It's Always Something...

Sorry If I Offended

2012-02-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

I want you all to know that I have pulled my two part "naughty" blog about sex from the rank of "published".

From the lack of and then rather odd comments I received I decided that you do not want to read about that subject from your 84 year Old Lady role model so I will try to be good for a while and behave myself.

No promises, of course.

Meanwhile, to restore your faith in me as a wholesome character, I am proud to announce that I have achieved something beyond my wildest expectations. I have managed single-handedly to refill the color cartridge from my printer from a kit !!!

One of my virtues or foibles, I am not sure which, is that I grew up with the 1930's Depression Mentality and have never lost it.....I am frugal, can't stand waste and will go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to save a buck. In my mind......certain ridiculous lengths are perfectly OK to go to in order to save money.

My blood boils at the thought that, for the price of replacing both cartridges in my printer, I could buy a new printer containing 2 new cartridges (I know they are reduced capacity, but still....).....what kind of madness is that???.......For years I have been refilling my black ink cartridges from a kit, thereby saving at least $20 - $30 a throw each time and a few years ago I successfully refilled a color cartridge. For some reason, my recent efforts have ended up in failure, unless you consider a plump Jewish lady festooned from head to toe in Magenta, Blue and Yellow some sort of success. Worse than that is that the printer, last time, spat at me with harsh words and refused to process what it obviously considered my hand done atrocity.

So, after running out of ink in my color cartridge last week, I shed many tears and dispatched Florence to the store to buy......gasp......sob......aaaaarrrghhh.....a new one while I awaited the arrival of a new refill kit that I ordered on line. When the kit arrived I had many misgivings, but the thought of that wasted $35 propelled me into the Garage to fetch my good old electric drill (which I got free in 1970 with Blue Chip Stamps and which helped me build half my furniture) in order to drill the 3 holes in the top of the cartridge necessary to add ink. With my wretched vision I had to paint 3 white targets on the cartridge with the only thing at hand which happened to be a bottle of White Out. (I may be a dirty old lady, but I am inventive) Then with some trepidation I depressed the trigger on the drill and......voila......a perfect hole in what appeared to have been the compartment for blue. I could detect from the ink bars on the cartridge that the center compartment was for red and the right hand one was obviously for yellow.

Well, there was no stopping me after that and before you could say "Alakazaam" I had the 3 holes drilled and managed to dispense at least as much colored inks into the cartridge as I got on my person. A few rolls of paper towels for clean-up........a carefully placed sealing strip of black electrical tape over the holes.....a thousand prayers uttered while reinstalling the cartridge into the printer and, would you believe....it worked.

Of course the printer is still advising me that my color cartridge is empty.....it does that when you refill.......but at long as it is willing to keep on printing with both cartridges registering empty on its funny little ink meter, I don't give a damn. I have not only saved $35, but I have outwitted the printer software.

I feel like Superman/Woman........and who wouldn't?

Sob.....What Have I Done?

2012-02-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

I have often admitted to being baffled by this or that, but nothing in the history of baffledom has confounded me as much as this latest bafflement. You good people out there have to help me.

Yesterday I published a two part blog with wild rantings about the strange and silly way we deal with the subject of sex. I figured, because of the subject matter, that even if my writing and thoughts were pure excrement I would surely get a few comments by today.

However, when I staggered in this morning and eagerly turned on the infernal machine what did I find?

Bubkas.

When I wrote the blogs I jokingly worried about losing at least half of my readers, but......holy moly.......did I lose ALL of them?

Or is Blogger punishing me for my uncensored ramblings by censoring not my words but my readers' comments?

What I am asking is this........ if you can read this blog (which, to my knowledge, contains not a single dirty word) please advise me by leaving a comment. I just want to be sure I haven't been totally banned in Blogville.

I desperately need to be un-baffled. Please. Thank you.

What's All The Fuss About Sex - Part 2

2012-02-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

And then we have what one might call the DIY Guy.

The following blog is stolen from two wonderful bloggers.....Ms. Yvonne of Yo' Momma's Blog, guesting on Kristene's, The Mouthy Housewives. I was going to use just excerpts but the whole is so splenderiferous I am just including the whole thing.
*********************************

Hold on to your lattes, ladies, because we’ve got a guest Mouthy Housewife on deck today. Miss Yvonne of Yo Mama’s Blog is bringin’ the sass, the spunk, and the spumante! (I hope, anyway. What else am I going to do with all of this orange juice?) She makes me laugh on the regular with her no-holds-barred humor, and really knows how to pull off a mustache. So, without further ado, let’s hear what Miss Yvonne has to say about jerking off! –Kristine

Dear Mouthy Housewives,

My Boyfriend Prefers His Hand Over Me!

My boyfriend is masturbating when I am home. We have sex
2-3 times a week, and he knows I want more than that, but he still sometimes chooses to masturbate. Is there something wrong with our relationship where he won’t come to me instead?

Don’t get me wrong: I know guys masturbate, and it doesn’t bother me if he does it when I’m “not available” so to speak, but sometimes this interferes with our sex life. I’ll try to initiate and he won’t get hard, or I won’t be able to get him off because he’s already relieved himself. This makes me feel incredibly inadequate.

I’ve told him specifically how him masturbating with me in the next room, awake, and willing, hurts my feelings, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I don’t want to live my life feeling inadequate for the man I love. What should I do?

Signed,

Sexually Frustrated

__________________________________________

Dear Sexually Frustrated,

First let me say that I feel your pain, as can most women at some point in their lives. You are not alone in your feelings of inadequacy, but take heart because all is not lost.

Based on your email, I’m assuming that your boyfriend is fairly open with you about his masturbating, ummm…schedule. This is a good sign. This means he feels comfortable with you knowing that he’s in the other room wanking it. He’s not hiding it or feeling ashamed of what he is doing. This bodes well for your relationship and probably means he’s not in there watching some kind of deviant porn or having phone sex.

I know it hurts when your man seems more interested in his hand than you. But it isn’t about you. It’s about him, getting his rocks off quickly without having to engage in foreplay or worrying about if he’s going to be able to get you off before he’s done. It doesn’t mean he wants to cheat on you, doesn’t love you or doesn’t find you sexually attractive. In fact, since you’re doing it 2-3 times per week, I would say it’s the exact opposite.

As long as you have a great relationship in all other aspects, he’s not isolating himself from you and doesn’t jerk off more than once or twice a day, then things are probably okay. Try to remember that men just aren’t as evolved as women (apologies to my husband). They think about food, sex and cars…not necessarily in that order…with a bit of work, family, and miscellaneous thrown in there. They don’t obsess over things like we do. What I’m saying is that sometimes a wank is just a wank.

Now, if having sex 2-3 times a week is just not cutting it for you (ah, I remember those days), then maybe you need to step up your game. Take the reins, mama! Initiate a quickie before getting ready for work in the morning. Send him flirty text messages during the day telling him you can’t wait to get home and do naughty things to him. Dress up as his favorite fantasy character (Princess Leia in the gold bikini anyone?). If he watches porn (of course he does), ask him to watch some with you in bed.

And if that doesn’t work, tell him you’ll give him more blow jobs if he stops jerking off so much. Works for me, every time.

Signed,

Miss Yvonne, Guest TMH

*************************************

Well, that is all I have collected to say about the subject of sex right now. If you do not agree with me that all of our public attitudes about this subject are insane, then I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Meanwhile, have fun y'all out there in whatever way you chose.......I suppose it would be redundant or just plain crude to say "fuck 'em all" to anyone who objects.........

What's All This Fuss About Sex - Part 1

2012-02-11T22:29:00.000-08:00

Dearest readers.....once again I have lost control of the way my words are presented to you on this blog.......everything looks fine when I am working on the draft but as soon as I hit "Publish" several phrases are flung into the middle totally out of context.....Ihave tried everything I can think of to make things right to no avail. I think I have offended the propriety of the blog Gods who must be from the previous century or something. Anyway......I have worked to hard on this endless piece of shit/brilliance to give up, so you will just have to pick your way over the extraneous lines and slog onward.

I have an idea that paart of my trouble is that this blog iis just woo long so I have split it into two parts.
Good luck darlings. Love, Lo
                        *********************************
I cannot believe that it has been a whole month that I have been mulling over several posts by other bloggers which dealt, one way or the other, with the subject of SEX. I have been trying to organize my own thoughts into some kind of coherent rant......but it is 30 days. I even made a note of it in the draft I started, inspired by the fabulous Mary Brewster of "MurrMurrs", the incredible Ms. Yvonne of "YO Momma's Blog", and the talented person who does "Mouthy Housewives".........and I seem to be no closer to publishing than I was when the notion first hit me. Hence, please forgive if the following words shock, confabulate, confuse or downright disgust you. I am only human, a mere mortal, so you can complain to me if you like, but please blame either the Creator or Darwin, depending on which way you bend......oops....I mean that in the most dignified sense.

January 12, 2012 9:22 AM          (Murmurrs ........D'Oh, A Deer)

re Murr Brewster's post on Jan. 12th which deals with the honorable (?) Senator Inhofe and his attitudes toward homosexuality and bestiality.....some hint or reference that he is partial to sheep in an unmentionable way.....and I say, whathehell......so what if he likes sheep when he can't have his first or second choice?......if the sheep doesn't mind, who is being hurt, I ask you?)....

She also highlights a newspaper article about a man who was arrested (briefly) for having sex with a dead deer on a public road.....yes,   ....roadkill....I think they had to release him when they could not find what law he broke.....maybe just indecent public behavior? If a man violates a dead deer on a public road and no one sees him but the police is he really contributing to immorality?

I am baffled by some of these weird attitudes about our sexuality.   (I speak honestly as one who , from a young age into not quite my dotage, was known to be One Hot Cookie and resented any critical connotation given to that term.)   I feel we have been burdened with a too strong dosage of the sex urge as far as I can see.   If you believe in Intelligent Design, then it is perfectly obvious that the Creator made a real blunder. If you lean toward the Theory of Evolution, then it appears we have not evolved sexually hardly at all, at all.......barely enough to keep up with the ability to stand upright, walk on just the hind legs and use some primitive tools.   We certainly have not managed to evolve our uncontrolled sexual behavior to suit rational human needs or at least to keep pace with the level of development of creatures who have learned to use tools as sophisticated as computers, Ipads, Ipods, cellphones and a dozen or more remotes....whatever.

It may have been preplanned initially as necessary for the survival of the species, but it sure as hell has ended up as nothing but a source of agonizingly brief ecstasy and endless unsatisfied craving, yearning, distraction and a feeling of general perpetual deprivation and often disappointment.   I guess the logical thinking was that, since the ecstasy is so relatively brief compared to the effort to achieve it, people would not bother about the activity so much unless they really, truly wanted children or wanted to do something nice for each other on special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries.    Ha!   Sure.

That just shows that, whoever or whatever force made us (possibly Mr. Spock, all intelligence, logic and no emotions), after fashioning the most amazing, unbelievably incredible and complicated physical entity and endowing it with a brain to put other computers to shame, simply did not understand what harm and damage was being wrought when, at the last moment a handful of assorted incompatible powerful feelings including (but not limited to) sexual cravings was flung into the mix. Out went logic and in flounced madness and 4,328 kinds of insanity. Pity. All that promising work for nothing.      Like a culinary masterpiece of a dish spoiled by a pinch too much of salt.

And even worse than our often undignified sexual behavior is the hypocracy that surounds and totally obfuscates the reality of our true behavior...........it was bad enough when only the upholders of various religious beliefs got into the act, but now that the entire political field is being exposed as tainted.....no.....immersed in sexual weirdness out in the open and in front of the media and all of us, I feel like I am adrift on a stormy sea. Are infidelity, masturbation and bestiality as bad as what priests and general lechers do to little boys and girls?

What the hell difference does it make if a person has sex with one's pink vibrator, one's significant other who happens to have the appropriate protruberences and/or orifices, a sheep or a ripe looking pumpkin in a field somewhere?
No, no, I do not joke here...... there is a man I read about in a newspaper article on another one of these here blogs ( I think it was Dr. Grumpy, that incredibly brilliant and humorous blogger).......a man who was arrested one night having his way with a pumpkin in a pumpkin field, and who explained to the officers that. as he was driving home past the field, he was suddenly aroused by the sight of all of those round rumps in the moonlight and, visualizing the consistency of the center of a pumpkin, was absolutely compelled to stop the car, leap out and have sexual congress with the nearest one. Makes sense to me.

I have heard many times that men think about sex approximately every 13 seconds (or was it 23?) and I can vouch for the fact that many oversexed young women may not be far behind, but most women, I believe, do outgrow that eventually due hormonal changes and to the aging of their relevant parts while men, regardless of whether their sexual equipment ages or not, do not seem to ever get their needs, their hormones or perhaps their fantasies adjusted. And on the 8th day....... came Viagra.

******    This will be continued in the next blog....part 2

Oh, Gawd, I Wish I Had Said That......

2012-02-08T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is what I sort of consider cheating.........passing on someone else's blog highlights, but since I am not in fit condition to finish the blog I have in process, and since I believe in spreading the good word, here is an excerpt from a recent "Doctor Grumpy" which is a gem.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Awesomeness

Dr. Grumpy: "Have you had any neck pain?"

Mr. Awesome: "I have no idea."

Dr. Grumpy: "You don't know if you have neck pain?"

Mr. Awesome: "Look, doc, I'm 89. If you pay attention to every ache and pain at my age you become a fucking hypochondriac."

In Which I Pass on the Liebster Blog Award

2012-02-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

I am still trembling with surprise and delight over Brian Sibley (BRIAN SIBLEY : his blog)awarding me the Liebster Blog Award and I am still blushing with shame that I lost control over my page format and let the computer devil have his way with me in my last blog where I acknowledged the honor.....Now, I must pass on the award to 5 of my favorite bloggers who do not have more that 200 followers.

However that is not as easy as it sounds....many of my favorites have followers lined up around the block and some of the blogs do not show how many at all.

I am going to violate the rules just teeny bit and blame it on my poor eyesight. One of the most interesting blogs I follow has just sneaked past 200, but I am going to pretend I did not see that. Consequently, here are my choices and I bless each one for many hours of delight. I hope you will find joy in them as well.


1. Murrmurrs   by the incredible Mary Brewster....one of the funniest and most brilliant blogs I am privileged to read.

2. News From Nowhere by Alan Burnett.....not only interesting, informative and delightful, but he writes Two, the second with his dog .

3.    a little light in london ......by Lizzie.....this is my latest addiction, and what a fabulous find.

4. April's Reign.....by April who never fails to make me smile.

5. AngelMay's Growing Pains....by Angel May......another pleasure I can count on......sometimes I even say, "I wish I had written that."

Now I wish everyone a rip-roaring good time.....some of you basking in the glow of appreciation and others enjoying new pleasures.

By the way.....apologies for screwing up the links above. I hope I have fixed them. Many thanks to Daisy of Furr-licity for pointing out the errors.

Who me? Aw Shucks........(Sigh.....Moan of Delight)

2012-02-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

This glorious award was given to me by Brian Sibley whom I love madly
I am totally discombobulated by this unexpected honor and have obviously cast a spell upon my computer which refuses to format lines to my liking. I do not know how to get our of this strange columnular format but I am afraid to do anyuthing drastic for fear of losing the whole damned thing. Consequently, I am simply going to fall on my knees and kiss the hem of Brian's coat in thanks (is that a bit too extreme?) I would like to nominate my 5 choices to whom I wish to pass on this honor but I refuse to do it while in the strangling grip of this malfunction, so I am going to publish this and follow it up with another blog with my choices. Forgive my incompetence.....I would be ashamed if I weren't so damned proud!

Ahhh....I Can Sleep Tonite and You Can All Stop Looking...

2012-01-31T01:15:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to report that the brilliant GTChristie of The Moxie Files has come up with, not the answer to my query, but with a way of getting it, and, by George, get it I did !!!

Bless his kind heart and vast stores of knowledge.....who knew that that little tab up in the left hand corner of the screen labelled "History" can give you every damned site you ever visited, if you have the time and strength to scan each entry into infinity..

You all may have known, but I didn't, and lo and behold, after only 10 or 12 abortive attempts to zero in on the right time frame, I FOUND the blog about sex which I was looking for and which I mentioned in my last post. Naturally, after all this fuss I will gladly offer it up for anyone wishing to slake their curiosity or sink so low into the tawdry details, but not tonite. My eyeballs and fingers are too tired.

Thanks to all of you who so valiantly tried to help me......I love you for that. And many thanks to the beloved GTC.......you should all be grateful to him too.

Needless to say......more later.

I Need Your Help

2012-01-29T15:20:00.000-08:00

This is probably the weirdest blog I ever wrote and possibly that you ever read........particularly considering the subject matter. I will not dilly dally nor dither around the bush and will bravely accept any censure , flogging or stoning you might fling at me.......trying to remember and locate a blog I read recently is driving me crazy and only you guys can help. (providing one or more of you happens to know which blog I am referring to and is willing to share.......which I fervently hope.....

Inspired by Murr Brewster's (Murrmurrs) recent brilliant blog concerning odd sex practices and Rick Santorum, I somehow happened upon a blog that was a sort of an Ann Landers Advice column type thing. It displayed a letter from a perplexed wife who was complaining that she and her husband only had sex like twice a week, but that he much more frequently seemed to prefer his own hand to her charms and it was eroding her self-confidence. The blog-writer's answer was a brilliant and wonderful essay on masturbation .......the punchline of which was that if she was getting great sex with her husband twice a week she should give thanks rather than rock the boat.

