Morning Routines

I’m a morning person— the perky, annoying kind that wakes up without an alarm. Night owls tend to view folks like me with suspicion, as if we’re asking them to join a religious cult like Scientology or Weight Watchers.

The key to a happy morning is making sure your routine contains at least a few minutes that you can call your own. If you have to wake up 10 minutes earlier, do it. I don’t care if you spend that time on the toilet while you play Candy Crush on your cell phone for so long that the edge of the toilet seat creates a red ring on your butt. It’s still worth it. You can get an ointment for that.

I love my morning routine. I wake up, eat an English muffin and check my email. Unlike Hillary’s lost classified goodies, most of my email is junk from random companies that want to sell me crap at 10% off. It doesn’t take much brain power to tap the delete button, so while I’m doing this, I watch the morning news on TV.

I love watching the morning news, but recently it has majorly sucked. It seems the entire broadcast is devoted to the presidential election and/or celebrity news. There are probably hundreds of children dying in third world countries— but we’d have no way of knowing because the TV anchors are too busy giving a recap from the MTV Video Music Awards.

When the media does choose to cover real news stories, it’s incredibly unhelpful. I’d like to know when debating a presidential candidate’s physical robustness became an important issue? I don’t care if a candidate has high cholesterol, has spray-tanned skin and small hands, or sometimes has a cough. I care if they are mentally prepared, capable and qualified.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the greatest US presidents and the longest-serving, was in a wheelchair. Polio struck him as a young man and he never regained the use of his legs. The truth of his condition was known to most journalists at the time, but they chose not to make a big deal of it. They recognized that FDR was a devoted public servant that was fit to be president.

Have we now regressed? To the ancient tribal days when the chieftain or warlord was always the brawniest guy with the biggest… err, sword?

In today’s political climate, I’m very sad to say that a person like FDR would never be elected president. It wouldn’t matter how qualified he may have been. As a person in a wheelchair myself, this makes me very disappointed to admit that. But, in a culture that only values beauty, celebrity and strength, it comes as no surprise.

For the next couple of months, perhaps I should forgo watching the news during my morning routine. I think playing Candy Crush might be a better bet…

Brexit Woes

I’ve always been fascinated by all things British. Shakespeare was an early literary favorite – and before he was usurped by George Clooney in my esteem, Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy held a special place in my teenage heart.

British history is full of drama and intrigue – rivaling, if not surpassing, the bloodiest and wildest episodes of Game of Thrones. I know that may not seem possible. But without the inspiration of British history, author George R.R. Martin would have probably been stuck writing episodes for Sesame Street. Imagine that. Poor Elmo.

Anyway, before this week, I had believed that Britain’s days of strife and drama were far behind them. I mean, they hadn’t cut off a royal’s head in … well… centuries. They had matured and developed into a nation where their most dangerous export was Simon Cowell. But now all that has changed.

Last week, in a shocking national referendum dubbed “Brexit,” a slim majority of the folks living in the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union. While this may not sound like a big deal, trust me, it is. If you are a fan of analogies, here’s one for you. Imagine that the European Union is the United States, and that the United Kingdom is California. The Brexit vote is pretty much equivalent to California deciding to declare independence and be its own country.

If you were paying slightest bit of attention in 11th grade U.S. History, you should know that the last time part of our country tried to withdraw from the United States, we fought a Civil War to force them back into the fold. So you can imagine the aftermath of this Brexit vote.

In the days following last week’s referendum, the British pound has tanked in value and stock markets around the world have – please excuse the technical term – freaked the $%&# out. France and Germany, the other two most influential members of the European Union, are now treating Britain like a cheating spouse – demanding that the U.K. hurry and pack up their crap to get the hell out of the house.

The British people themselves are heavily divided on this issue – causing tension across the British Isles. I don’t think there has been this much drama in the U.K. since King Henry VIII went on a rampage and got rid of five of his wives.

In the weeks and months ahead, we will see how the Brexit vote will play out for the U.K. and the world, at large. While I hope for the best, I can’t help but quote the incorrigible Mr. Shakespeare …

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Just say no

When I was a young child, the Reagans lived in the White House. It was an era of fluffy hair, enormous jewelry and shoulder pads the size of phonebooks. And phonebooks! In that time before Google people actually had to use those yellow-paged tomes to look up telephone numbers. Imagine that. Now, I just use our phonebook as a decorative statement. Like an artificial ficus tree.

In my memory, Nancy Reagan was a tiny person with wavy, stylish hair who told us schoolchildren to “Just Say No” to drugs.

Her shiny, elfin face was overly earnest and compelling. So it’s no surprise that we all proudly displayed a red “Hugs Not Drugs” ribbon on our backpacks. There’s nothing a kid loves more than a bandwagon to jump upon.

It didn’t matter that we were probably too young to understand the concept of drugs. We still loved all those free red ribbons, stickers, buttons and pencils they passed out like cheap Halloween candy. The anti-drug slogans of “Just Say No” and “Hugs Not Drugs” became a cultural mantra of our generation. I still think of it fondly—just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

When I heard that Nancy Reagan passed away last week, it made me sad—as if a small part of my childhood had ended. The petite lady with the fancy, ruffled blouses was no longer here to give us cool red keychains and tell us not to snort heroin. What would we do without her?

