Googly Christmas

This post is a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to you post.
I wish all my readers the happiest of times this season.
There is lot going on in my life here at the end of 2017 and those 'going on' things keep me from regular postings and my brain from working on the coherent side of normal.
But you deserve better in 2018 so please stay with me!!!!!!!
Love you lots.



Keeping an eye on our Christmas festivities.
or
My Taxidermy Christmas Tree, "The eyes make it so lifelike!"


Thanks for being here.

How much is it?

Money.
Such an elusive thing.
My father always told me that "The rich get richer and the poor...can't do anything about it".
Words to think about.
No, he didn't always say that.
What he always said was "Would you please get some fudge ripple ice-cream when you go to the store?"
No, he only sometimes said that.
What he always said was "How much is it?"
Now that is a phrase that most everyone can relate to.
I thought that as I got older I would have more disposable income and wouldn't have to worry about that question.
Hahahaha!
I don't know why I thought that.
It's a good thought but completely erroneous.
"How much is it?"
I ask that question when I buy groceries, get gas, watch TV, do ANY sort of shopping or gift giving.
Everything in my world revolves around that question.
It stinks.
What brought it up was this shirt:


Neil Young is my Co-Pilot shirt

Not something I need, (I don't even wear t-shirts!) just some sentiment I think is adorable because I have liked Neil Young since forever and still have the ticket stub from the first concert I ever went to which was...of course...Neil Young and the ticket was $3.00.
ARE YOU KIDDING?????????????????
Yes, $3.00 !!!!
That is how old I am.
Kinda bragging right here, but that is free.
So I thought the shirt was cute.
But when I found it online-here it was $78.00!!!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????????
It's a freaking t-shirt!!!!
Kinda crazy.
Don't even wanna spend that much on a casket.
Like who cares how cute your death box is.
But I understand that a casket and all the death party accessories can be quite expensive.
Not that I am ready to shop for that yet.
Google says the average funeral is $7000-$10000!
HOW MUCH?
And you don't even get fudge ripple ice-cream for any guests who might show up to say good-bye thrown in as a bonus!
Google's average estimate cost for burial makes $78.00 for a dumb t-shirt almost look like a good deal!
Especially if I save it for my funeral outfit!
Spend it while you got it people.
Sheesh.


Thanks for being here!

Mosquitos don't even deserve a blog post!

Ok.
I get that mosquitos are part of the food chain.
That they are food for bats, frogs, lizards, spiders, some birds and probably many more dietary deviants that I am not even aware of.
They are necessary.
(I typed the previous sentence with my eyes closed because if I don't see it then it's not true)
Recently I became a significant part of that food chain too.
I am a buffet item for them.
Have mercy!
I am contributing major tissue* donations on a daily basis to this circle of life and will probably pass out before I finish this post.
Since hurricane Irma bashed up my little part of life here in Florida, the mosquitos think it's Mardis Gras or Spring Break or the Running of the Bulls or OctoberFest or La Tomatina or some such other party that I can't relate too because I am not big on crowds, large pointy bovines or vegetables in my hair.
That is why the sun is out and I am inside at the computer.
I am sitting at the computer scratching like a yard dog trying to soothe the itch of bites I didn't know I had.
It is 85 degrees right now and I am wrapped up in a double thick throw that is my temporary mosquito armor.
One consolation though is that these hurricane mosquitoes are huge.
Well, not huge like blue whale huge, but big enough that if they were domesticated could be kept on a leash.
As a pet.
If you like quiet blood sucking pets that won't bark at your neighbors or require a pet deposit at your rental.
Because who has time for grooming and teaching things to roll over?
Sheesh.
Gross.
But gratefully because of their immenseness, the hurricane mosquitos are easy to spot and exterminate.
So after my son and husband declare war in the front room on the little buggers that squeaked through the screen door after we quickly get groceries out of the car, the scene looks like a blood filled paintball fight that lasted way too long.
Then I, yes I alone, spend the next 20 minutes trying to remove the bloody squashings from the wall that must be cleaned up immediately because if the spots are left for more that 15 nano-seconds, they bond to the wall like paint does on a battleship.
Squashings and insect death everywhere.
It is truly a scene from a nightmare.
Don't know why I thought you should know this.
But there it is.
Covered with bumps, itching and a splat of blood.

