I'll Be Back. You've Been Warned

Hi, Porch Sitters!

Thank you for hanging out on the Porch and waiting for me, while I was inside scarfing down Cheetos and not watching "The Bachelor". As if I would watch that George W. Bush sound-alike and Texas cry baby Brad! Puh-lease, people. I have standards, you know. Not high ones, but standards. But um, now that I assume the final rose has been handed out to Emily (lucky guess) and I am no longer not watching "The Bachelor", I need suggestions for other Monday night shows I will not watch.

For instance, I actually did not watch an episode of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" the other night, so I did not notice that the housewives all have identical long, blonde hairstyles to match their identical plastic Barbie bodies and shallow, catty personalities. Nope. Never seen it.

Regardless of all the mindless television shows I most assuredly do not watch, I apologize for the long delays in posts. Your readership and feedback are important to me. Believe me, I have wanted to write and, at times, desperately needed to write lately, but I am going through a major life transition, and my focus and energy are elsewhere -- as they should be.

Maybe I will write about it here eventually; maybe I won't. Elizabeth Gilbert already wrote Eat Pray Love, which pisses me off, as it killed my book idea: Eat (Chips that End in "o"), Pray (Hostess Puts the Ding Dongs Back in Foil Wrappers), Love (Trashy Television). Or maybe it didn't. I sense a bestseller in the works...

But that's tomorrow, and I must first get through today. That's enough. In fact, it's plenty.

A wise friend of mine told me this is the storm before the calm, and I believe that. I also received a fortune in my monthly crate-o-Chinese takeout the other day that declared, "Spring has sprung. Life is blooming!" I believe that, too, as we all know cookies never lie.

But spring is a fickle season that fluctuates between cold, gray, rainy days and sunny, blue-skied ones. I sincerely believe that brighter days are ahead, but I am not foolish enough to think that I won't have to go through some storms (and God knows how many bags of Cheetos and boxes of Ho-Hos) before the sun emerges again.

One thing I have going for me is that I am, for the most part, an optimistic gal. I'm not quite Charlie-Sheen-I'm Tired-of-Pretending-I'm-Not-A-Total-Bitchin'-Rock-Star-From-Mars optimistic, and I certainly have my non-winning moments (duh!), but I am the type of (yes, annoying) person who attempts to glean the good from the muck.

For instance, I was on a dreary drive a couple of weeks ago, and was so damn tired of the rain and barren winter landscape, when I rounded a curve to see an entire hill dotted with daffodils. I have to believe my daffodil hill is just around the bend. Sorry. Maybe I have rainbows imprinted on my DNA. Or maybe I have a chemical imbalance in my brain brought on by vast amounts of polysorbates. Whatever.

While I look for my daffodil hill, please be patient with posts. Things are difficult enough, and I'm trying to avoid additional melodrama when possible. If you've read this far, you see I'm not that great at it yet. And while humor and pain can be sisters of sorts, there are days when, quite frankly, it's just too hard to find the funny. I do good to find the trashy television shows I'm soooo not watching. When does "Jersey Shore" come on again?