Who wants to learn the hard way that the system is broken and our lives have changed? TV commercials are telling me how my values have changed and how much better they are now. I’m not buying it OR their products – because my values haven’t budged. It’s my lifestyle that’s changed.

Here is my newest list of coping tips:

If you wake up in the middle of the night in panic - don’t panic! It’s the new normal. Just get up and go to work the next day like you slept like a baby.  Work hard and double your resolve. Eat healthy but don’t drink the Kool-Aid.  By the end of a very long day-two you WILL sleep like a baby and your values won’t have shifted beneath your feet like other things that have.

The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Budget – in short, what budget? The budget is zero and we go from there.

Only Buy What You Need – this is the one that frosts my muffins. I need a manicure. I bought the polish. I need fresh flowers. I bought the onion. I need a housekeeper but bought the scrub brush, which is why I need the manicure!

I also NEED the Gulf to be cleaned and the people to be safe and the sea life and birds to be rescued.  I need  action, responsibility and effective emergency response, not more commercials about who is in charge with views of pretty beaches.  I also need gas, but won’t buy it from BP, because their CEO is yachting among other big boners such as rampant greed.

Maybe it’s time to crack out the old bicycle – and tool away off the grid. But then I’ll need a bell and some handle bar streamers but I’ll probably get the doctor and the cast instead.