A Series of Unfortunate Houseguests.

It's been an exhausting sort of 18 months, these months where blogging has been more frequently absent than present. It's been the kind of 18 months that you go into with the most noble of intentions, all smiles and sunshine but you get kicked in the teeth and handed a parking ticket instead.

After a foreign-exchange student gone wrong for 8 months, we played host, for 14 weeks and 3 days, to a family member fresh out of rehab. It's difficult to determine which was more taxing...the privileged child of wealthy parents who turned his nose up at all things American and put his pajamas on at 2pm, or the senior citizen who demanded gluten-free meals after three decades of consuming grain alcohol by the gallon.  Either way, they both slept in until 11 and wouldn't do their own damned laundry.

The damnedest thing is we spent months, MONTHS, trying to do the right thing, trying to take care of people who didn't appreciate it, in fact - resented it - and feeling guilty because we resented it right the hell back. You know how hard it is to hide in your own house? Stupid open floor plan.

Larger than that, some folks we considered dear friends, people we would've bent over backwards for...how do I put this eloquently? Let's see...they screwed us over. They said, "Hey, know what? Eff off, nice people. The fact that our utter lack of effort has affected your very livelihood doesn't bother us. And you know what? Screw your kid, too."

That. That's the shit that zaps the funny right outta me. That scrapes the goddamn give-a-shit outta me. Those symbolic house guests that you let into your life thinking they like you as much as you like them. But really they're just there for the free night's stay and the hot meal. They're going to use your good towels and leave the bed unmade.

My father, the person I'm probably most like, has a saying, "People are no damned good." I used to think it was an all-encompassing sentiment. But it was a warning. Take care of your own. Take care of the people who take care of you.

My husband, the person who has put up with me longer than anyone else has a saying, too. "You can't fix stupid."  I've been trying to fix everybody, with opportunity, with my time. I thought I could fix stupid. But people? Turns out they're no damned good.

So. This year and all the other years to come...I will not fix stupid. I will concentrate on treating the people well who deserve it. Starting with me.

Well, whaddya know. I almost feel funny again.

Labor Day 2011

Since it's labor day weekend, I'm now going to treat you to a minute-by-minute rundown of the two times I was actually in labor.*

Go grab yourself a big frosty Bloody Mary and get comfortable kids, this is going to be goddam riveting.

Not really.  I'm going to go outside with a beer and a bulldog and pretend I have a union job.

Happy three days off in a row.

xoxo,
LGBG

PS - Exactly why do people write about that for the whole internet?  Because, bluck.

Everything that's wrong in the world. A special LOVE edition of LGBG.

I have spent the last 48 hours desperately looking for a letter sent home by a teacher several years ago regarding Valentine's Day so that I could tell the internet about it... I've instead found my birth certificate, my sister's 10th grade report card and an overdue bill from the milk man so I will have to recreate it here for you from memory.

Disclaimer: The teacher was a  lovely woman in every way and a perfectly wonderful, engaging, charming educator.

Disclaimer disclaimer: But obviously had issues.

Disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer: Also, she looks exactly like a waitress at the pub around the corner so every time I go get a beer I remember this story.

It went something like this.



Dear Parents,


As Valentine's Day approaches, I would like you all to talk to your children about being especially careful of other's feelings.  Many children dream about Valentine's Day being a day to express their affection for someone special. Sadly though, other children use it as an opportunity for cruelty! They might purposely avoid giving a Valentine to someone...or even...send a Valentine with a negative message.

(Right about here is when I said, "Huh? Really? Freaking dreaming about it?" "opportunity for cruelty? OPPORTUNITY? For CRUELTY?" Also... do they even make valentines with negative messages? What are they? Scooby Doo looking at Shaggy and saying "Dude, you reek like bong water and van mattress, take a shower, a-hole." I almost crumpled the letter up right there, but I forged ahead. Because I am a good parent.)  

I speak from experience. I remember a particularly horrible Valentine's Day in my own elementary school years when one student had a "crush" on another and when her feelings were not returned by the object of her affection she was teased mercilessly and cried on the playground for an entire recess.

(Hmmm. You seem to remember this in great detail. Almost as if it had happened to someone rather close to you. So, what happened? You brought in homemade cookies and a dozen roses to the math teacher and he told you he was 30? And married? To a dude? Or was it that your evil twin who is now a cocktail waitress around the corner wrote you a mean valentine and read it in front of the class? Something along the lines of "Mommy says I'm the pretty one and you're going to end up alone?")