Thanks for being here.
Be careful out there!


One of my resident but mostly useless pond frogs who is clearly more interested in showing off than catching mosquitoes.
(No bloody squashed mosquito pic for this easily queasy blog.)



*Yes, blood is a tissue. I had no idea of that till I did a little (very little) research on the good old inter web. Now you know it too!
Mosquitos: Your educational resource!

'Body' Language?

Body part parade.

Above you can see some lovely ladies of my clan walking around with body parts.
Mannequin body parts, but still body parts.
We got lots of funny looks and even more comments on the oddness of our group as well as pictures taken because folks said that nobody would believe them if they told the story of how they saw our strange but merry band carrying fake people in their arms.
It was a great financial deal on the lot of torsos and we were quite pleased to get them not realizing the big deal people would make of them as we carried them to the car even though they had been for sale and on display ALL DAY before we found them.

My 3 year old grandson was not so pleased.
Not pleased AT ALL.
When we rested the full body mannequin up against the wall to wait for it's new owner to claim it, he would not go near it.
Could not even turn the hall corner in case he might glance up at it.
Told us it was scary.
He was/is 100% correct.
Unclothed mannequins are like deadness on display.
Not that there is anything wrong with deadness, you just don't expect to pass by it on your tricycle eating a pudding pop.
That's why mannequins usually have clothes on, they are trying to fool people into thinking they are regular humans just trying to be part of what's happening.

So we rectified the situation for him as you can see in the next picture...


Auntie Amy comes to visit.

The cardboard face is from my daughters wedding and has added birthdays, dinners and working as a very effective security guard in our home for about 6 weeks to it's face-only job resume.
The clothing is a raincoat.
That is all it took and the grandson was fine with it.
He asks if Amy will be there when we get in the car on the ride to my house.
He even tells 'Amy' goodbye when he goes home after staying with me for the day.
But the mannequin finally went to it's forever home and my grandson has asked where Amy is repeatedly ever since.
We just tell him, "She's at work" and he seems ok with that.
He hasn't seen the real Amy since the mannequin Amy left.
Can't wait to see his reaction when they finally meet again.

Simple things.

Thanks for being here.

"Here's a dollar, why don't you two elope?"

The title of this post is a quote from my father.
Most of the time his quote was "Here's a quarter, why don't you_______?"
My sister and I could fill in the blank with whatever chore he wanted us to do.
He also probably thought that because our family rarely had any expendable cash that a quarter or even a dollar was inticing.
It was not.
We usually just chuckled and went on our way because my father was a kidder.
The only time he was ever serious was after he and my mother were in a motorcycle accident.
He was serious for about 4 months before reverting back to his usual silly self.
Which leads up to the 2 points of this post:

1) Weddings are hard.
2) Seriously.

And I am not the one getting married.
Even for the mother of the groom the magnitude of getting ready for a wedding is tsunami like.
My father must have understood this magnitude instinctively.
"Here's a dollar, why don't you two elope?"
It was his wise way of being comical and serious...sort of like a warning, because my sister and I heard it repeatedly as soon as we were old enough to date.
Now, my son is getting married.
His marriage is a long distance wedding so I offered my son ALL the money he needed to elope and he wouldn't take it.
His fiancé really wants a wedding.

Now don't get me wrong, weddings are enchanting and lovely and expensive and fun and full of endearing details and expensive and memorable and yummy and a lovely time for the family and have I mentioned expensive?

Having just the one son gave me no previous experience with the true magnitude of the grooms family responsibilities, which are, as I have mentioned, extensive, expensive and much more expanded than from when I was growing up which, if I recall, was only to pay for the minister and the rehearsal dinner which isn't so bad but now includes lodging, gifts, extra food, spouses or significant others and enough beds and towels for everybody all of which wouldn't matter so much if someone had just told me these things with enough lead time that I could have sold a body part to help financially because my son didn't know and quite possibly didn't try to know because I think he is now thinking with another part of his body other than his brain if you know what I mean plus the fact that I am soooo much older now that I can barely handle the stress of boiling water for tea in the mornings which makes me think that this destination wedding stuff is a made up thing to give humans something to do on any given weekend because Netflix is entirely too slow in producing their good quality binge watching stories if you know what I mean?

