I’m Gonna Change My Way of Living, and If That Ain’t Enough…

Well, they tell you not to make too many life changes right after you’ve had a seriously traumatic event in your life, and as usual, I’m not listening.  In one short week since I last talked with you, I have:

>Switched banks.  A whole new start, right?  Out with the old, in with the new.  Banking, that is.  Love the new one.  Hopefully when they write out checks to pay some of my bills to companies that haven’t caught up to the 21st Century enough to have automatic bill pay, this bank won’t bounce the same checks THEY wrote and THEY mailed, as happened twice in the same year with my old bank.  Ya know why they did that?  Beats me, but I think it almost certainly has something to do with outsourcing the work, where nobody is accountable.  Take that, George Bush.  Outsourcing Does Not Work if you want your business (or your country) (OR your war) to be run with any sense of responsibility whatsoever.  I’ve had enough and I’m not taking it anymore!  (Yay me!)  Old bank, gone.  New bank, huge enough that they have to hire people within their organization to do all the work, which means there’s more chance they MIGHT do it right, capice?

>Dropped my land line and am using my cell phone exclusively now, which I’ve been thinking about doing for quite a while anyhow, and I’m findng it curiously freeing because now I won’t have to go running to my house phone when I come home from wherever, to see if there are any messages.  Anybody calls me now, I’m going to know about it in real time. Somebody  call me so we can check that out.  Anybody?  Hello?

>Speaking of my cell phone, I managed to finally call Verizon for a new area code to match the area code I actually live in.  When I got my cell two years ago, attached to my daughter’s cell contract in the next state, there were no numbers available in my area so I used her area code, which has always kept me off-balance anyhow, and I don’t need any extra help with that, thank you very much.  Old phone, but new number.  And actually, it’s NOT my old phone.  I got a new one while I was at it, after putting that off for six months.  This one’s red, a happy color unless you’re a Democrat.  I hope to God I don’t have that backwards.

>Wore one of my late husband’s T-shirts without feeling guilty or morbid about it.  In fact, it felt quite comforting.  Not so much because it’s red and white striped, but probably because it’s big and soft and floppy.  Big and soft and floppy is good, right?  (Well…maybe not always…)

>Watched the Ellen Degeneras Show for the first time EVER, and I have to tell you, I haven’t laughed like that, which was out loud and totally delighted, in I don’t know how long.  She even had me dancing, even though I was alone in the house with my two cats, who cowered in the corner wondering what the hell was wrong with me.  Thank you, Ellen Degeneras, and I hope I spelled your name right.  If I didn’t, somebody will tell me fast enough.

>Managed to get my late husband’s insurance company (who generously offered to allow me to leave my insurance proceeds with them, let them manage it, and dribble it to me in monthly checks until the money ran out, wasn’t that lovely of them) to send it to me in one lump sum.  I gave them a list of enough reasons why I was perfectly able and more than willing to manage my own money.  About a dozen or so, to be sort of exact, all valid if a little goofily worded for maximum effect.  In fact, I let Hotclue write it. I got my check exactly one week later.  I had no idea until I opened the envelope that their sleazebag salesman had dropped in one day years ago when I wasn’t home and talked my husband into switching his policy so that the face value would begin to diminish after the first three years.  Which I’m absolutely sure my husband did not understand AT all.  No, I won’t mention their name, but I do seem to remember a picture of a huge rock jutting out of an ocean somewhere…Oh, but I digress.  Anyhow, I SO appreciate their concern for me in my dotage.  Even so, there’s nothing as exhilarating as winning a battle of wills.  I probably misspelled exhilarating just now, but I don’t think I’m dangling any participals.  Or is that participles?  Sigh…

>Last but not least, my one and only extravagance, because I’m becoming as tight as a witches…well, never mind, I’m trying to be nice here.  I bought a Garmin GPS.  And in addition to that, I paid for a third of it by cashing in credit card points, also for the first time ever.  (You have no idea what it took to get me to do that.)  So now, for the First Time EVER, when I get into my car to drive anywhere further than one mile away, I won’t get lost like I always did before.  Sometimes, I blush to disclose, less than a mile away.  Now I’ll always have that little voice to tell me, “Turn right at the next corner.  NO, NO, RIGHT, did you hear me, RIGHT!  NOT LEFT, you idiot!  RIGHT!”

>I haven’t changed my hair color.  But I am thinking about it. 

Ciao for now.  I may not be doing that well with Widowhood 101, but I am learning independence.  I’ll probably never be fit to live with again.

