Wow, life is busy. I always think fondly of the times when, as a child, I was bored.

That's it. There's no point to that story. I just really wish I had the time to be bored again. There are always dishes to be washed and sheets to be folded and furniture to be dusted and cookies to be baked and articles to be read (not for fun, so they actually require concentration and I just end up having to read them twice because I'm too distracted) and music to be practiced.

And then there's work.

We're doing a big project, and whenever I do a group project (this started in kindergarten…I hate group projects), it seems like everyone else does what they can and I'm the person who has to bust my behind to make it actually happen.

I realize this is all self-imposed. I realize I can always just do my share and then let us fail if everyone else doesn't pull their own weight. Or can I?

I really don't think I can.

I've been sitting at my desk and realizing, around about 11 a.m., that I have to pee so bad that if I don't go IMMEDIATELY, there's going to be a situation. I am kind of like a camel in the bladder area. When I was in the hospital this past summer, I got up and used the toilet the first morning (into the lovely pee collector) and then the nurse came in to empty it and chart what was going in via IV and coming out via…yeah. She says, "Alright, and how many times did you go to the bathroom?" I say, "That was once." She says, "No, I mean, how many times did you go into the collector?" I say, "Yep. Just the once." She stares at me in disbelief, shakes her head and says, "I've never seen a person pee that much fluid at once. You must have an enormous bladder."

That puts all those childhood rumors to rest. I just held it for too long because toilets are gross and I like to minimize my contact with them. Ew.

Anyhow, wow, I'm over-sharing. Maybe it's because it's just too dang early. Maybe it's because I'm bananas. Maybe it's because I'm turning into…well…let's not go there.

I guess I didn't really have a point today, but I guess I don't usually have a point. Or maybe the point is that I want to be bored. I long to be bored. Boredom sounds so amazing right now, I can't even stand it. Let's do THAT this weekend. Happy Friday.

So I think I'm finally just about over my horrendous cough. I thought it was allergies for the first three days because I never really felt like crap, I just couldn't stop coughing. After that, though, I accepted the fact that it was probably some kind of virus because everyone else was coughing, too.

I haven't had a cough in years and years and years, and I was freaking out the whole time about getting congestion in my head and getting another ear infection, but luckily, I escaped that, and the whole thing has now died down to a simmer.

However, it did bring up an interesting question for me: What happens when I reach that age where every time I cough or sneeze, I pee my pants? What am I going to do? 

Apparently, that just happens. I don't know if you escape that when you haven't had a baby or not, but I'm not taking any chances. It's bad enough when you cough or sneeze so hard that it makes you cut the cheese, but that really only happened in the middle of the night around here. It sucked because they always make me laugh, whether they're mine or someone else's, and I don't think my husband appreciated being awoken at 2:30 a.m. by a hacking cough, accompanied by farting, followed by bed-shaking giggles for about five minutes.

He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't find it nearly as funny as I did.

Anyway, I'm wondering about that now, because I've seen those terribly disturbing Tena Twist commercials, which lead me to believe that only chubby older women pee themselves, which means I'm on the list.

That just sounds terrible. We used to give our dog pills to help her not pee on the couch, and they worked great for her. Maybe they make those pills for people. If not, they should. I need a direct line to some scientists.

Because those Tena Twist commercials are just terrifying.

 fascinating video from youtube.com

Thanks, YouTube. I…just…no. That commercial is worse than the Burger King and the clown from It all rolled into one. THAT'S what I have nightmares about. And why on God's green Earth would anyone ever put liquid into an absorbent pad and wring it out? On TV? <Shudder>

Getting older is so much scarier than I ever thought it would be. I think maybe when I get to that point and I have a cough, I'm going to just sit in the bathroom until it's over. Just skip a step.

Or maybe I won't care at that point. Maybe that'll hold off until I've reached the "not giving a crap" stage of my life, which, I have been guaranteed, will happen eventually.

I don't know. I just never, ever want to do the twist. Any kind of twist. It's just wrong.

It seems to me that three-day weekends are a menace to our society. They are a threat to our very existence.

This is because they make it way too hard to go back to work.

