Let them eat cake!

Every year I struggle with what to give up for Lent. Not that I'm religious per se but I like to see if I can stick to something for forty days (or live without something).  Sometimes I give up alcohol or chocolate or coffee (bad idea--very bad headaches) or sometimes I add something like doing sit-ups or jumping jacks or NOT complaining.  This year I gave up bread.  Which immediately called into question what items are bread products and which are not.  Is cake bread?  Are tortillas?  What about crackers?  I'm pretty much sticking with bread is bread so I can eat a damn cracker if I want to.  I thought it would be fairly easy but then I ordered some pasta for lunch and it came with the most enticing smelling garlic bread and all I could was stare at it.  Not even take a nibble.  Not even a lick!  Well I survived it.  Then I went to a potluck brunch and one of the really awesome cooks brought a french toast casserole. I mean.  It was divine to look at, it smelled heavenly, I ate one of the walnuts nestled on top and it just made my mouth water for a nice big piece!  I guess it's the whole point, but I was bummed man.  I wanted a piece of that french toast (and really I could in no way convince myself that sliced bread covered in brown sugar and other deliciousness was somehow not "bread").  So damn.  How many more days do I have to go?

Who Can You Tell?

I'm pretty sure my dad has a gambling problem and who can I tell?  My mom would freak--she doesn't handle stressful situations at all.  My dad would deny it.  I don't have any siblings.  I feel like crying when I see the stacks of lottery tickets and hear about the trips to the Indian casinos.  It's pitiful.  He's spending all his retirement money.  I think things are getting desperate.

Did you know that if you are an executive at the Walt Disney Company (even a low-level basic executive) you get a Silver Pass which allows you access to the park whenever you want to go.  Any time, any day.  Do you get how cool that is?  Can you also immediately see just how sucky it is when you leave Disney and have to forfeit that pass.  Do you know how much it hurts the first time you have to plunk down over a hundred dollars to get something you used to get for FREE?  It sucks.

It's a party!

When I was in college I liked this guy who liked me back.  Because he liked me back I decided he wasn't the right guy for me afterall.  I broke up with him.  He was broken-hearted.  He was so broken hearted that he got a new haircut, a new wardrobe and a new girl friend.  He looked better than he ever had with me.  I wanted him back.  I told him.  He told me that he was happy and that I had made him unhappy.  I had a hard time understanding that.  Such a hard time that I talked about it endlessly to my roommate.  She understood at first.  She listened at first.  But there's a limit.  No matter how good a friend is eventually they will come to a point where they just don't want to hear it anymore.  She reached that point.  I searched out new friends.  They listened.  They reached their limit.  I searched out new friends.  Eventually--many friends later--I realized that I had to stop talking about it.  No one wanted to come to my pity party anymore.  And so now decades later (and I swear I no longer care about that guy) I realized that there should be somewhere you could go when you need to tell just one more person about some of the terrible heartbreaking things going on in your life...when no one you know wants to hear about anymore.  That's why this blog isn't my pity party it's R pity party.  Let the sadness begin.