Have any of you dear readers seen the post and can you tell me who the Blogger is and the name of the Blog? I long to reread it and perhaps even quote from it in a blog of my own. (yes, I can talk dirty).

Any info will be greatly appreciated.

WTF......Caftans Out of Style? When Did That Happen?

2012-01-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

In a charming blog the other day, Cathy, of Still Waters, mentioned that since caftans were coming back into style she went into her closet and extracted a few well loved ones from the cobwebs in the back.....caftans coming back into style????

Holy crap.....are you telling me that they ever went out of style? Not that I care.......they are what I live in 12 months of the year. For the summer I have a bunch of lovely flowing cool cotton jobs and for the california winter I made a bunch out of sweat shirt fleece, and, for parties, from velour (cotton/polyester velour, that is, so that I can wash them in case I dribble bbq sauce down the front at the latest neighborhood soiree). I keep saying I don't understand things the older I get.....well......it continues to get worse.....I cannot understand why comfort has to be a sin in the fashion world. I keep hearing decent, sensible people vilified and ostracized for wearing comfy pants with waist elastic and vain and foolish others sanctified because they wear uncomfortable pants with zippers, in which you are OK as long as you don't want to eat, breathe, sit down or, godforbid, sneeze. The world is mad, I tell you. Save those caftans or, when you get to be 80 you will regret it..   Talking about uncomfortable clothing reminded me of the ultimate torture garment that I wore daily for a year or so back in the 50's.............this is to demonstrate that I too suffered from vanity and foolishness in my younger life.............have any of you ever heard of the Playtex Rubber Girdle?

To demonstrate that women have always been obsessed to insanity about their shapes and willing to almost give up life itself to make some body part smaller, let me describe this product of some sadistic mind......male I am sure. As I recall this item was made our of a pink or beige rubber, lined (or flocked, they used to call it) with a soft, thin fleece like cotton. This was so that a person would be able to don the damned thing....that is, schlepp it up over calves and thighs and hips up to waist height without tearing all the skin off the lower part of one's body, or worse, getting it stuck halfway up and being paralyzed, since it was tough stuff and would bind one's legs together making them incapable of moving.........imagine having to call 911 under such circumstances.

Once on, it molded all the bulges into a smooth line from waist to thighs. If you were lucky, the place where the girdle ended on your thighs was not particularly fleshy, thereupon leaving just the smallest dent and not creating a horrific bulge where the girdle ended. At the waist, however, no such luck. Anyone needing to wear such a garment always had a roll of fat along ribs and waist which simply created what they now call "muffin top" I believe. Unless you happened to be long waisted......or was it short waisted?....... in which case one could pull it up onto one's ribs and avoid the dreaded overflow. This sadly created a condition which pulled at the skin on your ribs making one tend to lean slightly forward.....aha.......I just figured out why that wonderful Carole Burnett character, Mrs. Wiggins, the secretary to Tim Conway, had that strange forward lean to her posture.....she must have been wearing a Playtex, Rubber Girdle.

By the way, getting out of the PRG was easier than getting into it.....one simply rolled it down to one's ankles and stepped out of the roll of wet rubber........ Oh, I am so ashamed......

All of this, however, is only the beginning of the horror story. The Playtex folks promised that this girdle would make you lose weight by making you perspire (sweat) the moisture out of the fat on your fat hips and belly, thereby rendering you (yes, exactly....) thinner, if used faithfully. Unfortunately, one did sweat profusely inside this hot rubber wrapping.......the cotton lining was supposed to absorb the moisture but it didn't make a dent. Consequently, you were enveloped in a very peculiar, not terribly offensive but definitely puzzling odor of hot, wet rubber with just a touch of something else, also not very attractive except to animals who seemed to find it magnetic........embarrassing, to say the least.

If you are wondering why any person in their right mind would subject themselves to such torture, don't be silly.   Women have always done terrible things to themselves in the quest for beauty........witness a 13 year old girl with incredibly curly hair going to bed nightly wearing curlers ....the old kind were exactly like boar bristle hairbrushes (no foam rubber in those days) and hurt your scalp and skull like hell, plus layers of scotch tape pasted across bangs to straighten them and a shoe lace tied around the neck and around the lower portion of the hairdo just above the lower row of bristly curlers which were rolled up facing the neck ...........even more painful than the upper ones.....to create a Page Boy Bob exactly like Ginger Rogers wore in her movies with Fred Astaire.

Did it work? Was it worth it? Don't be ridiculous......I can still hear the "boing" of my hair snapping back into all over curls as soon as the instruments of torture were removed in the morning.......including the bangs. Why did I persist? I have no answer to that question.......it is the perfect description of insanity....one continues to do the same thing over and over to achieve a certain outcome and fails miserably every time, yet, one persists endlessly........sheer madness.

Sob. It is the story of our lives.

Fat Cats, Skinny Cats and the Cat Servants who Pander to Them

2012-01-09T15:22:00.000-08:00

Gussie Winnie, Baskin and I spent a very pleasant quiet weekend. I have reconsidered my hysteria re Gussie's bones. After much pondering and a conversation with the Vet, I have come to the conclusion that Gusssie is really OK.....I think it is me who is sick (in the head). I have thought it all through many times and think now that perhaps I panicked. I am so partial to and so used to fat cats I thought she was at death's door being so skinny and losing weight. She seems to be totally content and happy. I don't think she is losing any more right now. It may simply be old age....she was always a slim cat and she is getting up there in years.....I don't know how old exactly. Rescued strays do not come with birth certificates. I know old cats often get very skinny. I plan to simply keep indulging her disgustingly, watching her carefully and feeling her bones. Have no plans for further tests or specialists etc. right now. Needless to say, I am watching her very carefully and will not neglect any danger signs.



I had a brilliant idea the other day about how I can monitor her weight and either ease my worries or drive myself off the cliff. All I had to do is weigh her every few days to see how we were doing. Sure. Oh yeah. Sounds so simple doesn't it? I do not know why, during my long lifetime, everything that sounds so simple and ought to be simple ends up so damned complicated you simply must bang your head against the nearest wall repeatedly.......unfortunately I replaced most of the walls in my house with glass years ago so that limits not only my head-banging needs but my picture hanging area.......well, as they say,"Nothing is perfect".

"Why", you may ask, "is this simple idea so difficult to execute?" In your house it may not be so difficult at all, but you must remember, you are dealing with a rather farmished (mishugina) (fercockta) (slightly crazy person) here.......and with limitations physical and especially optical. It's like this.......for most of my life I used to weigh myself every morning......when you have spent your lifetime dieting, weighing yourself every morning is like breathing in and out. So is sighing with relief and/or shrieking with anguish, depending on what the numbers say. Recently though, I find I often pass up this pleasure/pain partly because there is not much I can do about it anymore if the numbers go up......I cannot exercise more nor can I eat any less, and frankly, if the numbers should begin to go down I would probably freak out with worry about what might be wrong with me rather than jump up and down with joy and triumph, so, hell why bother. Also, I can hardly see the dial numbers anymore and must utilize a guesstimate based on where the pointer is in relation to the next big black up and down mark. Not the most accurate system........not so bad for a rotund, zoftig old person whose poundage exceeds.....well, nevermind.....but totally useless when you are dealing with ounces on a 7 1/2 pound cat.

In addition, for anyone who has never weighed or attempted to weigh a live animal...........you don't just stand them on the scale and tell them to hold it right there while you read the dial, even if you have 20/20 vision. The method is to first weigh yourself. make careful note of the exact number. Then grab or attempt to grab the animal, step gingerly onto the scale while screaming from the clawing or gasping from the wriggling, and attempt to peer over the furry body which is now wrapped around your head to see what the numbers are. First efforts are rarely successful. Second efforts are more difficult because the animal is now wary, unsure of what the fuck this thing is all about, but convinced that it is not in their best interests and therefore more difficult to catch up. Third attempts must wait till later in the day when the animal has almost forgotten the strange event and you have had time stem the bleeding or catch your breath or both.

But there still remains the problem of reading the dial. Consequently, this is where your significant other or my caregiver must enter the picture.   How you explain what is needed with a straight face is up to you, but what is involved basically is that the assistant must get down on hands and knees by the dial of the scale and be prepared to take an instant reading if you are lucky enough to hold onto the animal for long enough to make that possible. Sadly, anyone who has a love/hate relationship with scales as I do knows that there is always a specific position, slight sideways or forward lean that gives you the most favorable reading. When holding a crazed, wriggling animal, fuggeddaboudit. If the pointer stops, even for a moment, it must be captured then or not at all.   And recorded immediately, by the way, so that the groans and curses of the holder and shrieks and complaints of the animal do not distract to the point of forgetting the number altogether thus requiring a redo.

Well, I could go on, but why? You are surely either nodding your head in agreement, laughing at my idiocy or crying in sympathy by now. If you think I am exaggerating then you have never tried to weigh an animal while being half blind plus old, weak and unsteady on the weighing platform. To which I utter a heartfelt congratulations and the comment that you are a better (and luckier) man than I am Gunga Din.

Well, It's Like This.....The Situation is Murky......

2012-01-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wring my hands and shriek, "What's to become of me?" and instead of having a gorgeous Rhett Butler to toss over his shoulder, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.", all I get is a tired voice from within muttering, "damned if I know."

I have been struggling for weeks with a sick kitty......sick in the sense that for months now she has been losing weight till she is merely skin and bones and concurrently demanding to be fed approximately every 3 1/2 minutes. Naturally, I am feeding her every 2 minutes and having every test known to man and felines performed on her to determine the "why" of it.

Last week my Vet took more tests and determined that one of the thyroid test results showed an abnormality so he was convinced tht she might have a benign growth on her thyroid causing hyperthyroidism which would explain the symptoms. He explained to me that there is an animal hospital here which specializes in doing thryroid scans and, if a tumor shows up, administering a week of radioactive iodine treatments with a 97% success rate. Of course the treatment is so exalted that you must mortgage your home to pay for it, and your cat comes home a bit radioactive for several weeks (don't let her sleep on your bed for about 12 days) but it is a cure and after that, (except perhaps for an occasional glowing in the dark..... (the cat, hopefully not YOU) everything should be fine.

So for 2 sweeks now (first available appointment was today) I have been opening cans and preparing kitty smoothies just like Gussie likes them and grilling liver and giving her kitty treats at the least little "meow" and allowing her to sleep endlessly on a fake fur pillow strategically located on my boobs and tummy while I recline in the lounger and wonder if this is the life's purpose my mother had in mind for me.

Just to prove that sometimes life tests a person beyond endurance, the only appointments available at the west LA office of this one-of-a-kind treatment center are on wednesdays, the one day of the week that my driver and caregiver, Florence, does not come and I had no intention of driving to Tustin (wherever the hell that is in Orange County) on any of the other days so it was time to call in some raincheck favors. Uh-huh. I will not pursue this path except to say that I did finally find one friend willing to take me so I should just shut my mouth and be grateful. Realized much later that I should have simply called the Agency and hired another caregiver driver for 3 or 4 hours.....it would have actually been less expensive since SUV's seem to hold a lot of gasoline in their tanks.

But never mind all that.........we, of course, encountered the obligatory construction blockage on the way to the Hospital which made it a good thing that we had left the valley about 40 minutes earlier than needed and we arrived at the place on time, were received, I tearfully handed Gussie over to be taken to the scanning room and thence to the radioactive kitty center and, after taking my friend to lunch, lurched into the house, ripped off all my garments, donned The House Robe and sank into the recliner to allow Winnie to try out the pillow on my boobs and tummy while I awaited the news from the Doctor at 7 or 8 pm this evening.

Well, it turns out that Gussie does NOT have a tumor on her thyroid so I can go back and pick her up tomorrow and can spend the rest of my days taking her for various tests to try to find out why she is so skinny.....(he thinks perhaps a bowel condition which does not let her absorb the nutrition from her 37 meals a day but then, who can tell without more tests.). I will be happy to get her back un-radio-iodized so she can sleep on my bed immediately without having to wait 12 days and without my having to confront her glowing in the dark some nite. As for the bill amounting to the national debt which I was preparing to pay........not to worry....it will only be about a third as much because she does not require the treatment and the week's hospital stay......and I can spend the rest for further tests at other Veterinary Centers.

The irony is that, thru all of this, Gussie has not complained once of being too skinny....(she probably subscribes to the "you can't be too thin or too rich" theory) ...I am the one who screams and groans and tears my hair as I run my fingers along the poor little furry skin and bones creature. If I can keep her at 7 1/2 lbs with the 37 meals, perhaps I should just let it go at that.....but noooooo......I would, of course, have to be that crazy person who likes her cats to be fat. If she were only more like Winnie, who is now so fat she can hardly bend herself in half into that amazing cat position so she can wash her hiney. Often I have to help her do that. I really would not want Gus to be that fat.........having to wash two cats' behinds would really strain my sense of dignity.............if I still have one.

So, y'all say you want to know what I have been up to...........don't you wish you hadn't asked?

.......Hell and Damn.........Last Day & Blog of 2011 and Nuthin' To Say

2011-12-31T13:52:00.000-08:00

Horrors! I guess I will have to finish off the year with something old and familiar because I cannot summon the Muse.......lots of stuff going on, some good, some bad, but I can't organize my thoughts at all right now, so bear with me, folks.

I am still shlepping along (and that's a good thing) so the odds are fair that you will get some decent blogs out of me in the new year. just no goodies to wind up the old one.

I must say I am grateful for having made it through another one and am looking forward to doing it again and wishing you all the same.

Meanwhile, in tribute to my old friend, Dorothy, who taught me most of the dirty words I know, let me just say,

"Shit, Piss, Fuck"

to all of the Bad Guys and the Bad Things That Happen.

May the new year give none of us any cause to utter that beloved phrase in anything but triumph.

Merry Mishugina Holiday Madness

2011-12-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

What's that you say? Holidays? Christmas? Hanukah? Faugh.

All I know is, it seems to be the end of December and I will be damned if I know what happened to most of 2011, and I am invited to a Neighborhood Brunch tomorrow and I just made a batch of my trusty Brownies and, for some mysterious reason, they failed miserably......didn't rise a smidgeon....only fit for the garbage.......OMG, OMG...... ..so I am falling back on a batch of Hummous and am hoping it will be edible....gasp. Now I only have to toast up some of my seasoned Pitas chips and I will be ready, almost. I hope I will be able to force myself into garments of some acceptable type so I can attend......thank heaven it is being held in the daytime before my bedtime at 5 pm, and am muttering words of gratitude because it is only across the street so I can walk and do not have to endanger the Western World (and my own precious bod) with my driving..............if you think I sound a bit hysterical, well.....you would be right.........anything which involves my being surrounded by more than 3 people and further involves my donning clothing and leaving my front door causes an instant attack of hysteria these days. Any one of those things is quite enough to cause an attack. Sigh. Being a hermit does have a few disadvantages......

Before I become comatose with anxiety, I just want to wish all of you darlings a happy holiday season and reiterate my favorite words of caution:

DON'T FALL DOWN!"

And I will try to do the same.

Bless you all

Hmmmmm.......I am Perplexed

2011-12-22T14:35:00.000-08:00

I received the following email recently and am not sure how you, my beloved and perceptive readers, will respond to it if I accept the offer.

Are any of you interested in Scrapbooking and its related software?

**********************************

Hi!

My name is Liz and I work for a company called My Memories. We have an award winning digital scrapbook software that is extremely easy and fun to use. My Memories Suite is rated #1 by Amazon and TopTen Reviews. Using this software, anyone can create digital scrapbooks, photobooks, cards, calendars and gifts without having to buy expensive and complicated software programs.

I just ran into your blog and absolutely love it! I was wondering if you would like to host a My Memories Suite giveaway on your blog? We would love to give you 2 copies of our software ($80 value) for free! One copy is for your personal use and to review. The other is to give away on your site. Additionally, we will give you a personal $10 off promo code to share with followers and friends. Every time this code is used for our software, we will deposit $20 in your PayPal account! It is really that simple! Everyone could use an extra $100-$500 per month, right?

Please visit our site www.mymemories.com and let me know if you are interested. I’d love to chat more about it with you.

**********************************************************
I guess I should not be so jaded as to look a gift horse n the mouth, but I also would not want you to consider me disgustingly vulgar and sordidly commercial if I offer a free gift and put an Ad on my pristine and virginal blog.

All opinions will be welcomed with open arms.......that is an odd phrase, isn't it?

By the way, I seem to be recovering from my collapse and near demise after the yard sale. However, before you give vent to too many "huzzahs" I must warm you that I just bid farewell to the Termite Inspector and may go into a decline at any moment............

I Have Seen Hell and It's.........aYard Sale

2011-12-17T16:49:00.000-08:00

Oy Vey. Let me repeat that for emphasis........Oy vey, oy vey, Groan. Gasp, Screech, Sob. These words are issuing forth to you from the tattered fragments of a creature who once , quite recently, was some kind of functioning human being. No more. I fear I will never be the same since enduring and surviving my first and definitely last waking nightmare innocently referred to as a "Yard Sale".

Holy Moly, OMG and, to quote my father a non-Jewish Jew, "Jesus, Mary and Joseph". The Human race is truly insane. The idea that people willingly subject themselves to such horror......some even more than once........is totally beyond my comprehension. And, not only are the presenters of these events totally bonkers, but, from my observations, so are the attendees.