For that reason, please have your child bring enough valentines for the entire class, and do not put a "to" name on them OR a "from" name. This way, everyone will get equal attention from all members of the class and no feelings will be hurt.


Sincerely,


Your Child's Miserably Lonely to this Day Teacher


And that right there is why the Japanese are getting ahead.

I don't actually know what that means.

But I do know that in 1977 I would've been particularly thankful to have a teacher like this, because instead of an anonymous Holly Hobbie or Mickey Mouse card, I got a creepy big lumpy envelope from a chubby freckled kid. Inside was the kind of card you'd buy your grandmother, all covered in plastic with a photograph of flowers and some gooey poem about love. On the interior, he'd taped an Avon necklace. My stomach hurt for three weeks and I almost quit school. But I didn't make him cry on the playground.

Because I believe in love.

Also recess.

I don't actually know what that means either.

Cross walks. Cross dressers. Hot cross buns. It's been a busy day.

I live in a very, very doggy neighborhood. Just about everyone has at least one dog, several neighbors on my block have three or more dogs. Because we all have older homes on small lots, dogs are spoiledy-rotten house dwellers who get to go on walks a lot.  The few times Big Dude's labradorks have gotten out of the yard, they are not only scooped up and rescued within half a block, they're often taken back to someone's house and fed a nice warm meal before we are contacted. A couple of years ago, the big black labradork was missing for more than 24 hours without his tags on. While we were visiting every pound and dog morgue in the city, he was languishing on a floral sofa, being catered to by a pack of Girl Scouts who had found him, bathed him, fed him pizza, taken him to the vet for a check-up and were working on rewriting their parents' wills so that he might inherit a goodly chunk for his future care.

At any given time, I can look out at the parkway steps from my house and see doggies on leashes, doggies tied to strollers, doggies riding in strollers, doggies trotting next to runners, etc. And, generally, without fail, these dogs all have the same trick that owners proudly demonstrate.

It's the You-Sit-On-The-Curb-While-I-Step-Off-It trick. I agree that the intent is a good one. It allows the owner to check for oncoming traffic, and teaches Fluffy or Fido to not run in front of a car. However, my observation is that most people only make their dog do this if there's already a car at the stop sign. Which means, they're basically just showing off. "See here, car? What my St. Labradoodleshire knows? How to sit! Please wait while I reinforce his training on your clock."

And I patiently wait and nod with a knowing, "Wow, that's a super dog you have there, and what an original trick!" smile on my face.

This morning, though I saw the ultimate.

I was dropping the giant middle schooler off at his giant middle school. He hopped out of the car just as the light turned green, and I needed to turn right. But I couldn't turn right because Dudely Dogwalker wanted to cross the street and Denver says pedestrians in crosswalks have the right-of-way. FINE.  Please let me now paint you a picture of Dudely Dogwalker. Imagine if you will:

1. Dorothy Hamil haircut
2. Liza Minelli sunglasses. Large. Like 5" circles per lens.
3. White mesh tank top. Tight.
4. Levi's cutoffs, with an approximately 3/4" inseam. Again, tight. As in, I know for a fact he was circumsized tight.
5. Striped knee socks. Red and yellow striped.
6. Those Skecher shoes that are supposed to work your ass out.
7. Mesh backpack.
8. At least 6'8" tall, approximately 167 pounds.

Can you see this fella in your mind? Got it? Add a bitchy smirk. And a sweet little yellow lab who was in desperate need of a sandwich. The image should now be complete.

So Mr. Dudely "My friends call me Cameltoe" Dogwalker pulls the ultimate trick by parking the dog on one sidewalk and then sashaying across the street. Alone. At a snail's pace. With his carefully powdered nose in the air, completely ignoring the dog, the fifteen cars waiting to turn, and his gender. He then makes it to the other side of the street and, still not ever looking at the dog OR traffic, looks up to the sky and slaps himself on the denimed ass. This was apparently the leashless, collarless dog's clue to run to him.


The only reason his dog is alive is because I didn't feel like having to furminate my front bumper.  The only reason I didn't get out to kick his ass is because I had fourteen cars behind me. And pajama pants on.

But tomorrow I'm totally getting dressed and bringing an extra leash. Being weird-looking to get attention is one thing, endangering your doggy so that you can feel special is just plain wrong.

Does this Kindle make me look fat?