And I think we all agree that we all know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong though.
There is no doubt in my actual brain that the wedding will be beautiful, meaningful and come off with very few hitches (thanks to the brides extremely organized mother) but my fathers words sound off in my head at least 5 times a day because, besides weddings, stress is hard.
"Here's a quarter, go see shrink."


My father in all his wisdom...and whiskers.


Thanks for being here.

Once upon a time...Sasquatch and My Little Pony Got Crazy....

Yes, It's a crazy title but that's what this post is about.
Crazy.
Being almost crazy doesn't really count with most people.
Full blown, perscriptionized, stay away crazy is all that people seem to think matters.
I disagree.
Most people I know including myself aren't 'certifiable' in the legal sense of the word, but we could get there in the blink of an eye.
Now THAT people, is scary.
We are holding it together with the subtle strength but delicate fragility of a spiders web.
Every day.
Every moment.
The 'not knowing' or 'never sure' of humanity is what frightens me.
I can totally see the edge of sanity but have easily kept my toes just dangling over the edge.
The rampant greed and the lack of integrity in earthly leadership these days, however, have given my dangling toes a bit more wiggle room and my spider web retention rope is strained very thin.
So maybe that is why I over reacted when I went to work the other day.
'Over reacted'?
No, I lost it.
You see, I clean for a living.
I am a maid.
And a darn good one if I do say so myself.
Spic and span.
Top to bottom and side to side.
And most people that I clean for are lovely, hardly make a mess kind of guests.
MOST people.
Well, last week the guests were apparently Sasquatch and My Little Pony.
Interesting and adorable, right?
So very wrong.
Humans are mammals so they are going to shed a little.
I regularly clean up stray hairs, no problem....
B u t....
Last week it was full on molting season!!
There was hair on E V E R Y-D A D G U M-T H I N G !!!!!!
EVERYTHING!!!!!
It caused me to go over the edge for a few hours.
There were long hairs on the chairs, the walls, the linens, the kitchen sink, everything, singularly and in globs, plus.....there were pubes stuck to everything.
PUBES !
In places where pubes should not be.
I will not even attempt to list all the items the pubes were on because I bet you have already thrown up a little in your mouth by now.
It was like the people had shaved each other from head to toe during an indoor hurricane!!
Never have I seen anything like it before in my life and I have been doing this for 4 years!
I had to clean everything 5 times with every product I had all while making the 'scrunchy nose gross out face' because it was never clear when the horror would end.
Then I came home, burned my clothes and took a lava hot shower.
So who's crazier?
The shedding, hairless, molting Yeti/Pony couple, or me?
-Don't answer that-
I thought that by putting my 'hairy' experience on paper and getting the heebie-jeebies out of my mind I would become a little less crazy by now, but I don't know.
People are nuts.
And they make the rest of us crazy.
No. I correct myself. They make us craz-ier.


EEWWW. Truth is stranger than fiction.

TMI??
Sorry. Had to.

Thanks for being here.

Getting Out of Bed Should Count as Exercise.