To properly explain my position I have to go back a few weeks and describe the tortures I, the proposed Seller, have endured. First, I was led through my house by a hired "Organizer" whose purpose was to help me select and part with things........something I have never been able to do. I started collecting my treasures when I was young and was constantly putting things like interesting pebbles in my pockets.   I later graduated to saving my pennies to buy things.....one of the first of which was the most gorgeously realistic toy revolver/cap shooter for which I surrendered my entire savings of 25 cents. I would still have it to this day were it not for the fact that my Mother was getting worried about my fondness for deadly weapons and was not particularly thrilled by my ambition to grow up to be a Cowboy (or an Indian or possibly a common criminal) and she somehow surreptitiously disposed of my gun and collapsing knife collection when I turned my addiction to Photos of the Big Bands and Frank Sinatra. But I digress......

I was able to collect a lot of great art during my years as a starving artist since all of us were poor as churchmice and the only presents we could give each other were pieces of our own creativity. And, during my 20 years of traveling the world I managed to bring home mementos of my trips......sometimes a thing as simple as a particularly lovely stone from the beach below Taormina, Sicily, and other times a gorgeous majolica platter from Ravello, Italy or salad servers carved from an ox horn in Bali. Then there were the mementos inherited from my family which alone could fill the Superdome.......and every crumb was precious to me, so imagine my horror when Ms. Organizer began to seize items from my shelves, stuff them into boxes and say heartless things like, "You don't need this."   The anguish was intense or worse.

However, after a while I began to tune into the charm of reducing the clutter so that one could actually SEE the things that remained on my shelves. I managed to join in the gathering process, even though I suspected I might sneak back during the night and rescue a few of the items I still coveted. After all, they were still in boxes stacked in every room in the house plus the front porch covered in a tarpaulin,,,,,not the pleasantest way to live....but it would just be till Saturday.......right?

Except that, after crawling thru channels between stacks of boxes for days, the weekend arrived with rain forecast so the whole thing had to be postponed for week, whereupon there were another 7 days of crawling and another rainy weekend. And the following week was Thanksgiving, so that weekend (which was sunny) was out.

Each nite during these three weeks was spent not in restful sleep, but in anxiety and worry, plotting how to construct display tables out of the scrap drywall and lumber in my garage, how I was physically going to drag boxes and lumber around when I was incapable of picking up a 20 lb bag of birdseed anymore and, worse, yet, how was I going to price these precious artifacts so people would not have to sell a child or 2 to afford them. The nites may have been the worst.

And then came a weekend which was dubious weatherwise, but not actually forecast to rain on Saturday at any rate. So I called all of the people who had earnestly promised they would gladly help me when the big day finally came and found that, amazingly, things had come up and none of them could help me, gosh darn it and so sorry. So I had to hire Ms. Organizer for the day and she couldn't get there in time to set up the tables, but she would help unpack the boxes and display the mdse. Well, to trim a few pages from this endless epic, let me just say that by the time the first customers arrived we were still in the process and my back and assorted joints were threatening mutiny if I didn't lie down at once. To which I laughed and kept unpacking wildly, managing to display my gorgeous precious objects in such a way as to make them look like the most quintessential JUNK. Seeing them cast down there thusly, even I didn't want them.

And then there was the horror of the customers............one arrived with a Jewelers' loupe and proceeded to examine the bottoms of everything looking for valuable hallmarks I guess, looking for the Romanoff jewels, while wearing an expression of total disdain. He picked up a lovely carved stone box from Alaska and sneered, "how much?" "Three dollars", I quavered, whereupon he cast it back down and stomped off
to his car. Meanwhile a strange waif with hair painted /dyed 3 colors was slouching up the drive peering through puffy half-closed eyes. I did not want to speculate on what her night had been spent doing. This one idly picked up 2 or 3 things, replaced them on different tables and slouched off. At this point I could hardly care, having collapsed into a handy garden chair, carefully guarding my bag of ones, fives and tens, withdrawn from the bank under the impression that someone might offer me more than a quarter for something. And so it went. Finally a few people bought something for a dollar or even two Wow. I could hardly cram it into my pocket fast enough in case they changed their mind.

But amazingly enough, something that I had put on display for decoration but never expected to attract any interest were a bunch of my late partner's colorful abstract paintings which I had bought from her son fearing he would simply trash them.   Quite a few of our few attendees were very interested and asked for prices. Cosmic joke. Before her death I had bought my favorite from her for $600. For once I decided to be smart about this. Most of the canvases were large, about 40 by 60, some were medium, 40 x45, and a few were smaller. A few were modestly framed, the rest just on stretchers. They would enhance any wall they got near...............I decided I wanted them on someone's walls if I had to give them away so I quoted between $15 and $30 and, wonder of wonders, one lovely lady who was an artist herself bought 3 as gifts for her family members. Another young couple wistfully singled out 2 or 3 and said they would come back. Damn......I wish I had given them the paintings right then, but I goofed. Ah, well, at least 3 of Peggy's lovelies will brighten some rooms somewhere. (I have hung as many here as I have walls for).

About 3 pm I had had it and so we staggered around and repacked everything into the boxes and returned them to the front porch from which they will go to some charity. I paid Ms. Organizer for her help and ended up only about $50 in the red.........a cheap lesson at twice the price. I spent the rest of the day and the subsequent week lying in my reclining chair panting quietly, wiping beads of perspiration from my forehead and being grateful that I was able to escape from hell after only 1 day.......the others on my block did it all again on Sunday!

As I said at the beginning......people are undoubtedly insane..............but not me.

Pollyanna Checks Back In

2011-12-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

Amazing things do happen, I guess.

1. I do believe I am feeling somewhat better.

2. I find myself disagreeing with my blog-idol, Ms. Moon, who wrote quite a rant recently against being grateful..........sorry, Mary, old thing, but I cannot help it.   I am so grateful.

I am so damned tired tonite that I cannot blog another note. I made the mistake of gathering up all the fallen limes from my prodigious tree and decided to turn them into marmalade, forgetting what an energy intensive job it is and how endlessly and disgustingly sticky. I had thought I cleaned up all the various drips and dribbles, but just now I put my forearm onto the desk and had to spend 5 minutes prying it off so I can see I missed at least one place if not more.   The only possible thing now is a shower and bed.

Sorry to have to short change you, but at least the sun is peeking out.   With luck, there is always tomorrow.

A Crabby Word From the Ungrateful Undead

2011-11-29T22:24:00.000-08:00

No, no.....not those silly Vampirish undead..........just those of us who seem to be given the gift of living without any obvious reason. Sorry, my darlings, but you are being subjected to the Worst of Lo......it was bound to happen someday...........this is the revolting other side of the Pollyanna girl and I am sure in a few seconds you will be praying for me to start sparkling with ", Glad, glad, glad and being grateful for receiving crutches from the Missionary Barrel ......grateful because she didn't need them. Bah, humbug. Fuck, piss, shit.....I DO need them goddammmit.

Well, not really.....first, I already have my own pair, plus 17 canes, the Walker, the manual (or better I should say foot-operated wheelchair, since that is mostly how I used to scoot around in it when I had the broken hip) and the electric razzle dazzle wheel chair for ramps and for street races with my neighbor Marge on her scooter. And I haven't used any of them, except for the cane, for over a year. Truth is, I am grateful for that. I am not quite sure what is wrong with me right now.......I cannot imagine how even the most skilled vascular surgeon in captivity could have managed to remove my joie d' vivre while removing plaque from my left carotid artery.......but that seems to be what has happened and I am not only desolate but ashamed.

And considerably pissed off.

Actually, since I just spilled a cup of cappuchino all over my computer keyboard, mouse and 1000 notes here and there, you might say I am more than pissed....maybe apoplectic. And stricken dumb.

This is a perfect time to say....more later. sob.

No Funny Business on Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T12:58:00.000-08:00

I rarely approach the blogspot without thinking of the potentially funny bits I can toss into the pot, but today.....not so. (Except that, to show the extreme depths of my boundless gratitude, I just overheard myself muttering to my innards, "Thank you, guts, for starting to work normally again."

I have so many things for which I am grateful that there is no way to enumerate them......... but I must tell you beloved readers how much your loyalty and good thoughts mean to me (and of course, your wit and brilliance). Even though we may never meet face to face, I feel a special connection to each one of you that is more important than actual contact and I believe that we communicate more deeply and meaningfully than many friends outside the blogosphere.

To all of you blessed darlings, "Thank You!........I love you."

And may it please you to hear......more later.

Graaack, Urkkkkklll, Blurgggghh........Mphmp......

2011-11-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

Well, what's that you say? Well, it looks like English to me! What's that ??????....italics?........hmmmm........I fear it may have to be italics..........I have forgotten the combination, not that I ever really knew it......sometimes if I pound on the Ctrl key hard enough it fixes things, but obviously, not today.......

And, furthermore, if there's anything I hate it's when you are just drifting off into a nice blissful sleep and some rude masked man asks you if you can heave yourself off the gurney and get your bountiful bod onto the operating table.....hell there are at least 4 or 5 masked people standing around uselessly doing nothing......why can't they each grab an arm or a leg and heave me over themselves?.......

Anyway, that is the last I remember of my former life.........there were absolutely NO great colorful dreams or adventures....in fact, the world I was in was a strange grey brown color, I felt like I was lying on some odd, sharp rubble like pulverized lava and people's faces were seen from time to time thru a haze of gray-brown mist.......and the faces kept asking me how I was doing and I would snap I am just fine thank you, and go right back to sleep.

Apparently this continued for some time till I finally opened my eyes and asked, "What time is it?", and was told it was 5:30 which seemed about right to me since my surgery had been about 10 or 11 am........then I looked out the window and saw the sun rising in the east and asked, "What the hell day is it?" and when I found out it was Thursday not Wednesday anymore, that was when the wheels came off and the cart has not been running quite right since.

I don't know why the idea of sleeping for 20 or so hours discombobulated me so much....or perhaps it was the idea of having lost a day unexpectedly.........it might have even been when I asked to go to the potty and the nurse said, "this is ICU......there is no potty" that I lost my firm grip on reality. When she offered me the use of a bedpan and, I, for my own reasons, insisted on a commode or a real toilet things went downhill rapidly. She assured me that a real room with a real toilet was in process of being prepared for me somewhere but now she had to go on her break........fortunately, still being in my post anesthesia stupor I could not protest too loudly and decided to just go back to sleep.

I have many more funny (?) stories of this hospital stay, but I will save them for another day when a few more of my faculties may have returned. All I can say is that this visit was no fun at all, nor is this strange woozy convalescence I am experiencing...........I can only conclude that my brain, having accustomed itself to doing just fine on only 10% of blood flow, just doesn't know what the hell to do with this extra nourishment and has decided to just sleep it off till my body figures out how to make things become normal again. I have been assured by my doctors that this is the best idea I have had in three days.

Migawd, I have now been upright and awake for over 15 minutes..........I must immediately prostrate myself and drift off for a while. Nice visiting with you. Do come again when you or I or both of us can spend more time...............so sorry, but I must get a nap in here somewhere because I must be awake by 8 PM when NCIS and Mark Harmon appear on the TV..............NO, of course I haven't lost ALL my marbles...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................

Newest News

2011-11-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

Lo has survived and will be coming to you on her regular station shortly. Home now and being tortured by cats.

Opening Wednesday 10am - Lo's Left Carotid......Closing 10:15 am....Hopefully

2011-11-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

OK, my darlings......all the pre-op tests are complete and I am apparently in splendid condition for my adventure tomorrow. I have decided not to take my laptop so you probably won't hear from me till Friday or Saturday.

Bless you all.......I love you........thanks for all your good thoughts. Now don't forget what I have taught you.......especially "Don't Fall Down".

Fear not, Lo will blog again.

Hey, Mother Nature.....What Did I Ever Do To You?.....

2011-11-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

I would really be in a state of Rant were it not for the fact that my Pollyanna persona and my Gemini duality keep seeing it as sort of a Good Thing. (IT being the rain last weekend that made us postpone our Yard Sale.) Hell, a person can live for a week with 17 boxes stacked in their Living room and on their porch, can't they?

"Sure, I can", I told myself........"and I can use the extra time to collect even more stuff and put it in even more boxes." And so I did.

Sob. It is now the following Saturday and once more the forecast has called for rain today, so once again we have postponed everything. Maybe the Pennysaver will give us a refund for the ad?

Meanwhile, sigh, on other fronts I have just found out, after innumerable pokes, pinches, scans and invasions of the bod, that my left carotid artery needs to be roto-rooted of clogs like my right one was last year and the Vascular Plumber has been scheduled. Therefore, even if the sun should shine for 24 hours next Saturday I will be unable to attend because I will be back in the condition where I can not turn my head from straight ahead to anywhere right of center for a while. They make those stitches so damned tight........besides.......the advance weather checker has just informed us that it may rain next Saturday too. How fortunate that by now I don't even notice the 17 boxes piled in the living room and on the front porch. So now it looks like we may try to have our sale the first or second weekend in December. If any of you have any pull with the gods of weather, pulleeeeze put in a good word for us, will ya.?

I don't want any of you to worry about me........I am sure I will emerge just fine and 90% additional blood supply to my poor brain can only be a good thing, dontcha think? I will probably take my laptop with me, but I may or may not feel like blogging. Last time I was evicted from the hospital after only a day so it may not even be worth schlepping the thing with me. We will see, but, rest assured, I will try to keep you informed.

In the meantime, any good thoughts you would like to send my way are always much appreciated and, I promise you that, if I should happen to be routed into the tunnel, I will definitely send you Steve Jobs' "Oh Wow 3x" message and it will unequivocably mean only Good Things.

Love ya' all.

Moses' Tablets on Mt. Sinai May Have To Take Second Place

2011-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

I am puzzled, perplexed, bothered, bewildered and generally discombobulated by the fact that nobody has really talked about it. At least, I haven't been able to find anything meaningful said about it.

Am I the only one who was totally blown away by Steve Jobs' last words?
"Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow".

Maybe it is because I am so much closer to the Exit Door than most of you (though I don' t really think that's it) but I was absolutely flooded with awe when I read about his last moments and last words........and, I must confess, tantalized with a fragment of hope.

I happen to consider Mr. Jobs to have been one of the most monumental, brilliant, inspiring, evolved and enlightened people on this planet and his contributions to the rest of us cannot properly be evaluated yet. Consequently I take his last words and calm demeanor very seriously. I would have been equally fascinated if he had said, "Oh, Damn, Ouch, No, no, no, Why me?" or (my favorite), "Shit, Piss, Fuck". I would have been thrilled if he had said, "Oy vey" (but I realize that is just the shred of my Jewishness speaking,) since, having been a dedicated Zen Buddhist, I guess it would have been more in keeping if he had muttered, "Carry Water, Chop Wood".

I do not want anyone to think that I mean to denigrate my very serious and heartfelt feelings on this subject with humor.......I couldn't help speculate on what pronouncement I might be inspired to utter on my way out ........but, being a huge admirer of Zen as being the philosophy closest to truth and reason I must bring myself to admit that my own interpretation of his message, as best I can verbalize it, is that, finding himself in the tunnel between life and death, he got a glimpse of something awesome that excited him to the possibility of further adventures beyond the ones he was leaving behind.

Face it, my dears. It's what we all hope he meant isn't it?   I guess I may be the only one dumb enough, naive enough, gullible enough, Pollyanna-ish enough to put it in writing.   I just hope that on my way down the tunnel that is what I will be inspired to say.

Of course, I am willing to admit that what he really meant was simply "Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow'.

I would love to hear your own feelings and ideas on the subject if anyone would care to share them.

Game Called Because of Rain.....Damn....or is it Hooray

2011-11-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

I have only enough strength to utter a few grunts and monosyllables....... the big Yard Sale Project has had to be put off a weekbecause of rain. (Yes, it does occasionally rain in California.....especially on the weekend of the big yard sale) One half of me is rolling on the floor thanking every Deity ever prayed to by man. The other half is kicking the furniture in frustration.....not that there is really enough room to kick any furniture right now because of the profusion of cardboard boxes full of goodies taking up every inch of floor space.

However, the bright side is that now that I have gotten the hang of this Make Way for Empty Space thing I am finding more and more stuff I think I can bear to part with and the extra week should help me organize a bit. (Ha).

Whatever, do not look forward to the promised tell-all blog for another week.

Oy.......but I just realized that now I have to live thru another week of this agonizing waiting........better start an office pool on what day and hour Lois will deconstruct and sprinkle particles of herself over North Hollywood and adjacent communities. Sigh. Dammit,it IS always something........

Holy Crap! What Have I Done? I Must Have Been.......

2011-11-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

OUT OF MY MIND !

The thing that I have feared and hidden from has come upon me....no, the damned truth is that I have brought it upon me.....posted a sign, put an invitation in the PennySaver and invited it into my driveway, onto my front lawn and godknowswhereelse. Do I have to let them use the bathroom?

My dear friends, you must have guessed it. Desperation has driven me to participate in a neighborhood Yard Sale and I have only a few pitiful hours left before I must schlepp 4,327 boxes down the street or commit suicide (and you must know in which direction I am tending).