I rarely read the newspaper at all anymore. Mostly because piles of newspapers are annoying but also because:

1. They're all grocery store ads. I do not require advertisements to remind me to buy food. I also do not comparison shop for food. I go to the store, buy the stuff we eat and I leave. Because I flunked home ec probably. Also I hate the grocery store. I could link back to all the times I've mentioned that, but it would be very time consuming. Just believe me.

2. They're ridiculously biased and anyone who says they're not isn't reading the whole thing. I took journalism classes. It was, for at least three semesters, my major. And one thing I sort of remember from the whole experience, besides one really cool party called "the Dacquiri Factory" which, truth be told, I don't really remember AT ALL, is that you're supposed to be impartial. Go ahead and try and find an impartial newspaper article, you can't do it. Okay, maybe you can, but that would only be because you found an article about impending doom and despair due to weather.

3.They're full of excellent advice for criminals.  If you're a bad guy, and a dumb one, you need only read the paper for all kinds of cool ideas on excellent crimes. In the last six months, I've seen how to disassemble sprinkler systems, catalytic converters and frickin' doorknobs to get to high-priced scrap metals. I've seen diagrams for pipe bombs, and learned how to best sneak contraband onto airplanes. I don't know why they don't just put a map of my block and show where all the keys are hidden and the guard dogs who are sleepy or deaf.

4. Calvin and Hobbes. Gone. Enough said.

With that background in mind - I accepted a temporary subscription to the Denver Post on my Kindle, because it at least cancels out that "they pile up" excuse for not being aware of current events.  Have I mentioned yet my love of the Kindle? Oh sweet mother, it's the only device I value more than my Dyson. BOOKS! Delivered through thin air!  Portable enough to take entire libraries to youth football practices.  I received it as a gift from my sons and husband, who presented me also that day with a handgun...which caused me to realize that a) wow - they sure do trust me and have somehow gotten the idea that I am mentally stable, and b) they have no idea how much I don't like to be interrupted while reading.

So - I'm reading the Denver Post yesterday, on the Kindle, which basically means reading a headline and pressing "next page" because I'm annoyed or already know how to make that particular sort of bomb, when I find an article about clothes that make you look fat.

I perused it, thinking, "Umm. Tight ones? Horizontal stripey ones?"  But I'm pretty sure the author just made a list of all the stuff she hates, since at least 6 of the 20 things were particular types of shoes. SHOES. That make you look fat.

I'm no fashion journalist, but if your shoes make you look fat, dude..you're frickin' fat. The list was so random I think she just listed all the things her ex-husband's new girlfriend wears. It included two types of sandals, ballet flats, birkenstocks, t-shirts, rolled up jeans and cargo pants. Also shorts - all kinds of shorts. Apparently, just stay away from t-shirts, shorts and birkenstocks and you'll instantly be thinner.

Unfortunately, that's my entire wardrobe. Guess I'll just have to hide behind a newspaper from here on out.

A public service announcement, because I'm greener than thou. Also I care about the earth. You are very welcome, Ma Nature.

If you ever had the considerable honor to talk to me in person for longer than 38 minutes, I have no doubt mentioned to you the utter disdain I have for printed phone books. If you've never had that distinct pleasure, then you may have read about it here.

Even before Al Gore invented the Internet and put all the phone numbers you could ever want on the worldwide web (thanks Al!),  phone books bugged the living crap outta me. It's probably because I grew up in a community where seven towns fit in one tidy 1/2 inch book, yellow and white pages, and there was no need to print a new one every year because no one moved in or out. If someone died, you simply got out a Magic Marker and drew a line through their name. And it was a Magic Marker, because no one used Sharpies yet. Because Sharpies can't make you high. It was all we had, because cable TV hadn't been invented yet either.

When I moved away from the idyllic land of little phone books, I was amazed and dismayed by the stack of slippery yellow and white tomes that graced my steps. At first, I put them on the shelf, carefully folding the pages over for Pizza Delivery, Video Rentals, Drive-Up Liquors, Tanning Salons and University Note Taking Services. But a few months later, more books arrived. Wanting to be a responsible adult, I scribbled the numbers I used often on the cover and stuck the old phone books under the bed in case I needed to reference them. By the time a couple of semesters were over, I had enough phone books to prop up the entire Lollipop Guild at Thanksgiving Dinner.