Therefore, we should either abolish the three-day weekend or we should have a half-day on the first day back, so we can ease our way into the workweek.

I vote for the second option.

This would make my life so much easier, and I think we would all benefit from that, as I tend to ruin everyone else's sunshiny day with my bad attitude.

Of course, I tend to do that most days, anyway. Even in the best of times. As I have previously mentioned, I am working on it, but it's hard not to have a bad attitude when all of the people around you are so, so very thin.

And they're all eating cake. All of the time. Only I don't actually see them eating cake because they're doing it behind my back and then mocking my cakeless state.

Turds.

Therefore: Three-day weekends + a half-day on Tuesdays. It's the only logical solution. Write your Congressman/woman. Write the President.

Write everyone, guys. Everyone. We need to eradicate this evil so our children don't have to suffer.

Also, I would like to vote that we get an entire month of vacation every other month or so. Just to feel refreshed. 

That's a different post for a different time, though. For now, I'm concentrating on the three-day weekend recovery plan. Stay calm, all of you out there…I'm working on it.

Wow. Justin Bieber. Who could've imagined giving a teenage boy unlimited money, time and notoriety could end up so badly?

And now he's egged a house.

First of all, seriously, he egged a house. I'm sure the people who received the egging were upset, and I get it. What I don't get is why that's news. I have never egged a house, myself, but I did a lot of other crappy stuff when I was a teenager. It happens. It's not news: It's called life. Call the cops, give him probation or whatever, move on.

(I never caught being a turd, though, Mr. Bieber. Maybe you need to learn how to be sneaky.) 

Really, though, why is that a bigger deal than driving down the street at super high rates of speed? That's the one I'd be mad about. What if there are kids or animals or even slow-moving adults out there?

Cars are deadly weapons. Really, they are. We should be more careful with them. Grow a brain.

At any rate, I wish the people that complain so much about famous people in the news as they're buying their People magazine would realize that they're just as much to blame as anyone else.

And Justin Bieber, vile wormy kid that he is, is just being a teenage boy, albeit a really obnoxious one that is begging for his Mom to give him a good smack upside his pointy little head.

I hope it won't mess up his hair. That would be a shame.

Are we really a bunch of over-sharing drama queens? I feel like we might be. I feel like maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea to step back and maybe not calculate every action we take in terms of the kind of response it will generate.

But I also think that might just be me.

I feel like we are all so inter-connected anymore that we have stopped living just to get through and everything we do and say has become a display window where other people get to watch the show.

The Me Show. Yikes.

It's getting pretty boring. I don't think our everyday lives were meant to be super entertaining. Entertainment is rarely entertaining anymore, because we consume it so rapidly that Hollywood is forced to spew out tons of mediocre crap and anyone who takes the time to actually be a craftsperson or artist is dismissed as being hoity-toity and irrelevant.

Really? If it's difficult or takes time or effort for the mind to digest, it's not considered mainstream enough and therefore takes in no money and the people making it get pushed further to the back and are forced to take on more commercial projects to survive. And we're presented with still more shows starring "real people," only they're not that real.

Could we please just put the phones and the cameras down? We're not that interesting. Go outside and play Frisbee or read a book.

Geez.

Sharing every five minutes of your life (and your kids' lives) doesn't create value. It actually lessens the effect when you have something real to share, plus, I feel like it kind of instills this "I'm performing all of the time" attitude and makes your kids little shells of people, instead of just letting them feel things on their own, not doing actions to be seen by other people.

It can't be healthy to constantly gauge your actions in terms of how they're seen by others. It just can't.

Trying to create drama in order to give one's life more meaning is a pretty empty way to live, not to mention the constant stress it places on the people who can't ever tell what's real and what's marshmallow fluff.

(I realize that this isn't that hilarious, but it's annoying me. I realize, as well, that the people to whom I would love to say this won't actually read it, but that's okay. It makes me feel better and more virtuous, and, really, that's the point.)

Zumba.

There. I said it. I went. I realize that I am pretty much morally opposed to everything Zumba stands for: perkiness, bouncing, yelling, and middle-aged women doing a less explicit version of twerking, but I went.

