My life has been replete with diplomatic challenges since I returned a phone call last week. It’s a long story, but lets just say:

(1) I have too many old women (TMOW) in my life.
(2) They all compete for me like buzzards after the last scrap of squirrel hide.
(3) They are all in danger of pushing me too far.

Now, of course, the bad thing about #3, is that if do lose my temper, I’m going to give them ammunition they can fire back at me – daily – for the remainder of their time in this mortal coil.

There really does come a time when you do things you don’t want to do and make compromises you never thought you’d make just because you don’t want to listen to it.

I’m just saying.

And unless you’ve lived with or been subject to the phone calls of an annoyed little old lady, terms like “babble,” “carp,” “harp” and . . . my personal favorite, “bitch” . . . just have not reached their full level of understanding in your vocabulary.

A planned visit to the Little Town  in 16 days is either going to happen and go well, or happen and transcend a root canal without anesthesia.

I am slowly – with trepidation — starting to take the necessary steps to make this excursion happen. This morning I made an appointment for R. to get a haircut on Thursday – her first haircut in 15 months.

Are there words to describe how I dread this excursion? I warned the hairdresser, F. “No matter what she says, you cut her hair short the way it used to be. She’s gotten weird and cranky, but I can be weirder and crankier.” His gulp was audible.

Stay tuned. The next two weeks are going to make the Titanic look like a leaky rowboat.

The Epson receipt printer at the drugstore spit out a line today for something I’ve never purchased before, one of those tiny little energy drinks that’s supposed to give you a boost for four or five hours.

For the record, I’ve had $5 a bottle bourbon that tasted better, but it did seem to put a little wind back in my badly flagging sails. At 2:50 this morning R. woke me up to give her a sleeping pill.

She has no schedule, no work, no responsibilities. She can and does sleep all afternoon in her chair. She knows I’m going to give her something if she’s still awake when I get up at the crack of dawn.

But two and a half hours before my alarm was going to go off, knowing how hard it is for me to go back to sleep, she went there anyway.

I coped by emailing a sympathetic friend a growly email. And I did manage to go back to sleep about four. I then overslept until eight, which has thrown the whole day off. And I feel like a truck ran over me.

Hence, tiny energy drink.

What I really wanted to do was go buy a big sledgehammer and work over the intercom.

Le sigh.

Yesterday I sat in a parking lot talking with a friend on my cell, air conditioner blasting and never mind the gas. It was just too hot with no breeze and we were wound up.

The general gist of the conversation was a familiar one these days with many of my gal pals. We’re at that stage of life where we’re dealing with older relatives and vowing to one another to do better as we age.

My general line of argument was that we have to be a little more enlightened for all our colon cleansing, system de-toxing, Oprah live-your-best-life, self-help-book acquired “wisdom.”

My friend was skeptical, but I also pointed out that we have a little different approach to friendship-based communication in our generation.

I firmly believe in having people in my life who have my permission to shake the spit out of me from time to time and say, “Stop it! You’re doing it again!” These are the people we allow to say what we don’t want to hear.

If I did not have these people, I would long ago have retreated to the corner to compose concertos on my lips.

I would also like to think that most of the folks in my life who have earned that right know the value and sanity-restoring potential of laughter.

How did I end my conversation with my friend? In an elaborate description of our plan to build a shrine to St. Eustace of the Llano, patron saint of possums. (Long, running inside joke.)

The point is, we ended our conversation laughing. I felt better. She felt better. Same problems. Same world. Same worries. Different perspective.

It’s about laughing at the insanity, Grasshopper, not hosing it down in Valium and stuffing it under the rug.

This Monday I simply did not ring up on the POS systems of life. I was strictly returned merchandise. No refund. Heck, I felt like I had literally been stuffed in the little cash register drawer.

Do I really need to say to this audience, “I do not care about the $%#(@ pool?”

‘Cause that’s what I want to say to the Empress.

Yeah, haven’t talked about her in awhile and no, she hasn’t kicked. [Inappropriate remark of choice inserted here.]

The pool pump blew. Of course, this was after we got dumped by the pool guy. Which broke her heart because he seemed like such a nice young man who always listened.

[Insert best guess as to why the pool guy dumped us.]

So, greenness ensued in the pool no one but the possums and coons use and this was a crisis. A new pool man was sought with appropriate panic.

She got the guy whose grandfather installed the pool. I kid you not.

His sage assessment, “This pool is old.”

