Sometimes It's Just Not Your Day

I knew I shouldn't get out of bed this morning. I lay there, awake, for at least a half hour, trying to work out how I could avoid it. Why does my job have to be an every day affair?

But I finally did get up, too late to make breakfast at home. I stopped in the bagel store, so far so good. Decided I should have coffee on the way to work, since I hadn't woken up yet. Asked for, as I always do at a deli, hazelnut with milk.

There are people who think flavored coffees are evil. But my thinking is: if I'm not going to have a very-high-quality cup of coffee, in a ceramic mug, sitting down at a table that doesn't have a computer screen on it, I should at least have the softening effects of the toasty hazelnut.

Except that the woman who gave me my coffee gave me regular coffee, which I didn't find out until I opened it several blocks away, too late to do anything about it. This is also the woman who, when I once asked for "not too much cream cheese," gave me the amount you would put on if you were putting on butter at home, i.e., not very much at all. Sure, it's probably better for me that way, but if I'd wanted better for me, I would have gotten up early enough to make my own damn breakfast at home.

Where was I?

Right, so I chucked the coffee, figuring life was too short to drink bad bagel-store coffee and I would get a cup of hazelnut at the deli in my office building. There they make you pour your own coffee, which means you always get what you want, even if what you want is half caffeine/half decaf, with a drop of half-and-half and a swush of skim milk. Not that I would ever want such a thing.

Up at my desk, bagel at my left hand, coffee at my right, I settled in to a day in front of the computer, when, whoops! I knocked over, no, I flung over, the coffee, all over my desk, underneath my monitor and keyboard (fortunately not on the keyboard, or I wouldn't be writing this now), leaving myself with approximately one sip of coffee.

And then, and then, I get a message from the bridal salon I went to last night to try on wedding dresses, telling me I'd left a pair of Spanx in the dressing room. Insult indeed, added to injury.

So I have had a total of three sips of coffee today: two of the bad-woman-bagel-store cup, one of the knocked over hazelnut. Where is my bed?

Gore for Four?

I'm not the only one who would like to see Al Gore run for president in 2008. A "Draft Gore" group placed a full-page, $65,000 ad in the New York Times, which you can see here.

Now, I don't think Al's going to go for it. But let's fantasize a little and say he did. Say he won. We get four years of good governance, repaired relationships around the world, serious headway in the development of alternative energy, even, let's dream big, an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a major reduction in the deficit.

Then it's 2012 and he's up for re-election. You know what's going to happen then? Karl Rove will slime his slimy self back into the equation and declare that it's unconstitutional that Gore run for another term. After all, the 22nd Amendment bars anyone from being elected to the presidency twice.

And we all know Al Gore was elected in 2000. (OK, we don't all know that, but it's a very strong possibility.)

Just you wait. The one thing you can never accuse the Republicans of is insufficient chutzpah.

Two Things I Want To Know About Britney Spears

I'd like to be able to say that I haven't the slightest idea of what's going on with Britney these days, but that would be a lie. I know about the head shaving. I know about the flashing of the unmentionables. I know that she lost custody of her kids to her ex-husband. The "news" about the Britney car wreck is everywhere, and it's hard to look away.

But here's what I don't get. All the media converage has been: Oh, she's so crazy! She's out of control! Just like Lindsay! And Paris! Girls gone wild! Doesn't she care about her children at all???

But there are two things that are never mentioned. The first things is this: At 25, Britney is around the age that, if she were going to have a giant mental disorder, it would appear. Schizophrenia anyone? Manic-depression? She's cut herself off from her family. She's self-medicating. She's acting completely irrational, paranoid, delusional (her performance on the MTV awards was proof of that last). I think she's not "crazy," but actually mentally ill.

Which leads to the second thing I don't hear anyone talking about. Isn't anyone worried that she might kill herself? Especially after her children have been taken from her, possibly her last tenuous tie to real life, if I were her parents or anyone who actually knew her, as opposed to all of us who just read about her in the tabloids every day, I'd be keeping a close eye on her.

God help me, I feel sorry for her. Plus, the entertainment shows have just about wrung out all they can out of Anna Nicole. If Britney commits suicide, they'll be feeding off her for the next five years. And I'll probably have to watch it.