Excuse Me While I Disappear: Tales of Midlife Mayhem

by Laurie Notaro

order kids’ meals at restaurants, and the server just nods without question. Old lady. Little appetite, if she even lives through the meal.

“The day will come when you fervently wish that you are only as fat as you were the FIRST time you thought you were fat.”—

You never get a peach without a pit.

Eugene, Oregon, where people are so far to the left that they have almost looped around again to the right, and they have no problem demanding that other people not ruin their nature walks by doing laundry. This attitude is super typical of the neighborhood. We are liberated and free! We delight in passing that liberation on to others by telling everyone else exactly how to live.

Everyone thinks they know the best way to live, think, and be (based of course on what works so well for them and so if it is true for them, well then it must be true for everyone else)

grief must fall on one of us, and I’d rather take it than hand it to her.