Ok, I got high-jacked from writing silly verses (actually I am finishing up lead sheets of my songs before the table read, but that music stuff is pretty fun too.)

Men, here's the thing...We don't hate you. We have never hated you. Even - and this is on us - when you got drunk and incredibly stupid.

I saw my mother help my drunk teenage brother crawl out of the car he had just driven home. I watched her lift my dad from the floor after he fell in his drunken vomit. I did similar things. I said I was driving when my stoned boyfriend wrecked my parents' car. The lesser drunk, I drove shit-faced men home routinely. I rescued a guy friend with epilepsy who took acid and had a thirty minute seizure. This is what we do.

We have a song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnlU6rPfwY

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me, If I spring a leak she mends me, I don't have to speak she defends me, A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one!

We have a movie: Leaving Las Vegas

We have a book: Women Who Love Too Much

,

So yes, that's "on us" to be naive enough to think we could change you. Oh hell yes. 

I am mentioning all this because - oh so predictably! - the Kavanaugh hearing seems to have unearthed new victims and they are not women but men who have their panties twisted because they feel vulnerable, I guess. 

And this is a good thing. 

Not because we hate you, but because it's a human condition and women have known it since, well, before our ancestors stood upright. 

It's part of our - women's - physiology, of course. We carry on the species, so yes, we were dragged into caves or under bushes or behind trees where our screams wouldn't be heard. And that cave-mentality continues even to today, where some (likely drunk) men think that what they want (from women) is their right to have. Yes, the brutality of it IS archaic, I know. But we all still have that tiny brain stem to blame. The thing is that we have also have thousands of years of evolution and the glorious functioning of the rest of our brains; we can choose to not be apes. (Apologies to all earlier primates.)

So we have all shared a role in this and what's appropriate - now - is that we ALL acknowledge it. 

In a nutshell, here's what we - I - would have preferred to hear from Brett Kavanaugh...

"Christine, yes, I remember you. We were not close friends, but I do remember you. I have hazy memories of those days but I did drink a lot at those parties. We had drinking games where the idea was to get as drunk as possible. If I forced myself upon you, I am so sorry. Those aren't details I recall - I have no memory of what you have described  - but I understand that someone sexually assaulted you.  I want to help you in any way, but more importantly, I need to be certain of myself - of who I am or who I could be with enough booze. Maybe a lie detector test or an FBI investigation or interrogations of every one of our friends from back then will give you and me some measure of comfort, and IF a drunken stupid me did this to you, I need to know for sure."

So is that hard?

(Please, please, please, please forgive me; but I MUST end on a lighter note.)

"That's what she said."

I

A musical!

A musical!

Here, this will be in your head all day, guaranteed…

https://youtu.be/0aiKosNOMRE

A musical!

Writing silly rhymes is fun and pretty damn easy, too.

(Thank you, RyhmeZone!)

PLUS, it worked! 

I could JUST NOT be intensely troubled by the Ochre Joker while writing silly and irreverent songs!

This story - at least the I am Bill W. one - is well known. Somewhat.

In a nutshell, Bill Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous and all the other Twelve Step programs which sprang from AA.

BUT, Bill’s great defeat – his enduring regret – is that he never convinced Ebby Thacher to join him “on the broad highway”.

And, oh so ironically, Ebby is the ONE person who was able to convince Bill to get sober! 

Years before Bill spread his “news” to Bob Smith and they began to work together (but separately – Bob was in Akron; Bill was in NYC), Ebby had approached a drunken Bill with religion – a good ol' fashioned Christian conversion! He showed up at Bill’s after being “missing in action” for years of street living and drunkenness. 

The OXFORDS – an early 20^th century "high brow" Christian social group had bailed Ebby out of jail. Literally. So he was grateful. Plus, he liked that the OXFORDS all had money and that they thought HE did. (He'd squandered his inheritance before he ended up homeless. Maybe the OXFORDS still thought there was a nickle to squeeze somewhere because they generally INSISTED on helping only the classiest down-and-outs. Before Ebby, they had dried out young Bud "Whatever you drive, drive a Firestone." Firestone.)

This version of Bill's story is a bit like The Gift of the Magi; with the girl cutting her hair to buy her boyfriend a watch chain, while the boy sells his watch to buy her hair combs. I mean, it might be like that tale if the girl chose an alcoholic death after she rescued her boyfriend from addiction. Yeah, maybe it's NOT like O. Henry's story.

Bill’s  love for Ebby, though, WAS pretty thoroughly unrequited.

So, the story is a one-sided bromance, with Bill Wilson getting the world’s acclaim and recognition but not Ebby’s love or respect, which is all he every really wanted.

Heck, EBBY SAID is about loving a drunk!

Oh snap! It’s an Al Anon story! It's about Codependency!

Go figure.

Ebby Said

“Start a blog,” they said.

Really? It’s come to that? You’ve got me doing the fucking Facebook! (Facebook! A full time job, am I right?)

And now a blog.

They said, “You’re 65 and you wrote a musical so blog about that!”

