I am the last person reading the newspaper

I read our daily paper every day. I’m the only one in our Scottsdale neighborhood who has it sitting in their driveway every morning. It has diminished to such a shrunken size you’d need three to line a bird cage.  And only a parakeet’s at that. Not an African Grey like my neighbor’s that shrieks when I open my garage door. I don’t even understand why people want to keep a flying animal locked up. Especially one that can’t even lick you. On Sundays I buy the New York Times at Starbucks for Maury, my information-obsessed husband. It takes a week to get through it and then I have anxiety because of the Broadway shows I’ll never see or the great art exhibits that are happening without me. I digest current events so I can keep up intellectually and hold my ground on the issues. Maury and I don’t agree on everything. He’s a do-gooder leftist progressive and I’m a cynic. He thinks Pakistan will give up its nuclear weapons and I think we should build a shelter in the backyard. But the thought of being locked up in a confined space with my family, especially my mother who would have 24-hour nudging access, makes me think I’d crawl out and offer myself to the coyotes.

The Bizarre News

I read the headlines on the front section first and then I go to the inside page for stories that are not big enough to be a major news story but some off-balanced editor says, “Hey, this looks interesting, The quacks will love it!” That’s how I find out about killer spiders in South America or a Kansas legislator who’s produced a “RedNeck Rap” about our President. My favorite today is the funeral home that flashes the dead person’s name and picture on an electronic billboard for 8 seconds. In America everyone wants their name in lights. If my portrait were up there my mother and kids would both criticize what I was wearing…and for different reasons.

The News Gives Me Insomnia

Sometimes there’s a terrible story and I can’t sleep. It rolls around in my mind repeating itself like one of my parents’ conversations that dealt with a slight from a family member. Hash and Re-Hash would go over it like a Valley girl with a wad of gum. My biggest concern about not getting enough sleep is my thighs. Scientists say if you’re only getting 4 hours of sleep a night, you increase your chance of obesity by 73%. That gives me stress.

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