I had to hire an expert in the field to take me by the scruff of the neck and drag me thru my bulging domain uttering phrases like, "Here, this is something you don't need...it will be perfect". whereupon she literally pried It out of my gnarled, clutching fingers and dropped it in a cardboard box, stonily ignoring my whimpering and pleas. I will not dwell further on this horror right now because it is taking all my courage and dedication to keep myself from dragging all those boxes back in from the porch. On the other hand, it is more than weird that I find myself opening more cabinets and finding treasures I had forgotten I even had and putting them into yet more cardboard boxes at moments when I am not looking.

To be a crazy hoarder is wretched.....to have been collecting stuff from the four corners of the earth and from several relatives from before Methuselah makes it worse..........and to be partly logical and dispassionate at the same time is total agony and chaos. I am not sure I will survive till Sunday at 4 pm, but if I should be so lucky (or so ill-fated) I will be sure to blog you all about it. Sigh....Gasp.....Groan.

I wonder if collecting for 85 years before having your first Yard Sale will qualify me for the Guinness Book of Records?

Hmmmmm. Now in which box did she put that adorable brass mouse with the wavy tail?...........

Just Passing on a Jaw Dropper

2011-10-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

I was just reading an article that Ryan Air had to return to their flight takeoff point after some tape which had been used to repair the pilots' window came loose and the pilot's attempt to duct tape the window failed to work.

That pales in comparison with the final paragraph of the article, which I quote below.

"Ryanair has had quite a string of bad press lately. Earlier this month, the airline came under fire for its announcement that it will remove toilets from planes to make room for extra seats. This summer, the notoriously cheap airline gave a passenger in cardiac arrest a sandwich...and later charged him for it."

Gotta love it!.........sigh.

I Think I Want to Be Somebody Else for a Change

2011-10-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

Some odd thoughts have been popping up and down and in and out of my mind recently.....wispy, uncompleted thoughts.......fragmented, disorganized but determined, insistent to be noticed and definitely repetitive in their meaning. The gist of them has something to do with the fact that "I" ( as the entity which occupies this body ) was having trouble dealing with the ongoing disintegration of my "enclosing vehicle". Been feeling a bit like a turtle whose home /shell no longer fit well didn't navigate well and was no longer acceptable as a container for "me".    Worse yet......I hadn't a clue about what the hell I could do about this strange mismatch other than to just schlepp onward. Very unsatisfactory to my way of thinking and I have been hoping for an idea to circumvent this undefined ennui.

Then today I was directed to a blog from one of my favorite bloggers and found some beautiful, profound words which filled in the holes around my thoughts and and expressed them better than I ever could.

     "Is the self a cage from which one should struggle to be free?

      Or should we see it as a home?

      Is it both things?

        Maybe I should treat it both ways while I try to work through the conundrum. I can patch and paint         the worn walls, knock down the cobwebs, scrub the floors, fix the toilet, open the windows to let in         some light.

    At the same time, dig at a spot on the floor with the spoon I hide from the guards under my mattress, ,                  take a handful of dirt out each day, working on my escape."

The above was quoted from a wonderful blog I first encountered today, thanks to the incredible Mary Moon of Bless Our Hearts.   The blog is called   "The Dishwasher's Tears" written by The Tearful Dishwasher and I am so delighted to have found it and him........for many reasons, not the least of which is that he clarified and crystalized my thoughts and described exactly the way I have been feeling inside. I will try to expand on that.

The body and the persona that goes with it no longer feels like the real "me" . Or, rather, it feels like somebody the real Me is just damned sick and tired of.   I have said many times that I feel like I have had a wonderful life (despite certain bumps and detours along the road) and feel lucky and blessed with every bit of it. I still stand by that, but suddenly, I am tired.   Not quite sure if I am tired of living or just tired of living as Lo and being this persona. After all, 84 + years is a helluva long time to be with and part of an entity night and day, wouldn't you say? The only damned vacation you ever get from yourself is when you are anesthetized for surgery and that is just a brief respite but not a really a renewal.   Besides, it's not much fun when the anesthetic wears off.

It keeps reminding me of all the stories reported by people who have died and been revived, had near-death and out of the body experiences and every one of them seem to describe the same wonderful feeling of release in getting rid of and floating free of the body like being able at last to take off a choking girdle and agonizing bra and a costume that is cumbersome and at least 3 sizes too small to fit comfortably.

All in all I feel that the creature that I have worked on becoming for all these years has turned out to be a fairly decent job of work. I am ashamed and sorry that I have not really utilized all my gifts and my full potential to the max, but I feel that I have done pretty well considering some of the pitfalls I have had to navigate and conquer. No excuses.......I just took all the parts and pieces that came in the box labelled "Lois", assembled them, took them apart and reassembled them in a million different variations over the years and am rather proud to say I have managed to have used all of the pieces without wasting anything, except for a few parts that were obviously my Father's worst traits and which I had no choice but to dispose of discreetly in someone else's trash barrel so they couldn't be traced back to me and returned, perish forbid. When I consider the whole structure objectively I think I look more like I was created by Rube Goldberg than Michelangelo, but as long as I don't blow over in a strong wind I shouldn't complain.

And as far as who or what I would like to be if I could be someone other than me..............I swear there is no one I can think of on the planet I would like to move in on and inhabit.   I guess I will just have to wait and see who or what I will be next.....right now, I think a Rock might be nice.

And, Furthermore.......

2011-10-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

When I finished my recent rant about the fact that, in today's world, you can hardly believe a word of anything that is put forth by any of the media since they seem to have forgotten the difference between truth and lies , I was hardly ranted out. To go further, they have also managed to avoid, ignore or forget the fact that it used to be their job to put out for public edification as much of the objective truth as they could manage to establish and express. Oh sure, the Editors and/or the Owners usually managed to impose their slant on things but still outright lies and fiction were rarely resorted to. The focus seems to have changed from fact to fiction, and I have already said a lot in my last blog regarding how I feel about this turn of events.

Feh! and Patoooooey!   (You have to visualize my target, the brass spittoon in the corner.)

What is giving me a hissey fit today is the incomprehensible fact that, with a thousand and one telephone type devices proliferating like rabbits, and everyone having pockets full of them, people have all decided that they don't ever have to answer any of them if they damned well please not to do so.   Being that everyone I see on the street, in their cars and at the supermarket is always talking to someone I can only assume that some folks out there must be answering their phones, so maybe it's just the people that I call who prefer to let me leave a message so they can decide at their leisure whether or not they want to bother talking to ME.

Who's paranoid.........me? No way!    Of course, I may be old fashioned, but it seems very disrespectful to fail to respond to a phone call when you are perfectly able to do so simply because you'd rather screen the calls and prioritize which ones deserve your attention. It is doubly insulting nowadays when we have caller-id and you know you are being ignored on purpose. Faugh! My contempt for such goings-on is unbounded. And a lot of good that does me. But I am not going down without a shriek. Eeeeeeeek! There....I feel a mite better.

This behavior has annoyed the hell out of me numerous times recently, but I am really pissed off this week because circumstances have sort of led to me playing a Saint Theresa act and the final good deed I was working on was trying to get a gift delivered to a bridal shower I was unable to attend. All I wanted was to drop it off to a family member who was going to be there. Over a period of 2 or 3 days I sent several emails to the one who was hosting the shower, also several phone calls with messages to her, several phone calls with messages to her Mother and even a desperation email to her husband. Timely responses = 0.   Bah, humbug. I have put that St. Theresa outfit into the bag for the Goodwill and have dug out my Evil Witch garb for use from now on. Gosh and golly, I still remember the days when we would all (even the old folks) run at life-threatening speed up or down several flights of stairs to answer the phone before the caller hung up. In those days a phone call was next best thing to a hug.....a gesture that someone wanted or needed to speak to you..........not so any more, I guess.   The easier the means of access the more difficult it is to make contact, it seems.

However, my dear ones, I am not going to leave you with the memory of this embittered creature who appears to have handcuffed herself to the complaint department desk permanently. I have temporarily unlocked myself to deliver ecstatic news to those fans and admirers of the Delicious Mark Harmon. A recent made for TV movie starring the beautiful one has been made and will be shown on November 6, a Sunday nite at 9 pm on channel 105......I think it is USA or ION or some such.......do a bit of research yourselves though I expect there will be considerable interruptions of programming to tell you about it. It is a mystery/detective plot based on John Sanford's novel "Certain Prey" and features a rather interesting and charming Policeman named, I believe, Lucas Davenport. I have read a gazillion of Sanford's series all of which feature the very bright and appealing and ruggedly sexy cop and the buzz is that if this first one makes it big there may be a slew to follow. Oh, Lord, please oversee this effort kindly and don't let it end up being a load of bullpucky. There are so many good souls out here who deserve to have the dark clouds chased away and their spirits lightened by a couple of hours of really enjoyable TV.    (I guess even if the script is not very good we can always put it on "mute" and just watch the pictures......or at least I can, but you must remember how easy I am to please when it comes to the comely MH).

Let all the clan (you know who you are , (all 4 0r 5 of you) send good thoughts to whatever place you think they will do the most good. I have already begun my efforts and my vigil.

What I Know For Sure,,,,,Is Within These Parentheses ( )

2011-10-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

I keep seeing books and blogs by people who have apparently found all the answers or even some of them.....Titles like "This I Know For Sure" and "Two True Things" or whatever, and I'll tell you, I take my hat off to those people who can state unequivocably that they are sure about something.

Now I, for instance, have recently realized that I am not sure of anything any more. Strange, because when I was Forty something I was sure I had everything figured out. (I was really an arrogant prick for a while back then) I look back and see so many of my absolute truths that have gone bad on me over time and that I have had to discard or thought I had discarded......, kinda like those small containers of food that get pushed, forgotten, to the back of the fridge shelf and, when discovered, are displaying questionable spots of green or red mold making it impossible to even guess what they once were. All you can be pretty sure of is that you probably should get rid of them .........at once.

The other day I was thinking that the time has come when a person cannot read a publication or listen to a news program and have any confidence whatsoever that what is being told to us with the utmost false sincerity is anything but just hype....a bundle of lies concocted by spin doctors with nothing but the prepositions in the sentences remaining trustworthy and at all dependable.    (Really....how wrong can after, at ,by, down, for, from, in, on, etc. be ....without a noun or a verb I believe we can be fairly sure they remain blameless?)    I suddenly realized something shocking . There are so many things that we accept as "absolute truth" that are so obviously absurd and insane that I don't understand why we haven't all risen up in riotous protest, burned books and stoned the offenders who have implanted these devilish worms of thought in our brains.

With nothing making any sense to me at all any more my deep introspections have revealed to me something I should have thought of a long time ago....... we have completely accepted premises that our minds and our senses tell us is a bucket of bull crap. I think I have finally arrived at one new truth.

Ladies and Gentlemen........THE WORLD IS REALLY FLAT.

Now just think about it for a minute.

Never mind Christopher Columbus and all that shit. He could have very easily have sailed right off the edge of the earth if he hadn't been lucky enough to bump into America or the islands off the coast. I'll bet a lot of those guys who sailed west to get to the East Indies and were never heard of again DID sail right off the edge of the earth.

Hell, just go for a drive across Arizona.......is the world round or flat, just tell me? Take a cruise and convince yourself and me that the ocean that you see stretching endlessly out there is really on a curved surface. Climb the highest mountain and when you peer out into the distance, aside from a few protruberances like other mountains, what is out there? Nothing but Flat, flat, flat.

Now just think about this for a minute.......there are only recently a handful of human beings who claim they have zipped out into distant space and looked back and seen this blue marble thingy and sent back pictures of it and have established beyond doubt that the earth is round..........yeh, yeh.....and we are supposed to believe them 'cause pictures don't lie. Ha!(What about PhotoShop? ) And how do we know that blue marble is the Earth? I am not sure they are any more believable than the people who claim that the moon landing never happened and it was all done on a movie sound stage in Burbank.

Just think for a minute about the fact that we are told that, with the earth being round and all, that about half of the people on the planet are actually living their lives hanging upside down by their feet.   Got the picture?   And what is holding them on and keeping them all from flying off into space???? An invisible thing called gravity, we are told. Can't see it, can't feel it but that is what makes Australians think they are right side up and perfectly fine, when, in fact, none of them have ever been right side up except possibly Crocodile Dundee who visited NY and the one or two Aussies who may have vactioned in Maine or Canada. What is keeping all those Aussies from having a constant dizzy, headachey feeling is also a puzzle to me. It, too, is attributed to gravity, but I know how I feel when I have been in an inverted Yoga pose for just a few minutes and I don't know about that gravity thing at all.

And it gets even worse..........the Scientists tell us we are wrong in thinking the sun revolves around the Earth. In truth,they say, the Earth and a bunch of other big rocks all revolve around the sun which does nothing but just sit there burning away. Well, if that is true how come I see the sun come up just beyond my lime tree in the left corner of the back yard every morning and I often watch it set way out on the right edge of the Pacific Ocean in the evening...down it goes.....plop.......day after day probably just about the spot where the ocean is fighting to keep from running off the edge of the earth. (I haven't figured that part out yet about the oceans.)    So who is crazy?

They tell us that the Earth not only revolves around the sun, but that it spins on its axis and does a complete turn on itself every nite (that supposedly explains sunrise and sunset) while it is also spinning in it's orbit around the sun, a feat that takes a year to complete and that explains Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter because one part of the orbit is closer to the sun than the rest of it, making summer hotter than winter.   As far as I am concerned that doesn't explain anything especially, with all that spinning around, how come we aren't all staggering off the sidewalks and falling down in the gutters all the time without having imbibed a single drop of intoxicating beverage?

Hmmmmm. Pretty tatty....all of it, I'd say.    I think we have all been seduced into believing a lot of garbage even before this current crop of Fox news hit the fan and I have decided I am going to start making up my own truth from now on. Anyone who cares to join me is more than welcome. I'll bet we can create a better reality than the one we are stuck in. How could we not?

Humph ! Fickle Followers......Can't a Person Just Sit Down and Rest?

2011-10-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes, I know it's true......I have been invisible and silent in the blogosphere recently and I apologize to all you beloved folk who keep checking in eagerly and have to leave disgruntled and unsatisfied.

What's worse ....today will not be much better but I notice that followers are deserting me by the handful....ingrates, wretches.......and I decided I had better utter a few small grunts and squeaks to let you know I have not traveled on through that dark tunnel to the light....not yet. Just been busy with several projects.

To the faithful few, I will be back soon, I promise.

And to the others I say......Feh! (not what I really want to say, but "feh" looks more civilized than what I really want to say.) Love ya' all.

Not Plagarism....Sharing Anonymous Genius With the World

2011-10-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

Forgive me if you have already seen the following piece. I just received it from my old and dear friend, Bruce Simkins who happened to be the brother of my beloved friend Anita ....sadly, now no longer with us. They were my first friends in California and without them I surely would have died of loneliness or just walked into the Pacific and kept going. However, that is another story.

I do not know if Bruce wrote this.....he may have....he is quite brilliant. However, to whomever wrote it I give credit and praise. I think it is wonderful and deserves to be spread as widely as possible. Feel free to copy and forward it to anyone you know who needs a laugh. And, if you know who wrote it, please advise me so I can give proper credit.

By the way...I had to work like hell to try to fit the type into my space so please forgive any choppped off words.
**********************************

DRAFTING GUYS OVER 60

No - idiot !! The subject does not read dating guys over 60 - Put on your glasses & read it again !!

Begin forwarded message:

Subject: Drafting Guys Over 60

Date: October 8, 2011 12:40:34 PM CDT

Drafting Guys Over 60

This is funny & obviously

written by a Former Soldier... New Direction for any war: Send Service
Vets over 60!

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I'm too old to track down terrorists. You can't be older

than 42 to join the military.
They've got the whole thing ass-backwards.
Instead of sending 18-year-olds
off to fight, they ought to take
us old guys. You shouldn't be
able to join a military unit
until you're at least 35.

For starters, researchers

say 18-year-olds think about sex
every 10 seconds. Old guys only
think about sex a couple of times
a day, leaving us more than
28,000 additional seconds per
day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven't lived long

enough to be cranky, and a

cranky soldier is a dangerous

soldier. 'My back hurts! I can't

sleep, I'm tired and hungry.'

We are impatient and maybe

letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make

us feel better and shut us

up for awhile.

An 18-year-old doesn't even

like to get up before 10am.

Old guys always get up early

to pee, so what the hell. Besides,

like I said, I'm tired and

can't sleep and since I'm

already up, I may as well be

up killing some fanatical

son-of-a-bitch.

If captured we couldn't spill

the beans because we'd forget

where we put them. In fact,

name, rank, and serial number

would be a real brainteaser.
Boot camp would be easier for

old guys.. We're used to getting screamed and yelled at and

we're sed to soft food.

We've also developed an

appreciation for

guns. We've been using

them for years as an excuse

to get out of the house,

away from the screaming

and yelling.

They could lighten up on the

obstacle course however... I've

been in combat and never saw a
single 20-foot wall with rope
hanging over the side, nor did I
ever do any pushups after
completing basic training.
Actually, the running part
is kind of a waste of energy, too...
I've never seen anyone
outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole

world ahead of him. He's still

learning to shave, to start a conversation with a pretty girl.

He still hasn't figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to

shade his eyes, not the back

of his head.
These are all great reasons

to keep our kids at home to

learn a little more about

life before sending them

off into harm's way.
Let us old guys track down

those dirty rotten coward

terrorists. The last thing

an enemy would want to

see is a couple million

pissed off old farts with

attitudes and automatic

weapons, who know that

their best years are already

behind them.