Beth, and Hotclue is right behind me, laughing.  I have no idea why.  Love you all, you know we do.  Come back and see us next week.  We’ll leave the front porch light on for ya.

Widowhood 101

I know y’all have been wondering where Hotclue and I have been for the past six months. I’m finally ready now to talk, because we’ve missed you too, and I, more than anyone, have missed Hotclue. For a long time now, she hasn’t been around, and in truth, neither have I.

To start with, my husband, Stan, had been in end stage COPD for quite a while. He also had been diagnosed with advanced dementia last fall, not that I didn’t know he had it, but to be faced with it in an actual written diagnosis sort of puts a different light on it. You can’t deny it any longer, not even to yourself.

There’s something that anyone who has lived with a person with dementia knows. You don’t notice it so much because you grow into it with them, day by day. Who notices someone’s hair getting longer day by day? Nobody, really. Just all of a sudden, you notice it’s too long and it’s time to do something about it. And so it was with Stan. I’d go on day by day, then something would happen to jar me, something new, and that little voice inside would say, he’s getting worse. A lot worse.

Still, he wasn’t that hard to manage, since he’d done a complete lifestyle turnaround and become a very compliant and agreeable little boy. “Whatever you want” or “whatever you say” became his standard answer to everything. That’s not much help when you have a question you can’t answer yourself, but still, that was our day-to-day life.

In addition, he had a weak heart, and for about six months had had a terrible reaction to, I think, his last flu shot. I say the flu shot because he was very allergic to MSG, and the flu shots last year, according to my sources rooting around on the Internet, had MSG in it, probably to preserve it. He gradually became pretty much covered with an unbelievable rash that looked more like lizard skin than human skin. I can’t tell you how much medicine and cream I bought over those months, until his doctor finally said the only thing left to try would be high-tech staph antibiotic pills and cream. We got that and finally something worked. He was having itch-free nights and days for the first time in months.

Just as background, he was allergic to a lot of things. For such a big, strong-looking man, he actually was one of the most fragile people I ever met.

All those things take their toll, but still, you do what you have to do and day-to-day life goes on. However, I had become completely unable to write anything. People kept telling me I was stressed, but I didn’t see that since I was in the middle of it. I stopped writing emails on my groups, and eventually found myself deleting all of them. I was in that state where “none of this matters so why bother”. You get like that. You can’t help it, and you can’t see it. All you see is that suddenly the full life you did have is somewhere else, you know it is, you see life going on without you, but you can’t quite grab it back.

That’s called depression. My doctor put me on an antidepressant, lightest dose, when I burst out in tears for no reason at her office and then told her what was going on at home. When I started taking it, that’s when I stopped writing my blog. There was just nothing there, nothing in my life that I thought would interest anyone, and certainly not enough fun or humor inside me that gives Hotclue her steam and wackiness. I couldn’t find her anywhere.

On June 3, Stan was having one of his bad days where he could barely function, but he had an appointment with his retina specialist. (Did I mention he also had wet macular degeneration and had to have periodic shots in his eyeball to prevent him going blind?)

It was pouring down rain, coming at us in huge sluices as we hobbled toward the car. We couldn’t hurry because I had to say, “Right foot now”, then “left foot now”. We were soaked going into the doctors office, soaked getting back in the car, soaked getting from the car and back inside the house.

Once inside, I sat him down at our dining room table and said, “Stay right here, I’m going to go change my shirt and bring you a dry one.” Two minutes later I came back into the dining room and not only was his chair on the other side of the room, Stan was hurtling toward the wall. Before I could reach him, he had splintered his hip into three pieces and the last twenty-five days of his life had begun.

There’s something not generally known, although I was told this both by his doctor and the Hospice people (God bless them!). When a person with advanced dementia breaks his hip, they never live past a year. Most die much sooner. That’s because they cannot re-learn how to walk. In his case, he wouldn’t have remembered anything taught him in any kind of therapy longer than five minutes, if that long, and you have to be able to walk to recover from a broken hip.

So, two hospitals and one short three-day stay in a rehab center later, we brought him home to die, probably one of the most excruciating times any family ever has to face. His kidneys had ceased to function, his body was shutting down, and there was no hope he could recover because the death process had already begun.

I have to say, my daughters, including his daughter, were wonderful, as was Hospice. All four daughters came to stay and help, and they did. Hospice provided everything we needed to keep him comfortable, and somehow, we got through that week. Stan died in his sleep late the following Saturday afternoon, June 28th, 2008.