Trying to get enough exercise is only a problem for some people.
Like the people who decide what counts as exercise.
The folks who make up the charts and such.
The 'people' telling me what counts for exercise on my score sheet have entirely too much power and do not seem to really know what actual day to day 'exercise' is for every day people.
I'm not mad about it though.
Wait a minute...
Yes, I am mad about it, so it should count as 'angercise'.
60 calories burned.
I'm tired of being written off for the actual, real-time, hard work-physical fitness stuff that I do each day (although according to exercise experts, being tired...of anything...means I am not doing enough exercise or just being lazy, so zero calories burned).
Sheesh.
My insurance company 'suggests' I wear a pedometer (which I do) and keep track of my daily activity and earn points/dollars towards fitness equipment (and I'm not talking about mops and scrub brushes kind of my fitness equipment).
I get no credit for:
- 6 loads of laundry complete with drying, folding and putting away = 45 minutes on the stair master...at least.
- Vacuuming the living room, bedrooms and hallway...twice because of the dog hair = 20 minutes on the rowing machine...not including the sneezing fit.
- Cooking, shopping, loading and unloading the dishwasher...twice a day = 30 minutes on the stationary bike...without benefit of TV distraction.
- Weed whacking and/or mowing the grass = 1/2 marathon at least because we live in the gosh darn mountains.
- Pulling up actual weeds, gardening and trimming the freaking yard bushes = easily a full hour of hot yoga...with no relaxing background music.
And imagine the calories burned and the exercise you get when you have children to take care of and chase after on top of the aforementioned other chores!
No, lets not imagine it cause I did my time with all that and I am grateful those days are kinda over.
Only kinda, because I still take care of my grandson and after he leaves I feel like...a very unfit, physically over active, exhausted, old person.
So why don't I get credit for that?
The types of exercise my insurance company apparently only counts is:
1) Running on asphalt till your feet blister and bleed because not all of us can afford $200 running shoes to make it bearable or
2) Paying hard earned money to use expensive equipment at the gym that is covered with gross drippy sweat from people who only work-out for the spandex or
3) Professional aerobic type classes that make the rhythmically challenged of us move like we intentionally walked into a room full of spiderwebs...for entirely too long.
I work hard in my own way and that should count for something.
Anything.
So I make it count for cookies and quick naps in my comfy bed that I then have to force myself to get out of again.
And YES, getting out of the bed each morning or naptime deserves massive amounts of credit in my humble physically fit opinion because life is hard and people who are brave and strong are the ones getting out of their comfy bed to tackle the tasks of life, for zero points!
So....?
So, insurance policy writers should pay us to have maids, cooks, child care providers, yard crews and gardeners so that we have the time to perform all the 'proper exercises' they require because they can't begin to understand how the rest of us stay in shape by actually doing ordinary daily tasks as part of being healthy and alive.
Seems fair to me, but I don't want to think about it anymore.
Writing this post has been exhausting and I am sure I burned a ton of calories in the process of it but I do it all for you my faithful readers, with no regrets or exercise points.
I'm gonna go take a nap or eat a cookie... maybe both.

Have a lovely sweaty day!


Yes, really.

Thanks for being here.


P.S.
This post makes it sound like I clean a lot.
Hahahahahaha!
Good one.



I do not. :)

Traveling is for the Brave

Well I am back home all safe and sound from the trip of stress.
(Fretting about the Trip)
It is amazing how so many awful things and so many pleasant things can share the same weekend because life is like the weather these days...it is totally unpredictable.
Like the random way Philadelphia people use their horns.
Randomly = All The Time!
Not always AT you but you're never sure because they surround you.
My son says that they are not mad at all, that the horn for Philadelphia residents is just one of the main tools for driving.
They don't think about "Come on get going", "I gotta get to work" or "What's the hold up?", those 'thoughts' are immediately translated by car horns.
It would seem to me that the car horn in Philadelphia has a very large vocabulary and speaks as many as 6 languages.

Back to the trip.

Not having Scrooge McDuck rooms full of money to play in, my husband and I had to fly economy class.
Well. no, that is too nice.
We flew in 'the economy is ruined so you could be walking, just get over it class'.
What we paid for were the very last two seats of the plane which were smaller than the other economy seats (I measured), they did not recline (I tried), had no window (I looked), no moveable arm rests (I wrestled and pushed) and we were one thin sheet of aluminum and some textured wallpaper away from the giant loud, screachy, vibrating engine that is tacked on to the back of the plane with duck tape (I can only guess) but I had no window of my own so I couldn't really know for sure, but I tried to look and be sure when I peaked through the window of the lady in front of me, which was not really helpful because she had big hair and all I could see was the front 4 inches of the engine but that is a good thing because it prevented me from watching the tragedy that would occur if said engine decided to fall off in mid flight (It didn't).
I sat there pondering my situation while we waited for maintenance to fix the phones the flight attendants use to talk to each other which took 40 minutes of buckled in can't go anywhere waiting because my husband and I are right next to one of the repairmen.


