Maryellen G.

Ms. Refusenik Has Seen It All and Lived To Tell It My alterego's blog is: Ms. Refusenik Has Seen It All and Lived To Tell It:http://msrefusenik-msrefuseniktellsitall.blogspot.com/

Ms.Refusenik, is aptly named. She refuses even to get a cell phone so you know you can just go ahead and forget about her having TiVo. Oh, and she doesn't drive. Nope, doesn't own a car. She does her bit for the environment by peddling everywhere. She wants you to feel a little guilty, too, as you drive your sacks of groceries down the polluted highway. She wants you to know that she is old but still carries more than 50 pounds of groceries in her backpack, yes, on her back. Are there no prizes for this kind of environmental zeal?

Truth be told, to make a long, complex (I like to think) story simple: She is an aging hippie of the nearly cliched kind. She has long hair, check. Doesn't wear makeup, check. Loves anything and everything Neil Young has ever done, check. Reveres Anne Lamott.

She has two kids: A girl 22 and a boy 18. The girl is wild and crazy just like she was, unfortunately. The boy also smokes pot but keeps it together. He wanted something to love and his step-mother wouldn't let him have a dog or a cat so he bought a Lop rabbit (long ears). It is just a bunny now and the cutest, sweetest little bit of a fur wisp of feather-soft fur you ever imagined. Watching him pet it for the first time brought a rush of mother's love into my heart as thought he, too, were new again. A boy-man in a large body barely trusting himself to be gentle enough to touch the softness of the baby rabbit took my mother's heart to another place.

Ms.Refusenik, "about me", continued: She really does think she knows it all. Maybe she does. She stays informed in the worst ways. She reads all the time, and not just what most people read. She reads the unexpected, bizzare and unconventional. She knows things lots of people don't know: Soy is a poison that is being foisted on us by propaganda set forth by Monsanto. Organic honey is the best thing for an open wound. It turns into a natural sort of hydrogen peroxide. Integrative medicine has finally come to save us from the "first: do harm" philosophy of today's Western medicine. Apple will not honor their warranty if their iMacs are easily hacked, and they are. Stuff. She knows stuff lots of people don't know.

She lives alone. It only makes her a little crazy. She writes a lot so she doesn't talk to herself so much. She hates it when she finds herself talking to the television. The television can piss her off so much, and she does her best not to even watch the worst shows.

What does she watch that she likes? Old Andy Griffith show reruns. They are rerun here three at a time from 3:30 a.m. till 5:00 a.m. Was there ever a sweeter, gentler show? She's a sucker for Frasier reruns. They just don't lose their appeal for her even if she's seen them before. She likes the McLaughlin Group every Saturday night even though they get on her nerves when they all talk at once. She particularly likes it when they regularly give the count of the dead and wounded in Iraq. We need to notice. Her guilty pleasure is Wife Swap. She enjoys when one really crazy family gets straightened out by one righteous family who knows how to live. Sometimes she cries at the end. When TV comes back on she will go back to really liking Boston Legal.

That's enough for now. I don't want to bore you straight off.