Sometimes, when you just have to bite the ole 'responsibility bullet', put the laundry in, scrub that burnt grilled cheese crust off the still-soaking pan and get the veggies ready for steaming, it's a tad less tedious if you have the TV on (volume very loud) in the background. Sometimes.
Now there are alternative 'carrots'. Like today, I made reservations to fly North and visit the daughter and her fam who said "No!" to being a Southerner. It was a fun chat with a travel agent - an Idaho native. She was pleasant, funny and professional and, obviously, when faced with the 'big question', she decided to leave her hometown hood for a barely-remembered local to drive around in a 16-wheeler, repeatedly losing the truck and the huge baking potato splayed across its middle.
You may recall, we recently moved to a decidedly rural, picturesque, prosaic area of Virginia. Indeed, I get lost when driving along one white-gated pasture after another. I could just kick myself because my parents weren't Holsteins! City-raised, ambling through this overdose of NATURE does nothing to improve my already bruised mental status so a retreat from the un-natural world of TV advertising has become a nonpareil when it was once non-existent.
Today, I was treated to a head shot of a whining young married posing the question that must be consuming her sisterhood, "Ladies, are you as tired of NOT being able to find the perfect, most comfy recliner for your hubby as me?". (That's not even rhetorical. Unbelievable comes to mind.)
This travesty was soon hooked, replaced by a pert and serious journalist giving us the heads-up on what we may have time to learn- today's news. Her selected 'MO' was the 'no-lead-in-snippet-of-the-meat-of-the-matter'. Alabama's governor was seen sourly baring his conscious - smothered in rural,garden-fresh garni from his estranged wife's new green bank account. It seems our remorseful state leader is stepping down, having stepped in and out with one of his underling aides. Back to the ADS, pu-leez!
There is that poor dear literally hopping up from her seat in the center of a theater row, whispering embarrassed, "Excuse mes" as she is pulled down and forward in her trek to the aisle, apparently at the insistence of of an animated, bloated, determined bladder. After enduring several such humiliating exits, she takes a stand (and presumably a seat) wit, "That's it. We're going to the doctor.".
And she's not alone in facing absurd resolutions. The asthmatics, the forgetful, the overweight, short of breath, blood-clotters, joint achers, complexion-pocked, heart-beat blocked eve, the sleep under-stocked - all malingerers NOT to the malaprops flock - your friendly PHARMACIST. He's got the stuff - that gels your feet when you can't jump, that tells your heart how fast, slow or strong to pump. The MAN.
The medication, information and cost for this remediation concludes the cheering and he goes on to 90% of what he's to say - the AUCTIONEERING! His tongue came to the fork in the road - and he took it - and us.
That yellow brick road was fun but don't kid yourself into thinking you won.That road morphs to quick (very quick) sand, and you're swallowed into the dire,fatal even,things that can possibly - indeed already may have - happened, befell the cure-taker. Buyer beware. You can lose more than your hair. If brevity is the SOUL of lingerie, CYA-jargon is at the very HEART of the "info-mercial" that 'drapes' to the point of smothering you MEDICAL HEART. I wound up catching too many glimpses of insanity-pushing and no diversional and really helpful data.
I tell folks we moved to the "Plantation". I've counted 14 spots per night dealing with death and burial preceded by spots pushing 'company/care/sequestration' for the older set, the soon-to-be planted. Their "NATURAL HABITAT"? Think I'll take a solo trip to a weekend spa, then come back, rested, but not bested. And just munch on the ole 'responsibility bullet'. Ya know?
Later, Lorane. . . .
