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but not your own facts.  Seems reasonable enough to me, duh.  Somewhere along the way, however, all the Who, What, Where and When’s have washed into tabloid journalism.  Opinions.  Sensationalisms.  And yes that is a word because it will be Published and that makes it true.  Sunday my manfriend and I were watching the morning news shows I’m embarrassed to say.  We started having very grownup discussions about the House and the Senate and serious serious stuff.  But, what we discovered is we need to start back to fifth grade.  And pay attention.  Absorb the material.  Hope that the teacher really is smarter than a fifth grader or at least have better tools at her disposable then a worn out book and chalk board.  Which is really fun to clean unless you have to stay after school to do it.  Great memories sigh.  (And yes she probably would be a female. Just sayin.)  Anyway, manfriend and I were complete duds.  Not quite sure of anything.  Education is wasted on the young.  But…..we were being enlightened by a media that has turned opinion into fact.  Which is why people forgot how to think for themselves.  We have the Hollywood elite rolling down their limo windows and shouting out causes we must care about, and movements we must follow, and pins we must wear.  At least they do it in really beautiful clothes so that the ten year old in me rah rah’s with them.  Glitter gets me every time.  Opinions.  Heresay.  Not allowed in court,  but allowed in the media and everywhere else in the Wild Wild West of the Internet.  No rules, no fact check, no editor questioning the five W’s.   I keep expecting some backlash, but the dumb fifth grader in us is still quite gullible.  After President Trump was elected, there was a collective  ‘Whoa where did that come from?’  Briefly.  Until the media twisted the narrative to their ‘opinion’ and we were left to flounder.  Maybe I just need to get off the grid for awhile. Go back to the land.  Raise some pigs.  Put Elmers glue on the back of my hand and sprinkle it with glitter.  And no I never did that.  Much.

 

between eating tacos everyday or being skinny, would you choose hard tacos or soft tacos?  *crickets*.  More *crickets*.  Get it???  I kept seeing the word crickets used in tweets and online time wasters and I didn’t know what it meant.   Finally did some research and know way too much about the small to medium sized insect with a mostly cylindrical, vertically flattened body and slender antennae.  Which of course is not the cool, slang use of the word.  This Boomlennial ventured on and now I get it and want to use it.  So back to my one liner at the top of this blogue.  Someone tells a joke.  Not funny.  No one laughs.  Awkward silence.  CRICKETS!  Or, you’ve been emailing back and forth and then no communication. They’ve gone CRICKETS!  Who comes up with this sh*t?  And how do you go from an insect related to the grasshopper where the male produces a characteristic  rhythmical chirping sound and has a  smooth, robust pronotum behind the head to silence which is pretty much the anti-crickets?   This is the question Googs isn’t answering for me.  Much like when you were young and looked up bad words in the dictionary and couldn’t figure out why they were bad.  Why are they calling that girl a hoar when she looks nothing like white ice crystals?   Just confusing.  But I do know there are 900 species of crickets with about 100 being found in the US.  Now I am boring myself which is hard to do since I am oh-so-fascinating.  Ok I’ll tell a joke.    Broccoli- “I look like a tree.”   Walnut- “I look like a brain.”    Mushroom- “I look like an umbrella.”        Banana-  “Dude!  Change the topic.”   CHIRP!  CHIRP!

 

+  Talk about walking miles to school in three feet of snow.  Barefoot.  Uphill.  Both ways.  #evenifitistrue

+  Order a drink at Starbucks using small, medium, or large.  #grandeismedium  #thatswhatshesaid

+  Save the little piece of soap at the end of the bar and spend a week trying to get it to stick to the new bar.   #babysteps

+  Wear a bra at home.  #nonamespleasemypersonalsuri

+  Get rid of your waterbed.  #amazonstillhassheets

+  Call someone on a phone just to talk.  #exceptyourmother

+  Buy things in a store with a check.  #istillloveyou

+  Watch old movies again and again.  #unlessitstheperfectstorm #georgeclooney #markwahlberg  #awesomestorm  #honeyholefishing

