The past two weeks, me and the Gumpster have been focusing on making our mechanic a millionaire. Ever since I had the dastardly car wreck a few weeks ago, there has been a pattern of things going wrong. Rather like when you go to the doctor’s for one thing, get a new prescription for the new ailment, and that medication sets off a different issue….yep, it’s like that. The upside is that when I die, I will feel a great sense of accomplishment as I have made a mechanic rich, and put at least one of my dentist’s kids through college. This morning I have already taken Sam out for his daily game of fetch. This is done every morning, with the intent of making him go to the loo before I head out to work (he is an inside doggy). I wish I was a dog. Sammy is 12 years old and still gets excited about seeing a tennis ball. Personally, anything with the word ‘ball’ attached doesn’t elicit any excitement from me anymore, well not unless it has something in front of the word like ‘chocolate’, or ‘meat’…..it’s funny really how women change so much over time (of course I speak for myself, but secretly I know many of you are the same as me).

How is it that when I weighed less, everything about me was so very different? I felt more confident, I felt sexier (yep, I really did) happier, and even more intelligent? What is it about gaining a few – ok a lot- of pounds that annihilates all aforementioned healthy and happy feelings? Is weight really a true measure of our emotions, a currency we use to buy happiness, the result of our culture preferring skinny chicks?

It pisses me off……I used to think I was okay to look at, no oil painting, but ok…..who knew that men all over the world quietly yearned for women weighing three pounds with breasts the size of small planets and lips that doubled for sink plungers? Really, I know I’m getting old and the generation gap has grown as wide as my cleavage, but is it me, or do all the women that are touted to be ‘beautiful’ in magazines look completely emaciated like Victoria Beckham? I don’t mean thin, I mean they all look like they have spent their vacations as prisoners of war in some godforsaken country…..you could turn them sideways and carve the Sunday Roast….I don’t get it…..starve yourself, get a thin body, then pump up your boobs and lips…..Honestly, everyone looks like a PEZ dispenser to me. And here we thought women’s independence had come a long way….nah….society is still encouraging women to make men like us based on our boobs and not our brains……….Oh I know I probably sound like a jealous, bitter FAT woman….of course I am! But I do think that it just looks wrong. But hey, I am a victim of the current shortage of estrogen and multiple other hormones. My body’s shelves are empty of these delicacies, and consequently I spend a lot of time being MAD. Thinking about skinny chicks somehow got me thinking about old farts who have kids (with skinny chicks)….you know, like Michael Douglas, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Quinn (oops, he’s dead) and others. I want to know why it is cool for guys to have kids when they are in their seventies? I don’t mean guys who have never had families, but those on their third or fourth helping. I guess it’s easy for them, a purple pill, a naughty book/movie and they are quite capable of launching their little satellite into their new PEZ wives, or alternatively into a test tube to be inserted into a chubby girl who has no boobs or lips, but isn’t wigged about stretch marks.

Really, I read about some actress who was going to get pregnant via a ‘surrogate’ because she didn’t have time to put her career on hold to have a baby……translation “I am too chicken shit to go through labour and perhaps gain a pound.” Really, those women give the rest of us a bad name….. I have realised why we go through pregnancies when we are young, because I can’t even think about what it would be like to get pregnant in my fifties. I can’t imagine carrying a child at this age when I can barely carry my groceries….not to mention the mood swings from hell. Seriously…..no child would survive, I would make Joan Crawford look like Bambi. I am now on my third cup of tea this morning and it is only 7:30 – it’s funny how this new schedule has evolved on Fridays. I am very fortunate to have Friday’s off (something I do not take for granted after many years of two jobs). Gump leaves, heads out to save the world (and consequently my sanity), I throw Sam a gooey ball until he drops yesterdays dinner out of the opposite end it went in, and then I sit at this computer with no idea of what I am going to write until my fingers start moving on the keyboard. Sorry Readers……..whenever I read over the ramblings, and this might surprise you but I do, I seldom change anything except typos, and take out some of the offensive cussing. I am weird, and that makes you as bad as me for reading it….but there is safety in numbers right? Well you have safely reached the end of my thoughts for the moment. I have to stop here and continue on with my ‘other’ story, the one that is going to take us on the big cruise around the Greek Islands……it’s a murder/mystery, and I am going to introduce a character I hope to write about more….his name is Jago (pronounced Jaygo)….. Have a wonderful weekend gang! Enjoy the hints of autumn! Jude the big breasted, pouty PEZ.