Obligatory Daylight Savings Time Sucks Post & Other Things That Bug Me

I hate saving daylight. I really, really hate it. Today, I didn't go on my morning walk/run because my friggin' eyelids would not un-clamp. They are still closed. I'm blogging like Helen Keller here.

And, I'm irritated for other reasons. Namely, I hate Girl Scouts. I hate them because they hawk the most vile product on earth. There are three foods, yea verily four, that deserve eternal damnation because they are evil. And by evil, I mean that they make you, force you against your will, to eat the whole thing in one sitting. And those four foods are: Doritos, Cokes (I'm addicted to Coke, recovering, but I still look longingly at those wavy red cans and what sucks is that I have to go meet the dealer every fucking week and he's evil too--told you I was going to use it more--curse HEB! and curse Kroger, too, for good measure), Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies and to a lesser extent Pringles. Pringles is right out there with their evil--you can't stop at just one. No, you can't. And it's just wrong.

A sweet little Girl Scout at church emailed me (this is the modern world after all) and asked me to buy some cookies. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. It's my boundary issues. I just can't say no. Drives my husband crazy. If some ragamuffin actually gets me to open the door, they win. It's all over. Every sob story, every band group, I buy from. So I bought three boxes. One seems chintzy, four seems excessive, two seems a little ungenerous, so three boxes it was. Total guilt tab: $10.50. Guess how many are left? Hint: We got three boxes on Saturday afternoon. One tube was gone by the time I got in the car. Another half a tube was gone before I got the twenty minutes home and I wasn't sharing. A-huh. That's right. Guess how many are left now? Guess! I'll go check. Hold on. (This is a ruse, because I'm hungry and if there are any left, I want to eat them.) Well, shiver me timbers! There is a whole box left and half a tube. That means I only, only, ate a tube and a half of Thin Mints in one day. I don't think I blew my diet after all.

So, yesterday, my daughter was one of the few fifty thousand who got the privilege of seeing Hannah Montana at the Houston Rodeo. Click on the link "Hannah and her fans" below the Hannah picture and see if you can pick out my kid. Yes, she has mascara on. Sigh. She went with her friend and her friend's mom. She rejected the Hanna wig because "it itches". You know there's going to be a big problem, don't you? Miley Cyrus is going to get pregnant and a whole generation of girls will fall into the swill of American pop culture right along with her. They love her the way hippies loved the Beatles circa Yellow Submarine. They love her like Lefties love Obama. It's irrational. It's disturbing. And hopefully, it's something they'll grow out of.

My parents didn't allow me to dip my toe into the popular culture cess pool. I was unsullied as a teenager (well, as much as they could control it). As a result, I have an unnatural love for 80's big hair bands. There are developmental stages--teenybopper adoration being one--and if they are short-circuited, well, weird things happen in adulthood. No, I don't cry when I hear Obama orate but I did accept the gift of the Legolas standing cardboard cut-out (radiant in all his mossy green splendor) from a friend and put him in the living room where I could see him every day. I would be what could be described as a developmentally delayed, nerd teeny-bopper. Actually, I think I'm out of that stage, but I still like Bon Jovi.

While my daughter jammed, I went to a class to learn a new skill. I need more skillz. I'm not ready to share with you all yet what my new skill is, because I'm afraid that I won't follow through with it or get bored with it, as I'm wont to do, and then just sound like a pretentious asshole. In the mean time, though, it's fun to learn something new and make new friends doing something new. Lots of newness there. But I'm worried about getting old and letting my mind rot. It's something that concerns me. We age and we calcify into these underachieving versions of ourselves. We concede defeat to life--well, I'm 40, I'm only going to achieve so much. Might as well accept my lot.

Accepting my lot has never been my way. And I plan to fight being "elderly" in mind and body as long as possible. It's not that I mind having an old age number. It's that I mind the rock-headedness that comes with it. It's a fine line, you know? Getting settled with who you are as a person and what you need and want to be happy is one of the nice things about getting older. You see yourself for who you are and kinda accept it--the limitations and the gifts. But with that acceptance can come complacency. Well, I'm no good with that, so why bother? Goes the thinking. Bah! I want to continue to expand my brain and not let it shrink.

And just for your information, read up on the concept of neuroplasticity. It used to be believed that our brains were pretty set at a certain age and we just lost brain cells with time. That's not true. We continue making new brain connections and our brains keep pruning the tree of extraneous connections 'til the day we die. So, it's important to keep learning, to keep playing, to keep doing as we age. One of my professors at college was fond of saying, "Movement is life." Well, move your brain and your body, and you live.

I want to live. I just also want a nap. Did I mention that I hate daylight savings time?