ALL WORK AND NO SLEEP MAKE UNCLE BOB ONE UNFUNNY MOFO

Good God.

I woke up at 2:30 a.m. and haven't been able to go back to sleep since.

I laid in bed for two hours, tossing and turning ... all over a stupid dream.

Wanna know what the dream was?

Okay ... but it's stupid...

I was still living at home with Mom and Dad and Mom REALLY wanted me out of the house, because I was 39 years old and she just thought it was time.

I was panicking in my dream, because I didn't have any idea how I'd make ends meet on my salary. I was so mad at Mom that I wasn't speaking to her. And I just kept racking my brain thinking "How do I live on my own?"

Then I woke up, realized I was married with my own house, a wife and a kid and Mom wasn't really pissed with me and ends were being met just fine, thank you.

Still, I could NOT get back to sleep.

But hey...there's always tonight, eh?

So I got up at 4:30, finished my column (perhaps one of the suckiest columns I've ever written ... I think I may include it here to show you just how unfunny I can be when I haven't had any sleep), and researched some stuff for a story I'm doing.

And now I'm here.

Aren't you lucky??

Well ... our 13th anniversary was perhaps the most boring anniversary yet.

We STILL haven't exchanged cards. I gave her my card that I bought for myself for her to sign and then give to me. And the card I bought for her is still on my desk, unsigned.

Maybe we'll give them to each other next year.

I sent her a dozen roses at work with the card "Thank you for 13 wonderful years, All my love, Uncle Bob".

She said she teared up when she got them. I'd be impressed, but she tears up watching HGTV, so it's not like I did anything special.

We met at 2:30 for a little rendezvous at Andy's doctor's office where he received a clean ear of health ... the ear infection is now completely gone.

She took Andy back to work with her while I came home and wrote my column. She decided to work late and got home about 7:30 last night.

For our 13th wedding anniversary dinner, she had leftover chicken while I dined on some fine frozen pizza.

She went to bed at 8:30, nursing Andy in bed until they both passed out, while I watched the WWF.

You kids see what you have to look forward to???

OH!

I finally taught myself how to put pictures on a CD, so now all of Andy's photos are burned on one CD.

It's something I've been wanting to do for some time now, but just never had the time to do it.

So while I watched 'rasslin' last night, I was actually busy making the CD.

Go me!

Seriously ... go me!!

Oh great. I just tried to open the damned CD up to admire my fine smartmanship ... and the damned thing won't open up.

I bet I screwed something up.

I just betcha.

Two guys called me at the office yesterday to tell me they had two teams of golfers who wanted to be in my golf tournament.

WHOOOHOOOOO!!!

This thing is really starting to come together now!

Yeah!

It sure is!!

Sorry...I'm trying to come across as enthusiastic, when all I can think is ... "Shit I'm tired".

Alright...because I can't think of anything else to write about, I shall leave you with the rough draft of this week's column. Try to struggle through it.

"PLASTIC'S FINE" IS THE BATTLECRY OF THE WEAK AND DOWNTRODDEN

It is time for we, the American consumers, to fight back.

It is time to stand up and tell the truth. To get right in corporate America's face and say "We want paper...NOT plastic bags."

For the last several years, we've gone to our local grocery stores and are presented with a dilemma ... do we want paper? Or do we want plaaaastic??

Think about it ... every grocery store cashier worth his or her salt will drag out that word "plastic" like it's a synonym for "Golden". And if we choose paper over plastic, oh ... heaven FORBID we do that. That means we're not politically correct, we're ... we're ... we're just EVIL.

Believe me ... I've done some research on this subject. I may have been ACTING like I was trying to decide which candy bar to buy in aisle 7 of the local Bruno's for several hours last Saturday ... but I was RESEARCHING, babe. Thanks to my impeccable acting skills, nobody was the wiser.

Here's the statistics: Out of 100 customers, four will demand paper bags to bag their groceries in. The other 96 customers will say (and I quote) "Plastic's fine."

I will say it again ... "Plastic's fine".

By that phrase alone, we are saying that we would RATHER have the paper bags ... but the plastic bags will do. It's as if the plastic bags are the lepers of the bag industry and because we feel sorry for them, we will take them, because if we take the paper bags that means we're endangering the rain forest and there's just no way we can live with that on our conscience.

Why are we, the American consumers, accepting that which we don't want?

Because we want to look like we care. We want to look like we recycle these "fine" plastic bags.

I don't recycle those plastic bags. Do you? I don't even know where we would do it. The big orange trucks that come to my house on Monday mornings don't want them. They'll take newspaper, aluminum cans and the occasional cinder block chunks ... but they don't want or need the plastic bags.

Neigh...those plastic bags are all crammed inside one plastic bag that hangs on the doorknob to my utility room, courtesy of my wife.

"Let's throw all these plastic bags away," I say to her once a month.

"We can't throw those away," she says. "I may need them."

What do we NEED these plastic bags for? I have roughly 6,000 plastic bags hanging off this doorknob and the ball of bags just gets bigger every time I go to the grocery store.

Why?

Because you can only get a maximum of three items in these plastic bags. If you buy $100 worth of groceries, your groceries will be in 85 bags. There's enough room for one banana, a small bag of M&Ms and a Tootsie Roll in each of these bags.

Whereas with a paper bag, you can get upwards of 212 items tucked away neatly inside of them. I once bought the entire spread for a church picnic and it was all bagged in ONE PAPER BAG.

Okay ... that's a lie. I bought everything but the potato salad.

The point I'm so desperately trying to make here is ... just say no to plastic bags. If you'd rather have paper, stand tall and proud and say "I'll take PAPER please."

The cashier will look at you like you're a kitten killer. The bag boy will have to grab a store manager to teach him how to actually BAG groceries rather than individually bag every item you've bought. And the rain forest will look like a desert.

But you'll have peace of mind, you'll only have to make two trips from the car to the house and the ever-growing bag of bags will stop growing and threatening to eat your dog when you're not looking.

Be one of the few.

The proud.

T

he Paper Bag People.

The preceding has been a paid announcement for the People Who Are Sick Of Plastic Bags Cluttering Up Their Home (PWASOPBCUTH)