HEY!! How about recruiting

Women over 50...in

menopause!!! You think

MEN have attitudes??
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my God!!!

If nothing else, put them

on border patrol. They'll have
it secured the first night!

Send this to all of your

senior friends... it's in

big type so they can

read it.

Not a Crock of YouKnowWhat......Here's a Different Crock Altogether

2011-10-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

Well, dear souls.....face it.....when you get to be an octogenarian your options for amusing yourself narrow a bit..... The way it works is, first you try to pick something that doesn't hurt, does not require you to cover much ground and doesn't compel you crawl around a lot on your hands and knees.

That is why I got so excited a few weeks ago when I discovered the world of stock options........it allows you to sit at your computer for 24 hours without getting up, especially if you take your laptop into the bathroom and get one of those soft toilet seats to sit on all day. (Incidentally, that new hobby is working out well.....I am learning a lot and am only down about $47.....and by tomorrow I may even be in the black. A blog about that will surely follow soon) However, the markets do close early in our time zone and are not open on the weekends and just how many candlestick charts can a person examine for bullish or bearish flag formations before screaming obscenities and rushing into the street to be run over by a car?......so I really needed another reason to get out of bed in the mornings. Happily a cousin of mine is getting married and I was browsing Bridal Registries for a gift when I was reminded that I had always wanted, of all things, a Crock Pot Slow Cooker thingy and had never treated myself to one...........until now. A real life-changer, I'll tell you.

Hoopty=doo.......I have a new toy for practically no money (I found a great sale bargain) and I have a new reason to spend time in the kitchen assembling fabulous dinners. (I hope). With my very first effort I have learned an important lesson which I could have figured out by myself had I not been so excited. Do not expect the same results from a crock pot that you get with a saute pan. However, if you follow the recipe and put in extra wine the results can be delicious. Hence I had a fabulous bowl of Chicken Marsala for dinner last night and could not stop licking the spoon and the bowl. The sauce, replete with basil, oregano, garlic, cream cheese (?) and lots of marsala, was so good I would have gladly eaten my shoe (or even someone else's shoe) if it were cooked in that sauce. As for the chicken......well, it sure as hell was tender! I can see why these pots are superb for making barbecued pulled pork and beef. Now that I have that lesson learned I am working on a soup which should definitely benefit from long slow cooking.....French Onion Soup with some dry Vermouth and perhaps a slug of Brandy in the 3rd hour. I have my baguettes all ready to top with Parmesan cheese to float on top and will put the little crocks of soup under the broiler before serving/devouring. What a good thing I didn't give all of those French Onion Soup crocks to the Goodwill a few years back.

That whole story just exacerbates one of my problems though..........after spending the last 18 months convincing myself that most of the contents of my kitchen cabinets and drawers will never be used again and might as well be disposed of, here I come up with a use for those damned oven-proof soup crocks which have been taking up a whole shelf in my cupboard for 40 years. Now I undoubtedly will never be able to dispose of anything again. Sigh.

(I do realize that those slow cookers were really invented for the poor unfortunate souls who have to rush off to work in the mornings and needed a way to find dinner all ready for them when they came home. The fact that I am home all of the time doesn't matter one whit.......it is a new skill and I intend to acquire it and enjoy it.)

Now, you will have to excuse me.....I have a few more candlestick charts and 50 day Moving Averages to examine before I prepare my strategy for tomorrow's market opening. Tenks Gott this new hobby has not bankrupted me yet nor has my head exploded spraying the countryside with numbers and strange symbols and abbreviations, but please............ don't stop praying for me.

The Cats Take Over

2011-09-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

I have had a very harrowing day coping with my electronic and technological gadgets all of which defied me at every turn and left me a broken shell of a person flung into the corner of the room like a pile of dirty laundry. Consequently, you don't get very many words out of me tonite, but I will try to fill up the column with a few pix.

One of the things which confounded me was the simple (?) task of trying to download some pics from my camera. Two hours and a bucket of tears later I finally found the pro blem.....I was using the download cable from my old camera not my new one. If the prongs all fit the various holes I cannot for the life of me understand why the old one should not work, but at least the correct one did work and enabled me to display this somewhat undistinguished Picture of the new and improved, softer version of Baskin in his favorite perch giving you the "look deeply into my eyes and I will turn you into a pumpkin" stare........otherwise known as the "Don't Fuck With Me, Kiddo".

This is supposed to be a pic of Winnie co vering her eyes with her paw as she tries to nap.......ny vision is poor so all I can be sure of is that it is a furry creature.

Same pose, perhaps a bit clearer but I know it will never win any prizes.

A view of my marvelous red trumpet vine blossoms.......too bad you can't see how huge they are but you can catch a glimpse of one of my numerous hummer feeders. The funny thing is that the trumpet vine flowers used to be a feast for the hummers till they tasted Lo's Home Brewed Nectar. Now they spurn the flowers for my offerings. I hope I have not ruined their lives....

And finally, a pitifully inadequate shot of the livestock lounging by the pool........I took 2 or 3 of these and none of them was any good, but being that I am merely a limp pile of dirty laundry thrown into a corner by my tech devices, I guess you should consider yourselves lucky to be getting even this dubious stuff.

And now, my precious followers, I must rush off to bed so I can arise with the dawn and see what is happening to the spreads, straddles and naked puts and calls in the Options Market.

G'nite.

Anyone Up For A Naked Put?

2011-09-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if I will ever be able to blog coherently again. For a week I have been immersed in a rare, esoteric language which nobody in their right mind really speaks, but in order to participate in my new hobby it has been critical that I learn it. My brain is reeling and I am beginning to think I have made a huge mistake. (won't be the first and I sincerely hope it won't be my last....if you know what I mean.....)

Well, my darlings, if you consider that first paragraph a bit of an enigma just wait till I start spouting whole sentences, paragraphs, yea pages even that don't make any sense whatsoever. I have spent hours bruising my brain with decisions like whether a covered call framed in a vertical spread is a better tactic than entering into a short straddle whereby I must be willing to accept exercise or assignment on either leg.... (of the transaction, that is).

Or perhaps I might dare venture into the dangerous world of the naked call or put. (Believe me, it's not what you think) I am warned that if I enter a naked put and the market moves against me and the stock's price is lower than the put's strike price upon expiration (whose....mine or theirs?) I might indeed have to clench my teeth and suffer having the stock put to me whether I like it or not. That somehow sounds like it might be uncomfortable, painful or even a bit maiming, no? Well, that just gives you a taste of what I have coping with trying to fathom the intriguing, incomprehensible and totally frustrating world of stock options. Aaarrrrggggh.

I am all for continuing to learn even into one's dotage, but I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew this time. It all began a few weeks ago when I woke up and decided there was absolutely no incentive for me to get up at all.........no challenges awaited (except for those like cleaning out the closets which I have been putting off for 5 or 10 years but am sure to get to one of these days. No happy surprises were in store for me.........I had already received my last internet order of those storage bags which promise to compact your fluffiest possessions down to the thickness of a microchip with the help of using your vacuum to suck the air out and found that they do a passable job but no ecstasy results from it. I have been forced into the unenviable position of having to give away some of my afghans due to no room left in any closet (despite the promises of those sucky bags) (No...this is writer's rhetoric....I love to give away my afghans.....the problem is I just can't stop making them). Face it......I, who rarely in my lifetime have been bored (except at cocktail parties) was suddenly bored to tears because I cannot physically do the things which used to keep me amused......like building a 6 foot blue velvet couch or a stained glass window etc. Life, as I knew it, was over. Sigh.

And then I happened to accidentally read a piece of junk email (not quite spam) which begged and pleaded with me to realize the huge opportunities that Stock Options offered in a Stock Market such as we are experiencing. Being weak and vulnerable I fell into the trap and read the whole damned thing (usually a disaster) and it really offered a nugget or two of interesting information. Before I knew what I was doing I found myself on Amazon checking out the various "How to" books on stock optionsand ordered one.......used, of course.

You see, the truth is that may years ago I had what you could call "dabbled" in stock options and fortunately had enough sense to shake the whole thing from my fingertips like a 200 degree shred of melted mozzarella when I saw the column labelled "net profit/loss" contained too many negative numbers. I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing and felt lucky to get off so easy. But the lure of a process where you could be naked in a transaction (figuratively, of course) never totally left me and I decided that perhaps if I studied I could learn enough to do it right this time....I confess it is the hardest subject I have ever tackled with the possible exception of "Deductive Logic" in the Philosophy Dept at UCLA.......a subject which I naively assumed would be fun like solving mysteries and found, to my horror, that it was 2 parts incomprehensible math type equations blended with 3 parts something like breaking down sentence structure in 8th grade English. I fear I will never be able to erase from my mind the memorable prime example of diagramming and proving the truth of the sentence "If it rains, the street is wet." ugh.......quell horror.......But I digress.......

I am still feeling my way gingerly into this new endeavor and pray that it will turn out to be both exhilarating and profitable. So far I am not sure whether it has touched or even come close to either of those goals. The thing it did do was to get me out of bed at 7am (the market opens in New York at some awful hour and we are 3 hours earlier) and had me staggering and tripping over my cane as I made my way to the computer to check on some paper trades I had entered (mythical trades....no money involved). This totally confounded the cats who never expect to see me before 10;30 on my best days, not to mention what it did to my daily naptimes. The household has been in total disarrangement. No one knows when to eat or sleep.

.Then there was an interruption to the process when I discovered that my blood pressure, which is normally incredibly perfect, was going through the roof. I put my book and pretend option tickets aside and made my way to my magnificent cardiologist who saves my life regularly just with a hug and occasionally with an angioplasty and some stents. After reviewing every thing I had eaten, drunk, inhaled or coughed up for the past 3 days we were no closer to an answer till I thought to mention my new activity and, after he finished laughing, we decided that excitement and stress and naked puts can have a resounding effect on blood pressure, especially when the 2nd most exciting thing in a person's life has been hummingbirds for the past 2 years. Well, who knew?

So there you have it.......Lois is galloping off in yet another direction and who knows what adventures will ensue. Let us hope that bankruptcy won;'t be one of them

Next blog I will tell you all about bull call spreads and straddles and strangles and collars and some strategy I can't recall which is named after some kind of butterfly.....I can't remember how many legs it has and whether you can be assigned or exercised if you do it wrong. I think I will stay away from that one for a while. I certainly don't think I want to be exercised........I had enough of that with the broken hip and the damned physical terrorists.....and if you are very good I will tell you more about naked puts and calls.....I know that is really all you care to hear about.

And, please, either wish me luck or pray for me....probably both if you can manage it.

This Belongs With My Previous Post

2011-09-17T17:38:00.000-07:00

I fully intended to look up the following quote and include it in my modified rant against the pathetic attempts some people make to hang on to youth and beauty far beyond their expiration dates. I just found it, so here it is. It comes from one of my favorite authors, the wonderful George Bernard Shaw and goes something like this:

"Youth is a wonderful thing.
What a crime to waste it on children. "
George Bernard Shaw

And, even though the main message of my rant was hopefully implied throughout, I realized that I never came right out in that post and stated the obvious .......... the bit of comfort we all can apply to our twinges of loss and regret......... that the appearance of the package will never be the main thing... ....it's what's inside that counts.

Sorry Folks.....No Extended Warranty

2011-09-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Enhh......I always try to keep my promises, and I intend to continue with that noble effort. Trouble is, sometimes it ain't easy. For instance.....

I mentioned in a recent blog the awful fact that I had written a vast ranting outburst against the folks who keep yearning to have their youth back or, worse yet, their youthful good looks......oy, such a waste of noble effort. Then disaster struck. I hit "publish" and somehow sent the whole thing into oblivion....aaaarrrrrggghhh...... sob.

After I mopped up the lake of tears I felt that perhaps it was a good thing that the post did not see the light of day because I was in a deep funk that day and being really ultra bitchy. After spouting fire and smoke while spitting out a rant usually all that is left is a small pile of dubious ash and one wonders whether the heat was really warranted. Well, after vacillating back and forth and about that idea for a few days (as I am wont to do) I am sort of on the fence about my whether my harshness was justified, but I am going to try to recreate some of my thoughts on the subject because I think it is really important that the world get a new attitude about that ephemeral thing called youth and beauty and stop suffering pain over the loss of something so ....well, SILLY...... the agony of which often blights the whole damned rest of their lives.

I have confessed in these pages many times that I had a touch of real sadness about not having enjoyed my day in the sun because I never though I was in any way beautiful. It is only in ancient decrepitude that I see clearly that I was somewhat gorgeous. I know I am not alone in this sad fact because many of you have stated the exact same regret in your blogs and I always feel my heart wrench when I read that.....what a bloody shame. To have once actually possessed the thing that you spend the rest of your life craving and to not have recognized that you had it and been able to enjoy it is worse than pathetic. Boo Hoo for us all.

I also remember vividly how naive, gullible, clueless, uncertain, scared, confused, puzzled, wracked with anxiety and tormented I felt as a teenager (and even a young twenty-something) . The torture of that feeling of being an outsider, even when you had weaseled your way inside and ostensibly "belonged". The desperation of feeling so empty inside that you were like an overfilled balloon and every moment of your life was fraught with the danger of someone accidentally or on purpose pricking you with a sharp edge or word causing you to explode and be reduced to a miserable shred of rubber. Confidence and some measure of inner assurance did not begin to come to me until my 30's and it has been an ongoing process ever since to fill my balloon with solid stuff rather than air. I still have many pockets that need filling, but I am working on it every day and I no longer dread the approach of someone with a pin.

Of course there are blissful moments interspersed with all the pain that make being young a treasure to be appreciated if possible. If the pains hurt worse when you are young, the delights are equally extra delicious and ecstatic especially because they are so brand new. Somehow though, in looking back objectively I find a lot more time spent hunched over clutching myself in agony than tripping along a foot off the ground in delight. (Perhaps I was just unlucky but I suspect not. So many people have expressed to me their combined desolation and relief at reaching middle age and accepting the fact that they are never going to have a happy childhood. Once you get that notion out of the way you might have a chance at inner peace..)

But to look at the whole subject with a mercilessly reasonable eye, there is a specific purpose for youthful beauty in both sexes that has nothing to do with the Ego, Vanity or your ultimate self worth rooted in your appearance. It is the job of youth and beauty to attract a mate and get about the excruciating job of propagating the species. Once you have got your mate and have produced your obligatory 2 or 3 or.....4 etc. offspring, those glowing, dewy, enticing looks are more a hindrance than anything else........I would imagine that any Mother worth her salt would better spend her time attending to the needs of the children, hubby, dogs, cats, goldfish etc. than annointing herself with ungents and potions intended to make her look more like she did before ever getting tangled up with aforementioned distractions. And the dreadful pangs of conflict and guilt to be wrestled with regarding this choice must be agony indeed. (Never having had or wanted children I cannot speak from experience about this tenks gott......a wise decision since I would have been a terrible mother of children........animals no, children yes.)

I do not deny that I enjoy looking upon beauty, youthful or otherwise as much as the next person.......that is what the entertainment world is for. Many of those called "eye candy" have little to offer except for their good looks to satisfy our need for what Al Capp used to call the "purty face wif naught behind it". Of course some of them like Mark Harmon, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Scarlett Johanson also bring a load of talent to provide double-barreled joy to us, but the others who just strut their stuff and get into mindless,endless trouble........I will try to be magnanimous and say that their looks alone somehow justifies their existence, but I cannot believe that any of you beloved people would trade their hard won solid structure and character to be a Paris Hilton or..... who is that wretched young person I keep hearing about....Justin Bieber? (Who or what the hell is a Justin Bieber?)

So, if after this penetrating expose you are all still mourning your lost youth and beauty I am truly sorry. I refuse offer to share your misery but the least I can do is wish you, "Good Luck." And, then again.....maybe not.

Dammit......you were given the chance at a life...........hell's bells........live all of it.

.

Wrong Again.....Baskin Is Smarter Than Me

2011-09-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

(I know, I know, I still owe you the blog on lost youth....it is coming soon..........)

And now for something completely different.

The only somewhat interesting development I can pass on this week is regarding Baskin, my part feral orange kitty who, in the 6 or 7 or 10 years he has lived here would not let me get close enough to touch him. I inherited him from a friend who rescued him from some mean kids when he was a kitten. She told me that all he did was hide in the closet except to come out to eat and....you know. When she had to move and could not take him to her new apartment she begged me to take him and I, naturally, succumbed. I figured I would have him eating out of my hand in two weeks max. Ha.   In 2 weeks I couldn't get within 6 feet of him. Dumb Cat!

After 2 weeks of failure I switched to plan B. I went off blithely to KMart and purchased a big heavy duty fishing net for scooping huge bass or something from the water, removed everything breakable from my bathroom and proceeded to chase Baskin around the sunroom for an hour or so trying to net him in a space not occupied by furniture. Sweaty, exasperated and exhausted I finally got him and trotted to the bathroom shutting both of us inside, with Baskin uttering the most horrible moans and shrieks while I tried to soothe him with soft platitudes.

After freeing him from the net into the bathtub lined with soft towels I kept up the soothing speech while he cowered in the farthest corner of the tub looking at me like I was Freddie Whatshisname.. I then reached out slowly and proceeded to pet him while he tensed every muscle in his body making him feel like a lump of bricks and continued with the awful moans that told everyone on the block that I was torturing a cat in here. Patiently I proceeded and after a few minutes the moans stopped but not the tenseness.   A few more minutes and I actually heard him purring a bit while still tensed into the fearful ball. After a while of this, I then I complimented him on his bravery and told him we would play like this again later. I was sure I was making progress.