I can’t blame Hotclue for not being here. I had completely buried her, but little by little, I can see she’s still with me and I’m letting her out to play from time to time, testing both of our wings.

So now, I’m learning how to be a widow. Widow 101, I call this class. No homework needed, pay as you go.

How do you begin? How do you suddenly realize, when someone asks you to go somewhere, that you can go, without worrying about the other person at home who needs you? How do you start learning how to cook for one? I haven’t gotten there yet, and considering how long it took me to learn to cook for just two after my kids were grown and gone, I may still be eating TV dinners a year from now. So far I’m not sick of them yet, and in fact, I’m eating a lot better because I’m not the one who was allergic to (you name it). I’m eating fish and chicken and green vegetables and fruit, and as a side effect, I’m losing weight, a bonus, if there is such a thing.

Yes, I’m pulling out of it. Once in a while I email someone I haven’t emailed in a long time. I’m catching up with a lot of favorite group emails. DorothyL, I haven’t read them in months. Now I am, and any day now I’ll start responding again. I have a new hairdo and I’ll put up a photo soon so y’all can vote on it. Shoulder length, ends curl under naturally, no hairspray needed, 1940’s pageboy cut with a 2008 twist. Still blonde, of course; I’m not giving THAT up no matter how many bottles of Clairol #27G it takes. Am I lonely? I can’t honestly say I am. I got over loneliness a long time ago, when I realized Stan didn’t recognize my youngest daughter, whom he had helped raise from the time she was about 8.

So, I’m back, and soon Hotclue will burst through in all of her weird, goofy glory, and all will be right with my world again. I hope you’ll join me here. There’s a lot of life to be lived for all of us, and my feeling is, we should try to enjoy every second we have on this earth, because you only get one time around.

…Although, if you do get more than one life, next time around I’m coming back as a Broadway Star like Liza Minelli. That’ll be a start. I always wanted to sing off-key and dance with half a tux and a top hat.

Love y’all, and I have missed you very much. I hope you’ve forgiven my absence.
Beth Anderson
(And Hotclue says “Hey!”)

Hotclue’s 2007 Annual “How Do They Get Here?” List

I like to do this once a year, show y’all some of the phrases used by readers who wind up at my website through no fault of their own. They type these phrases into their browsers and who do they get? Moi, somehow, the poor things. Well, I welcome every single one of them and they’re an endless source of interest and amusement to me. I just thought I’d let y’all see some of my most recent ones, along with my own added comments, and sometimes, sorta kinda maybe rational answers. Here we go:

clinton and beth anderson divorce — You have NO idea how many of these I get every single month. Apparently a lot of people are obsessed with finding out the truth about myself and Clinton. So let me clear this up once and for all: I did NOT have sex with Hillary Clinton. (Bill is another story.)

sexy beth waiting — Is she already sexy, or is she just waiting to BE sexy?

leotard straitjacket — Folks, I get an awful lot of straitjacket hits. WTF???

kinky — Would this be Friedman, or just…Kinky?

sorority spanking — Makes you wonder what goes on in the average American mind nowadays, doesn’t it.

gym bloomers — Lonely for the Good Old Days, are ya? Oooh, those sexy blue bloomers. NOT.

anderson hot — Well, Beth thinks she is. Far be it for ME to discourage her. I have to live with her, after all. (For anyone who doesn’t understand this, see my very first blog entry in February, 2006. It’ll all become clear to you.)

hot local sluts — Those would almost certainly be my critique partners, right? Phone numbers available on request. Just send cash.

when a narcissist leaves you — Cross yourself, move to a different state (or country), and hope he never finds you.

spanking fun & games — More spanking games? America, what’s going on here? Are we a little angry at anyone in particular, like in the White House, maybe? Oops, mustn’t get political, right?

night sounds — A little serious BSP here: That would be one of my books. Even more serious BSP: Buy it, you’ll love it.

i can’t get over a narcissist — Yes, you can, as long as you keep far, far away.

neckedgirls — Pat Robertson, you’re not fooling me, I know that’s you.

boyfriend does not have a clue — Maybe he’ll get one when he becomes a man. But probably not.

spandex straitjacket — MORE straitjacket hits. Hmmmm…

typing games — That would be found on Yahoo or MSN chats, I think.

can narcissist really love someone — Yes. Himself. (I get TONS of narcissist question hits every month. Are there REALLY that many running around loose? Cheesh! Call the CIA or something!)

victoria secret ben wah balls — I didn’t know you could get them there! Maybe that’s where Beth’s husband got them?

