What is longer than an elephant’s pregnancy and just as painful? It’s an American election cycle and it feels like a mental ‘wedgie’ on steroids.

When we say the words ‘election season’ do we get that burning feeling in the pit of our stomach as if it were a side effect from some drug we don’t need? It’s not really a season, because ‘season’ denotes a happy joyful time of the year that includes a holiday we celebrate. With Congressional approval ratings lower than the interest on your savings account, we don’t celebrate our politicians.

Let’s be thankful that the political ads are coming to an end and grateful for a little breather before we start getting bombarded with Christmas ads. Holiday ads motivate us to push back from the table and go shopping as it gets us out of the house and into more debt. Running up more debt is as American as apple pie and paying for that pie with no interest until 2018.

Running up debt could be the most exercise people get. Since the invention of the clapper, most of it comes from jumping up when we win 2 dollars on a scratch-off.

If the upcoming holiday ‘Feast-A-Rama’ causes you to think about getting into an exercise regimen, do it in the first 2 weeks of January like everyone else. And like everyone else, in late January you’ll stop and go back to the eating habits that caused you to think about exercising in the first place.

Speaking of food, we’ve got Thanksgiving to look forward to. It’s all about the food, the tradition, the food, the shopping, the food and the leftovers.

I think the pilgrims started this whole thing by coming here because either the shopping mall had not yet come to England or they were sick of ‘figgy pudding’.