Retirement

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Cells and Hells

I don't know about you but I think this weather is enough to qualify to be some level of hell in Dante's inferno. Weather this year has been an absolute fiasco. We have been from buried in snow, to tornadoes and now we are melting in this horrible heat. To walk across my yard rather reminds me of walking on shredded wheat cereal. Well, except where the crab grass has taken over. It is about the only thing surviving this inferno we call summer. The only rain we have had has come with storms that scare the beans out of us... whatever happened to those nice summer rains?

I am beginning to wonder if there is some truth to the Mayan Calendar ending in 2012 and all the rumors associated with what that means. Life on earth has never been “static” like we would like to think it is... but I would prefer not to see it change to a point where the roaches are all that is left. I hate roaches. And spiders, I hate those too, and ants, I don't like them either at least not in my house. Sometimes I wonder if we are too informed, there is so much bad news that permeates our lives now. News crews seem to gravitate to the bad like bees to honey. I know we should all be informed, but dang, how much bad news can we take? It isn't like I don't care... it is just so depressing to hear constantly about all the things that are wrong with our country, the world... everywhere. I am sure there was a time when just as much was wrong -we just didn't know about it all at once.

Growing up in a somewhat “kinder” time was preferable to what times have become, or are we just dwelling on the bad and the negative? I always thought that the powers that be in the area of psychiatry said that if we dwell on the negative, we will subconsciously make the bad come true. If that is so, then how much of what is going on in the world is a result of everyone dwelling on bad things that happen? Could we be creating more bad by being so inundated with it in the news, in the paper and just about everywhere we turn?

Sometimes I think there is just simply too much going on. We tweet and twitter and facebook our mundane lives and then make people famous for doing nothing but being rich or beautiful. They are famous for being famous but they didn't get there for any real talents, accomplishments or contributions. We are more concerned with plastic surgery for bigger boobs, erection dysfunction than we are with finding an energy alternative to gasoline. If all the time and energy we have spent on frivolous crap was spend on something actually useful, I am willing to bet it would be astounding where we would be at this point in time. We have many TV shows based on “housewives” arguing like hyenas over a carcus, not to mention their lifestyles are as far removed from the norm as you can get. I guess the average American lifestyles are far too boring, even though that is where the real heros and heroines are and will remain quietly and obscurely living their lives. We look at their lavish lifestyles and then look at our own and feel like somehow we have failed or lacked some element of luck. I have to wonder when actual reality ceased to exist at least in the media.

The average person in the US is probably walking around with a phone that cost more than more than my monthly mortgage payment. Makes sense to me!!? If you look around when you are at a stop light, half the people you see driving their cars will be on their phone or texting while making a feeble attempt to drive. I have almost been hit more times than I can count by some idiot with a cell phone stuck to their head -their brain not actually functioning in the drivers seat even though their body is sitting there. I don't care if they want to drive off the road and hurt themselves, but I don't care to go with them.

I am not sure I fully understand this need to stay in constant contact with someone. There are thousands of tweets each day to keep their follows informed of very important things like when the tweeter is in the loo. Not really but that could happen! What is this need to know everything that others I doing? I couldn't care less about the activities of people I know on an hourly basis. I don't tweet or twitter, I find it stupid, annoying and useless. It's like getting a gossip text update. I can live without that for sure. If I want gossip, I will go buy a National Enquirer or such... at least those are entertaining! People tweet nude photos of themselves and seem to forget those too can be forwarded... they are traceable-- how stupid have we become?

Don't get me wrong, I love my computer and my cell phone but enough is enough. I find it unbelievable what cell phones and the integration of the internet into the phone has done to us. It is fantastic and at the same time it has made too many people into mindless imbeciles obsessed with a bit of technology that fits into their hand. Cameras are everywhere and just think we used to be concerned about Big Brother, when the fact of the matter is –WE are Big Brother.

Cell phones have become everything to some people. Ugh, I just shake my head and remember when a phone was a phone and there were no answering machines. We didn't die because we missed a call. We didn't die because we missed a message. Priorities were different then. Life was simpler then. I used to ride my bike, play in the yard and use my imagination to invent or dream whatever I wanted. I didn't need a phone or a computer or a X-Box to do that. Imagination is free and far more rewarding than paying to use someone else's imagination.

It is if the world is a preteen that obviously has a ways to go to be an adult and act like one... and is right in the middle of a giant temper tantrum. Hope we grow out of it before it really is too late.

Hmm... what AM I doing here?

I really don't know what made me do this... perhaps a little boredom and perhaps a little curiosity. I googled the words "women who choose to be single" and got basically nothing back. There were links to dating sites, links for men who choose to stay single but not a lot about women. I was just curious as to what other women have to say about choosing not to date anymore and who have no real desire to get married again. I happen to be someone who has no children either, so that really makes me an American oddity. I know the looks and have heard the whispering... wondering if I am a lesbian, but no one has had the nerve yet to ask. The answer is no, I just was fed up with bad marriages followed by a lot of bad dating experiences.

As I got older I noted that the men my age wanted to date much younger women, and did. Some ending up with very young children and a youthful wife who ditched the marriage, usually made some kind of financial profit and left this middle aged man to split his time to work, take care of his kiddos about 50% of the time -leaving little time for dating -not to mention the fact that many women his age would run away at the thought of dating a man with children under the age of 10.

I had a few long term boyfriends who, well... it just ended and not in a pretty way. I ended up single and on very odd dates with leftover men who were trying to sell me something or most who where just looking for a strings free good times and would say or promise about anything to accomplish that. I thought that ended with high school or college, but I was really wrong about that. My bad. I find myself much more content without those bad heartbreaks and ions (frustration, altercation, misconception, misinformation, aberrations...).

Now I find myself having not dated anyone in over two years (and wouldn't know how to act if I did). I wonder if that was a mistake or a good idea? I am not miserable alone, although it would be nice to have someone to do things with and actually appear to fit in out there in society. Where I live, singles hide as though they were lepers. This area is all about the married people and family values and no one knows what to do with a single women except ignore her. Couples don't want me around, and feel awkward as do I. I can't discuss the joys of motherhood with other women, which is usually the prime bonding agent among women. I am more prone to discuss home repair or lawn mower maintenance that the joys of finding a great diaper bag or which baby food is better  -which puts me in a male oriented arena. This isn't a great ice breaker for making buddies with wives. But since I own my own home, I have to know how to do some things that are not the norm for a lot of women, at least not in these here parts.

I was just wondering if there were other women out there like me who felt they were quiet the misfit into the USA pond of family values.