When you are a kid, politics aren’t a part of the White House. The occupants living inside the stately mansion aren’t Democrats or Republicans, they are glossy figureheads with really nice teeth. Politics don’t matter as much as whether they are friendly, smiling and give you free stickers with pictures of huggable bears.

For the small kids of today, I’m certain that Michelle Obama will hold a similar place in their hearts as Nancy Reagan did in mine. Michelle will be the super cool lady that urged them to move, play and eat fresh fruits and veggies from a backyard garden.

The bickering campaign rhetoric happening today is exhausting and annoying. We have candidates calling each other losers, liars and idiots. This bluster can be entertaining and enticing—no doubt about it. But it’s easy to attack another’s efforts—to point out all the little things that you think they did “wrong.”

It’s far, far harder to take meaningful action yourself—putting yourself on the line for a cause or issue you believe in.

To all this political negatively, I can only quote the late Mrs. Reagan: “Just Say No.”

#elizabette2016

After much thought and reflection, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I’ve decided that I’m running for President of the United States of America. I’ve been watching the news lately, and there’s a lot of people who seem to think they are up to the job. So, why not me, too?

I was watching the Republican debate the other day and saw a whole fleet of candidates lined up on stage. You usually only see lines that long on Black Friday or when someone is giving away something for free—like a donut. It was rather remarkable.

While some of those people on the stage seem qualified, I think I’m the more ideal candidate. First of all, my name is really long—thus, it would probably take up more than half of the ballot. Folks wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from voting for me. Poor Jeb Bush with his short, tiny name should just give up now.

Secondly, I don’t have a secret email server hiding in my house, and my emails are so boring that no one would even want to read them anyway. And I never delete anything in my inbox—in fact, I still have expired Pottery Barn coupons from 2009. Take that, Hillary.

In all seriousness, it’s very important for a presidential candidate to have achievable and realistic goals. I have lots of goals—and not all of them are related to instituting a nationwide ban on the word “manscaping.”

For example, I believe that border security is essential to the safety of this nation. Any discussion of security must begin there.

That’s why I am advocating that we build a 10-foot wall along the Canadian border. That way once we finally deport Justin Bieber, he won’t be able to get back in.

Frankly, I don’t think being president really can be that difficult. Once you get over the fact that most folks will begin to hate your guts about four days after you take office, the rest is simple.

I could definitely handle traveling in a big plane, wearing tiny American flag lapel pins, and having people salute me like I’m Capt. Kirk from Star Trek.

As an added bonus, if I were elected, I don’t have a furry, dead animal residing on top of my head—unlike Donald Trump. I’m sure the Secret Service would be relieved by this since my hair couldn’t be so easily set ablaze by a would-be assassin. This would give the Secret Service more free time to search the perimeter of the White House lawn and cavort with prostitutes in Colombia.

I’ve only got 13 months to Election Day, so I really better get to work. In the meantime, maybe I’d better get rid of some of those emails. …

One for the ladies

Now is a great time to be an American woman. This is nice to hear, especially since women have to live 4.8 years longer than men do. Just five years from now, we’ll mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment—the landmark legislation which gave women the right to vote.

In recognition, the Treasury Department recently announced that they are redesigning the $10 bill to include a yet-to-be-determined woman on the currency. While I appreciate the government’s gesture, I’m little bummed that they chose the $10 bill. It’s the one denomination that I can never find when I need it. And now I know why.

According to the Federal Reserve, $10 bills make up only 5.2 percent of the currency in circulation. The only bills less common are the $50 and the $2—the latter being the weirdest and most useless of all currency. After all, the only $2 bill I’ve ever encountered now resides in the junk drawer of my kitchen—the place I keep playing cards, half-used lip balms and pens that don’t work anymore.

While it would be nice to see a woman have a more prominent placement, like on the $100 bill, I know that will never happen. Benjamin Franklin is so entrenched on the $100 bill that it would take a feat of superhuman strength to rip that bespectacled man off the face of it.

That said, though, we women have another reason to celebrate; the Women’s National Soccer Team won the Women’s FIFA World Cup! While I know just as much about soccer as I do about astrophysics, this doesn’t take anything away from my joy.

Our team was given $2 million by FIFA for winning the tournament. I thought that was nice … until I decided to look into the amount the German men’s team received for their World Cup victory last year.

I gasped out loud when I saw the number—$35 million. Yes, you read that correctly. That’s 350,000 Ben Franklins. I also learned that each participating men’s team (regardless of performance) was given $1.5 million—the prize money rose dramatically if you managed to win a few games.

I instantly became livid. If a person of the male gender had walked into the room at that moment, I would have growled and seriously considered the benefits of castration. And I wouldn’t have even felt guilty about it. Frankly, I believe this earnings disparity to be an insult to women everywhere.

It’s like saying: “Oh, did you win the World Cup? Congrats. Here’s a brand new car!”

“Oh, and did you win the World Cup, too? Congrats. Here’s a pack of chewing gum.”

Women shouldn’t have to settle for less—like the humdrum $10 bill or mediocre prize money. But, in a world where American women only earn 78 cents on the dollar, I really shouldn’t be surprised when things like this happen. The question is: When will society finally do something about it?