Thanks Skippy, that’s helpful.

Anybody shocked he immediately suggested we start spending money on the cement pond? Anybody?

If I hear, “We have to take care of the pool because it enhances our property values" one more time I will scream. Beyond the fact that it’s no longer true, it always prefaces a fricking dues assessment which I, unlike the ancient country club wives, have trouble affording!

She called me yesterday for the fifth day in a row and told me all of this again – for the fifth day in a row – after I’d spent 45 minutes on hold with the insurance company only to get cut off.

We are now distraught because the replacement pool pump has been delayed and Crazy C.’s nieces cousin’s grandchildren from Tulsa wanted to swim. What are the odds that the damn pool would be out of service and nasty the first time a human wants to get in the thing in a year and a half? Tell me the Universe doesn’t have a sense of humor.

Me? I’m having fantasies involving a lit stick of dynamite.

Yesterday I ventured forth to run my errands at the hottest hour of the afternoon, about 3 o’clock. I had my little list – magic cat food store, library, drug store for some age spot removal product R. wanted, grocery store, home.

We’re having such a hot, glaring summer, I put on my darkest glasses before I ever leave the house and on my face they stay. I detest switching my glasses back and forth while I’m running around anyway. Plus, I’ve discovered that hiding behind shades makes for greatly improved people watching.

The trick to staring at odd folks – okay, folks who are odder than you on a sliding scale of oddness – is to make sure your head is pointed in one direction and your eyes in another. This is particularly easy while standing in line at the library because they keep a wall-mounted TV going in the lobby (muted with the captions on.)

So, while I was pretending to care about what the CNN news ticker had to say, I was actually watching an elderly couple in line ahead of me. Our branch library is popular with the oldsters because they have an extensive DVD collection.

Now, when I say old, I mean old. As in walkers, portable oxygen tanks, and more blue rinse than should be allowed in the interest of environmental safety.

This pair, I am relatively sure, were sweethearts during the war. (The one my father referred to as ‘dubyah dubyah twice.’) He had on a cap identifying the ship on which he’d served, and a fading blue green tattoo of an anchor peeked out from the sleeve of his golf shirt.

They were arguing about which movie they were going to watch for supper and what supper was going to be and who was going to drive home. Her overly tense permanent was fairly bobbing as she told him how the cow ate the cabbage.

I don’t remember who said what that caused it, but without any fanfare, he leaned down and kissed her and she kissed him back. This was not one of those irritated pecks, but a sweet, moderately lengthy kiss that ended with a lingering, loving look.

And yeah, I got a knot in my throat because some things transcend time and space and age. Like a sailor and his girl, still in love, 65 years after the war.

My discovery for the week. A $34 pair of reading glasses are cheap insurance against a headache. Back when I had my glasses changed the doc tried to talk me into a single purpose pair of specs for the computer. I wouldn’t do it. And actually my bifocal adjustment is just fine, the problem was the angle at which I had to hold my head to see what I was doing.

On the previous prescription, I looked over the line to see the computer screen. Le sigh. Those days are no more. Magnification is my friend.

So, after a couple of months of headaches and cricks in my neck, I took advantage of an online sale at 39DollarGlasses as well as some customer loyalty points I had run up. I wound up with a cute little pair of burgundy wire-rim reading glasses for $34 including shipping. Rectangular-ish – fun, funky, and oh so very functional.

I fear when the most exciting thing in your week is being satisfied with your new reading glasses it’s a clear signal you are no longer part of the younger generation.

I’m just saying.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a pill that strips away mental fat like hydroxycut works on the love handles.

Last night I had the absolute worst case of writer’s block ever. Cellulite all over my inspiration. Ugly. Very ugly.

I was working on a simple piece about the value of laughter. How hard is that? I am reputed to be mildly amusing. I like to laugh. Well, trust me, the mirth was not flowing in this piece.

If a friend hadn’t quoted a Jimmy Buffett lyric in a late evening email, I might still be sitting there at the kitchen table trying to come up with something.

These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes,
Nothing remains quite the same.
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands,
If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.

That article has been finished, sent off, payment received. And I have Jimmy Buffett on the brain, which isn’t an entirely bad thing since in general, his music is fairly laid back and resurrects nice memories from college and grad school.

I saw him in concert once at the Erwin center in Austin. A seriously good show and some of the best second-hand smoke I’ve ever inhaled.

What were we saying about changes in attitude?

But I digress.