Every apartment I rented, phone books appeared on the steps and more were hidden under the kitchen sink. I had an address book I wrote down the good stuff in, and threw the big books in the dumpster, effectively ridding half of the Oregon coast of old growth timber in the process. Later, I joined the ranks of the real world in advertising sales and learned that they have to print 80 billion phone books just to sell the ads, and they don't really care if you open them or not, just as long as some guy in a Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon sends his 8 kids out on every city block to deliver them, then they've done their part to get your ad in the hands of the people.

Still. Don't. Care.

Every 4 months, I get a plastic bag of unusable paper on my front porch and it just plain pisses me off. But the pain ends today. Because today, I found this:

http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/

And I clicked on some stuff and gave them our address and opted out of getting phone books. Forever.

It's because I'm all green and eco-awesome and I'm wearing vegan fair-trade shoes and weaving a baby wearing device out of hemp right now as I type on my solar-powered laptop made from recycled goat hair, grass clippings and soy.

Meh, not really. I'm just easily annoyed.

I'm not high quality enough to read Elle Decor. And by "high quality" I mean, I'm not a gay guy. Apparently.

I really have nothing against Woman's Day magazine. I bet, in fact, that loads and loads of perfectly lovely Women read it and it makes their Day.

But I don't. I don't buy it. I don't want to buy it. I've accidentally picked it up when I'm stuck in a waiting room and I have purposely put it back down and read old emails on my iPhone instead because I am very NOT interested in anything about it.

And dude, my homey Bobby Brown will back me up on this...that is my perogative.

However. A bunch of wise-asses at a giant media conglomerate called HFMUS have decided that I do want Woman's Day magazine. So much so, in fact, that they'll send me 17 of them a year instead of the magazine I paid for, Metropolitan Home.

It seems that Metropolitan Home (that I paid for, did I mention that?) has gone the way of so many other print publications. Even the 100-year-old newspaper in Denver is dead, so I can't really expect that Met Home is going to make it. I'm cool with that. I only bought it because someone was standing on my doorstep looking sideways at my bulldog.

So, a little postcard with a note that says, "Hey, we ran outta money, better go read your Kindle" would have sufficed.

But nope, the marketing geniuses at HFMUS sent me a little postcard that says, "Lucky You, Woman! We're sending you 17 issues of Woman's Stupid Day Magazine even though you only had 3 issues remaining on the subscription to the magazine you really liked! Yay!"

No big deal, right? I'll just call and tell them No Thanks and it will all be over before the mailman has time to wonder why I'm suddenly reading hastily published crockpot recipes on cheap paper crap.

But I couldn't let it go. Mainly because, every time I got Metropolitan Home Magazine in the mail, I thought, "Oh! I bet me and 150,000 gay guys are all settling in right now on our divans and just looooving this tile!"

Are 150,000 gay guys going to also going to get Woman's Day Magazine? I'm no gay guy, but if I was I am pretty sure that'd piss me off. Did they just sign me up for WD because I have a female name?  Being the Encyclopedia Brown Internet Detective that I am, I looked it up.

Seems that the rat bastards at HFMUS are not sending everyone WD. In fact, they are sending their "HIGHEST QUALITY SUBSCRIBERS" Elle Decor magazine.

Mother effers. Where do they get off deciding who is and who is not "highest quality?" What are the determining factors?  I downloaded the advertising sales media kits to read the demographics of WD and Elle Decor. I won't go into details, but apparently, the asshats at HFMUS have decided I am ten years older than I really am, my home is worth a tenth of what it actually is worth, and my hobbies include playing harmonica with my uncle daddy while he taste tests moonshine. Really. It said that. Maybe.

And who is to say that people in that demographic don't still really really like to look at pretty tile? Seems to me, the less my house was worth, the more I'd want to see fancy ones. I'm not saying it's just because the parent company of HFMUS is a bunch of snotty French guys, but I'm not saying it's not, if you know what I'm saying.

I feel like the cool kids won't let me sit at their lunch table.  Somewhere, 150,000 gay guys are saying, "Finally! I was sooo tired of hanging out with her."

Sit on it.

This summer we spent days upon days on youth baseball fields, which means one thing: PortaPotties. Well, it means all kinds of things actually. Including feet sunburned with sandal patterns, raw tongues from sunflower seed overindulgence, children in doubleknit polyester...but also: PortaPotties.