+  Take your own bags to the grocery store.  #buymorefood  #nocatfood

+  Read in the dark.  #hahahahahahaha

+  Wear a two piece bathing suit.  #youthinkyoulookgoodyoudont

+  Go gray.  #onlyyourhairdressershouldknowforsure

+  Tell a lie.  #cantrememberalie  #cantrememberthetruth

+  Post pictures of your dog on Facebook.  #nobodycares  # getalife

+Reheat coffee from breakfast all day.  #butitsstilldelicious

+  Watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette.  #worstshowsever  #needashower

+  Talk about the good old days.  #theywerent

+  Talk about the 60’s being the best decade for great music  #itwas

+  Advise anyone to go through natural childbirth.  #therearedrugsforthat  #worstadviceever

+  Eat tootsie rolls.  #implantsarentthefunkind

+  Keep writing long after anyone is still reading.  #butimbrilliant

+  Give your children advice.   #seehashtagabove

+  Never call # the number sign.  #knowwhentostop  #leavethemwantingmore  #didisayimbrilliant

 

 

 

Now that the Oympics are winding down I realize it’s evolved into the Hunger Games with better clothes.  These are supposedly the finest athletes our countries can muster, but they spend more time flopping around on the ground then being fancy.  Ice skating used to be a beautiful sport with those flowing gossamer dresses and little tutus I would lust after knowing only my Barbie doll would ever be able to wear.  Now I watch them bumping around on the ice while wanting to rub my rear thinking how much that must hurt.  It’s great you can land a triple or fourple jump five percent of the time but the odds really aren’t in your favor.  You look like an amateur with your fingers crossed.  Just not entertaining.  Give me better odds or a heads up so I can shut my eyes and not just cringe.  I bruise easily.  As one of my dearests once said  “fat people bruise more easily”.  And he knew immediately that was probably not a good choice of words, but probably pretty accurate.  The back peddling and trying to explain that one away was actually quite funny because there is no pink diamond big enough for redemption #KobeBryant.  Which would also explain why those tiny ladies skating aren’t covered.  Just not enough adipose tissue to use all those glorious box of 64 colors.  Magenta!  Midnight blue!  Salamander!  Of course their flesh colored tights probably hide a lot of secrets.  Other sports suffer, too.  Great ski jumping!  Until they miss. Then the commentators expound about how tough they are because they’ve had dozens of surgeries and broken bones but still want to compete.  Helmet not doing its job.  The doping.  In Curling.  Really??   How weak must you be to need That enhancement.  Swish that broom!  Harder!!  Faster!!  And now I need a cigarette….

…..or half full, clearly there is room for more wine.  Some people always have a PMA.  Which has nothing to do with women being rightfully cranky once a month for way too many years.  I still see the PMA poster hanging in my college dorm room when the world was still my oyster.  Then I actually ate an oyster and realized it is a disgusting  creature that people who can afford it should never eat, but cultivate a lustrous pearl.  I probably have the science all wrong on this and was about to google it but realized I somehow got off track here.  PMA.  Or lack there of.   Most Boomlennials have been in that roundabout long enough to know its not always easy to maneuver through.  I’m not talking about that odd configuration that is supposed to be safer then stop signs but PSA- never pull out in front of an incoming pickup truck.  Sh*t for brains.  Anyyyyyyway.  PMA.  Once you hit that ‘senior ugh’ status it’s more important then ever.  Nothing gets better with age.  Wisdom, shmisdom.  Sixty is not the new fifty blah blah.  Totally fake news.  I had decided that I never wanted the ‘senior ugh’ discount.  Just wasn’t worth it to me to say that word to save a buck.  Then an even worse thing transpires.  They GIVE it to you without you asking.  The first time this happened to me was at the Cleveland Clinic when I was buying a parking pass.  Suffice it to say if you are buying a parking pass at a hospital it might not be your best glam moment.  And I should have been grateful because it is not cheap to park there and you really don’t have a choice because that place is like the Vatican but in a less cool way.   But that ‘senior ugh’ pass is still front and center in my ARE YOU FRICKEN KIDDING ME memory bank.  Even those speeding ticket(s) I got barreling out of that empire didn’t make me as mad.  I mean who can even see a camera high up on a pole?  Obviously not ‘senior ugh’ me.  So I tried again at the movie theater to just get an ‘adult smiley face’  ticket while in full makeup and they still gave me the ‘senior ugh’ discount.  I concede.  Will still whisper it but might as well embrace this creepy phenomenon.  Everybody has to believe in something.  I believe I’ll open a bottle of wine.

