I am very grateful for the things I do have. I have my husband, my two grown children, a Masters’ degree, and a home. After almost 30 years in the public schools, I walked out the door in a fiery huff, and now I’m an adjunct professor at a community college. Here, I have found my calling. I am also very active in the area of social media; I have a blog with a very large readership, and I am a professional writer for several online businesses. I’m active in BlogHer, Linkedin, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. I don’t have much time to mope. But sometimes, when I read what some other women are able to do, seemingly without a lot of effort or sacrifice, it makes me pensive.

I would LOVE to be able to travel! There are many things I would love to be able to do, in fact; just being able to stop worrying about money would be one of them. Unless I win the lottery, though, it’s not going to happen. I do not give myself a glass ceiling, either. I am limited only by money: I have none. None to spare, none to pare, none to set aside for a rainy day. I barely cover the necessities, and I believe in paying the people I owe before paying myself. (unlike many people I know, who believe they have a right and SHOULD pay themselves first and pay their creditors with whatever might be left. I could not do that; it seems so selfish and shameful to me.) And since there is nothing left over for me, well, I can’t travel, or buy new clothing or name-brand anything. My charity work is extensive but it’s all donations of time, because that is all I have to give. Medicine, mortgage, utilities, food, gas, and upkeep take it all. Which should I give up? My only luxury now is my internet connection! I guess I could travel as a nanny or “companion,” but that would pretty much negate the whole purpose of traveling, for me. Not everybody has thousands of dollars to spend as they choose. Most people I know don’t even have hundreds of dollars to spend as they choose. Right now, I have $6.15 in the bank, and it has to last until the end of the month. I like imagining what it must be like not to have to wonder how I’m going to manage the next month’s house payment, but trying to imagine getting to the Mediterranean, let alone living there long enough to need the people on that list, is so far out of my realm that it’s useless, right now, to even dream about it. I can’t afford to go to Indianapolis and stay at a Day’s Inn. How could I ever get to Europe, unless I was sent there for a conference or something? I travel all over the universe in my head, and that is probably all that will ever happen for me. Everything else takes money. I know, “… it takes some money, but not that much, to travel… .” But for people like me, there isn’t even SOME money left over.

None of those! For me, it’s reading, listening to MY music, and letting it all out to my only therapist: my blog and my readership. Comments from people, whether they agree or disagree, make me feel viable. And anything that costs money is automatically out.

Wow. That is, as Aladdin would say, “A whole new world.” If anyone ever needs to know the name of a plumber who shows up on time and gives discounts if you make him a sandwich and lets you pay him a little bit each month, or a doctor who keeps evening hours, or a guy who will drive out to your house at midnight to chop up a tree that fell over your driveway so you can get to work in the morning, or a good place to buy used clothing so your kids won’t look like hoboes on picture day, or little tricks on how to make your prescription medication last a little longer so you can pay the light bill first, I can help you there. But this kind of thing? For most people, this is an alien world and has nothing whatsoever to do with us. Holy scheisse on a popsicle stick, I don’t have enough money to buy brand name cereal. I do, however, have a summer home. It also serves as my winter home, my autumn home, and my springtime home. I don’t even know anybody with the kind of money necessary to maintain the kind of lifestyle proffered here. I am hoping very hard that this post was meant as some kind of ironical sarcasm.

Ah, South Pacific. So lush and beautiful and full of truths, both ugly and wonderful. “That woman… her color… what PIFFLE!” “I can’t help it; it was born in me!” “I do not believe it was born in you!” And then, of course, the near-tragedy because someone was a racist, and the terrible tragedy because someone was racist… and rising above it all, the song that sums up the causes of all prejudice: “You’ve Got to Be Taught.”

