I gave up television at the beginning of the year because during the week I was working all the time or taking care of my daughter.  I had no time for it and it was a significant expense each month.  Most weekends when my youngest daughter was with her father I was off somewhere else doing something with other people.   I am now month one into what will be an almost three-month recuperation.  Don’t get me wrong.  I can work since that requires being on a computer as I am now.  I can also get out of bed and go places – just not very far for very long.  So I am not going to Ireland in the snow, walking through deserts with a handsome companion, nor hanging out in D.C. Irish pubs running into aborigine diplomats from Australia. 

Just hanging around Orlando dealing with the mundane.   Here is what I mean by my summer of mundacity.  Prepare to be stupified with boredom.  God knows I frequently am.  I also miss friends something awful.  Spent way too much time in a sick bed the last seven years.  That is why when I get out of the sick bed I run off in search of something or someone interesting.  I am going to run like a scalded dog mid-September.  Do not try to stop me.

The clothes in my closet from the past seven years or so range from a size 7 to size 12 due to pregnancy, dieting, and illness.  Before my recent operation I wore a size 10 but was becoming smaller due to dieting.  The operation caused me lose several dress sizes so I am now a size 6 or size 8.  There is no rhyme or reason to my closet.  It is hard to get in there. I have to toss a lot of stuff meaning it is going to Goodwill.  My oldest daughter will be here this morning to help me to start what will likely be a weeklong project.

I will also be reading some Thomas Kuhn to prep to go to a meeting of my newfound Philosophy Group in Winter Park on Sunday.  I only had two days notice and must have something intelligent to say about scientific revolutions by 1 p.m. on Sunday.  Right now I’m thinking Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shift assumed such shifts were a natural occurrence.   Call me cynical but I see such shifts to be more a result of what Klein calls shock doctrine in that a particular group will arise to push change in attitudes/worldview in a purposeful manner.  It is sketchy but I am thinking about it . . . as well as how to express such an idea in public without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

 If pain allows then I might even go to an artsy movie at the Enzian tonight where one can have homemade hummus and a glass of wine while watching Cyrus.  That only takes three hours.  No.  I don’t know why any movie with Jonah Hill and that John C. Riley guy can be classified as artsy.  I liked Riley in Talladega Nights if that is what that lowbrow but very funny NASCAR movie was called.  I live near Daytona.  Sue me.  The Enzian movie curator is quirky.

The television is back and I am not using it to watch PBS or anything else that might improve my mind.  No I watch HGTV.  Last night was the first night with TV for a long while.  This brought back a bad habit of going to sleep with the television on which I must nip in the bud.  I wake up in the middle of the night to take pain medication and to drink a Boost.  Don’t have much of an appetite and that is how I guarantee my vitamins and minerals ;0)  I have been referring to this activity as PARTYING LIKE IT IS 2042 because that is when I will be 80-years-old.  I am grateful for the recent operation I am complaining about because now I get to be an 80-year-old.  However my reconstructed boobs are new so I will be an 80-year-old with 32-year-old boobs.  Gonna rule the nursing home dating scene.

So last night I was sitting there drinking the Boost watching Vern chastise a finalist during the closing moments of Design Star.  The designer contestant was named Chris and he was from Arkansas.  I know this because being a true Arkansan Chris felt the need to tell Vern this repeatedly driving the generally even-tempered to Vern to distraction and rudeness.  Vern told Chris to stop talking.  Yep Vern was rude.  Highlight of my 2042 party.  Never saw that before.  Chris was just doing what I do and what anybody raised in Arkansas will do.  I wrote about this early on when writing for Open Salon.  People from say Iowa do not seem compelled to say, “Hi I am George and I am from Iowa” when meeting someone new or explaining themselves.  People from Arkansas suffer that compulsion.  My celebrity piece of supporting evidence is Bill Clinton who is one of the most recognizable men on the planet.  Now that he is no longer president he just shows up after natural disasters or during tense hostage negotiations like a post presidential Underdog sent to save the day.  The first words out of his mouth tend to be, “Hi.  I am Bill Clinton and I am from Arkansas.”  As if the crackpot crazy president of North Korea cared what state in which Clinton was raised.  Anyway Chris was nervous and jabbering on and on about Arkansas which meant he had to present pops of yellow in room design because it recalled daffodils in Arkansas in the springtime.  That is when Vern told him to stop talking.

My name is Dorinda and I am from Arkansas. 

BBC America is on this early morning and I must be going to learn just how many pounds these old ladies got from selling those Georgian silver spoons.  If they got enough money they get to go on a charitable trip to East Africa.  Go old ladies go.  Wish I was going with you.  They are also examining an antique Japanese ivory carving that looks exactly like a half-eaten nasty old banana.  Some Japanese dude back in history had way too much free time.

I will stop talking now.