beth games — Beth must have some kind of wild secret life I don’t know anything about because I get lots of these hits, too.

nascar babe — GUILTY! I got my Jimmie Johnson t-shirt yesterday to prove it, too!

pics of old gym suits from high school — Longing for those good old bloomer days, are ya? Whatever flips your switch, I say.

should get married at sixteen — NONONONONONONO! By the time you’re nineteen, and I know no sixteen year old girl is ever going to believe this, you’ll be an entirely different person, saddled with a man you don’t even know or like anymore, and a couple of cute little, but constantly hungry, wet rugrats with head colds. Don’t do that to yourself, I BEG you! Wait till you’re thirty is my advice.

afraidofme heroin washingtonpost — This one took me aback because there IS an “afraidofme” who posts on the comment pages of WAPO. I have no idea of his or her pharmaceutical choices, but he/she does come up with a lot of interesting political comments, some of which I agree with, some not.

how do i make him value me — First, make him give you diamonds, lots of them. Big ones. At least three carats each. Then hide them. He’ll value you, no problem, at least until he tracks down those diamonds.

how do i leave a narcissist — Walk out the door. Never look back.

real romance love letter — Maybe I should write those for people. I’d probably make a lot more money than I do writing novels. Come to think of it, MJ Rose wrote a BEAUTIFUL book about a fictional heroine who did just that.

hot yoga — I want the answer to this one, too. Maybe in the Kama Sutra pages, ya think?

her name is lola. she will be my yacht. — Okay, Barry, I know that’s you, but I thought you promised you were going to name your new yacht “The Hotclue”!

help on writting an mystery uthors synposis — Uh, hon, I think you need a little more help than that…

lisa gardner — And this poor hapless Internet searcher got me…but hi anyway, glad to meet you! Say hi to Lisa for me!

oh whatever makes you because i got what i wanted now — Is this by chance one of Beth’s ex-husbands?

turkey and dressing for 100 — I can only run screaming out of the room at the thought of doing this.

hot boys — What’s the problem? They’re lining up outside my door even as we speak. Come on over, I’ll give you a few of my leftovers.

made me go barefoot — No problem there either. Mine BEG me to go barefoot.

in a train wreck with the narcissist — Correction. The narcissist IS the train wreck.

coughing up a fur ball — Sarge says to tell you Hey, and she’ll be doing her own 2007 Furball Year End Blog sometime this month. Man, has she got a looooong list THIS year!

worst spanking from wife — Did it hurt-ums? Did ooo wike it?

pekin — Someone from my checkered past trying to track me down, maybe? Well, here I am, in the flesh, so to speak.

how hots a turkey supposed to be — 175 degrees. Then cover it with foil and a big folded bath towel over the foil and let it sit in its own juice for a while. (Well hey, I have to make a serious, rational comment ONCE in a while, right? I KNOW this works.)

beth glitters — Well, she thinks she does. But really, I’m the one who glitters 24/7, not just once in a while, like her.

anderson map — Now I could understand this if you asked for a Hotclue map, which is far more interesting than any old Beth Anderson map.

pictures of hot christmas girls — Well, we all know what you want in YOUR Christmas stocking this year, don’t we.

love me hot — Yes I do. You KNOW I do, and so does Beth and so does Sarge.

sign your relatives are like fudge — This conjours up a fascinating picture to me, of my relatives, anyhow.

christmas rhyming clue — And did you find anything that DOES rhyme with Christmas? Please share, and also, share what rhymes with Orange.

gabrina garza take me out — Hmmm…I foresee a potential problem here…

picture of a hot fudge sundae — One of my relatives, by chance? One who blows hot and cold at the same time, maybe? Food for thought.

narcissistic boyfriend replacing you –You should be so lucky. Pray for your replacement, it’s the charitable thing to do.

homemade hot clue — At home, abroad, on a boat, on a plane…

limerick barry manilow — Barry, quit posting here. I’m still mad at you for not naming your yacht after me.

100 things to make from a cardboard box — This would be one of Beth’s husband’s relatives trying to save money at Christmas, LOL!

hot sexy pekin men –Well, I just bet there are a lot of them, now that you mention it.

bare picture of most beautiful girl of afghanistan — Oh oh. bin Laden, get off my blog.

inserting ben waa balls — This is a hydraulics question I’m not prepared to answer at the moment. Actually, I could, but Beth won’t let me.

want a nice hot women — Just ONE? But wait, we got a problem here. “Women” is plural, right? (What did you say your phone number was?)

examples for a 250 word mini saga — I have never written or spoken only 250 words on anything in my entire life. Any takers?

hot sex nabors — Jim, what are you getting into now? Just sing Back Home Again in Indiana once a year at the Indy 500, that’s good enough for me.

beth anderson nude — You really, REALLY don’t want to see that.

clue to hidden christmas present — The ben wah balls, I take it?