My favorite holiday has come and gone and no longer will I allow myself to use the F word.  I reveled.  I ate the chicken étouffée and drank the Hurricane(s).  And I said F-a-t all day long in a celebratory voice while lusting after the King cake.  But now I will use my Lenten voice for the next year until it’s appropriate to say f-a-t again in a good way.  The Boomlennial (and all the other faceless generations I might add), have taken that word to replace every other derogatory thing we no longer say.  The alphabet soup is getting quite thick, and I’m still trying to decipher some of the initials.  I know the N word is awful, and the R word, and all the nationalities that have moved to be defined by their region instead of some creepy slang.  I don’t care about people’s sex lives (ok that’s a lie I do), but not in a way to define them.   Just when I figured out LGBT a Q emerged on the end and that one threw me off but my Questioning spirit got it right.  So the only thing people rely on now to be mean to someone is to call them f-a-t in a mean or bullying or I’m not a nice person voice.  Last weekend I was watching the Cavs with one of my dearests and there was a female announcer who was gratingly annoying.  She would interview in a break but kept asking stupid questions long after the game resumed.  And did it multiple times.  Just rude and really bad sportmanship when the Cavs were kicking a$$.  Finally one of my dearests said  “get that fat woman to shut up already”.  I agreed with the shut up part.  BUT.   She’s not even f-a-t.  Rather petite actually.  I realized that’s the last word that it’s still socially acceptable to say when you want to be critical for whatever reason.  My dearest knew enough not to call her a dumb blonde because them are fightin words.  Just kidding.  Kind of.  Maybe.  Possibly.  Why test the waters?   So the venom shot out and I pounced.  Fortunately the *ss whoopin was more fun so I moved on.  Maybe.  Possibly.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!

1.  Have a body.
2.  Go the beach.
3.  Bikinis?  Oh hell no.  I thought you said martinis.  Having a beach vacation is much easier than it used to be.  The Boomlennial is much more comfortable  being with a group of pasty white strangers and relaxing.  No more worrying about a ripple or a wrinkle or a stretch mark that isn’t going to unstretch no matter what gooey concoction you apply to it. Probably not going to get toned or ripped or elongated at this point.  We’ve thrown in the beach towel and are just grateful for sunshine on our scraggly face.  Of course I’m the last person who still believes the sun is good for you.  Love me some vitamin D.  Love me some rosy cheeks and bronzed skin.  Love me the mental health benefits that only that blazing ball gives me.  My dermatologist may not agree with me so he is not invited along.  I will deal with the consequences of my good/bad decisions if necessary and just soak up the glorious rays.  I take really good care of my pancreas whatever that means so it better not be touched by that no names please disease.  Planning for that beach getaway gets you through the dregs of winter.  As opposed to a ski trip, beach clothes are light and small(ish) and you can bring so much more that you’re not going to wear.  How fun is that!  Toes get brighter, hair gets lighter.  The serious books of dark days are replaced by trashy novels that you can proudly refer to as beach reads.  The celebrities become my friends as I catch up on the rag magazines (sorry People), and Oprah will enlighten me with her wisdom.  What’s not to love?  I think salt water is good for what ails you and the straw on my head might disagree but poof!  Mermaid hair, don’t care.