Flight Phone Fixer Upper Guy

This phone repair delay happened AFTER waiting 40 minutes in the terminal because our flight had not arrived yet.
But, they finally finished and we took off.
Then came the turbulence.
THE ENTIRE FLIGHT.
I spent 80 longer than normal minutes white knuckling the back of the seat in front of me, making the seat occupant extremely nervous while holding on to my barf bag and praying that the trip was almost over now....NOW....How 'bout NOW?!
I have been seasick before and that is the worst kind of nausea compared to everything, up to this point.
Well, I was in a sea sickening AirBoat, wondering if I really loved anybody so much as to endure this plane ride.

I do.

Barely.


One of the people I love enough to go through this flight.

And did I mention...
The turbulence lasted THE ENTIRE FLIGHT!
Sheesh.


Barf Bag. Maybe She Will. Maybe She Won't.

I could barely walk off the plane.
Heck, I could barely walk for the next 4 hours.
No more cheap seats for me.
My husband sat supportive but unfazed and fine through out the whole nightmare.
I do not EVEN want to talk about that.
So unless you have rooms full of money or a steel stomach, maybe a nice drive with a loud horn will get you where you need to be.

Thanks for being here.

What's Up With Cats?

Cats.
They are either adored or despised for the most part.
I, however, am on the fence about them.
They, like us humans, have good points and bad points.
But MY cats actually have no point, except to be adorable and remind me every minute of every day that I am in THEIR kingdom and need to be aware of that fact in every one of those minutes.
For example:
Today I was refilling the cat dish with dry cat food.
As per usual.
For some reason both my cats will immediately come running when they hear the food pinging against the glass bowl, but it is the exact same food that has been in the dish since 1 minute ago.
The dish was not even m o s t l y empty.
It was, by any human estimation, m o s t l y full.
I was just topping it off.
The one cat, Meow-meow, came running and ate with wild abandon.
As a starving cat might do.
The other cat, Mongo, ate a bit and then went back to her sleeping spot like it was really no big deal and she was doing me a favor by pretending the food was worthy of her sniff.
Point of the story is that I leave to put up some laundry, gone for 4 minutes max, come back and step in something squishy.
Meow-meow had thrown up a huge pile of scarfed up, undigested cat food.
What the heck?
Was I mad?
Kinda...because I stepped in it and...
Yes...because I now had another mess to clean up and...
No...because I can totally relate.
I know you know what I mean because we have all just survived Girl Scout Cookie season.
You get a box of your favorites and open them with the intention of eating 3 maybe 4 cookies at the most because they have to last till next season, but the next thing you know there are only 2 cookies left in the sleeve and you might as well eat those because they will just get stale.
What has just happened?
I just behaved like a cat.
Without the puke and run sequence.
That is why I am on the fence.
Cats drive me crazy but they so get me.
And you are not gonna believe this, but as I type this sentence, I can hear Meow-meow back at her food dish, crunching and chomping away, trying to fill up the empty tummy she just created.
I gotta find her a job.

Thank-you for being here.


Mongo and Meow-meow on top of the warm dryer wondering if the bowl of cat food is really as full as it gets.

Fretting about the Trip

I really don't mind getting older.
It has been my destiny for many decades now.
But there is no way to adequately prepare for some of the inevitables.
Like traveling.
My husband and I will soon be flying, on a plane, to go visit my son who, in my mind, is living in a far off place riddled with barely enough food, only cold places to sleep and bad guys waiting behind every shadow.
Just kidding.
It's only up north and in reality he is well taken care of.
But I have to be certain...and the only way to get there and check in a timely fashion is to fly.
On an airplane.
In the sky.
With only one tiny suitcase.
But what about all the stuff I need?
-Like my favorite blanket?
-Or my favorite pillow?
-The foot lotion?
-My book that I started and want to finish but probably won't?
-The giant, fluffy coat that would keep a polar bear toasty but I can only wear for about 15 minutes because I get too hot but when it's cold outside there is nothing better?
-The entire bedside table full of things I need sometimes, but not all the time, but can only sleep because I know they are there if I need them because if I do need them and don't have them then I have to get out of bed to get them and I will be up all night because the wood floor is cold on my feet and wakes me totally up with a jolt and then after I get the needed thing and get back to bed I'm grumpy-sleeping which is not restful at all only because I wasn't prepared enough which is what will happen when I take this trip because I can't bring everything I might need and the stuff I do bring is all the wrong stuff and so I spend a week worrying about how to not worry and try to plan ahead so that I actually DO bring the right stuff and by the time we leave I am exhausted and wonder if this is really a good idea, but this is my son and he needs me?
Not really.
He's a full grown man/boy and doesn't need anything except extra cash.
All the time.
But once I get somewhere I am always/usually/rarely glad I got out of the house.
It just takes so much planning and preparation (H) though because the body does whatever it feels like doing anyway no matter where or who you are and you never know what will be necessary due to the fact that traveling magnifies all the needs of the human body and old people already get a bad rap for existing.
All this stress so I can just try and NOT be a typical old person.
But I'm going anyway.
I will be brave, traveling light and feeling vulnerable
Off (in every sense of the word) I go into the wild blue yonder.