Naturally I brought food, fresh water and clean litter box several times daily and each time our routine was the same. I was sure that after a few days the howls, at least, would stop. Not a chance. The animal lovers in the neighborhood were already casting dirty looks at me no matter how much I reassured them that no animal was being harmed in this process. At the end of a week our relationship had not improved a single whit so I just gave up, released him back to the sunroom and the safety of the wicker couch or the topmost shelf of the kitty condo and got my bathroom back.

The Plan B maneuver was repeated a number of other times during the first year or two with not one iota of improvement till I finally said, "F... you, you miserable little excuse for cat.......you win......no contact.......and thus it continued for 5 years until I finally decided to let him spend the day in the garden, fixed up the garden shed with a bed and food and water, let him sleep in the shed at nite if he preferred and just come in for meals whenever. He really seemed to like that. But he looked so lonely.

Then I went to the enormous trouble and expense of getting another cat to keep him company. When he first came to live here I had two lovely russian blue kitties, Minnie and Moe, and Baskin loved both of them, particularly Minnie and he would cuddle with her and not have to be lonely. Sadly, both of them reached their expiration dates and, since he never cottoned to Gussie, I thought perhaps another female might fill the bill. Hence Winnie came into our lives and it was Pretty Good. He developed a crush on her and, while she was pretty casual about him, she did permit him to lie close to her by the pool and to follow her around so at least he wasn't lonely any more. That improved the situation a bit for me and I though that was as good as it it would get.......until this summer when I ordered from the internet an easy-to-install screen to cover the sliding door opening but still permit easy entry and exit.

I have always described Baskin as mentally challenged, but I have just found out that I am wrong. He is actually very intelligent....just brutally, head-smitingly stubborn. For the years when his pattern was that in the morning I open the back door of the sunroom where he ate, slept and poohed, he would run outside , spend the day in the yard and often refused to come back in at nite. For several years now he has been sleeping in the garden shed most nites.   In the morning when I open the door and leave the room he would come in and have his breakfast and during the day go in and out the open door but only stay in some nites. (those nites when he sleeps inside he wakes me to be let out with huge howls around 4 or 5 am....grrrr.)   Of course this method may have been been good for Baskin but it was hell for me .....not only the early wake up call. but the flies!   Because the flies in the neighborhood considered the open door an engraved invitation to come in and drive me crazy in the kitchen, and required me to perfect both my forehand and backhand slam and be constantly at the ready when I would have really preferred doing other things. Sigh. Such is the life of a slave to cats.

But then.....recently I bought a thingy of a screen that fastens over the slider opening with velcro and has a magnet that closes the split to keep out at least some of the flies.. Of the 3 felines, only Baskin figured out that he could poke his head thru the split and get in and out. The other 2 cats sit and look at it like it was the Berlin Wall so I have to prop it open a bit at the bottom for them. Recently my handyman has been working in the yard with his chain saw plugged into a socket in the sun room and the extension cord running out that door so I cannot close it all the way at nite. That little devil, Baskin, figured out how to get his claws into the opening and slide the door open enough for him to get out in the morning. (tenks gott....better than having him wake me at 4 am every nite howling.) Now he generally comes in every nite around 5 or 6 pm to sleep and is almost blase about my passing through the room. I think he feels he has his own key now and is more comfortably independent. Meanwhile neither of the other cats has figured out how to slide the sliding door open.   The little bastard.....all this time I thought he was retarded. He is obviously brilliant......a very clever pain in the ass by choice.

Both of us are so much happier now.....I am tickled to have him indoors at night and protected from the weather and other threats and also delighted to be able to walk into that room without him behaving like I was Typhoid Mary and running like his tail was on fire. He even looks at me differently now......instead of that fearful, wary, sullen stare he now observes me calmly, almost benignly......unless, of course, I get within about 20 inches of him.

There is and has always been, however, one exception. (This, by the way, has been going on for years). It consists of him taking a certain hiding position under the wicker couch, my going out to the garden and gathering a handful of the choicest tender blades of grass (only accomplished on hands and knees, you understand, and returning to the sunroom with the sacred bouquet. Then, I get down on hands and knees or, preferably, tummy, on the floor and creep with outstretched arm to fingertip distance from Baskin holding out a tender blade enticingly. Baskin, who is watching me like a hawk to be sure I do not get 1/16 of an inch closer than necessary, pretends to cast a casual disinterested, disdainful, blase glance at the offering and, just at the moment when the phrase, "Fuck you, you ungrateful wretch", is trembling on my lips, he reaches out an inch toward the morsel and chompfs it down to a nub allowing his whiskers to tickle my eager fingers in the process This gets repeated with each blade until there is nothing but inedible nubs left whereupon he scans the floor in front of him for missed goodies, sighs and turns away casting me a glance fraught with meaning something like, "There, you frumpy old biddy, don't ever say I never did you a favor". I am not sure what it says about my character, pride or self-respect that I accept this treatment gratefully.......I do not intend to pursue that avenue right now. I never for a minute would have put up with such abuse from any man in my life, but, somehow with Baskin it seems OK. I cannot satisfactorily explain this.

Chalk it up to just one more character flaw or sheer insanity, whichever comes to mind first.

Things to Ponder While Yelling "Ouch"

2011-09-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

(This is NOT the blog I promised you after losing the rant I wrote on Sunday.....that is yet to come.)

I am sharing a hard won life lesson with y'all today on the off chance that my struggles may be helpful to someone out there. If you are one of the lucky ones who never has a pain or an ache, for heaven's sake, don't waste your time plodding through this....just keep on smoking whatever it is you are smoking and move on to a more exciting blog. However, if you have ever uttered an "ouch" or "oy vey" you might find a nugget of interest here. I am not preaching anything, by the way, nor am I trying to entice you into my cult where magic is a daily ho-hum happening. I offer my experiences with all humility and much gratitude.......it's a kind of take- it- or- leave- it thing. I hope some crumb will resonate for you and make things better.

As most of you know, I recently cancelled my plans to have a bum knee replaced when I realized that my suffering from the knee only accounted for about 30% of my total miseries and it did not seem worthwhile to incur the pain of surgery, recovery and the damned physical therapy to only feel perhaps 30% better.

I definitely feel like I made the right decision for me....(I encourage anyone who is facing replacement of parts to proceed like gangbusters if that surgery will eliminate most of your discomfort or give you mobility you are lacking). The most interesting thing is, that in order to make that decision, I had to face, analyze and get on speaking terms with all of my various aches and pains and was reminded (once more) of a lesson I learned years ago but keep forgetting:

When there is no possibility of immediate relief from a pain the best thing to do is to stop fighting the pain.
Stop resenting, resisting, hating and trying to pull away from the pain or tear it out of yourself. Relax and get neutral. (Easy to say, I know, but it can be done).

Accept the pain.

Take a deep breath. Look inside. Examine it for shape, color, size, texture, general characteristics. Start thinking of the pain as not your enemy but a sort of equal.......you are both stuck in this together. As soon as you do this the pain becomes less intense and/or more manageable, I swear. When you quietly accept the fact that there is no quick fix, you develop an odd respect for the pain and begin to learn to live with it rather than be at war with it. Sounds crazy I know, but it has always worked for me. And it has just worked again.

Now, before you all pelt me with camel dung I must state (I should probably have said this at the beginning),
I am not talking here about Grade #10 or even #8 or #9 pain. This method did not work for me during the week on the ship when I was having the extreme sciatic attack and was incarcerated in my cabin unable to move and with excruciating, ceaseless agony for 7 days 24 hours a day. No amount of accepting made that better or distracted me from its intensity for a moment. I don't think it helped with an abcessed tooth I once had either. But it has helped with a lot of the inbetweens and it is helping me a lot with my knee. For one thing, my unceasing spewing forth of streams of curses and naughty words has fallen to a trickle. I am not nearly as exhausted by the end of the day or even when I get up in the morning. I have stopped obsessing about the damned knee, screaming at every twinge and have actually noticed one or two pleasant things in between groans. All in all, my condition is much improved without having undergone surgery, tenks gott. Of, course, the day may come when I re-evaluate things and find the percentage has shifted, and I may very well reschedule the knee replacement. But, for now I feel I made the right choice and I am content.

So when they find you seated in the lotus position with eyes crossed breathing heavily and they ask what the hell you are doing, just tell them, like Lois said, you are making friends with your pain.

You Coulda Heard my Screams in Timbuktu...

2011-09-05T20:05:00.000-07:00

Oh....all I can say is shit, piss, fuck.

Yesterday I had a brief moment of inspiration.....something goosed me to the laptop and I wrote at least 10,000 gazillion words, stopping every 500 or so to carefully "save" them. After all, I am no novice at this computer stuff....I have been around the block a few times and know all too well how stuff can disappear into the the Computer Nowhere. Still, when I had it all fine tuned to my liking I hit "publish" and ended up in some weird Bloggy swamp.

With trembling fingers I made my way back to my site and my worst fears were confirmed. Every gazillion of those words must be floating in oblivion because they sure as hell ain't in my Blog list....not even in draft status. Sob, snivel, sniffle. I was too disheartened to try to reconstruct it yesterday, but today I made a few notes and just maybe......

But, actually........the truth is.....

I wish I could say that you were all dreadfully deprived of a masterpiece, but I was in a really shitty mood and as I reflected on the whole situation I ended up thanking my lucky stars that the wretched thing did get lost. You would have probably hated every word I uttered and me for being the utterer. Most of it was a rabid rant against everyone (including a lot of bloggers whom I love) who had been moaning and crying for their lost youth.....no.....worse than that......for their lost youthful good looks, a complaint I simply have no time or tolerance for.

I will present my arguments tomorrow......meanwhile if you want to do any bitching and complaining about the fact that everything is drooping and you can't stand to look in the mirror anymore and "why oh why, poor me", you had better do it before I expound on what a silly fool you are for feeling that way.

See.....I am NOT always Pollyanna!

Enuf said for today.

Just passing along someone else's gem

2011-08-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

This is too good not to share. Kristie, commenting on Ken's "Living the life in Saint-
Aignan" reported the following............a perfect description of our peculiar current dependence/addiction......

Kristi in the Western Reserve said...: I'm glad your family is no longer in harm's way, and don't want to downplay the dangers of extreme weather, but I laughed a lot yesterday reading this on facebook, "As Hurricane Irene batters the East Coast, federal disaster officials have warned that Internet outages could force people to interact with other people and neighbors for the first time in years. Residents are bracing themselves for the horror of awkward silences & unwanted eye contact. FEMA has advised: “Be prepared. Write down possible topics to talk about in advance. Sports, the weather. Remember, a conversation is basically a series of Facebook updates strung together.”

The Cats Have Spoken

2011-08-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

The big day is here.......the Lottery drawing for the Erma Bombeck books has been completed. I must confess that the cats were not totally effective at the job so I did use the Random Number Picker and here are the lucky Winners:
                                 Blissed Out Grandma
                                Saranne
                                Anonymous - (Ida)

Now, if you really want the book you must be willing to email me your addresses. (I know yours, Ida. )

                        lms52927@aol.com      (the first character is a lower case "L")

Congratulations to the lucky winners and I do hope you enjoy dear old Erma.

And so ends another breath-taking episode in the melodrama of "It's Always Something".

Thank you all for participating so enthusiastically......I really wish I had a book for each of you.

Now, I am going back to bed.....believe it or not I woke up at 5 AM with the urgent need to pee, let Baskin out and, as long as I was up, to rush these results to you.

More later.

Lottery Closes Midnight Wednesday August 24 ....and Other Stuff

2011-08-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

It just occurred to me that, at some point, I had better close down the sale of lottery tickets for my old Erma Bombeck books.....so after midnight tonite, Wednesday, August 24 no more applicants please....it's no use begging.....I am preparing the tuna-scented scraps of paper with all the names and will put Gussie and Winnie to work tomorrow to choose the 3 lucky winners. As soon as I know, I will make the big pronouncement.

By the way, to Linda, who worried excessively that my commenter, "Anonymous" might win the drawing......worry not, my dear.....I happen to have inside informtion that "anonymous" is actually my dear friend, "Ida" who is having some problem getting Google to recognize her.

Incidentally.....to the potential winners....be advised that I will be sending the books at Book Rate so there is no telling what month or year they may arrive in your mail box....I have had to curtail my lavish sending of stuff via the USPS since their rates became astronomical.   Be assured though that the book will be in the mail.

The only other bit of fluff I have for you is the decision I have made to NOT get my knee replaced at this time. Yes, yes......I hear you all some booing and some applauding.....nothing is ever simple, you know

I have several sound reasons for what appears to be a cowardly decision. When I discussed this with my guru Cardiologist he suggested that I carefully evaluate how much of my general discomfort (misery) can be blamed on my knee and that proved to be a brilliant idea.     See, the thing is, without getting too much into the whiny, poor-me department, I hurt in a number of places.........my mended Femur still reminds me that it was once broken in 3 places, both my hip joints are defiled with arthritis and a number of my lower (and a few middle and upper) vertebrae also are in the clutches of same, so when I say "Ouch" I am talking not just to my knee but to a number of other individual members of the team. I figured it out that the knee pain is only about 20% of the package and that helped me decide that it wasn't worth surgery right now. Also, my glutes (the gluteus maximux muscles in the cheeks of your fanny, for those who don't talk abs, pecs and glutes.) have become a quivering mass of jello from neglect and could not possibly get me thru the physical therapy until I can refurbish them with some exercises (which I started two weeks ago).

And, it isn't as though I have given up my only chance at knee replacement. The surgeon and his staff eagerly await my next phone call wherein I yell, "Uncle" and beg for a fix. And, since he has just performed the magic on a 95 year-old I have a few years of leeway left. Meanwhile I am dutifully doing my series of exercises and hoping I can get in shape if I decide to proceed later. They have already been a bit helpful and I am not yelling "ouch" nearly as much as I was.

So, all in all, everything is OK.   (Oops....italics all of sudden and I can't seem to make them go away)
I am not sorry I went through the process ............I really feel better for having taken some action and if it got me back to doing my exercises it will have been worth it for sure.

That's all f-f-f-folks for today.   Tune in tomorrow for the lucky winners.

And to my beloved cousin, Loni, who really knows how to grab my attention ......as soon as I figure out the shelf life of my Blueberry Breakfast Bread I will consider another lottery.

Love 'ya all.

From the Shores of Lake Fahrdreyt or is it Lake Meshugina?

2011-08-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

If it appears that I don't know where I am, I must tell you that you are absolutely right. And not just about whether or not I should try out for a new knee......Yesterday and today I wrote 2 different blogs trying to elucidate a particular situation and neither is publishable.....I still haven't got it right. I will no doubt try again later, but meanwhile I just had an idea of something I could write about without any debate or dithering around.

If you are a faithful reader you will remember something I blogged about a few weeks ago, and if you aren't I guess it is unkind of me not to remind everyone that I went to the half-off-books website recently and ordered a few Erma Bombeck books for old-times sake. Re-reading them has not necessarily made me a better blogger or even a better person, but fortunately it has also not discouraged me from ever blogging again as I feared it might. However, here I am with three more books that I cannot possibly cram into any bookcase and I just had the brilliant thought of giving them away. But not to the Goodwill.

Is there anyone out there who would enjoy perusing an old copy of a book by the female Blogger's Idol, Erma Bombeck.? If so let's make a big deal out of it and have a lottery. Now, I am well aware that the last lottery I held in which I offered some ancient issues of the Saturday Evening Post was very badly executed. As I recall, I gave them to the first person who commented that they wanted them .......completely unfair.....I was young and innocent, blogwise, at the time and didn't know any better. So, this time, should anyone want this strange offering, I will write each of your names on a torn scrap of paper, dab them all liberally with tuna fish, blindfold Winnie or Gussie and have them fish three entries out of a basket at random and with no cheating whatsoever.

Providing no one cares to comment or bid I will just have to give them to the Goodwill and if fewer than 3 of you show any interest, then someone in the 1 or 2 of you who do respond will get more than one prize. Hmmmm.....this is turning out like that old W.C. Field's joke about the first prize being a week in Philadelphia and the 2nd prize being 2 weeks in Philadelphia....or something like that.

That just about does me in for today........now I have to go in and bake a Blueberry Fruit Bread. "Why do you have to do that", you may ask, and I will respond like the Sarcastic Bastard Blogger person does and say, "Because I damn well feel like it !" ....or something like that.

Love ya' all.

A Biit of Cheer For a Change

2011-08-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

After depressing the hell out of you with my vacillations about whether or not to have knee surgery, I feel like I owe you some bit of cheer so, peer below at what I consider a real work of art.

I must give credit to blogger Linda Medrano of
"The Good, The Bad and theWorse",
who led me to a site called, strangely enough, "TheFred Effect".

I simply love this charming creation......hope you will enjoy it too.

A Smorgasbord of Indecision

2011-08-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

The real title of this should be something like....."A Million Thanks"....directed, of course, to all you beloved people who leaped into the fray to cheer me on or warn me NOT to) in my struggle to reach a decision about doing a knee replacement.

