If you walked a mile in my shoes, you'd have gigantic blisters

I'm sitting here thinking about the feasibility of suing the company that made the shoes I wore today. I think I could get punitive damages at least. They're so cute, with heels and a sassy little thong between my toes, and now, 12 hours after putting them on, I curse whoever made them with a plague on all his houses, and I would give them to charity, except I don't want destitute people getting blisters either.

I think, after riding behind the fifth car in two week that either didn't have a muffler or the muffler was there strictly for show, it should be a national law that cars have to pass emissions tests. Now, before you start calling me Moon Queen and signing me up for Greenpeace, hear me out. Yes, it is truly awful for the environment to have your car just shooting out exhaust that smells like burning tires and prison, but you know what else? It's bad for me. My allergies and the Bubble Girl persona started when I lived in Philadelphia, PA, not because of trees and flowers and dust, but because the city, God bless it, emits more pollution than I believe any other U.S city, except for a few in California. In the actual hub of the city, you almost can't breathe for the cars, buses, weird grates that smell like people dump their septic tanks down there, the occasional person peeing on the sidewalk, etc...So, yeah, it's my personal opinion that maybe we don't worry about Mexicans who have been living here for 30 years and working their asses off. Maybe we worry about the fact that none of us can breathe properly.

I had a very strong memory of my dad today, and it was so weird how it happened. I was on my lunch break at work, and a very irritating person was discussing an alleged bill that Obama has proposed to add a 1% tax to some banking transactions. Where do I start???

A. Don't randomly bring up politics at work, for God's sake. Even I know that. If I went around espousing "I worked for John Kerry in '04, I voted for Obama in '08, and I do it again if he ran tomorrow," it would be akin to me going to an Alabama game, stripping down naked with the words "Bear Bryant was a homosexual," and running around the stadium. Generally not a good idea.

B. How exactly do people think we are ever going to get the country out of debt? I mean, really, I'm not kidding. If what this person was saying was true, and I'm not sure it was, a 1% tax would be added to paycheck deposits. Yeah, I said 1 percent. If that were true and it actually helped the economy, seriously?! That's why you want to bitch at Obama? Then, I really got nothing. Be sure to have some Earl Grey for me at the Tea Party. We should clearly just continue to overspend what we don't have, rely on credit, have unemployed people taking three vacations a year, and everything will work out fine. Do you know what the word sacrifice means? No, none of us do because this generation, and the one before us, I would venture to say, is spoiled rotten, expects to get everything they want now, now, now and knows nothing about what it means to cut back and save money. We're never going to progress without some modicum of sacrifice. Period.

Sometimes, okay, most of the time, I feel frustrated. It seems like I expect things to go one way, and they go another. I don't really do all that well with change, but I think I'm getting better. I had to kind of realize that no matter what I want to happen, and oh, the things I want (monkey butlers, a wine tap in my car, to have the financial freedom to write my best-selling novel, a baby without giving birth or adopting, minions), but what I want doesn't matter. God and the universe always have other plans. What I've gotten better about is how I cope with these things. You can't change other people's actions or behavior, but what you can change is your reaction and how you cope.

And that's what I've changed. I am 33 years old, I weigh more than I want, but my face is still really nice, I have excellent hair, a vocabulary, speech and spelling ability I'd match against anyone, my husband is the most amazing, sexy, protective man I have ever met, and he can reach whatever's up really high, and he fixes stuff...and cooks and kills bugs when I have a "Crying Game" moment and refuse to roll out of the fetal position until all bugs are dead, and I have a lot of people who truly love and care about me. What else is there? The rest is a ride to be enjoyed and used as a learning experience should things not go my way. I refuse to stress out about inconsequential things, and I want for people to think that knowing me enriches their lives. Hopefully, that's true, that I'm the kind of friend you'd want to have...