things that piss me off

i didn't wake up cranky. at least i don't think i did. i've been sick - a gift from baby jake "petri-dish" percival. i've been busy - Beloved's mother is moving up from brooklyn this monday, we're deep into spring spruce-ups, which this year, includes putting in a new driveway.

and then i read the new york times and the hartford courant.

maybe i just need to get back to the gym.

the hartford courant included an article about a woman who lost her job as editor of Better Homes & Gardens, was forced to sell her 7-bedroom colonial (yes, that's right ... seven BEDrooms, not seven rooms) and decamp to her SECOND home, on the rhode island shore. she's written a book about her terrible experiences, and i'm so happy to be able to tell you that at least according to the article, she's fine.

well, why shouldn't she be fine? people who have seven bedroom houses to sell, and second homes to move into SHOULD be fine. i'd be so much more impressed by her accomplishment if she'd had a couple kids to raise, a deadbeat husband and had to move into a mobile home. any fool can make a house on the beach look wonderful - especially if you have the resources necessary to tear the place down the way she did and REBUILD it from scratch!!!

so here's a message for the book-publishing industry (not that anyone's paying attention.) you don't have to publish my books. but could you spare us all this kind of drivel? any one with these kinds of resources SHOULD be fine, and if they aren't, they should be sent to toil ala mother thersa in the nearest slums (which won't be far, even from rhode island) so they can get their heads out of their asses.

now at least i understand why Better Homes & Gardens always struck me as light-weight and substance-less. it reflected the depths of its editor.

the second article - this one in the new york times - was about how lack of estrogen causes alzheimer's disease in women. according to the "scientist" who came up with this bright idea, she "noticed" that there's lots of little old ladies with alzheimer's. (i made a list of all the institutions that awarded this person her degrees. i want to make sure i avoid them.)

somehow, she's made a connection between drop in estrogen and rise in alzheimer's. her solution? REPLACEMENT hormones!!! (better ones, of course.) hooray! we'll pop better pills and we'll all be fixed.

what i'd really like to know is which Big Pharma company is giving her the money to do this "research."

i don't doubt some women suffer. i don't doubt some women have menopausal symptoms far more debilitating than mine. what i would say to those women is that those symptoms aren't indicative of what's going off in your body - they're indicative of what's going on in your life. in my world, manufactured substances of any kind are the LAST thing i want to put in my body and should be seen as the absolute last resort.

what i really wondered when i finished the article in complete disgust was....when's someone going to tell women it's okay to get old?

and furthermore, the war will end. blessed be.