The situation is turning somewhat into a farce whereupon I discuss my concerns with someone and make a decision to go forward, then wake up the next morning and stagger out of bed beating myself about the forehead and ears with my cane shrieking, "No, no, no.......I can't, I can't".

I figure I have until a week from Thursday to finally nail it down since that is the date of my first appointment at the Red Cross to stockpile the first pint of my blood for the occasion.

However, in reading and rereading your wonderful comments of support and encouragement I realized that I hadn't made it clear to you what the real basis of my doubts and fears was. I have no shudders or quivers regarding the actual surgery. Hell, they can do whatever they damned please to my bod as long as I am not there, or, if I am forced to be there, as long as they have saturated me with some stuff that makes me feel nothing while floating comfortably above the operating table. Before I did my research on the procedure i thought that they had to saw off the ends of both your thigh bone and your leg bone, insert the prongs of some intricate metal device into both bones and bolt them into place with all sorts of hardware. Even that prospect did not upset me.

Then I learned that the real process does not require such carpentry as sawing and hammering.........apparently a couple of properly shaped metal caps are simply glued onto the ends of your various leg bones, said caps being lined with fake plastic cartilege etc. and hinged into position neatly and there you go, dancing the Turkey Trot down the corridor with the medical staff pirouetting and following you like in a Woody Allen movie. Almost something to look forward to.

No, my cowardice and fears, such as they are not the usual ones about pain and mutilation......that stuff I can handle with no trouble.....they are for later that day or perhaps the next day when all the dregs of that wonderful joy juice they pumped into me have dissipated and two falsely cheery faces are falsely grinning at me over the bed sides. I see them making beckoning gestures, folding down the bedrails and trying to tempt me into taking a walk down the hall with them NOW.........migawd.... before the paraphernalia glued to my leg bones has even had a chance to set much less settle in ......and refusing to take my shrieks of "NO" for an answer. I cringe in shame as I envision the non-existent muscles of my body betraying me and dissolving me into a spaghetti-like pile of limbs on the shiny linoleum floor, requiring 3 or 4 strong male nurses and several technicians to raise my bulk up and drape me unceremoniously back onto the waiting walker......where the 2 physical terrorists await me eagerly.

Now, you must understand that I have not actually enacted this scene yet in any of my various trips to the hospital......I usually docilely obey and find myself staggering down corridors aghast at the very idea but too weak to protest. And up to now there have always been enough strands of muscle fiber to do the job.....but that was when I was only 79 or even 83. I have no confidence that those so called muscle fibers are still able to rise to the taskand the lack thereof concerns me mightily.

I have been very lazy recently resulting in a lot of loss of muscle tone. To fail at the serious job of rehab is where my uneasiness lies. And I am not really being unrealistic. I know the importance of exerting every muscle for 30 or 40 minutes at least 2 times a day to regain strength and control during the weeks following such surgery and I have some doubts about whether I can manage it. I keep peering down into the depths of my being to check out my reserves and see nothing there but the empty bottom of the bucket. Sigh. I am having trouble dredging up even a bit of enthusiasm.

And then there are the moments when I think I may be able to do it after all........I can hardly wait to see how this all comes out.

Whatever Else You Do.......Don't Use Me As A Role Model

2011-08-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Garhhhh......urggg......bleh........sob.

This may hurt you more than it does me.........if I have managed to fool you into believing that I have some "answers" to the mystery of Life or anything else, well......shame on you. Gullible, that's what you are. And I am all of the awful adjectives that get flung onto a Con person which slide off of his or her slick, slippery surface..   Sorry about that, but you enter Blogville at your own risk you know and read and believe at your own peril. There probably should be one of those "Abandon hope".....signs over the doorway or some such warning......and it seems to me that I HAVE warned you in the past that I am no guru nor am I really Pollyanna..........At this very moment, I am more like Shit-for-Brains cross bred to the Cowardly Lion.

I have just passed control to the sniveling wretch who occupies the other half of this hellish duplex known as "LO" and she has come up with a number of very meaningful arguments about why I shouldn't have knee replacement surgery. Yes, at this moment in time I am waffling, I am reconsidering, I am copping out. I have fallen out of the ranks of "mench" and am roiling about in the gutter with the fallen Shlubs and Nebbishes of the world.   Tomorrow I will go to my Cardiologist and friend wearing a paper bag over my head to hide my shame and calmly discuss my options with him. I think I may have simply overestimated my abilities and fooled even my own Self......duh. Talk about gullible......

We will have to wait and see where this whole melodrama ends up......I I do believe I have enough time to change my mind 6 more times and back again before actually checking in. Meanwhile I will continue to have conversations with all of my various joints and arthritic members and will try to ascertain whether I am really up for this bit or not.

The major question right now is......if I chicken out, do I have to return all those good wishes and words of high praise you have heaped on me?   I mean.....are they like wedding presents or can I keep them anyway?

Timid Critique of Some Blogs by a Somewhat Blind Person

2011-08-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Prologue:
Now, before I utter a single word I must apologize in advance for ruffling even a single feather of my adored bloggers. I know that many of you spend hours ruminating about how you can dress up and fancify the look of your Blog Page. It happens that I do not understand this overwhelming need to embellish but, hey, that's just me. If your blog is mostly words my thought is that they should be somewhat legible.....call me crazy.....

I applaud creativity wherever it pops up. In fact I consider it to be a great life force next to Peasant Bread, Baba Ganouj and Chocolate. Ok.... Having said that I will go on to the main premise here.

Body:
Dammit, can we just be a bit more considerate of those of us who have to spend much of our time groping around for things? (no pornographic meaning intended, I swear). There should be an Unwritten Law somewhere that words are required to be in Black on White or, at the very least, on Pale Beige. For some reason, even white on black is not really nifty. I seem to remember from one of my classes in Graphic Design that Yellow on Black is the most readable for signs of great import like "Caution....Road Ends Here- 1000 Foot Drop Begins", "Danger -Curves Impossible to Navigate Except by Tricycle" and "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here". However, for something that goes on for paragraphs even that combination is not recommended.

I am not asking for pity here, folks......just common sense. I know you don't even think about it when you conquer the eye charts with 20/20but choosing to print your words in black but on a solid red or maybe brown background you are kind of defeating your purpose at communicating with the fuzzy sighted of the world.

I must admit that I have actually had to give up trying to read some of my favorite blogs because they are illegible to me. Sob. And even some which simply have a pattern under the type can be precursors of a migraine. For instance, how would you like to try to read, say "War and Peace", if a child had spilled cherry Koolaid over the pages and also festooned every one of them with scribbles of multi- colored crayon? (Perhaps I exaggerate a mite, but that was for effect.) My message here, dear ones, is.......whenever possible...

KEEP THE EFFING WORDS BLACK ON WHITE

PLEASE!

Epilogue:

THANK YOU!

Love, Lo

Eeeny, meeeny .......Here I Go

2011-08-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

After days of doing the eeeny, meeeny thing and pulling petals off of daisies with Yesses" and "Nos"and tossing coins and muttering, "Heads I do it, tails I don't" I am sick of the whole undecided bit and have made my appointment for a replacement part. Now I plan to try to forget about it till September 21 when I will probably/possibly /maybe show up at the hospital for knee surgery.

That's all I have to report right now.......there will undoubtedly be More Later.

Get ready for a bunch of, "Omigawd, what have I done?"

It's Gotta Be This Or That

2011-08-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

Back in the Good Old Days my headline for today was a wonderful song recorded by Benny Goodman ( I think)....I don't expect anyone else to remember it (or to remember Benny Goodman for that matter......you poor deprived souls) but it doesn't really matter....it simply describes the waffling condition of my brain at the moment........To Replace the damned Knee or Not to Replace the Knee.........that is the question.

Actually I am almost 98% decided to do the deed......I am sure it will make the rest of my life much easier and more pleasant..........only 2 or 3 things deter me........one is that I cringe at the thought of the Physical Terrorists who get to own and torture me for weeks, nay months, afterward; another is the the 5am Hospital Vampire Lady who wakes you every morning for the 3 weeks demanding your blooood; and I guess the other thing is the fact that I must consider the faint possibility that I will expire at some point before I have really gotten my full and complete money's worth out of the appliance and the experience.....ooooh, I would hate that!

Anyway, I will make my final decision probably tomorrow, but in the meantime I must thank all of you for your touching and dear encouragements and comments. You really have helped me a lot, in particular the one sort of negative comment in which "imqtipi" warned me about her mother's unfortunate experience. I am so sorry that her Mom had a bad time of it, but her email to me reminded me of a very important fact and reinforced my own conviction of how crucial the Physical Therapy is to one's recovery from any of these processes. Her Mom apparently had little tolerance for pain and agony and consequently did not force herself to honor and perform the therapeutic maneuvers diligently. Consequently, she never really recovered.

Because so many of you have mentioned your own knee and/or hip problems and the possibility of needing a replacement at some point I feel it behooves me to stress how utterly important it is that you surrender yourself to that bit of suffering for a short time rather than be left with an unnecessary long term disability.

Anyone who has had any kind of surgery knows that, rather than letting you languish in your hospital bed, (hmmm....those 2 terms are in total contradiction to each other.......languish....hospital bed.....ha) the sadists who run things make you get up and walk the day of the surgery or at least the very next day and show no mercy. But it IS for your own good no matter how awful it feels and how much you think you are going to die and how much you enjoy thinking about what you will do to those people once you get your strength back. I verbally resisted every effort the therapists made to rehab me after my broken hip in 2010, but fortunately, my single brain cell of good sense forced me to exert myself to the fullest despite the pain and discomfort and weakness etc. and I know that is why I had such a great recovery. I still hear stories of people much younger than I am who are still in wheel chairs for their lifetime because they could not or would not suck it up and do the damned exercises because they hurt.

Forgive me for lecturing like somebody's Mother, but this is so important I decided I wanted to blog about it. And I do NOT mean to talk you out of any of these procedures but rather to encourage you to be brave and go for it. I just want you to hear my voice echoing in your ears while you are lurching down the halls groaning to NOT give up or give in.....it'll all be well worth it a few months down the line and, actually for the rest of your life. I swear. And you will be so grateful to the therapists and SO proud of yourselves.

Now let's see if can put my money where my mouth is........

My Blog Title Says It All

2011-07-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm.......just when I had reconciled myself to the sad fate of gimping around in pain for the rest of my days due to my bum knee, the logical, organized bully who lives in one corner of me dragged me off to consult with a knee specialist. While my hip surgeon had been somewhat dubious about my having a knee replacement at my age, this guy pooh poohed that and told me that knee replacements had originally been developed for people in their 80's and 90's who still had enough oomph to want to be mobile and they were so successful that younger and younger people have been taking advantage of them ever since. That was heartening to hear and I left his office gung-ho to have the surgery in September.

Unfortunately, as soon as I got home and thought about the week in the hospital after surgery with the pain and the relentless physical terrorists and the two weeks in a rehab facility with same plus the technician who comes each morning at 5 am and drones mournfully, " I have come to take your bloooood" like a paid vampire, (before I left she had taken almost all of my blooood)..... the coward in me grabbed the reins back and is forcing me to reconsider. I imagine I will probably still go ahead with it, but I realized I have to finish off a few items before I return to being an invalid for a while.

I have suddenly lost all my enthusiasm and am considering hiding out somewhere under an assumed name. Unfortunately, I know that my knee is only going to get worse and I am only going to get older so it does seem like it should be done as soon as possible.......shit, piss, fuck!

What I need is someone who is able to put me in a trance for, say, 3 months and bring me out of said trance as the home visiting therapist departs for the last time........ If any of you have such skills, I will be very interested in talking to you and making tempting offers. Meanwhile, I cannot vouch for the tone or quality of my blogs.......you will have to visit this site at your own risk.

Of course, it will be a good time for afghans.........

Aw Shucks......All My Own Work

2011-07-26T15:58:00.000-07:00

I have finally summoned up enough courage and energy to take some photos of my afghans and post them for your delight/approval/criticism. I have been trying for years to shoot proper photos of these things.....for some reason, when you lay them flat they look accurate but bleh. When you drape them tastefully on a chair they are more interesting, but you cannot really see the whole pattern. Oh, hell and oh well.......here goes.

Actually, if you will forgive my lack of humility.....as I took them out of the bags into which they were stuffed I could not help but exclaim to Florence,"Ohmigawd, they are beautiful'......some I did not remember til I saw them. Definitely feel they were worth the time and effort.....now the question is, Do I buy a bigger house or just turn the whole thing into closets and move into a hotel?. Don't forget to click on the ones you really like to see them enlarged.

OK folks........that's a fair sample of what I do when I am ensconced in Crochet Corner.
Now I am thinking of creating a site on Ebay to see if I can unload any of them before I have to move.

I will definitely need your help doing THAT.

I KNOW I Will Probably Regret Publishing This

2011-07-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

I have been playing/struggling with my newest camera today trying desperately to read the instruction booklet online. So far I can call up the first page of the topic I am interested in but cannot manage to make the pages turn. Does that make the glass half empty or half full? I dunno.

I have been experimenting with the features that should enable me to take closeup pix of things like flowers and hummingbirds.....I think I may be on to something because there is one setting which allows for self portraits, and being shameless I turned the camera around and without being able to see what was in the viewfinder snapped this from a distance of about 12 inches.It appears to be a picture of someone I used to know. I cannot imagine what she is looking so tickled about but one should not question apparent happiness even when it is probably about something as silly as a non-blurry photo.

The only thing I can think of to say is.......I want you to know that those are all my own teeth.

So are the wrinkles and the age spots, but I am delighted that they came out so sharp......I may be on to something here.

Dare I Tell the Truth or Is It Blogger Suicide?

2011-07-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

I may regret this till my last day on earth, but I cannot keep it in any longer. If you love me perhaps you can attribute it to an attack of advanced senility. And once I have unloaded the thought I am not going to hang around and be pelted by rotten vegetables, so this will be short and not so sweet.

Like all the other bloggers whom I follow and admire hugely, I have always held Erma Bombeck in the highest of regard. The epitome of the female humor writer.......the guru of all of us who struggle through the mud while worshiping the pristine, glowing image on the mountaintop......hell, I think even the male bloggers may feel the same way unless they have replaced Erma with Dave Barry........but that is a different simile (or is it metaphor ) altogether.

What I am trying to say is, I recently ordered 3 or 4 of the Sainted Erma's books thinking I had not read her in years and perhaps a serious submerging of my muse into a bunch of Bombeck might make my blogging sparkle a bit. The truth is......I am finding myself very disappointed! There, I have uttered the words. You may stone me now.

What I am going to say next is even more sacreligious.........I do believe that some of my favorite bloggers are better reads than dear Erma. Now I must go and sit by the window to await the arrival of either the Mad bomber, the Death Squad or the Wagon from the Funny Farm. Farewell all.....remember me as I was, not as I am now.

Two Cats Worth of Lo

2011-07-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

I am feeling so lazy today I decided to just plop a few photos on the page for your entertainment. Yeah, yeh.
Anytime I get inspired to blog pictorially it generally ends up with my head bloody and bowed. Today is no exception.....but I do believe I have managed to upload a photo taken of the Stearns family last month. It shows us in the wonderful recliner that I practically live in when I am not sitting in front of the computer.

And speaking of the computer......,mine is having the incredible effrontery to tell me that I have misspelled my name....humph......how the hell does this machine know that my father changed the spelling from
Stern to Stearns???? I will never understand these infernal appliances.......

Well, as I was saying, from left to right you should be able to make out Lo in her favorite position (horizontal). Perched on my boobs is Winnie the tortie and sprawled on my abdomen and thighs is Gussie, the eternal conversaationalist. This is one of the very few times they both have claimed territory on me at the same time and have positioned themselves so that I can manage to pet both of them without getting a hernia. This is also the part of my vast estate that I call crochet corner, and if I am not mistaken, I believe there is an afghan or two behind my head, stuffed into the kibble basket. One of these days I will take some photos of the afghans which do them justice and will publish the pics so I can prove that something productive is being accomplished as I loll about watching the telly and performing abominable acts like forcing cats to purr.

Another photo I want to show you is of the amazing red trumpet vine which grows outside of my kitchen window....can you blame me for enjoying washing dishes with this magnificent thing to observe while I watch the hummingbird floorshow?

I planted this vine 2 or 3 years ago and it has thrilled me with its display every year since. It now stretches
along the fence and has migrated as far as the garden shed in the back yard. Oddly enough, this is supposed to be a hummingbird favorite, but since I installed the 6 feeders outside the kitchen the birds seem to prefer my homemade nectar.......I make it really sweet.......no flower can really compete.

The final photo is one I tried to take close up and I fear I did not use the zoom properly......it shouldn't be that blurry.....Oh well.....I had better go back and read the instruction booklet yet another time.

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy my feeble efforts. I WILL try to do better.

Brain Dead But Scavenging Madly

2011-07-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone else is doing it so why should I not blame everything on the heat? (Even though in my case it is a lie.....my beloved house has A/C and, if a bead of sweat should ever have the nerve to develop on my brow, I can rip off my sleep shirt.....which has become my live-in shirt......and plop myself into the pool. However, I feel the need to blame something for the fact that my blabbity bloggyness has diminished to a paltry trickle.

I just checked my notes and found a few items which, at the time, I felt were worthy of noting........today they hardly elicited a twitch of the lip, but, hell, what do I know? Maybe someone out there will be amused or enraged or inspired to rant. I feel I should show that I have good intentions if nothing else.

