Stop, murder us not tonsured rumpots!

Last night, Princess Q walked past the entrance to my “office” and quipped, “Dad, can you say addicted?” This coming from the queen of AIM. It’s closing in on 3 am and here I am pumping out more narcissitic drivel. Judging by the details of my site tracker, my readers are no strangers to insomnia. But I have a confession to make. I’m on drugs. Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been under the influence. Prednisone. I’ve had Crohn’s disease now for over thirty years, but I won’t go into the shitty details. It’s a mild case, and when it flares up (stress will do it) I can usually knock it down with that wonder corticosteroid. Prednisone, like any other Faustian deal with the pharmacuetical devil, is a two edged sword. (honey get the blender, it’s time to mix some metaphores) It can erase my symptoms in a few hours and take my arthritic pain away with it. I feel fifteen years younger. I have way more energy than normal, I’ve eshewed my customary daily nap for more productive things. Well, blogging anyway. But on the other hand, you retain water, have a ravenous appetite, get agitated and jumpy, talk too loud and fast, and have problems sleeping. Not to mention the long term effects like bone loss and in males I think your dick falls off.
So the burst of energy that’s propelled my to keep this little celebration of myself going for three weeks now is fueled by drugs. I’m enjoying this exercise so much though, I’m really afraid that when I’m done tapering off the elixer, I’ll go back to my old lazy self, snoring away on the barcalounger instead of participating in this wildly entertaining ego circus. No! I shall persevere. I’ll overcome my natural lethargy. After all, I must think of my readers. Anyone? Hello?

Get Your Ya-Yas Out!

Earlier I wrote that I was going to explain the Ya-Yas. Of course they were named after the book by Rachel Wells but these Ya-Ya’s predate the book by at least a couple of decades. The first time I ever saw my wife she walked into a party at the Belvidere Museum¹, she was with the Ya-Ya’s. My calendar has a permanent repeating entry, “bec out” on Thursday nights. They call themselves Cookie, Higs and Swan and these girls know how to have fun. One is an escapee from a convent, one is a Wisconsin farm girl and the third is a small town Minnesota girl who grew up poor with an absent father and seven siblings. I don’t think guys do this. My pals and I don’t. For us if it didn’t involve killing something, competing in games, watching other people competing in games or fixing something, what’s the point. The thought of having a permanent night of the week reserved for hanging out is just too…well you know. We have a standing joke at our house. When my wife is telling me about her latest plans with her women friends, I put on a sad face and say, “I wish I had friends.”
Not that the Ya-Yas just hang out. They go to plays and movies and restaurants, they are regular bon vivants. Sometimes when the work week has been tough they do just hang, often in a room in Hig’s house known as the Ya-Ya room. Alcohol consumption is often involved. Otherr times they paint a room or have a garage sale or plan a party. I suspect they spend some tme bitching about their husbands, although my wife denies it.
Beck is a great friend, I can tell when I drop into her work world that people really like her. I think sometimes I get jealous of that. Sometimes it seems like she gives more of a damn about her friends than her family. I know that’s not true, just old Mr. Insecure popping his ugly head up again, but what good’s being married if you can’t occasionally bitch about it? One of the bonuses of the Ya-Ya sisterhood for me is that I’ve become pals with the other husbands. We play poker and fish and camp together and when we all get together we laugh so hard it hurts!

1. The Belvedere Museum: The house on the Robert Street Hill in St. Paul that I was living in. It was literally a museum to kitch, a college dorm room on steroids. but that’s another story.