I crack myself up, even when I'm asleep.

Last night, I dreamt I was driving down the main street of the old down town of my home town. My husband was driving our car, and he pulled over at a cafe/cd store (which isn't there in real life, except for the cafe). He said, "Get what you need, and I'll drive around the block."

So I went in, to this old shop with wooden floors, and worked my way through the cafe to the Virgin Megastore-type cd store in the back. This was a 5 & 10 in my childhood, and there were still elements of that in my dream: high dark ceilings, wooden display tables. I saw a table that held stationery, with a sign that said 30% off, so I looked to see if they had any Shag art. As I was leaning over, a clerk came up behind me and said something unintelligible about a nice bag. Nice bag? Huh? What am I carrying? I reached around behind myself to feel for my purse and realized that I'm only wearing a sweater and an olive green Coach hobo bag. My ass is hanging out.

"Damn! Naked AGAIN??!!" I yelped. I must be dreaming. I grab the clerk, to see if I can feel him, which I can. Never mind. I know I must be dreaming, and so I force myself to look around the store and confirm that I am, in fact, asleep. I then clap the clerk on the shoulder and say "Thanks, dude. I needed to wake up."

I leave the store, and wait on the corner for my husband to come back with the car. He does, but not before I've yelled at a couple of bad drivers for taking the corner too close. I get in the car, close the door, and wake up.

And yes, it was time for me to get up. As I said, I can crack myself up awake or asleep.

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time writing. Yes, I'm still annoyed by damn near everything. Yes, I am still surrounded by stupidity, incompetence and swine-like behavior. So why can't I rant? Have I lost the will to rant?

What a thought. Who would I be, if everything slid off me like water off a duck...

I entered a blog writing contest, the BlogMadness thingy, and, as my entry, submitted, not a rant, but my piece about death and the loss of friends.

And even as I did, the word came around about another college friend who has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bill Kelley, one of the biggest film junkies ever, and in a sorrowful coincidence, the best friend of the late and always lamented Leapin' Larry.

Which reminds me of a joke card about the good die young, and yet you, weenie boy, are still with us, celebrating another birthday. It was too cruel to send, and there was no way I could send it anonymously to the ex-husband, the Anti-Christ.

My good husband, the Renowned Local Artist, entered his first street show in years, and has decided to price to sell. If you are in Miami on February 21 and 22, stop by his booth at the South Miami Arts & Crafts Festival to pick up your own original work of art.

Finally, in this wandering entry, I leave you with a link to the Bush in 30 Seconds web site where you'll see some good ads. Too bad they'll never see the light of media play.

My parents drank. After work, before dinner, my parents would have a cocktail. When we dined out, they would have a cocktail. Maybe two, if things were really swinging.

I drink. After work, I have a glass of wine or two. I may have a martini or two instead. When I dine out, I'll have a cocktail, or two.

Growing up in the late 50s through the 60s, drinking was a sign of adulthood. A sophisticated adulthood. The Rat Pack, James Bond, Holly Golightly: they all drank.

I went away to college and learned how to hold my liquor. Much to my relief, I discovered that I am a jolly drunk. I do not get loud. I do not get sloppy. I do not cry, or fight, or pass out. I tell stories and jokes, and can keep them straight. I may have to speak more slowly than is usual for me, but I do not go out and get knee-crawling, commode-hugging, sloppy, shit-faced drunk. I am a respectable drinker, and I stop long before I have too much.

Drinking is now a sin, like smoking. But that's another topic for another day. It's drink I wish to address. I love alcohol. I love the taste of a single malt scotch. I enjoy the rituals of drink mixing. I love the olive at the bottom of the glass, after it has absorbed as much vodka as it can.

But I am slowly being forced to see that I am an exception among my friends, in that I can say no. I can choose not to drink, or not to drink another. I am dragging my mental heels, but I have to admit that a number of my friends are alcoholics. They drink because they must, not because they can.

I no longer want to be their enabler. I don't enjoy their company when they drink. I don't want to watch my one neighbor become disgustingly drunk after a single martini: channeling the snake gods and terrifying my other guests. I don't want to lie and tell her that I forgive her drunken, savage calls to me when she's had too many. I don't want to have those conversations with her husband, where he denies his own alcoholism. I don't want to hear about still a third neighbor, who is dying of cirrhosis of the liver, and had to be Baker acted just to dry him out enough to be put in a nursing home to die.

I don't want to go out with my friend and watch him pass out in his food, and beg to be let go to wait for the rest of us in the car. I don't want to be part of it when he embarrasses his wife or abuses the waitstaff.

I don't want to carry my other friend into my house to pour black coffee down his throat and wait for him to sober up enough to drive the two miles to his home.

What is wrong with us as a nation, that we cannot do anything without doing it to excess?

We eat to obesity, we drink to unconsciousness, we smoke to death, we drive too fast, we spend too much money and save too little. On the other side of that same coin, we refuse to allow others to make their own choices regarding birth control, or marriage partners. We terrorize people who smoke, wear fur, or eat meat. We insult, abuse, and attempt to discredit people whose political views are different from ours.

We are become a nation of intolerant extremists, and that terrifies me. Enough that I think I need to go home and have a drink.

I wrote this entry once today, just at the time that Blogger went down. It was, as so many of my posts are, well written, and heart-tugging. It moved effortlessly from pathos to wit and back to scathing sarcasm.

Too bad it went the way of the dodo, into pixel oblivion. Or o-BLIV-ion, as Riff-Raff would say.