That’s it for this time, folks. Come back again next week, we’ll leave the porch light on for you. Beth is in the kitchen whipping up a big batch of Egg Nog right now.

We love you, you KNOW we do!

Hotclue Herself
Beth Anderson
and Sarge.

March of the Penguins

The other night I happened upon a TV special called “March of the Penguins”. I thought it was going to be that dancing penguin thing and settled in for some light entertainment.

OH, but I found SO much more.

In fact, I couldn’t stop watching, even when I found it was much different than I’d thought, and I want to tell y’all in case you see it’s on TV sometime and think it doesn’t sound all that interesting.

Oh, but it is. It IS.

The people doing this special chose one small family among the hundreds of penguin families on one breeding ground in the Antarctica and followed them over the course of several months and horrific weather changes.

After the mother and father’s baby penguin was born, the mother had to leave to replinish her system with food after her long pregnancy. It’s the custom among penguins for the father to take over care of their progeny when the mother has to leave for food, so the father swept the baby under HIS tummy, where it could be warm, and the mother took off with all the other new mothers to head for the ocean where they could eat and store food in their bodies to bring back to their babies. This is a long, long trek both ways. It takes days and sometimes more. But on they plod toward the ocean.

While the mother was gone, a horrible winter gale swept in. All the male penguins, hundreds of them, huddled together, switching places from time to time so the guys on the outside wouldn’t bear all the brunt of the wind and bitter cold. The mother was gone for a while but the fathers took great care of their little ones. In fact, it was quite touching to watch, especially when the father had to cough up a special secretion to feed the hungry baby when its mother was late getting back, because he knew the baby would die without food.

The mother eventually came back, took over her baby’s care, sweeping it under her tummy again, nourishing and keeping it warm as possible while the fathers all headed for the ocean so they could eat.

Also, the mother began at this point to teach the baby little things, just as a human mother would do. Up to this point, the baby had pretty much been a teeny blob who traveled around by walking ON its parents’ feet while still being kept protected under their stomachs, only showing its head to squeak for food, then right back under the parents’ stomach.

Now the father, having eaten after his long trek to the ocean, came back and took over the baby’s care so the mother could go eat again. The baby was growing now and beginning to explore. Unfortunately, it explored a little too much and died.

Here’s the part I thought was so profound, so agonizing, that I actually sat and cried, totally mesmerized by this panorama when the mother came back.

The breeding grounds, where they spend most of their time, is a huge, crowded place, with hundreds of penguins roiling around all the time. Still, the mother found the father and then she started looking around for her baby.

She spotted it on the outside of the mass of milling penguins, went over to it, poked it with her beak, obviously trying to make it get up. It took her a minute or so to realize the baby was dead.

The minute she did, she started to wail. There was no mistaking it. This female penguin was in deep, agonizing grief because her child was gone forever. I saw unmistakeable pain, both in her cries and her body movements. Never mind that they’d have another baby next mating season. This mother loved THIS baby.

I’ve never been so awestruck by anything in the animal world. I actually could not believe it. The love and caring in this little family was SO evident nobody watching this story unfold could possibly miss it. No script here, this was real.

One of the reasons this hit me so hard was that all through this two hour special I had been thinking, these are families, and for some reason all they DO is live to have babies and take care of them. They go to the breeding grounds to have them, then they take that tremendously long walk over ice, in terrible conditions, to jump into the ocean and eat so they can feed them. They do this over and over, and I found myself wondering, why? What’s the purpose of all this? Why were these particular animals (or mammals) even put in this terrible, cold place only to have to struggle day in and day out, only to have more baby penguins and go through terrible conditions all through their entire lives just to do this?

Well, I don’t know the answer. I guess that’s up to a Higher Power to tell us one day. But for now, to me, seeing this devotion, this caring, this deep love, I found myself thinking, wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if all humans did the same thing. Love our kids and do everything in our power to take care of them, to raise them right.

Just think. If humans ALL did this, we wouldn’t have the kind of problems we have. We wouldn’t have kids turning to gangs and drugs and murdering each other. We wouldn’t have people all over the world ignoring the inevitable results to kids, anybody’s kids, by going out and blowing up people and buildings and even entire countries.

