I’m being stalked.  It’s been happening for some time now, and I don’t know what to do.  I can feel this dark presence around the corners, behind me, always where I am.  It’s confusing me, making me see things, it’s inside my head, my bones.  Mr. Who won’t help me, the police can’t help me.  And I think it’s giving me heartburn.  I’m all alone.

All alone.

So cold. So very cold.

Ok, I’m just messing with you, I’m just getting old, and it’s annoying. Inevitable, but annoying. I’m 41 and some change, and my eyebrows are coming in white and it’s upsetting me.  I keep thinking there’s a piece of fuzz on the top of my left eyebrow when I look in the mirror and when I go to pull on it, well, darnit, it’s ATTACHED to my HEAD.

Store bought hair dye doesn’t cover the gray like it used to.  My gray hairs laugh in the face of Garnier and Clairol. You can hear it, they stand up and wave their little gray fists and yell: “You cannot take me, you foul chestnut colored goop! I will not be colored! Me and my brethren stand firm!” and they do, and the rest of my hair is just now an even darker contrast to the gray.

I’m considering taping the sound my knees make as I go down the stairs because I don’t think I’ve heard it used as a special effect in a movie yet. It could be used by rappers or in science fiction movies. I could make millions. Snap!Crackle!Pop! has nothing on me.

I have bulging discs in my neck, which are so painful it feels like I have carpal tunnel in my hands and my arms feel like I did that thing where you push them really hard against the inside of a door frame for a minute and then let go and your arms float, but without the floating. My body from the waist up feels like it was just ran over by Hulk Hogan wearing a porcupine suit, and Steven Seagal tried to break my neck with his signature move but got distracted by a doughnut halfway through.

Standing up after sitting for 10 minutes or more causes heel pain that is so unbelievably painful it makes me want to suck my thumb and ask my mom to come over and make me my comfort meal of bacon and eggs.

Speaking of bacon and eggs, most of the foods I like I can’t eat any more without serious pain. I had my gallbladder taken out a few years ago, and let me tell you something, I miss her so bad. You have no idea how much that thing filters all the bad food for you. Be kind to her, woo her, buy her flowers.

I remember when my friend Cindy and I would study for tests my freshman and sophomore year in college armed with our usual staple of study food: Doritos and Ho-Hos.  All night long, that’s what we would eat.  All my friends and I subsisted on Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, and the usual other fast food.  Heartburn? What was that? Only OLD people got heartburn. There may have been the occasional: “Oh my God, I think I just vomited in my mouth a little” here and there, but that was purely from the alcohol.

I could eat anything and feel pretty good.  I don’t understand why now I have to get all sick and oogie feeling when I try to eat the things my body tells me it wants. For example, the other night, a Beef Burrito Supreme with extra sour cream, 2 orders of nachos and cheese from Taco Bell, and half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s between 11 pm and midnight wasn’t THAT bad, right?

Right?

WAH, I don’t want to start drinking Metamucil laced drinks. Someone hold me.