Lowered Expectations

Remember that bit they did on Mad TV years ago about a video dating service called "Lowered Expectations"? I have the theme song in my head right now. I loved the opening of it that featured an overweight couple holding hands as they gazed out through a chain linked, barbed wire fence at a dried up L.A. River - very un-picturesque and unromantic. These days, that is pretty much been how I've been feeling about opportunities here in La La Land. Probably because there are so few. What once was the land of anything and everything now feels like a land of desolation and fiscal irresponsibility. I'm fed up over our Government's lack of governing skills - how did Arnold the action hero get elected in the first place? And how can there just be no jobs anymore? Even the bad ones are hard to get these days. And the same holds true for other parts of the country - like Indiana for example. The folks out there who are working are just happy to have jobs, and they don't expect much from them, and probably never have. We seem to be a Nation of people who have all lowered our expectations, and are happy to just be looking out at a dried up old river bed. At least it has the potential to be a river, we tell ourselves. I know I'm happiest these days just hanging out with my little family, and conversing with Bee. "Hi Mommy. I have two eyes!" she'll say to me. "Hi Bee. Guess what? I have two eyes, too!" I'll reply. And so our conversation goes. 

My mother-in-law Joyce (or Mommy Nanny as Bee so fondly calls her) always talked about how Mel, her youngest child and only daughter, is her Sunshine. I never really understood what she meant by that, and always thought she was being sappy and slightly corny. I secretly wanted to bitch slap her. But now I get it. Bee is my Sunshine. And she is the one thing that Sparky and I have not lowered our expectations over. She helps make us happy and enables us to care a little less about the lack of money and everyday stress as we try to weather this New Depression. It sucks, I've got to tell you. It really, really does.  But as the world goes to hell around us, and we may have all lowered our expectations as a country, at least The Misers have our Sunshine.