PortaPotties that are not regularly maintained, emptied, cleaned out...whatever it is they do to above ground temporary toilet facilities sitting awkwardly and not quite level on old pallets in the middle of a ballpark. And, while I've learned to totally avoid hydration or elimination of such on these days, my friend Anne's little girls are not quite so finely in control of their bodily functions and are forced at least once per game to enter the fiberglass hulls of stench. Their little whimpers of "Momma? I gotta go..." usually come at a really convenient time of the game, like when their brother is up to bat or about to steal home. This is when I offer up a silent prayer thanking the powers that be for male children who can pee pretty much anywhere.

At one such game, Anne sent the older of the girls to the potty ahead of her so she could watch their boy's at-bat with the stern advice: LILY, DON'T TOUCH THE SEAT. Seconds later, she ran to catch up, opened the door and found her freckly-sweet curly haired angel proudly sitting on her hands so her bottom wouldn't be on that icky seat. Her blood-curdling scream nearly stopped the game.

I hearkened back to a Phillips 66 station in New Mexico, circa 1972, where my stunned and horrified mother saw exactly the same thing. We had always been warned to not let our bottoms TOUCH THE SEAT. Stand. Squat. Anything, but there were malicious diseases and terrible consequences to be had should any part of our little backsides came in contact with strange porcelain. Considering all these factors I did what any self respecting five year old would do to keep their bottoms off of something. Sat on my hands. And I'd been doing it for years before I was finally caught.

A question. What disease exactly enters from a non-porous surface through the back of the thigh? What germ is quick enough to stick to your leg and crawl its way up to your nether regions while you pee? We wear shorts on public buses. We wear shorts on amusement park rides. We wear shorts on grody ballpark bleachers and community park picnic tables and tree stumps. Why oh why oh why is it horrible to sit on a toilet seat?

I'll tell you why. Because of the Hover Generation. The very same people who holler at us not to touch the seat are the very reason we cannot. Because of their SHS Technique (Squat, Hover, Spray) we are all forced to do the same. Their paranoia caused by some middle school hygiene class from 1954 has made every public restroom and outhouse in the country disgusting. If men peed all over the seat women would throw fits, write books and call Dr. Phil. But they think nothing of hiking up their skirts around their midsections, blasting urine all over a public place, smoothing their skirts and smiling kindly at the next poor being waiting for the stall.

I would like to propose the following, slightly inspired by Fonzie.

Just sit on it.

Sit the hell down.

All of us.

Every woman out there. Save your thigh muscles for the gym. Relax. Put your bare ass on the seat and pee in the water, friends. It will be liberating. It will be tidy. It will put the creepy wax paper toilet seat cover people out of business. Which is probably an eco-friendly gesture. You'll save the planet and little girls all at the same time.

Respondez sil vous plait. Just not respondez TOUT sil vous plait.

You know how when you try to delete something Windows pulls all this crap and says, "Really? You really wanna delete that? You sure?" And you're like, "Dude. I pushed delete for a reason."

I contend we need exactly the same function whenever some a-hole pushes REPLY ALL on a group email. For example, when a delightfully enthusiastic mommy tries to let the entire baseball league of 158 players know that her child can, indeed attend the end-of-season BBQ, this little program could pop up and say, "Really, Dumbass? Really? Do you think the other 157 families on this email give a mother-lovin piece of hell that your sweet little Kailey/Kiley/Keifer/Keenly/Whatever is going to attend?"

And then the delightfully enthusiastic mommy could stop to think. And she might think, "Yup. Everyone should know that." And she'll click "Yes."

And then the program could pop up another window that says, "ARE YOU SURE? Because you're totally going to look redorkulous and people will totally make fun of you, possibly on their blog that fives of people read?"

And then the delightfully enthusiastic mommy could say, "Why so many questions? OF COURSE! We're delightfully enthusiastic! People love that about us!"

And then the program could sigh really loudly and let the delightfully enthusiastic mommy type "BARRING INJURY OR BAD WEATHER...WE'LL BE THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" in all caps. With fifteen exclamation points.

And then, sadly, a lone blogger will recreate the fifteen exclamation points. And the false enthusiasm. And pour herself another lemonade vodka. And she will sigh too.

PS - You should probably know that I did not really pay that much attention in French class, so there is a very likely chance that I did not say what I meant to in the title, but oh fricking well, it's a pretty good guess for someone who took French like 25 years ago, so deal with it. I'm German.

Dogs don't even LIKE mimosas.

