Yup.

That is my current state of mind. I would like to come here all sunny and upbeat, but I’m simply not able right now.

 I think world-weariness describes it best, actually. I am feeling overcome and overtaken by reality today. I SO wish that I could be funny and encouraging and inspiring and all those lovely things that would actually represent some kind of contribution to the process, but I haven’t got it in me. Do you suppose that eventually, everyone recognizes the futility of so many things these days, and feels like they just want to lie down somewhere (with a blankie, perhaps) and stop thinking altogether?

Alright – I am doing well with my dieting and exercise, and why is that, you might ask? Well, that’s because it feels like the only thing I have any control over, that’s why! Sound like a teen-aged anorexic do I? Well, I’m not going to claim to be anything other than downright dysfunctional today. I am appalled with life in general. When driving into work today, I found myself behind a young woman driving a Saab in heavy traffic just after passing through the toll booths on the turnpike. She was driving completely erratically while talking on her phone with a great deal of animation and frequently letting go of the steering wheel altogether to run a brush through her hair while she was talking. She drove in fits and spurts, sitting while the car lengths between her and the car ahead of her got up to maybe four or five, and other cars from the left-hand lane were cutting in front of her in droves because, of course, she was standing still because she was paying more attention to her phone conversation and grooming than she was to the flow of traffic. I, after having suffered this foolishness for perhaps five minutes or so, had the audacity to beep my horn at her, hoping to jolt her into moving forward in order to get out of the holding pattern that she had all of us in the right hand lane waiting in. Well, this young woman became a raging demon from hell! She leaned practically her whole torso out of the driver’s side window, let go of the wheel (and the phone, presumably) and proceeded to wave both middle fingers at me while simultaneously spewing a barrage of vitriol the likes of which I haven’t heard since I did an internship in a psych ward back when I was in college. Good grief! I could feel the waves of hate and anger spiking off of her, and it was downright SCARY! I was relieved when she pulled herself back into her car and spun out ahead like a race car driver, and didn’t leap out brandishing a gun or a knife or something! Why are people so angry nowadays?

Then I heard the most offensive advertisement on the radio urging us to “take advantage of the foreclosure crisis” by buying foreclosed properties at a FRACTION of what they are worth – some with little or no down payments!” What of the poor people who once lived in those homes and are now homeless or staying with relatives or renting substandard apartments? Where is our empathy? Our love for our fellow man?

 And Obama disowning his pastor of 20 years who has recently been spewing hatred for
America’s treatment of black people? Well, of COURSE he’s radical and talking hate and not a bit productive, and certainly isn’t doing Obama any good, but my goodness, when you think of what was done to the black race (and anybody who had so much as a drop of “black” blood) in this country, we really are expecting black people to achieve sainthood with “forgetting and forgiving”, aren’t we?And what’s wrong with US, anyway? I mean as a HUMAN race….we can’t even treat each other decently because we’re all nursing resentments and anger that goes back to childhood and beyond. I think about my relationship (or lack thereof) with my mother, I know that she and her mother had difficulties, and I have to admit that my eldest daughter and I – as hard as I’ve tried (or not tried, maybe, more recently) don’t have the best of relationships, either. But here we all are, awash in this acidic soup – this “melting pot” if you will – and where is it all going? We want our children to do better than we did, but will they, really? Or will they be saddled with so much national debt and such an inflated cost of living that they will all become little more than drones, working to eat and keep a roof over their heads? Will they even be able, in the final analysis, to do as WELL as we have done? We had pretend soy crumble meat with taco seasoning in “taco salads” last night for supper with fat free sour cream and salsa, which is only 25 calories per two tablespoons. It was delish, and I’ve brought some seasoned crumbles that were left over, along with flatbread, sour cream & salsa to make myself a little taco wrap for lunch. I WILL be a skinny old crone, and that’s all there is to it. The whole world can go to hell in a handbasket, and me along with it, but I WILL be a skinny old crone. 

Love (really),Z