We wouldn’t have politicians worldwide ignoring the future of today’s kids while they wrangle for centuries over money and oil and territory and ancient blood feuds. There wouldn’t be any blood feuds, because if the people feuding gave one second’s serious thought to the effect on their children instead of their own anger, they’d realize how stupid blood feuds actually are.

If only WE ALL thought long and hard about our children and everyone else’s children all over the world, before making even more mistakes than we’ve already made, there’d be a lot less bloodshed worldwide, all of it completely unnecessary.

Think grandkids, not oil and more money in your bank account. That’s what animals do. Should we not try to be at least as good to our children and grandchildren as they are?

There’s a lot to be learned from a little movie called March of the Penguins. That was my personal epiphany the other night. Not that I didn’t know all these things anyhow, but somehow, watching a two hour special about penguins brought it all home to me in a most profound way.

I hope you get to see it yourself soon if you haven’t already. I don’t see how anyone could fail to be tremendously touched by it.

Hey, y’all, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you come back again next week. You never know what’ll happen with Hotclue between now and then.

We love y’all, you KNOW we do!
Hotclue, Beth and Sarge, who just scratched on the back of my chair and said “Hey!” (Or was that “Treats!”)

HOTCLUE THE NASCAR BABE, THAT’S ME!!!

Okay, I’ll admit it. You heard it here first. I’m a JIMMIE JOHNSON NASCAR groupie. I have become a salivating, jumping off the sofa and screaming through every lap, tungsten-steel-hard-core NASCAR racing fan.

I’m even thinking about springing for a Jimmie Johnson sweatshirt, and if (IF???) he wins the championship and breaks Jeff Gordon’s record of four straight wins in the trophy races this upcoming Sunday, I’ll have to ask Count Baballalapaloozo to buy me an entire wardrobe ’cause those Nascar clothes are pricey. Nice, but WHOO HOO pricey!

It’s the Count’s fault anyway, he took me to one of the races over the summer, I got one look at Jimmie Johnson, who passed close enough by me that I could almost touch his gorgeous, tight little butt, and I fell in lust. Good GOD, Did I Ever!

I didn’t touch him though, his extremely lovely wife (I gotta admit this is true) was with him, so I left him alone. But I can dream, can’t I?

Yanno, it’s not so much his astonishing good looks, because NASCAR drivers are all, by nature, good looking and sexy, a girl’s wet dream every Sunday afternoon. I haven’t seen a single one I’d kick out of my gold-lined faux lepoardskin sleeping bag.

In Jimmie’s case, it’s the way he drives. He’s sneaky and he’s smart, the smartest one in the Nascar league, far as I can see anyway, although that might be colored by my overwhelming lust–er–admiration of his tight little butt. (OMIGOD, he is SO cute!)

Please, Santa, PLEASE put Jimmie Johnson in my panty hose this year for Christmas. The ones I’m wearing on Christmas Eve, okay? His wife would never know, right? How could she, when Beth swears I’m just a figment of her imagination.

Don’t believe her, folks. I’m as real as they come.

I’m probably years behind everyone else discovering NASCAR. I do that because I’m so busy all the time and things just sort of pass me by. CD players were out for ten years before I bought one. DVD players, I have to refer to the written directions every time I use mine. I was years behind on buying one. So you can imagine my astonishment when I recently discovered NASCAR has been running for a lot of years. It’s way older than I am. I won’t speak for Beth, she keeps track of her own years, but this has been going on forEVER and it all just went right over my head.

No longer. The fun to me, besides all the good looking guys to look at, is watching, over time, all the different drivers’ styles and what it is that makes different drivers either win or lose. In Jimmie’s case, he hangs back and sneaks forward toward the end of the race. Others try that, but never with his panache. It’s just the way he does it. (I wonder if he’s that way when he makes love? There’s a thought…)

If y’all haven’t been watching NASCAR races because you’ve heard them referred to as Rednecks Only, that’s just not true. NASCAR racing is a billion dollar business. Watch it a few times, you’ll be as hooked as I am.

For now, GO, JIMMIE JOHNSON! Hotclue’s got your back!

Thank y’all for hanging in here with Beth and me over the past months. I wasn’t much help, honkin’ all over the world with Count Babbalallapaloozo, but I intend to help her out all I can from now on. Y’all know how helpful I CAN be, right?

Just remember, we love y’all, you KNOW we do, so come on back and see us again soon, ya hear me?

Love, Hotclue Herself, no matter what Beth says.