So, apparently having a twelve-year-old is so traumatizing you can't write a blog post for at least two weeks. Or, maybe it was seeing this that sent me screaming into a closet scared of the planet Earth and all humanoid creatures who inhabit it:I know what you're thinking. "A cute widdle pink bike trailer?" Let me clarify. This is not a trailer for putting your darling daughters with Shirley Temple curls in and pulling them down a flower-lined pathway whilst they eat ice cream cones and think happy thoughts. I saw this trailer, being pulled by this bike...The woman driving said bike was wearing, of course, pink biking shorts, pink biking jersey and a pink helmet. Still not enough to cause the trauma I experienced. Stupid? Yes. Matchy? You bet. Ridicilous get-up for a woman pushing 60? Oh yeah. But the kicker, the thing that made me question EVERYTHING in life was what was in the trailer. Her grandchildren? Groceries? Nope. This. This was in her peptopink trailer:


On a leopard print doggie bed. With that exact skirty fruity haircut. Lest you think the poor little creature was disabled in someway, which crossed my mind after I shook off the creeps from seeing Grandma bend over in those shorts, he wasn't. He had a PINK leash which she attached on his PINK bandana and sashayed him down the sidewalk that she parked her 15-foot long contraption in the middle of.

Did I mention we were at a dog park? No? That is because we were NOT at a dog park. We were at a GOLF COURSE. Granted, it wasn't exactly the country club, just a city course, but really? You not only own all this crap to take your dog FOR A BIKE RIDE, you then take him to SUNDAY BRUNCH AT THE GOLF COURSE?

While Rizzo was certainly the most flamboyant, I will add that her and little Fluffy were not the first dogs to attend Sunday Brunch at the Golf Course...we had already been joined by a 150-pound drooling mastiff and a sprite Springer Spaniel who was so Well Behaved that his owner didn't even bother to leash him. At the golf course. At brunch. Good boy!

What. The. Hell. It's gone too far, people. Is it just laid-back Colorado where were take our dogs everywhere? You cannot walk through a Home Depot without having your crotch sniffed. The dudes have come home with dog poop on their shoes from inside the Bass Pro Shop. I've seen giggly twenty-somethings shopping for GROCERIES with a labrador puppy in their cart. And now we take them to brunch. At a golf course. In a pink fricking trailer, because everyone knows, dogs hate to walk. I totally blame PetSmart for giving people the idea that dogs should go shopping. Or maybe Paris Hilton. Yeah, let's blame Paris Hilton, too.

I understand that you love your pets, people. Stay home with them, then. Take them to a park or a lake. Take them on a hike in the mountains! They're just to the west a few minutes. Sure, not as many people will see all your Interesting Canine Gear and Matching Outfits, but I promise you'll have a nice time, and you can put pictures on your Facebook page so everyone will still know that YOU and YOU ALONE are clever enough to own a dog and put a bandana on it.

Should I suddenly disappear, check the 'blog ideas' folder on my desktop because it has at least 15 unfinished TOTALLY HILARIOUS posts in it.

However, in the meantime, I just want to let you all know that today I followed a car down the street. A brand new car with the temporary plates on it. A brand new shiny car that probably cost at least $40,000. And the new owner was so pleased with their purchase that they had already personalized it with two very awesome bumper stickers.

The first...a simple and lovely peace sign in a little circle. Ah. What a lovely and timeless bit of graphic design brillance - and a beautiful message to boot!

The second...a little circle with two words in Helvetica. "Want Less."

What the hell, new SUV lady? So...I should want less than peace? Or, I should want less than a new car? Or are you even talking to me? Because really I am pretty sure you have no right to boss me around, especially about wanting, especially because you're pretty much wanting an unattainable world fricking state afterall, and you have a brand new car. Or maybe you're simply describing your own mood...like, "Hey I am totally at peace and I don't have to want anything anymore because now I have a new car."

Either way, you're pretty much an ass, and you're damned lucky my husband didn't let me upgrade to the "Villian Package" at the Toyota dealership, or I'd have rocket launchers in my front bumpers and those totally awesome sawblade things on the side like the bad guys had in Grease, so when I pass you, I'd slice the shit out of your new, peaceful, unwanted car.

OH - but I would like to give total props to the frickin' GENIUS who is SELLING "Want Less" stickers to people. Dude, you ROCK. I bet it's completely awesome to hear people walk by your little sticker store and say, "Oh my God! I want this! It totally conveys my non-materialistic ways and will look awesome on my brand new car!"