yle="padding-top: 0pt;" class="paragraph_style_1">Let’s fight the good fight here for Christ’s sake!  Of course if you have the swine flu shingles Lyme disease and are behind on your property tax payments you’re screwed but still...if you only have one of these things you’re in good stead.

I’m just not buying all the bad news.  I mean we have a black President!  How enlightened is THAT?  And since life is such a friggin’ short trip I’m packing all the good times into each moment.  The swine I eat with mashed potatoes and gravy the shingles protect our little cottage from bird poop the lyme I put in my margaritas and the property taxes although pesky are a monthly given.

The Midlife Gals’ product is laughter and there’s nothing more productive than THAT.  I scoff at the bad news I make the sign of the cross (even though I’m a non-practicing Episcopalian) to fend off all the naysayers and assholes and I say pish posh to those newscasters whose business it is to tell us how horrible things are.  I’ve decided to only read good stories in the newspaper so it doesn’t take me very long to get through the whole thing now...leaving more time in my day to laugh and frolic and play.

I’m ALIVE.  I’ve got a kick-ass sister who loves me my cats use the litter box instead of the carpet and I don’t have to clean anyone else’s toilet but my own.  What could be better than THAT?

Go forth don’t worry be HAPPY!

KK

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Yeah times are harder now for most people.  I’m wearing last year’s sandals and pulling frozen foods out of the freezer that have been in there for months.  Now I don’t want to even dabble in ‘poverty consciousness’ but then again I have better uses for money now than splurging on boxes of frozen fried shrimp and Japanese egg puffs.  I have found the value in making my own King Ranch Casseroles with fresh ingredients and passing the gourmet isle at ‘Bubba’s Corner Groceries.

Luckily we have a mother who hates mortgages and always paid cash for her houses.  Our house is paid for.  I feel grateful for a nice nest a pretty garden and my 1998 Honda Civic.  Her name is Sateen.  She’s black and shiny like patent leather.  She gets me where I need to go and as per my mother’s habits she’s paid for.  All I have to do is keep the oil changed and hope that gas doesn’t go up to four dollars a gallon again.  If it does I’ll just have to cut down my trips to Steve’s Liquors and buy cheaper tequila.

It was news to me that all these people in the United States had been buying houses that they would be unable to keep if out of a job for even one month.  Great planning guys and now you’re screwed because the jobs are gone and you blew your savings on a six-foot flat-screen TV a big-ass Hummer and a double-wide baby carriage.  Time to sell stuff.  The only problem there is that nobody has the bucks to buy it. They’re out searching for matching Fiesta Ware at the garage sales in front of every McMansion in Austin with a ‘Foreclosure’ sign in front of it.

I see all of this as a good thing.  Wanton spending of money you don’t have and maxing out credit cards to pay for stuff that you can’t afford has lead us into dire straights and trips to the Goodwill ‘Business Attire’ racks for job-interview outfits.  We messed up and now we are all going to learn to pull in our belts and have a little discipline.

Going to the park is free.  Taking a walk by the river costs nothing and kids pee in the public pools just like they do at the Country Club.  The only difference is that they don’t serve fifteen-dollar club sandwiches by the pool and nobody cares if you drove up in a Mazda Mizer.

Good luck to you all and don’t worry.  Everything will be okay in the long run.  God is good and you don’t need new sandals.