So here's the thing. Tonight I will be in a safe place, far away from any windows when the midnight shooting-guns-into-the-air festivities begin in Miami. We seem to have the third world aloha* down. I will be indoors, my pets will be indoors, and the windows will be covered. The laws of physics still apply, friends, even if you are drunk. Goes up: comes down.

The only resolution I will make this year is to help regime change begin at home, in America, where I hope and pray with my whole Yellow-Dog Democrat soul that anyone other than Bush gets elected this fall. Really elected, as opposed to selected, if you know what I mean. And if you don't, then you deserve what you got.

I will drink myself silly tonight and toast friends missing, absent or dead. I will revel in maudlin emotions. I will not let anyone other than my husband see or experience that, however. And I'm not going to detail it here, tomorrow.

I'll end this by paraphrasing another pop-culture hero of mine, Ford Fairlane (aka Andrew Dice Clay) and say: 2003? I fucked it.

* the third world aloha: shooting guns into the air as an expression of a) satisfaction b) dissatisfaction c) violent disagreement d) violent agreement or e) any and/or all of the above.

I went to Disney World. Yes. I did. And I loved it. I love the sight of hundreds and hundreds of people in Santa Hats with Mickey Ears. I love the sight of many of those same hundreds in bright red sweat suits. In public.

On the other hand, I did not see a single instance of public personal grooming.

On still another hand, the husband and I got to engage in one of our favorite pastimes: being in other peoples photo shoots. On purpose. We wait until someone is about to snap a shot, and as we walk through the frame we turn and smile, or wave. We've been doing this for years, it started on our honeymoon, when we saw the same Japanese tourists day after day, with their video cams. We just started waving, and saying "Still married! Still honeymooning!"

This time we even got to toast the people at the table in front of us, as the waiter took the shot of the table from one end, thereby including us at the other end. What fun!

But seriously, I do love Disney. My girlfriend tells me that there is a special spot in hell for us stockholders, where we will be forced to wear the Mickey/Santa hats all year long... while we ride for all eternity through "It's a Small World." I say, as long as it keeps my portfolio from being in the red, I don't care what Michael Eisner does.

In fact, I have a couple of suggestions on how to increase the bottom line, if Mr. Eisner would like them, he can just drop me a line here at Girlyshoes.

The food at the park hotels is phenomenal, and when I get the chance, I will tell you about the 12 grain vegetarian dish I had at Jiko, in the Animal Kingdom Lodge. But tell me this: when was the last time you had a meal so good that you wrote a little love poem to it on the Styrofoam box in which you took the leftovers home? Yeah. Didn't think so. But this dish was so damn good, I did. And the two people I let see the leftovers ended up sticking forks in it and moaning in ecstasy as they ate.

I took lots of photos, which I may or may not post. I shopped at both the high and low end outlet malls. We indulged our audio/visual habit with trips to some obscure CD stores, and bought a box set of Rough Guide to Indian Music, a box set of Kurasawa's Samurai films, another box set of garage/psychedelic bands from England (Rubble) and the soundtrack to Our Man Flint and In Like Flint.

We bought books, and Legos and fabric for my quilting habit. We ate like starving stoats and all in all had a marvelous time, thank you for asking.

And you? Did you all have nice holidays? Or did they send you back to therapy for another ten years? Oh, well.

I guess that there are things more horrifying than watching a woman pluck her eyebrows down to fine lines during a morning public transit ride. Special thanks to the skank sitting next to me, who was using those tweezers that have handles like scissors, and who was quite ferocious in their application.

1. Pajamas as day wear

2. Milk containers as urinals (thanks to LaDiDa for the heads up on this one)

3. Tongue splitting as a fashion statement (Note: a google search for tongue "slitting" finds you all kinds of information on medieval torture. Tongue "splitting" which, as far as I can tell, is the exact same thing, takes you to news and body modification sites.... semantics)

4. Cosmetic foot surgery

On that last topic, I really must say something. My great-uncle was a cobbler: a man who made shoes. For three generations, my family made and/or sold clothing. Here's the sum of that collective clothing knowledge (ahem, clears throat for this pronouncement)

MAKE THE SHOE FIT THE FOOT, NOT THE FOOT FIT THE SHOE.

This is really a no-brainer, folks. If you have a big ole fat foot, buy big ole wide shoes. You don't need surgery to fit your size 9s into a size 7, just buy bigger fucking shoes. Shoe size is not a big deal. In fact, unless you are swapping them with your friends, nobody needs to know what size you wear. What is the big freaking deal?

Hey! I wear a size 9 shoe. Or an 8 1/2. Depends on the manufacturer and the cut. But you know what? Wearing a size 9 doesn't stop me from buying really pointy-toed shoes. So what if they look like something from the Florentine Renaissance? They are pointy shoes, you don't really think I'm cramming my toes all the way to the ends in them do you? No. My feet end somewhere around two inches in back of the point.

Here's a tip from someone who knows how to fit shoes. Put the shoe on. Stand up in it and put your weight on that foot. Then take your thumb and put it on the widest part of the front of the shoe. Press against your foot through the shoe. The widest part of your foot, the ball below the big toe, should be aligned with your thumb and the wide part of the shoe. If it isn't, then the shoe doesn't fit. If the wide part of your foot is forward of the wide part of the shoe, get a bigger size. It's that simple.

If you can't put your thumb between the end of your toe, and the end of the shoe (from the outside, of course, by pressing down gently on the toe of the shoe), then you need a larger size. Again, it is just that simple.

But carving off toes, in order to get a better fit? I'm sorry, but that is just fucking insane, and any doctor who would perform that surgery is immoral.