Really not sure how Wednesday got here. One minute I’m struggling at the keyboard to make a 5th wheel warranty sound interesting, the next minute it’s Wednesday morning and I’m panicking over my “to do” list.

Yesterday, after facing the fact that the larder (and refrigerator) shelves were bare – including a critical dearth of cat food – I was forced to venture into the aisles of that big box retail store my politically correct friends abhor.

The one I abhorred when I could afford the abhorrence.

You know the one. Where crazy people are famous for dressing funny?

It isn’t so much the place that makes me dread the errand as the actual gathering up of the groceries, the thinking forward about what meal R. is likely to not want to eat on what day, and the grim realization I’d probably be fine with a sack of chicken breasts, a bag of rabbit food, and some tomatoes left to my own devices.

Okay, and this time of year a cantaloupe.

I love me some cantaloupe.

On the way home I was talking with a friend who actually likes the culinary thing and who ordered me to make stock from the rotisserie chicken I bought on sale for our supper last night.

This particular friend doesn’t take much in the way of argument. She’s more than 400 miles away and I still think she’d find a way to catch me if I didn’t do as directed.

So, last night I get this email informing me that what I’m getting ready to do is called “mire poix.”

That’s an awfully short phrase for “stick carcass in Crock Pot.”

There is apparently a plan beyond “Phase One: Crock Pot Sticking” involving the production of soup. The word “poblano” was used. (I’ve seen that on menus in Mexican restaurants. Honest.)

If nothing else, when I produce cream of poblano cement it will give R. something new to tell me I don’t do right.

Kinda reminds me of that lyric from a country song, “If a tree fell in the forest and no one heard it, would I still be wrong?”

But, these mini adventures, they are the stuff of life, the stuff of fast forward laughter, the kind that comes after the kitchen has been cleaned up and you wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?”

Another wise chum recently wrote to me in the reaches of the night that if we are writing the stories of our own lives, we should make them fun and funny with happy endings.

Me and my Crock Pot are on board with that.

I’m betting Lance Armstrong wishes he could twist the little plastic knobs on the time machine and get a do-over for today’s stage of the Tour de France. He started the day at 14th (or 18th, I can’t remember, but down there) and . . .  well, frankly, I haven’t had the heart to see where he’s sitting now. Came in more than 8 minutes behind the leader.

Two crashes. Went down in one, and got hung up in the other.The last one was the saddest because he and the team were pouring on the speed and had narrowed the gap by more than 2 minutes. The instant the guy in front of him went down, Lance’s race was over.

Just a little while ago he tweeted that he intended to enjoy the next two weeks. Hope he can actually find enough laid back DNA to do that. He’s said this will be his last tour, so why not savor it, think about days past, and have a good ride into Paris?

As for me? I’m pulling for anybody, and I do mean anybody, who can hand Alberto Contador his head on a plate. Right now my favorites are Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck. But seriously, anybody riding ahead of Contador has my support.

My own personal Tour de Bedroom is at day 939, total miles 14,074. (One of these days I’ll get the counters in the sidebar updated, but I’m chugging toward 1,000 days.)

Outside our local big-box home improvement store a display of little steel buildings often catches my eye. They’re the sort you generally refer to as a “storage house,” but some have pretty, compact porches and tidy windows, obviously fit for use as an office or even a playhouse.

When I was a kid, I always wanted a playhouse. My buddy Mark and I cobbled a bunch of boards up in a big non-bearing mulberry and called the resulting mess a tree “house,” but it fell short of my mental musings.

My cousin Ricky had a playhouse. His grandfather built it for him. We’re talking roof, windows, built-in cabinets. If there had been a porch, my jealousy would have been uncontrollable.

Truth is, I still want a “playhouse.” I look at those companies that build tiny little houses in the name of frugal living or energy saving and that old childhood longing rears its graying head.

Now, of course, I’d like that playhouse to be situated in an isolated and quiet place, preferably beside a bubbling little stream and under the shade of old and welcoming trees. If those trees were large enough to actually hold the house, after the fashion of the Swiss Family Robinson, all the better.

My analytical mind knows these musings are a desire to be left alone and to have some privacy, primary human needs I am all too often forced to do without. My childhood mind, however, takes more whimsical paths. Magical things happen in tiny houses in hidden woods. Enchanted woods.

Of course, wolves also dress in red hoods and witches lure kids into gingerbread house enslavement.

Damn fairy tales.