YEAH? SO?

     I know I've been a terrible blogger. You wanna make something of it? Call me names? Insult me and my family? Go ahead. The fact is that sometimes, a sense of guilt and obligation just isn't enough to get some normally introverted people to blog, because sometimes, they JUST DON'T FEEL LIKE IT.
     But I guess I have a few things to say.  One of them is that last Friday I submitted my entry to the Greenhouse Literary Funny Contest.  At least, I think I submitted it.  It's kind of a long story and it involves my frightening technological incompetence, but I don't want to talk about it.  Nor do I want to talk about the Funny Contest itself, even though that's a much shorter story.  Let me just say that I've learned since Friday that last year's contest winner was a picture book entitled SQUISHY McFLUFF, THE INVISIBLE CAT.  I would not, and could not, lie to you about this.  It's a series, actually, first one releasing in 2014 with three more to follow.  Squishy McFluff gets around, evidently.  Adventures galore.  And I have no doubt that it will be a brilliant series, in both the American and British senses of the word.  And my book, as hard as I worked on it and as good as I think it is, is no Squishy McFluff.  Of that, I am sure.
     But we're not going to talk about the Funny Contest.  Instead, I will provide a helpful household hint, regarding a technique I just discovered this morning.  Say you're getting dressed for work and you're wearing your nice white summer dress.  Well, the slightly torn crocheted white espadrilles you inherited from your daughter when her feet outgrew yours seem just a little too casual, do they not?  So that leaves the extremely old white sandals with the chunky little heels, but when you dig them out from the bottom of your closet - are you paying attention here? - those chunky little heels turn out to be in fair-to-poor condition, having been stained yellowish in many places. White shoe polish, you say?  Are you kidding me?  Who owns white shoe polish?  Not my family, I can assure you.  We don't golf.  And there's no time to go out and buy white shoe polish, either, because you already spent a little too much time wondering how, and when, that ugly little cyst that's been sitting there for years at the inside corner of your right eye magically disappeared.  I mean, you're at an age when ugly things make a habit of appearing somewhere noticeable on your skin, not disappearing.  You're glad this one chose to depart, make no mistake, but it somehow feels like a perversion of the natural order.  So anyway, here comes the advice for the stained chunky white heels, and it can be condensed into one word: Wite-out.  And if my humble tip changes your life for the better - and I frankly can't imagine that it won't - I ask for very little.  Just drop me a line and let me know that I've started a fashion trend, because I've always known that would happen someday but it's been taking a long frigging time and I'm not getting any younger here.  Do you read me?
     Maybe tomorrow I'll try Wite-out on my teeth.  It'll be awesome.  Stay tuned.  Because if it works on my teeth, I know some invisible cats who could really use a touch-up.