And, surprisingly enough, I didn't hate it.

I went along with my sister, because we are both trying to get in shape and I felt like a class would be a good thing because then everybody can move at her own pace. It was good in that way, but what I didn't realize was how much I enjoy laughing about things.

I know. Where have I been?

It was hilarious. The only one who didn't look like an idiot was the instructor and everyone else was all stiff and flailing about, so I felt like we looked okay. Also, there were people who acted like we couldn't do it.

So, of course, we did.

When the first person made the, "Weeellllll, maybe you should try a video first" comment, we knew this was happening. I didn't care if they had to drag me out of there by the ankle and throw me into my car, I was going to go and make it through the whole class and not break into a sweat.

Except there was some sweating. Which I hate, but it was a decent workout, so that was pretty much inevitable.

Halfway through the first song, I started thinking, "What if someone farts? What if I fart? Will I able to keep from laughing?" I pretty much giggled about that through the rest of the class, which I have to say, wasn't too bad. It's no worse than fast-walking four miles on the treadmill, which is what I normally do.

So I think we'll go back. Most of the other ladies seemed nice, and there's always the nickname factor, which ups the hilariousness of any situation. 

But I still won't be yell or be perky. If that day ever comes, watch out. The sky may fall and then we're all in for it.

Well, that's over with!

I'm pretty excited to start a new year, primarily because the old one was getting stinky and gross and I hated it. It seems like everyone has decided resolutions are dumb and not cool, so I guess no one else has any, but I sure do.

I kind of feel like any time I have the energy to try to be a better person, I should definitely go with it. It takes so much just to be normal and when I feel like trying something above that, I kind of feel like I'm using my superpowers.

Have I not mentioned my superpowers? To be honest, I mention so much in here that I have no idea whether or not that's ever come up. I totally do, though. My superpower is cleaning.

That's a sad, sad superpower.

However, I am also pretty good at making excuses for other people, putting up with crap (not silently…screw that), and trying really hard to make things for long after all hope is gone.

I watched The Hobbit part two over the break…I may be a little more melodramatic than usual for a few weeks. It's the residual Bilbo effect.

Anyway, I am sticking to my resolutions, even if they're not the cool thing to do. Here they are, for all the world to see (any resolutions I decided on before January first are null and void, and forgive me if I'm repeating myself…I get a little excited sometimes):

First of all, I'm going to make a bucket list. I have always thought they were kind of d-baggy, and I still don't like the title, so I'm going to call mine something else. Maybe "List of things I want to do" will suffice. I've never really thought of things like that, as I've always been super focused on things like cleaning and making sure I have a well-funded retirement account. Got the cleaning part down, the other part not so much. Anyhow, I have some things that I'd really like to try, and my sister and I figured out that we have some things we'd both like to try, so I'm going to start working on that.

Secondly, I am going to work on learning more new things and not just keep doing the same things over and over. I like the learning part, and even though it's not as comforting, as I do loves me some repetitive behaviors, it will be good for my brain.

Finally, I am going to stop dieting. I realize that I am still fat, so this experiment could end up with me weighing 300 pounds again. I don't think I'll let it go that far, but I've gotten way too obsessed with dieting and it's kind of all I think about, and I'm sick of thinking about how fat I am all of the time. It's no fun. Fat-shaming is definitely a real thing, people, and I'm just as guilty of it as everybody else. I'm going to eat healthy food and get a lot of exercise and that's it. I'm not going to not eat anymore. I may just never be thin, and I'm tired of making myself feel like crap in order to be an acceptable person someday.

Maybe I don't want to be acceptable. Maybe acceptable people are boring.

So, anyway, number three is kind of a big deal for me. It's scary to let go of something that has become a part of my life for as long as I remember (I went on my first diet when I was 8). I guess if I look at it that way, dieting sure doesn't work, because if I've been doing this for 27 years and I'm still fat, that's not very efficient.

So I'm done. Woohoo.

I feel like I've done pretty well with my resolutions thus far, so maybe this year will be even better. Maybe I will have a better attitude, as I believe that was the resolution for 2013.

Bahahahaha. I'm adorable.