Harsh Realizations/Scary Scarecrows/The Red Hat Lady Mafia

So I've recently come to a harsh realization about who I am as a person. I've spent years trying to deny it, pretending like it wasn't true, and avoiding the fact.
But I can't do it anymore.
I have to come out and say...
That I, Amy, am a morning person.
I wish I wasn't. I wish I were a night person.
But I'm not.
I wake up in the morning and feel fresh as a daisy, ready to take on the day. I'm active and talkative in the morning (ask my co-workers, I think sometimes they want to shoot me) and I find I get the most done in the morning hours.
I am not a night person. When it starts to hit about 10:30, 11:00...I start to fade, real quick. I get quiet, I stare off into space, and sometimes can't remember exactly what it is I'm supposed to be doing.
Being a morning person is not to say I LIKE getting out of bed at 6:30 in the morning. It just means I've found I work best in the morning. And in most cases, even if I can sleep in, I'm out of bed by 9:30 at the latest.
...I know what this means. It means I'm 50 years old.
Don't be surprised if I start capping my nights with WGN news.

So I walk to the train in the morning to get to work, and there's this house I walk by the has a scarecrow-ish dummy sitting on their lawn. It's just a stuffed shirt and pants, with a grotesque mask sitting on the body. And he's got leaves all over him to make it sorta look like he's coming out of the ground...It's actually a pretty crappy scarecrow as far as scarecrows go. Not that I'm a connoisseur or anything. But I know when I see a shitty, shoddily put together scarecrow. And that's what this one is...
Yet every time I walk by, it scares the shit out of me.
And I've probably walked past it 8 or 9 times in the past few weeks.
The worst part is that I see something on the lawn as I approach. Granted there are bushes in the way. But I know there's something there, it's not like it "sneaks" up on me. My thought process is usually something like this:
"Oh hey, there's someone on the front lawn of that house...he must be doing yard work or picking up dog poop or something...GAH!!! (At this point, I jump 10 feet in the air)OMG!!! THAT GUY'S EYES ARE OOZONG OUT OF HIS HEAD!!!...oh wait, that's right...this is the scarecrow I walked by yesterday. And the day before. And last weekend."...stupid Halloween decorations.
But today I saw justice was served...
When I walked by this morning I saw that someone had stolen the scarecrows head.
haHA! And you know what? I didn't get startled this morning. This justice is sweet for two reasons:
a) Because the stupid scarecrow scares me every time I walk by it. And I hate it.
b) Because it's not Halloween anymore and that damn thing shouldn't be up anymore anyway.

...So I don't know if you're at all familiar with this organization called the "Red Hat Ladies" but they're basically extremely old women that go places (like theatre) wearing red hats. Yeah. I'm serious. A couple of them came to the window today to buy tickets and they were the scariest old ladies I've ever met. I seriously thought they were going to take me out back and beat the crap out of me. They were forceful and pushy and condescending. Which led me to wonder...are the Red Hat Ladies affiliated with the mob?!?!
I mean...shit...maybe I shouldn't talk about this. Because I don't exactly have the money to hire a bodyguard and if I'm right...this could seriously crack open a world of crime that we never thought existed...
I have to talk about it...for the good of humanity.
So...basically I think the Red Hat Ladies are in with the mob. Or, maybe more accurately...the Red Hat Ladies are the mob itself!!
Ok, I've got no...shit, what's that thing called??...Evidence. Yeah. That. I've got no evidence. But what I do have is a sneaky suspicion. And hey, a sneaking suspicion was enough to invade Iraq, why can't it be enough to suppose that the Red Hat Ladies are the mob, right?
Think about...
No one would EVER suspect old ladies to be crime lords. Old ladies are supposed to bake cookies, and play BINGO in church basements, and fall asleep in strange positions...
Not so.
You might think old ladies are old and sweet and all the sudden...
BLAM!! You're face to face with some crinkly-faced, aged-spotted, shrinking, dinosaur wearing a red hat and threatening to beat the snot out of you with her walker.
...when you come to you notice you've got imprints on your face from where the tennis balls stuck to the bottom of her walker struck you.
I wonder what sort of crime they deal in...I think it's drugs. Really, I don't even have suspicion to go off of on this assertion. I just think it's really funny to picture an old woman in a red hat sitting in front of a mountain of cocaine in some dimly lit room with armed Red Hat ladies around her.
That's probably a little far-fetched, though.
I mean really, they probably do deal in drugs, but let's face it...it's the prescription kind.
I'VE CRACKED IT!!!
The Red Hat Ladies Mafia supplies the geriatric community with the prescription medications their insurance doesn't cover or that they can't afford.
Oh, but it isn't like a Robin Hood stealing from the rich giving to the poor sort of thing...oh no...the Red Hat Ladies have a STRANGLEHOLD on Retirement Communities everywhere. They demand a percentage of old people's pension, investments, retirement funds, stocks, family heirlooms, and stamp collections...all going toward their ultimate goal...MORE RED HATS!!!!!!!
...we've got to stop these mad women before they suck America's old people dry! Seriously, that's the government's job, not some rag-tag group of low-life, red-hat-wearing criminals!
I'm going to take a stand against these evil-doers. They're almost as bad as terrorists. I hope you'll join me. Otherwise, you're not an American.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
STEVE: Uh-oh. I'm getting in one of my hyper moods and I have no outlet! I might have to run around the block.
ME: I know. I get like that too. And I just sit here in my roll-y chair and...(I proceed to move back and forth in my roll-y)...too long in an office!!!
STEVE: That's when you need to give yourself a research project...like...find out how many elements are on jupiter.