Thanks for being here.

Here is a quote from 'What About Bob' that sums up my brain today:
Bob Wiley: Well, I get dizzy spells, nausea, cold sweats, hot sweats, fever blisters, difficulty breathing, difficulty swallowing, blurred vision, involuntary trembling, dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort.
Dr. Leo Marvin: So the real question is, what is the crisis Bob? What is it you're truly afraid of?
Bob Wiley: What if my heart stops beating? What if I'm looking for a bathroom, I can't find it, and... my bladder explodes?

OR:

This quote from 'The Jerk':
Navin R. Johnson: Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything. Except this.
[picks up an ashtray]
Navin R. Johnson: And that's the only thing I need is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray... And this paddle game. - The ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need... And this remote control. - The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need... And these matches. - The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control, and the paddle ball... And this lamp. - The ashtray, this paddle game, and the remote control, and the lamp, and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The paddle game and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.

Both are an accurate summation of my brain function.
Thanks again.


Young me on a trip when all I needed was my dog and a walking stick.

Apparently I Am Becoming An Insect.

Being wintertime here in the South, there are not so many insects showing their faces in the mostly cold weather.
T h a n k goodness.
EXCEPT ....
FACT --->>> THERE 200 MILLION INSECTS FOR EVERY HUMAN ON THE PLANET!! <<<---- That seems to be an extraordinarily large number of bugs! Especially since the last time I checked I had way more extermination products, including frogs, than I had bug salons and bug coffee shops. I must say that I am actually grateful for most bugs though. Butterflies, bumblebees, praying mantises, flies, tics and fire ants are all here for a reason. Just kidding. Flies, tics and fire ants are really just miniature monsters from an alien planet and their main reason is to help us understand bug related paranoia with perfect clarity.
Even spiders are not that bad.
After all, most of us have a soft spot for Spiderman.
Maybe because he has a penchant for helping people.
Well, maybe, but Spiderman is still a weird little adorable freak to me.
Anyway...
Speaking of bugs...
For Christmas I got this microfiber towel.


Microfiber Christmas Towel....Of doom.

Are you already ahead of me on this...?
Dadgummit but those things should be banned from the planet
Even after lotioning, my hands apparently have those little insect nubs that attach to every single surface when I use that towel.
The towel turns me into a bug.
I hate it.
It creeps me out.
This also happens to me with some sheets and blankets and my rarely shaved winter legs.
(If you regularly shave your legs in winter then I am afraid that we cannot be friends, unless you live in a tropical climate then I am just jealous and will not hold it against you.)
I sleepily turn over and there is this scraping, snaggy sensation that makes me feel like my body is trying to get unstuck from fly paper.
Then I become fully awake and sleep eludes me.
It is the same entomological affliction that affects my hands and a certain kind of towel.
It is unnerving...and totally weird, unless you belong to one of yours and mine 200,000,000 crunchy, exoskeletoned acquaintances.
But then is it really t h a t weird?
What if it were a real transformation?
Wouldn't hanging on the ceiling at the Dr's office or climbing a wall at the mall to get past some slow moving lollygaggers be a hoot?
But alas, so far it is just my imagination run amok because of some linens.
HA!
It's gonna be a great year.

Anybody need a holiday towel?


Thanks for being here.