It’s really sad when you open your email server to discover that you didn’t even get any junk mail. Nothing. Send/receive complete. You click it again because that is virtually impossible but, no, nobody wants you. Maybe I should remove the spamblocker! I already did that. Wow! Lonely!

My morning routine has become… routine. Wake up to the daylight because there is absolutely no reason to set an alarm. Reach over and grab the laptop which is on the floor beneath the nightstand so the blinking lights don’t keep me awake. Open it up and check the email in case someone somewhere wanted to contact me between 3 a.m. and 6. Delete the ads. Check Facebook to make sure no one else is doing anything remarkable. Play the daily Trivial Pursuit Game and Crossword (good for 9-10,000 points that I have no idea what to do with). Blog, if I have an idea, or just go back to sleep. Listen to my heart pounding in my chest. The arrhythmia loves that moment when I first lie down. Breathe deeply and will it to stop… pounding, that is. It is gratifying to know that it still beats at all.

I was just looking at an ad for Levi’s Signature Jeans, promising a “thinner you”. What I want to know is, when you squeeze yourself into those jeans, where does the fat go? Does it pool at the ankles? Does it come brimming out of the top and flop over the waistband? Mine does. You wouldn’t know from the models of these slenderizing jeans. If they were any more slender, they’d break in a stiff wind. Where are our ‘truth in advertising’ laws when it comes to this stuff? Like the 16 year old model advertising wrinkle cream, or the obviously B-cupper advertising double Ds? I want to see a fat girl in those jeans! I want to see the blousy top required to conceal the role of excess body that oozes over the top of the waistband like a mushroom cloud. Or better yet, no top! Let us see the effects of squeezing one’s body into an ankle-to-waist girdle. Think of a plastic bag filled with water: if you squeeze the middle of the bag the water has to go somewhere! Why not advertise a waist to neck slenderizer along with the jeans. Can you picture the poor chub, her body locked into the vise-like grip of her slenderizing outfit and her head about to explode like a ripe pimple? I’m suffocating just thinking about it! I bought a tummy-tucker once. It looked great when I was standing up. When I sat down, it cut off my circulation. I looked and felt as if I had an inflatable tube around my mid-section. I had to sit bolt upright, pressing my abdominal muscles to my backbone, taking shallow breaths. Upon removal, the lines of the seams and waistband remained etched into my flesh for a week. Who thinks of these things? Give me an island and muumuus. Give me a sanctuary away from mirrors and let me live in my mind’s eye where I am always 26 and beautiful.