings.)

I might eat a few chocolate coins this week because chocolate, but on the other hand, they are really shitty  chocolates. They taste gross. The Jewish endcap items do not sell out here in Oregon so they probably bring the same gelt out each year. It's really old chocolate.

Ancient, even.

The leftover ones from the Happy Meals back in 167 B.C.E.

B.C.E. You know, before Chocolate Evolved. 

Now, that's a holiday I can get behind.

 

 

 

 

Smartish

 The other night, after Thanksgiving dinner, my son suggested we all watch a movie.

"Great idea," I said. It's been wonderful having he and his wife here.

And now, so cozy, watching a movie together on a rainy night, full with pie, a roaring fire in the fireplace.

"It's called, 'The Death of Stalin' ", he said.

Wait, what?

"It's a really good movie," he said. 

God, it's exhausting having to pretend to be intellectually curious when my kids come to visit. I really want them to respect me. We read the political articles in The New Yorker, we discuss complicated and erudite issues, I pay attention to the entire Rachel Maddow show.

I have a lot of "Flipping Out" catching up to do when they leave.

"Sure!" I said brightly. "A movie about the death of Stalin? Sounds festive!" 

"It's actually a pretty funny movie," he said.

Okay. Sold. We went downstairs to watch it.

And I loved it. I really did.

But as it turns out, I am a tad under-informed when it comes to things like history. 

More than once, while watching the nefarious deeds of The Committee - particularly when Rykov and Malenkov and Krushchev calmly execute Beria -  I finally said, "Oh, come ON!  No one's gonna believe this crap!"

My son looked at me and sighed, the way one might look at an old tortoise who was stuck on its back. A tortoise you know that once you turn it right-side up, will just tumble over again.

 "This is actual history, Mom," he said gently. He really is kind to me. Remind me to slip him some cash before he leaves this afternoon.

I like to talk about the important things in the world. I like to post my political opinions. I am considered somewhat of an expert political pundit in certain circles. Small circles. Of Facebook friends. Whom I've never met. 

The actual facts of an issue are really more of a garnish, I say. The parsley around my opinion.

My passion for an issue and the dearth of facts I possess about it are probably, roughly, equal. Or quadrilateral. Or intersectional. Or biblioteca. I really have no idea how to graph it. 

My cousin Adam likes to say that our family suffers from Authoritative Voice Syndrome. AVS. We can pontificate about pretty much anything with certainty and conviction that we just pull out of our asses.
And I like to say that we don't suffer from it; we enjoy it.

Hahahah. Adam thinks that is hilarious. Trust me.

It was much easier to be a radical activist in the old days, before I had smart kids, before Google. I could just make up shit and no one corrected me. I was kickass on a soapbox, condemning the war in Vietnam. I was all moxie and Body Shop strawberry shampoo. Not so much with the facts.

Although, thanks to all the soapboxing, we did pull out of Vietnam. Just saying. And you're welcome.

(Note to self: Did we pull out of Vietnam? Are we still there? Ask the kids.)

My point is, I totally get why Trump lies all the time. It's very emboldening. You start to believe you are super smart.

If only Trump had smart and kind kids like I do, to keep him honest. 

You know, like if Vassily had been less like Joseph and a little more like Svetlana.

(Aaron and Zach, was Svetlana a good person? Please get back to me before I post this.)
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello From Clusterfuckistan, Part 3

Hi, remember me?

I haven't blogged much since The Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Election. I've mostly been eating. You know, doing my part. 

But the other day, after mailing in my ballot for the midterms, I decided I'd check in with you. Because when everything goes to shit and people are so much worse than you could ever believe and the mean fuck in the White House is only the face of the problem, just the tip of the iceberg, and your vote isn't even going to count because of gerrymandering and voter suppression, well, it's time to circle the wagons and say howdy to your old friends.

So. Hi. How are you?

Yeah, me too. Sorry.

Nothing much new has happened other than, you know. Life in Clusterfuckistan.

Well, I turned 64 since our country fell to the GOP. I hardly celebrated my birthday because shit is so fucked up. Plus, I pretty much eat cake and look Death in the eye every day of the year so what's the point. 

I'm older than everyone else now. That's so weird. I'm the oldest person everywhere I go.

Wait, that's not true. I was the youngest person in the recovery room after my cataract surgery. The nurses came down the row of beds to check on us and asked us our names and dates of birth.  I was the only one with a birth date later than 1935. When I called out my answer - "1954" - the lady in the next bed whispered, "So young."

That was nice. 

And get this: I am now bumped down from "once a year" to "every 3-5 year" on the Pap smear guideline, which means my cervix isn't on anyone's front burner anymore. Can't even get a Pap and a shmear these days. 

Oh, and I am finally over wearing bras. Well, ha ha, not so much "over" them. "Under" them is more accurate. My poor boobs. These days I think of them as the sweet old couple who lives downstairs from my neck. They're quiet, keep to themselves. No loud parties. They smell kinda musty, but nice. They're all  squished and cattywampus by mid afternoon like they've been napping on the couch watching their stories.

I now wear those newfangled bralettes that are all the rage. It's about as effective as walking around wearing my old bras around my knees, but I am all about comfort in the Age Of Trump. Because just waking up and remembering that the GOP is still in power makes it hard to breathe. Add a snug underwire bra to the mix and I'd be dead in under an hour. Every morning.

The thing that I wanted to say is, I have no Plan B if the midterms fuck us. Maybe Big Pharma should get on that pill before Tuesday. Midterm Plan B. Erase all trace of the election and minimal cramping. Not, of course, covered by insurance. 

Okay, so, see you after Tuesday.

Or in 3 years. 

Or in 7 years.

Fuck.