(I blog. I blogged, I am blogging. We do this now. We make up a word and then give it the whole “real word” treatment. When did this start? With “trend”?)

ANYWAY, I did write a musical and goddammit, I AM 65.

How AND WHY did this all begin?

So, think back to two years ago. Did anyone have a doubt who would lead our country through the 4 years ahead? I sure didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even want to vote that night. I’d worked all day (I’m probably alone in that, right?) but I will go to great lengths to do my duty. (Ok, if this is my blog, and it is, there will need to be a running joke about that word. I said “duty” but yaw’l get to hear dooty and snicker, ok? I will also laugh when you say “duty” Deal?) Off I went to my daughter’s old elementary school a few blocks from home. Although it felt completely unnecessary (did anyone doubt she would win?) it sure felt HISTORIC wearing my “I voted” sticker. As an old – er – older woman, I could tell my grandchildren what it was like to vote for the very first female president. That was SO worth dragging my butt and doing my duty (laugh, here).

I remember that evening, and I bet you do too.

Let’s see…there’s that horrible day in ’29 when people lost their fortunes, and, yeah,  we all have that one bad day that changed our lives forever. (I got caught shoplifting at the Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh in 1971) It’s not hard to name a BAD day, but heck, name a day more impactful that November 8^th, 2016!

For me, a numbness set in. I felt like someone had started up a new movie over the one which had been playing. I tried to blink REALLY hard to make the new images go away, but they persisted. What parallel universe had I entered? The punchlines were now the headlines! It was truly astonishing and I sure as shit didn’t know how I could fit in this new world.

See, I’m an old hippie (can I get a Boon’s Farm Apple Wine shoutout?) so we had been down this road ages ago. Eons ago. We had marched for equality and, seemingly, achieved it. My generation’s pivotal “day” happened at Kent State in 1970. You just HAD to pick a side. I just couldn’t look over the PA border and say, “That’s Ohio”. Gloria Steinem nailed it when she (cough) repeated Carol Hanisch’s line “The personal is political.” Our friends – and a whole shit load of them were in body bags from Vietnam – were dying.

(So this is where I interject my background a bit. I am from Appalachia. Yes. The place with shacks and yards filled with car parts and at least one car/truck sitting on cement blocks. Believe it or not, as an AVON LADY (always tryin’ to make a buck!) my “territory” was those shacks and I made the rounds enough times to know that the wonderful gals with 3 or 4 naked babies running around who were SO HAPPY to see me, needed Pampers more than Skin-So-Soft. I did not last long as an Avon Lady.

In that part of the world, our boys were easy pickin’s for Nixon’s draft. My brothers all knocked up their girlfriends (THANK GOD) so they got married and couldn’t go. (Wait - Mike, Deb, Jim - you were all planned, ok?) Whew. Others weren’t so lucky. My high school graduated 70 of us that year, but not before they took us all out together to see the memorial built in front of our school. We read the names of those kids we knew who didn’t come back from that draft. Talk about surreal.

So that’s part of a future rant about who does America’s dirty work. Later...

Back to the - um - now.

Trump was – apparently – president of the United States! And IMMEDIATELY that Bizarro World grew. Looking back, it’s mind-blowing to see how quickly black was white, up was down and yes, those are fine duds, emperor!

Here’s where the “being 65” thing kicks in. I cannot change the world. And unlike my much younger self, I won’t be around to see it through anyway. (Them’s facts, folks!) So I started my own revolt, all on my own. I will share that with you now… Everything I do must be EASY and FUN.

I know. You are thinking “Good luck with that!” because the world is – fo’ sure – not easy and fun. As our leader says, “Storms are wet” and such. There is so much suffering in the world! So, my mantra “Easy and Fun” may seem like good-ol’ denial and hell, it might be. I just know that it’s MY job to make me happy. No one can do that for me.

And, it goes without saying that not all things CAN be easy and fun. Say you get in a bad car crash… not easy, not fun. But what I’ve observed is that any onerous task is helped by the Easy and Fun motto because most HARD things can be made a bit fun and most NOT-FUN tasks can be made easier.

Like this… you need to confront someone or worse, apologize! Now, that might not be easy, but you can have a plan to reward yourself afterwards by doing something fun (I am not talking about spending big bucks. For me “fun” is hugging a dog – any dog.) Now, the way this almost always works is that looking forward to the fun part makes the confronting or apologizing easier!

So shoveling shit in the backyard becomes “Oh! What reward am I gonna give me?”

This new plan – easy and fun -  was simply necessary for me to thrive as a human with this new paradigm of - what? - hate? in the world. I am a Pisces and we FEEL THINGS DEEPLY. How could I make this Trump era easy and fun for me?

I immediately started writing and – no shit – a silly and irreverent musical tumbled out of me. Really! I know people struggle and work FOREVER on scripts but mine showed up – complete with music – in less than a year. (This year also included working full time and caring for my ill husband. Am I something, or what?)

I should probably mention I have never written a play or a song before.

I love what I’ve done. I hope others will or if they don’t, that they won’t tell me..

Oh shit… do I gotta thank Trump?