I love the musicals SO MUCH! My first musical love was Oklahoma, high school style. After that, I was hooked for life. My children were taken to musicals before they ever started kindergarten, and every summer for years, we learned a new musical by heart so we could re-enact the entire thing on road trips. We’ve taken the kids to every musical within fairly reasonable driving distance for almost thirty years now. When I taught middle school, I took my 8th graders to a dinner theatre every spring, for 13 years. I agree with Arthur Schopenhauer: “Not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror.” (My husband took me to “Hair” for our first date. Our second date was “Godspell.”) I still view the universe as a kind of immense Broadway musical. Oh, oh, I love to think about the music, and the dancing, and all of it together. A good musical is a kind of fantasy world that we can all experience if we let ourselves go.

Choice. Self-control and choice. And aren’t humans supposed to be higher life forms than the other animals? It sounds like some of you are grasping at straws to rationalize a simple lack of self-control and some very selfish personal choices.

Cheating is adultery, and adultery is always a choice. No one is forced by circumstance or karma to betray someone’s trust; betrayal is ALWAYS a choice. I do not believe men are born with the cheatin’ dna programmed into them, but I do believe that many societal levels view men as childish instant-gratification-machines who may even have a perfect right to spray sperm wherever they please. And there are always women who accept this as a norm and even encourage it, more to our shame. I know many kind and decent men who are trustworthy and monogamous, and I have met many ego-filled losers whose desperate need for whatever they want whenever they want it. It’s all about choice. We choose to be trustworthy, or we choose to be jerks. Nice people choose to be trustworthy; anything else is just pure selfishness and childishness and shameful.

Cell phones are one of the handiest gadgets around, but people overuse them to the point that it makes them look like idiots. And, like most inventions, cell phones have made rude people ruder, lazy people lazier, and inconsiderate people even more inconsiderate. I wish people who used them while driving would get them confiscated immediately, and I wish people who use them while shopping or eating in restaurants could understand how immeasurably stupid and rude they are. But then, if they knew that already, they wouldn’t talk on the phone in public, now would they… . I text. I talk. But I do it where others won’t be disturbed by it. And in schools, parents who allow their children to bring cell phones to class are MORONS. I can see having a cell phone in a pocket or backpack or purse, but kids won’t leave it there; they have to get it out and use it in front of their peers. Much like their parents, who talk on the phone so much they have to get a little ear bud to free up their hands. Oh, well, I guess it’s like being at work for most of them: “Do you want fries with that?”

Pick a favorite parent? My mother was an excellent mother, and my father was an excellent father, and together they created a warm and loving home full of creativity, music, books, and “cool.” I have no favorite parent; I loved them equally, for different reasons as befitted their very different personalities, styles, and tastes. I have still never met any two people more suited for each other, yet with less in common, than my parents. My father died at 62, of complications from diabetes, but even after going blind and losing both legs, he would never allow us to park in the handicapped spot. “That’s for people less fortunate,” he would say. And we would reply, “Dad, you’re blind and you have no legs. There IS nobody less fortunate.” But he would just laugh and make us park somewhere else, because he felt that accommodations were condescensions and he would have no part of them. Mom is 76 now, looks 50, and has more energy than a 3-year-old. Yes, my parents were awesome.

If an adult asks me my age (but why would they?) I tell them the truth, but I always told my middle school students that I was 94 because I liked to see the expression on their sweet faces, and also because I liked hearing them say “Wow, you look really good for your age!”

Obama, yes. Hilary, no way in hell. No one is perfect, but to vote in a known liar and enabler? NO WAY. She’s a negative example to women everywhere.

Hallmark Christmas ornaments, fresh lemons, and social security, which is paid out to people who don’t speak the language, aren’t citizens, and have never worked a day in their lives.

No, I love my husband, not merely my husband’s penis. A Viagran erection seems about as sexy to me as using a broomstick, and has nothing whatsoever to do with emotion, passion, or love.

When insurance companies are happy to pay for Viagra but will fight you to the death - YOUR death, that is - about paying for actual medicines that keep people alive, something is really, really wrong with us as a society. Then again, the majority of insurance and pharmaceutical companies are headed by men, and men have always been willing to pay for sex.