Wait!  Wait!  Bad Advice!!!!  Be a Follower!!  Like me! Love me!  Share me!  Comment on me!  Just don’t troll me because then I think of a little naked guy with glassy eyes and colored hair with too much static.  Being a follower has sure changed connotations over the years.  No more sheep baaaabaaaaing.  We’ve become a world of followers.  We follow people, pages, links, groups, and more nonsense then I care to admit.  And we get great satisfaction from how many millions if not trillions of followers we have.  I have never been so popular in my life!  It’s an odd pecking order when you have hundreds of  ‘friends’  but nothing to do on a weekend.  Soooo you follow more sh*t and hope you get more followerrrrrs.  The young man who got his picture taken with JT at the Super Bowl was more excited about all the online traction he got then the actual selfie.  He became an overnight rock star and didn’t have to do too much.  Of course he was so busy getting the video that the whole encounter probably blew right by him but oh well.  He has lots-n-lots of followers now and I’m just jealous.  Like ME!  Love ME!  Leadership be damned!  Follow ME!   Just to be clear, I really don’t care about any of that but since there are enough people who do I try to be relevent.  The Boomlennial has a unique perspective and voice that sometimes needs to BE SHOUTED in all caps baaaaaa.

I don’t even know where a sandwich lives.  Cooking, eating, and drinking have become quite an endeavor recently.  Beer has somehow become a craft, and like crocheting can be quite complicated.  The are millions to choose from (at least) and they are catogrized with fancy initials, and grain choices, and countries they come from, or at least that’s what you are led to believe.   I know some of these craftsmen and they are the same dudes that used to be banging on cheap guitars in garages and basements, but have created an industry that seems to be working.  Winemakers can’t have all the fun.  But much like the snobbishness of winos (take out the alchohol and would anyone really be drinking that juice??),  beer aficionados know their stuff.  And that’s probably what really gnaws at me.  I know everything.  EVERYTHING.  Truly brilliant.  But I have been publically ridiculed for ordering something generically lite, or natural, or cheap.  (Yes that was overly dramatic but I like to ridicule others since I am an expert on everything.  EVERYTHING).  But much like cooking I just don’t care that much.  If my kitchen were filled with vending machines I’d be good with that.  I don’t want to talk about it.  I was in a bar of all places where two men were trying to one up each other on how they smoke tenderloin.  Yes the kind that comes from an animal.  They had dualing rubs, and temperatures, and times, and spices, and all kinds  of heated debate about whose was bigger and better.  Yes still talking tenderloin here.  My tongue was bloody from biting it so hard because there were way too many good jokes going to waste.  But once men got into the cooking thing it got ‘craft’ status and full on competition.  Women cook to feed people,  men cook as an art form.  Simplistic, of course, but there is a whole channel devoted to food and cooking and someone’s watching it.  I’ve never seen it because it would make me hungry and I’d have to go searching for quarters to get my lunch.  Now craft vending machines hmmmm??

 

If that title doesn’t pull you in like a pair of pantyhose with too many runners,  you have no imagination.  Which is the reason I couldn’t come up with a better way of expressing my favorite symbol.  Long story longer.  A friend of mine was giving me a play by play of a horrible thing he did.  So horrible.  It was a beautiful spring day and his kids came home from school and wanted to go out and play.  He thought it was a grand idea oh dear oh dear.  So out they went ooobla dee oobla da.  I’m starting to shake now.  SPOUSE comes home, sees the kids outside in school clothing, and lights into the world.  Yells at him, yells at kids, yells yells yells.  Such a big, bad blunder.  So smooth guy that he is draws a Big Circle with a Small Dot in the Middle, and explains calmly that the Circle is his world, and the tiny Dot is how much he cares about the kids playing in their school clothes.  Perfect gentleman, perfect sense.  I think many things that make us want to yell yell yell are just Little Dots.  Perspective.  This happened over ten years ago but I often think of that symbol which I wish I could name and patent.  Goose poop on your clothes is a tiny Dot.  Wait I take that back.  It’s disgusting.  But making yourself crazy over trivia is not good when we live in a trivial world.  SPOUSE is a bit of a wack job (oh yeah that’s rude), and I might be losing another follower here, but I’ll always be so appreciative of a path to categorize my life dot dot dot….