Ten Things I Absolutely Love The Most:

1. Using a lint brush on the carpet in my closet, after vacuuming. No hair, dust, lint---then walking on it barefooted.

2. Once or twice a year, indulging in really crappy fiction. Popular, but crappy. Most valid reason for staying up late, (meaning after 8pm.)

3. Unexpected but not completely wacky paint colors on walls and doors. O-o-o-o-hhh

4. The solar-powered Santa bobble head super-glued to my dash in my car all year round. I especially love how he grooves to music on a sunny day.

5. Organizational office tools: 4 x 6 postits, sticky page flags, highlighters, chunky manuscript clips, colorful green pens (just cuz), file folders, unlikely cups for pens, my high-glazed ceramic dishes full of rubber bands and paper clips and lip stuff.

6. Having the AC on in December and January, but wearing a sweatshirt. Thanks Florida.

7. Christmas mugs for every beverage all year long.

8. Living most of my day in my head, where life is beautiful and I am blissed out 24/7. Which explains the funky smile on my face in the grocery store or walking the dogs. Sometimes it's the only happy place, so it's really important to have one. I have multi-colored settees, and macarame chandeliers. What does yours look like?

9. Shuffling a deck of Santa cards. OMG so much fun. Makes me very happy.

10. Ugh, the last one? Hmm. Dharma wheels and mandalas and hands of Fatima. All three depict a center, a soul. Or in sciencey speak, a second brain in our upper intestinal area. Whichever. I have a mad connection to my second brain. So much joy.

M A B S

MABS. Middle-Aged Bodies Stink.

Create your own support group if you'd like. You likely already have, but it's a very lean group, isn't it?

Think about it. Maybe they didn't give you early retirement for whatever reasons they told you. (Ohhhh...) That's right. Epiphany happens. 

It's not that younger people don't see you, it's because they don't want to smell you. They can see flesh sagging and hair loss. Give them some cred; they'd still talk and laugh with you despite your appearance. Intelligent individuals are pretty accepting. But just seconds before they make eye contact, their nose tells their brains, "DON'T DO IT!!!" So they look down at the bottom shelf cereals in the aisle or take out their phones immediately. I've even seen people in line at Lowe's leave the line in a ruse to go grab something they forgot SO AS NOT TO BE STANDING NEXT TO THE MAB. 

We like to blame the social media and technology. Less social skills because of the increase in screens. Think about this: they have no problem talking face to face with each other. They are just choosing to not engage as they attempt to flee.

MAers have always blamed the newest generation, Elvis, the Beatles, marijane.

Our kids don't really think we are ridiculous. They roll their eyes as they walk away so as to finalize the contact! See?

So go take another shower. Invest in some cologne, please. You deserve a life surrounded by those you love! Your loved ones would benefit from your love and wisdom and experience. Make sure your outsides smell as good as they possibly can.

And just because I am attempting to be helpful and "fix" the problem, stop eating stuff that makes you gassy. You know that I am speaking from my own experience, too, so don't think my pointing fingers are only facing outward. 

Ha. The reunion this summer. Carby dinner, birthday cake slivers because I couldn't dare to have a plate with a whole big piece on it, and eat it with a fork like a civilized grownup. Slipping slivers into my mouth as I clean up the kitchen. Ya ever notice I don't clean up the kitchen when there was no sugar for dinner? Ya. Then family adult games on the deck. "At least we are outside," is what I kept telling myself. I should have gotten up and spared the humans. I sat there, squoonching my buttocks into that slotted deck chair, not enough of a breeze for anybody's liking. My poor husband sitting next to me. To his credit, he never pointed me out, even when people started getting up and moving away from the main group. True love, that is. 

If it causes inflammation or bloating or lethal gas, don't eat it. Dairy? Broccoli? carbs? And don't mash up the lethal foods with non-gassy varieties. Cake with chicken is still cake. Maybe you'd get by with broccoli and chicken... You know your body. Pay attention if you don't. Keep a gas log. A cute little memo book you can carry with you at all times. Maybe a red one, like the color of a stop sign. Or use your phone! Take notes however works best for you. Got gas? Write down every circumstance. Time of day. What you ate. Other symptoms: tired? nauseous? 

Maybe taking notice and prevention won't do anything for you other than make you attractive to those in proximity. Or maybe it could prevent further physical degeneration. Tell yourself whatever motivates you to smell better. MABs are the smelliest human subgroup on this planet. Let's be more considerate.

With love to all my family and friends. I'm trying,

Tami

FOR YOU

GOOD MORNING. Yes, indeed, this post is for you. Who you? Always women. I write with females in mind. Audience is a she, la audience.

Why not men?

Hmm. Emo intelligence, for one. They may not get it. Although I've recently met a couple of males who are using the right side loft of their brains, windows wide, most men I have known would not get my stories, would get bored of them, in fact would regard them as a kind of sweet torture. As in, why would anyone want to read this? and what a waste of time. Like seeing his wife on the couch watching the Hallmark Christmas movie-of-the-month in July when he returns from the hardware store, her cheeks wet with tears. Oh, baby jesus, he thinks as he heads into the garage. That's the strongest image currently, so let's go with that.

Why such a skew? I see women everywhere I go. Men are almost in half-color, faded images, deserving of a word or two, but really not anything to concentrate on. I am not being snarky---this is truth. Other than my son, who I would take a bullet for (but we're white, so I probably won't have to) I rarely notice a man. Oh, except that time I went kayaking and rented a vessel. The man gently pulled my hand by the fingers, closer to him just by inches, so he could attach my wrist-paid bracelet to my right arm. Oh...it was like my brain fireworked and my heart kind of stalled. Starved. Perimeno.

Is there any in between? When I am sitting next to a man at a plastic work party, my husband on my other side, four-tenths of my brain is thinking about my appearance in this man's eyes. Am I pleasing to look at? (What the hell is that?) I am not at all interested in knowing this man better, or not even fascinated by his conversation, but somehow I need to look good for him?

Relax. I'm not going to analyze myself in front of you. A blog does not a therapy session make. 

(But... there's a fear in the presence of a man, am I accepted, am I attractive, will he hurt me?)

Audience. Ya, I don't know. Is what it is.

Hi Bill

Garfield and Peanuts lover.
Acey Duecey player and teacher.
Model airplane maker.
Navy man.
Santa Claus. Literally. Sometimes I was an elf.
Previous driver of a white Spirit and a locomotive truck, in parades.
Jokester. Rough tickler.
Sunday Lunch provider: water-based ham rectangles folded in half between two slices of fresh white bread, with mustard.
Movie nights: Amadeus was our last.
Giver of ice cream outings.
And rides, sleepovers, shelter.
Daddy Daughter fill-ins for me.
The guy who lived in the pink house.
Buyer of my first DC temple trip, where I got sealed to a new family 9 years later.
💖And the clothes I wore on that trip.
Ping pong table used for holiday meals in the basement, where I watched Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.
Closest thing to a father.
Thank you. For all of it.

I'm sorry I didn't say it regularly for the last 30 years.

I'm coming.