Lawn Art

In this time when our country is once again facing a great political debate and the wheels of democracy are spinning….mostly in reverse, let me take a moment to share what has disturbed me most this election year…..people who put campaign signs in their front yard. I mean, I just do not understand it.

Everywhere I look are perfectly manicured lawns- mowed, trimmed, and edged within an inch of their lives, and then right in the middle of the grass is a big ol’ piece of cardboard with some stranger’s name on it. I mean maybe….may-be, if your brother is running for town council or your sister is running for district court judge, then it might be okay for you to show your support with a small, tasteful display. But to trash up your front lawn with a poster-sized logo of a candidate with whom you have had nor will have any contact, based on information you have learned by watching a television program where grown-ass men call each other liars for an hour? I mean this is just utterly insane.

I liken putting a campaign sign in your front yard to flying the number of your favorite Nascar driver from your front porch—proof that you are both tacky and stupid. My personal beliefs are neither here nor there in this instance. You can vote red, blue or green for all I care because let me just tell you, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. Whatever the heck they’re doing up there in Washington, something’s broken and since I’m not about to fix it with my little blog, I’ll just let you in on a little secret. I have flown all over this country for the past few years and the one thing that remains the same in every state in this union, is that folks are gonna do what folks need to do for themselves and their families, and no neighbor’s lawn ornamentation is going to change that.

Do these people really think anyone cares who they’re voting for? Like if your sign and my sign match we can hang at the clubhouse pool, even though you let your dog crap on my lawn every morning? I imagine advertising your political beliefs means you want people to come over and talk politics, which immediately alerts all normal people that you are one of those super-intense-yet-incredibly-dull people for whom social gatherings are spent in the driveway earnestly discussing the most efficient route home.

But then I thought about it and realized that maybe I was being short-sighted, maybe my aversion to these signs was just laziness and maybe these heretofore vulgar neighbors were really shaping the social consciousness of the neighborhood. If that’s the case then I couldn’t possibly let another day go by without proclaiming my personal feelings to the world, so I went right out and bought a piece of lawn art that expresses everything I feel about election season….an adorable garden gnome, bending over with his bare ass in the air.





 

Queenie is Found

Hello darlins!, Some of y'all have been wondering why I fell off the face of the earth a few years ago, but those of you with small children understand how a once intelligent, efficient, and otherwise fabulous person can suddenly find themselves adrift in a sea very tiny laundry, miles from land and without an oar. Once the captain of my own life, now merely a deckhand scrubbing unidentifiable goo from door knobs and walls. My best clothes relegated to the back of my closet lest they suffer the surprises left behind by someone insisting on feeding themselves but lacking the pincer grasp to connect with their mouth with any regularity. In my time away from you, I have produced not one, but two of these ankle-biters...er, lights of my life, hence my removal from cyber-society for so long. Because as any parent will tell you, children only need your attention when you sit down to do something else, and emails or any sort of correspondence are their first targets. Not to worry friends, in the time I have been gone from you, I have not stopped judging or berating. At some point I had thought that it was just the exhaustion causing my disdain, so I enhanced my daily caffeine intake with a few large sweet teas. But once the sugar was coursing sufficiently through my system, I took a moment to evaluate and discovered that lack of sleep did not, in fact, have anything to do with my evaluation that most folks just don't have any sense, and those that do continue to use it more for evil than good. So I have dusted the cobwebs off my laptop and rediscovered my inner Queenie-- not that she was ever very far away, tisking at my make-up-less face and pony-tailed hair, while we both frantically searched the shelves for a bottle of wine. But as I explained to her, it is useless to fret over one's hair-do when all of the hair around one's face has fallen out and is growing back at the pace of molasses in spiky clumps across one's forehead. It is also deflating, in every sense of the word, to try and squeeze back into one's pre-baby tops, only to find that they stretch to threads over one's rib cage and sag hopelessly where one's cleavage should be. And I did try and impress upon Queenie how ridiculous it would be to get all gussied up and go out to dinner, knowing that my eyes would be closing by 8pm in preparation for the thrice-nightly alarms sounding from the baby monitor, but you know Queenie, she'll hear nothing of it. Queenie believes a good eye cream and a good cocktail can fix just about anything, and you know.....she may be right. It's time to get my look to-ge-tha, honey. I've pulled those boobs right up from under my armpits and back into my properly fitted bra, I've sprayed my rooster bangs down until I'm a fire hazard, and I've spent a near fortune on whatever age-defying spackle the drag queen at the make-up counter pushed into my shopping bag. And if that eye cream doesn't make me look like the Queenie of old, then honey just pour those mimosas til I don't care! XXX