At least I’m getting stuff done, right? In these last two hours, I have:

1. bought Jake’s birthday presents
2. booked my hotel for when I attend my uncle’s memorial service in Illinois next weekend
3. paid bills (yay for payday)
4. touched up the gray roots in my hair
5. packed a bag for the overnighter we’re taking tonight

Speaking of Jake: it’s a rite of passage, I guess, but he has officially requested as a birthday gift “money to spend at the county fair” — the first time he’s asked for something other than toys. He’s a big boy now, going to be all of five years old and attending preschool school every day, taking swimming and gymnastics lessons, going boating with the family and working on cars in the shop with his dad. And the years fly by…

So, pony up your plans for the holiday weekend — what’s shakin’? Anything fun? We get back from Detroit tomorrow, then off to BFF Kay’s for dinner, then the Js, then Dinner Theatre work at school all day on Monday. It is Labor Day, after all. I shall toil at the mines.

Happy weekend to all — love dem Finkdays.

Strange indeed.

I’ve accomplished quite a bit since I got up at 2:45 a.m. I think I’m going to eventually give in to the advice from my cousin, who takes Ambien, and see if it might work for me without making me feel like I’ve been hit by a truck in the mornings. She swears by it.

I did some research on my particular problem (I can fall asleep but not remain asleep), and found this. What say you? Apparently, there are prescriptions that pack less of a punch than Ambien, but I think I’m not willing to combine them with anti-depressants and muscle relaxers and other various flavors of overmedication.

I think I will try the melatonin route (least invasive) first. I’ve read mixed reviews on its efficacy for keeping you asleep, but it’s a natural remedy, and therefore worth a shot. Failing that, I will call the doc. Anyone out there had any experience with melatonin? I know RD has, and he has had good luck with it.

But that’s not the point of this post. Strange news is the point, and I will now get to it.

Question: how can you throw away a kidney? I can’t imagine the horror of this poor nurse, who apparently chucked the organ before it was scheduled to be transplanted into the donor’s sister’s body. Oh my.

It’s bizarre by any stretch. In the movies and on TV, you always see medical staff handling a transplant organ as if it’s the Holy Grail. It gets its own cooler, seat on the helicopter, bodyguards and escorts. It gets a special pillow in the operating room. It must have been a confluence of the most extraordinary circumstances possible that allowed this terrible thing to happen. I can’t imagine the pall of dread hanging over the doctor who had to go into the recovery room and tell the two patients — brother and sister — whose backsides were just carved open then sewn shut for no reason, “Well, I don’t know how to tell you this…” So, so tragic.

Especially sobering were the numbers at the end of the article: in 2011, 136 people in Ohio died waiting for a kidney — 4,711 nationally.

All right. Enough reading and coffee slurping. There’s work to be done, and young voices to be shaped, one wrong note at a time.

Hey, it’s almost the weekend — pshh! Jump on it!

How did I not know this?

“Tonight, You Belong to Me” is in The Taffetas, a Broadway show. And if it’s from a Broadway show, it’s fair game to use for Dinner Theatre. Score! Add a third harmony part in there, dress up the girls in cute 50s dresses, and we’re off to the races.
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Somebody also uploaded the only scene from The Jerk that I like. Steve Martin, which you probably already knew, is an amazing musician. I want to play uke like this.

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OK, the rest of the scene is dumb, kind of like the rest of the movie, haha — but what a sweet, innocent, lovely song that absolutely has to make you smile. Made my day!

Time for another list like the last two or three I’ve done over the last 4+ years (and that I’m too lazy to search for). It’s good for the soul; it cleanses the BS tolerance palate so you can ingest more without dying.

And I do not mean to be cryptic. This list is flat-out take-it-at-face-value. In fact, misery loves company, so please feel free to add to this list. In fact, I covet your additions. Please…add.

Today’s Hate List

1. Going to bed at 10 because you got up at 3 yesterday, only to wake up at 2:30 a.m. and not be able to get back to sleep until around, oh, 15 minutes before the alarm goes off.
2. All. Political. Campaigns. I swear to the gods, if Congress doesn’t reform the way they’re done, I’m going to appear at rallies with a big ol’ ratty fly swatter and storm the podium every time one of these jokers makes a personal attack on the other. So alert Homeland Security; I’m comin’.
3. Closed minds that think the Bible is a cut-and-dried instruction manual, and that an ape could understand what God obviously wants. (If that is so, why is there not a single Christian denomination espousing doctrine upon which everyone agrees? Why are there fifteen translations and centuries-long bickering about the intent? I’ll stop here for now.)
4. Smelling the remnants of last night’s dinner when you come downstairs in the morning. I spent 15 minutes wiping down my kitchen with Clorox cleaner, washing the walls and taking out the garbage this morning. Juuuuuust what I wanted to do before coffee.
5. This one makes the list every dang time: hateful people. I am ashamed of my unclean thoughts about them, and also about including hateful people on a “hate” list — I know, it makes no sense, but work with me here. I’m in a mood. Look, we’re all damaged, right? Everyone falls down. It’s the people who aren’t the least bit concerned with the building-back-up process that grate on me. Shame, shame, shame.
6. Getting a cold. Yes, fiends, it’s time for my annual Fall Grippe.

OK, time to let fly. What grates on you this day? There has to be something, unless you’re one of those “every day is a unicorn party on a fluffy cloud with My Pretty Pony” type people, in which case you’re #7 on today’s list.

GrumpyFink out.

Random Neuron Firings

Thought for a Monday morning: Do you ever say to yourself, “I need to start writing down these things”? I do, every time I have a really ridiculous or bizarre thought. And believe me, I have many, and on a regular basis, to wit:

• The time is coming when can openers will be obsolete. I grabbed a can of soup and a can of peaches to put in my lunch box this morning, and they both had the pull tabs on them. That got me thinking: I rarely use my can opener anymore. Do you find that as well?
• I am absolutely repulsed by hot tubs. I know I’m the lonely rat cheese on that one, most likely. But the very thought of several dirty butts simmering in the same gurgly stew while their owners eat and drink (and probably swallow the occasional butt-infused water droplet) is so utterly repugnant to me, I can’t get past it. But seeing how it’s 5:26 a.m., I know I have to. And speaking of butts…
• Professional journalism is also on its way to obsolete. You wouldn’t think that a newspaper writer would use the word “butt” in the title of a serious piece of writing, and yet…
• And while you’re reading the above article, you may also notice that polite discourse is going out the window, too. Remember the days of honest letters to the editor? You know, the ones where you gave your real name? They are few and far between nowadays, because it’s a lot more fun to post anonymously so you can get on your inner troll and ride. Each time I see this, I lose a little more faith in what (I fear) makes up the bedrock of the human psyche. Are we really predisposed to cruelty if no one knows who we are? Are we a tribe of one-uppers as homo sapiens, or just as Americans? I’d point to it as a fluke — the rantings of the occasional idiot — but fiends, it’s everywhere.

I have dozens more of these, but I’ll ration them out for the occasional weirdness post. So tell me: do you have any of those “why do hot dogs come in packages of 10, but buns come in packages of 8” type RNFs? Do you, at any time, say, “Hmm, I feel orange today”? Share the oddities; it’ll take your mind off the fact that you have five more days before you can put your feet up again.

FO