At least I have graduated from writing ideas on tiny scraps of paper and tucking them in various corners of the table or under the laptop or in my shoe........no use following Sarah Palin's brilliant ploy of writing things on my hand.......unfortunately, unless used at once, such notes wash off. Consequently I have created a Blog Draft file where I can store fragments of ideas. Now, I have something new to worry about......the day my fumble-fingers accidentally hit the Publish button instead of the Save and I post a mess of garbage that only I can interpret or translate. Anyway, my darlings, consider this the Tapas of Blogdom........a menu with no real nourishment but with lots of teasing appetizers.

When I am really desperate I can always toss out a few favorite quotes.

This is a gem by one of my favorite bloggers......Pearl at
Pearl why you little......

"You see, while not as old as I hope to become, I am no longer as young as I was."     Oh,my...... Yeah!

Then there is one that stuck in my mind after I forgot who thought it up. Sorry I cannot give credit but I acknowledge their brilliance.

"There is no one in the world who needs a mink coat other than a Mink.

And one of my favorites from a Murphy's Law Calendar some years back......this seems to be particularly poignant and true the older one gets.

"Nothing matters very much and hardly anything matters at all."

                          ***************************************************

And now I am going to follow my beloved cousin Ken's advice and confess to an escapade of a few years back which always makes me laugh and beam with pride even now as one of the weirdest stunts I ever pulled off. I have a funny feeling that I already blogged about this, but I have no intention of reading back through hundreds of these things to find it.......even though I must confess that sometimes I do enjoy reading some of my old blogs........I wonder if any of you other bloggers have the same strange experience.....sometimes when I read an old blog I do not recognize it as MINE! I swear with all humility that I find myself giggling over the words and wishing I could write like that. OY.....I am afraid to pursue that thought so I will just leave it at that.

This subject, by the way, is sort of timely since I just recently babbled of my experiences at getting my Driver's License renewed and this tells of the first time I had to come up with a brilliant solution to fooling the public.

Anyway, a number of years back when I first began to have real problems with my left eye, my Drivers' License was about to expire and I doubted if I could read the eye chart with the bad eye so extreme measures were called for. (at that time I did not know that they would give you a license,albeit grudgingly, with just one good eye. I made several tours of the premises of the DMV casually pretending to be there for some worthy purpose while having dastardly intentions. When I discovered that all of the eye charts which were on display at many locations contained the same series of letters I had one of my flashes of genius. If I could somehow capture the details of one set of the charts and could memorize them it didn't matter to which window they sent me.....there was hope after all.   (Incidentally this was way before the era of digital cameras and especially cameras in telephones so I did not feel as if I could march in and just shoot 3 or 4 photos with my old flash camera. Instead I did a bit of research and slunk off with a plan.

I returned on a Sunday morning when the office was closed and the parking lot nearly empty with my best pair of binoculars and a notebook. I marched up to the door that had a huge mail slot about 18 inches of the ground, got down on my knees. shoved the binoculars thru the slot and zeroed in on the closest set of eye charts whereupon I proceeded to copy them into my notebook. When I finished I did a little dance of triumph, totally confounding a young couple and their offspring who had parked near me in the lot in order to go to a restaurant across the street......I think they were already confounded by the binoculars in the mail slot maneuver......the dance was just icing on the cake. They put their arms protectively around the kids as I passed by and watched me with grave suspicion till I got I my car and drove away. I should care ???!!!   I had the secret of driving life in my notebook.

Once home I got out some poster board and made several sets of the charts and hung them tastefully around the house including places like the bathrooms. Then I realized I was only part way to heaven.........there were 3 charts in the set.....each chart had 5 lines.....they used mostly the same letters, but in different sequences. Consequently, it was my task to memorize 25 letters in at least 3 different combinations and be able to know which of the 3 charts had which sequences. OY. This was no assignment for nerds or sissies.

What could I do with
                                     CPEZD
   ZBTDF
                                     TPEOL
                                     FTPEO
                                     DZFTP

so I could remember them in 3 different combinations?    Obviously mnemonics was the answer.....the sillier, the better. So the first set of charts above became :

                                    Can People Eat Zero Donuts
                                    Zero Boys Tell Da' Facts
                                    Tall People Eat Out Lots
                                    Few Tent People Eat Out
                                    Does Ziggy Fail To Pee

And it was also necessary to know which of 3 charts I was going to be looking at since they were labelled "A". "B" and "C" and the examiner would ask you to read the third line on chart "B". So I made a mnemonic of the first letters of each chart.
                                     Chart A:                Count on Ziggy To F*** Diane.

Within a month I could recite all the lines in all the charts perfectly. When the time came I performed flawlessly and passed the eye test and did NOT have to take the driving test to get a 4 year renewal. Oh frabjous day. The kicker was that I discovered that my bad eye was still able to actually read the chart, perhaps with the help of my exercise, so I was not really endangering any lives or committing some sort of fraud. In my most recent encounter with the DMV this was no longer possible and I really did not want to commit fraud, hence my noble struggle with passing the driving test while more than half blind.

Actually, I feel this recent accomplishment outshines the earlier one, but I still have a fondness for the memory of that Sunday with the binoculars and the mail slot. Am I a problem solver or what????

Photos of Bruno - a Promise Kept

2011-07-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago (on 6/21 actually) I published a blog about my friend, Bruno Bozzetto, the Walt Disney of Italy......about the amazing way we "met" via the internet and became friends........and promised to find some of the photos we took when we actually did meet in the real world in Milan in 2005. I have been making ineffectual searches ever since and have despaired of finding the album with those photos, but today, another miracle, I reached out my hand and pulled a book from my bookshelves and it turned out to be that very photo album in the totally wrong place. Huzzah!

I have managed to pull the images onto this page I am going to try publishing it.

There we are in all our glory

He was quite tickled to see how short I was.....his daughters, I think, are quite tall.

There they are ......Anita and Irene (not necessarily in that order)......aren't they gorgeous?

Well, I have had quite a struggle getting these pix to you so I think I had better hit Publish and be done with it. I actually had help from Iggy of Intense Guy who took pity on me and tried to do some cropping for me.....(thanks, Iggy). I fear I will never be dominant in the Computer/User struggle. Sob.

A Pox on You and Your Damnable Invention - Alexander Graham Bell

2011-07-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

Well, no, not really. The telephone as Bell invented it was a marvelous, wondrous thing.......it is what it has morphed into that I must rant against and I'll tell you why.

I remember the days when the telephone was considered a miraculous, blessed , mind boggling gift, and, by God, when it rang you answered it! Of course, there was only one such instrument in the house and it was always located where you weren't. If you were upstairs in the bathroom brushing your teeth when it rang, you dropped the toothbrush in the sink and clattered down the stairway, mouth foaming with toothpaste and grabbed the receiver frantically from it's location near the kitchen (or in the hall) before the calling party hung up. If you were in the basement doing laundry and the phone rang upstairs you dropped the washboard and everything back into the tub and rushed madly up the steps dripping suds and water all the way and if you were out in the yard weeding or gathering Japanese beetles from your rose bushes you galloped inside wiping your muddy hands on the back of your pants in order to snatch up the receiver and find out who was calling.

Missing a call was tantamount to spending hours in the first circle of hell wondering who it was and what they might have wanted to say......... Oh, the misery and the mystery of the missed phone call. Agony.
But, my recollection is that most of the time somebody answered when you called them and obviously vice versa. It was a very satisfactory arrangement. And there were no area codes.....GRAnite 4226 was all you needed to remember and to dial. Life was good.

Fast forward 75 or so years to early this morning when I needed to call my visiting Florida cousins to cancel an appointment I had made with them to visit me. There were at least three adults in the house I was calling and at least 4 different phone numbers.....one land line (which I knew in advance that no one ever answered......in fact they had the ringer shut off so that it didn't wake the baby so, in effect, it was useless as a contact vehicle except for them) and three cell phones, 2 of which had Florida prefixes and one of which had a West LA prefix rather than a SF Valley one making all of them long distance for me. Well, what the hell......I can aford it.

But, who can remember all those damned 11 digit numbers......a few, yes, but not all by any means. So first I have to schlepp out of bed (via the inconvenient left side because my kitty, Gussie, is sound asleep glued to my right flank) and lurch around to the right side to get my cane off the door knob because in the mornings my limbs have forgotten that they are supposed to hold me upright and transport me from here to there ......and thence to the dining room where my phone book lives and subsequently back to bed because I am performing this phone business way before my normal arising time in order to enable my cousins to make other plans if they want to. Next I must find my glasses by the bedside, find the switch of the reading light and find the proper phone numbers. Tenks gott they are all under "K".

I call the first one, it rings endlessly until the bright, cheery mesage voice chirps the usual crap that Oh yes, they do want to talk to me and etc., etc., etc. So, I search out the 2nd number and call it with the identical results. I am down to my last chance so I call the 3rd number belonging to the resident....the daughter whom the Florida cousins are visiting......dammit, she should be up and should have her cell phone turned on, wouldn't ya' think? Sure, when pigs fly. So I leave three messages and go back to sleep whereupon, of course, the phone rings and I, who was raised to answer phones if at all possible, pick up and speak to my cousin and the situation is taken care of. And I am too pissed off to go back to sleep again. Not at my cousins whom I love dearly, but at the bastardization of a perfectly wonderful system.

This marvelous invention intended to facilitate communication has turned into an instrument of torture and frustration. On the one hand there is half the world's population (those you have no wish whatsoever to EVER talk to) who spend what must be 23 hours of every day with their cell phones turned on, glued to their ears and in constant use, talking into same at the top of their lungs regardless of where they happen to be at the moment....on street corners, in elevators, in doctors' waiting rooms, in supermarket lines and particularly at the table next to you in restaurants.......deluging your ears with their inane chatter and forcing you to hear the disgusting details of their innermost boring lives. Urk and Faugh..

As upsetting as this may be, the other side of the coin is worse.....involving the other half of the population to whom you MAY possibly want or desperately need to speak. They of course, to a man, have their cell phones turned off and are totally unreachable until they damned well feel like it.....usually after you have gone to bed, or after the business day is concluded or perhaps several days later in the week if they feel so inclined. Meanwhile, you have the privilege of listening to their goddam recorded answering messages and, if you feel so inclined, of hitting your head against the nearest wall in quiet desperation.

Can this be what dear old A.G. Bell had in mind for his brilliant invention? I think NOT!

And if you are going to ask me what I suggest to solve this wretched state of affairs, all I can say is call me tomorrow and if I don't answer leave a message. I may or may not get back to you. I will be in the corner playing with my precious old rotary dial phone saying things like, "Hello, Central, give me a line....."and thanking heaven that Mabel, the operator, is a live person who doesn't chirp or tell me to leave a message.

Laughs and Titters at my Own Expense

2011-07-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry I cannot give proper credit for this wonderful cartoon...I did not draw it but I have loved it from first sight and I will tell you that I was sicker than that doggie looks..

This was me yesterday......I knew when I could not get out of bed in the morning that I must have the latest version of the 24 hour Flu. Everything hurt and the..... uh..... frowing up I had done during the nite gave me a further clue. Worse yet, I knew my cats had no intention of or talent for curing me or giving me comfort....

Today I am delighted to report that it probably WAS the 24 hour flu because I am considerably better.....tenks gott.   (10 hours in bed and 14 hours on the living room couch moaning piteously seems to have taken care of most of the awfulness......today I am back with the assortment of familiar unenhanced aches and pains with which I started )

I don't know why I am inspired to write today about a muddle of things where the joke was on me. Like, for instance, my feeling of incredible ignorance when I first realized that there were plants other than the ones you ate.

When I was a child we lived in a typical red brick row house in Philadelphia.....semi detached is what they were called, which meant that you had only one common wall and, on the unattached side, the walkway led to a small back yard where you hung the laundry on Monday, Wash day and in the middle of it was a small patch of lawn lawn (Tuesday was, of course, Ironing Day.....you guys with washers and dryers simply won't understand....)    What you did with it the rest of the time was up to the individual and in my Grandma's world it meant browsing the Burpee's Seed Catalog all Winter and spending every spare minute of the rest of the year on one's knees digging in the dirt. Come Spring she would take out a bunch of little paper envelopes, some Burpee's and some handmade holding seeds from last years blooms, and she and my Mamma would begin the kneeling process.   For all I knew or cared they might have been praying to the Plant Gods.....I thought they were crazy to be scrabbling in mud when they could have been playing Street Ball or jumping rope. Flowers were pretty, but......no match for jumping rope.

However, when June came around I did admire and enjoy the plethora of gorgeous blooms of every kind which sprang up like magic and obscured what had once been just muddy beds and made my Grandma's back yard the envy and talk of the neighborhood..   Of course, the downside was that I would be summoned to water the flowers once in a while and, worse yet, when the Japanese Beetle Plague happened one year, I was instructed constantly to go out and find those wretched little hard shelled monsters that were eating up our roses, pluck them off the plants and deposit them in the beetle traps that hung from every wrought iron Laundry post in the yard. I really hated that job (not because I was a caring person with kind thoughts for the beetles) but because the little creatures tickled scrabbling inside your closed fist and made me a bit uneasy and queasy. I tried not to think about it, but I knew what I was doing was no favor to the beetles......

Fast forward about 30 years to when I bought my first "property" and I discovered that houses other than those in Philadelphia had lots of muddy beds around the back yards and, yes, even the front and side yards too. And California was worse, in one way, than Philly had been, in that "stuff" seemed to grow almost all year round, not just in April through September. What was a person who got no great turn-on from mud to do? Before I knew what was happening to me I had bought a bunch of 6-pack growing plants from the Hardware Store   (who knew from Plant Nurseries?) and found myself one June day on my knees in front of a stretch of dirt. It was that moment when I realized that my fate was sealed. First, I remembered that I had forgotten to find out what the prayer was that one had to utter in front of every bed of dirt to turn it Green and, worse yet, I did not have a clue about how to grow things. As I squatted there pushing Petunia plants into little holes in the ground I heard someone behind me laughing derisively. I turned and found a lady on the sidewalk observing me and shaking her head. Oh, God, was she going to tell me that the flower part was supposed to go above ground?   Well, not quite, but she gave me a bit of advice about how far apart seedlings should be planted and left still shaking her head and saying over her shoulder.....It is better to plant young plants when it isn't 101 in the shade at noon."   "Too bad", I thought, "they will just have to deal with it." Amazingly, the petunias survived and thrived and I was smug and arrogant and thought I knew the secret of The Green Thumb". Yeah, sure.

Fortunately, my comeuppance did not happen with an audience. I had secretly snapped off a few springs of a neighbor's huge geranium bush and shoved them into a pot of earth as I had seen my Grandma do with all sorts of plants, and, miracle of miracles, I found that they grew. My smugness and arrogance knew no bounds. A few weeks later the geraniums even blossomed!    Merciful heavens, that thumb thing must be heredity in the genes, I decided.....it might be well not to get too cocky.

But, when I saw some little black seedy looking things on my geranium plants I decided I would snatch them up and reserve them for planting when I had more time. Who needed Burpee's? I did not bother to make a little paper envelope....I used a Baggie. Several days later I collected a bunch more of the little black seedy looking things and when the weekend came and I was off work I planted some of them in a pot and set them on the railing of the porch balcony. Each day as I left for work I examined the pot I had put on the balcony beside the pot of flourishing geraniums looking for my first born. Nothing. As days stretched into weeks and the flourishing geraniums began to look just a bit peaked I began to wonder. Maybe it wasn't a gene thing after all. Then I examined the geranium plant more carefully....it was still producing those little black seedy looking things.....but it definitely did not look happy doing it........and the stems were looking absolutely....well strange and lumpy. I bent down and looked closer as one of the lumps moved forward a millimeter and left behind it a little black seedy thing.   A Eureka Moment. The End of my smugness and Green Thumb arrogance. All I can say is, tenks gott the seeds I planted didn't grow or I would have ended up with a huge crop of Geranium Worm Turds!

Thanks !

2011-07-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

Just a few words to thank you all for your sweet thoughts and prayers for my dear old buddy, Stel. Glad to report that she is out of the hospital and in a rehab facility. I haven't been able to reach her yet today but will talk to her shortly, I hope. Meanwhile....keep thinking good thoughts and I will report in later.

Love you all.

Just Checking In with Last Kilowatt.......For Funny Stuff Go Elsewhere

2011-06-30T11:29:00.000-07:00

Hello, darlings all.........just want you to know I am still ticking even though I have taken a licking....(anybody remember the old Timex Watch commercial?)

My oldest and only remaining friend from my childhood is having a bad year....something like the one I had last year only worse and my heart is breaking. She had a small stroke in January, a disastrous cataract operation
last month and, having gone down to Boston to consult an eye specialist, fell and broke her arm in 2 places before the consultation, ending up back in New Hampshire in the local Hospital.

I am bereft, heartbroken because there is nothing I can do to fix this. Can't even help. Of course I have called and spoken to her and will continue to do so, but I can't even send her funny cards.....funny cards are not funny when someone has to read them to you. Flowers.....nah. Chocolate......maybe....... Last time I sent a bunch of Lindt Truffles......Oh, shit, piss, fuck. Life is indeed cruel sometimes......

I will blog again when my funnybone revives.....meanwhile, it couldn't hurt if you sent good thoughts and a prayer or two to my dear friend, Stel.

Bless you all....and as I always say......DON'T FALL DOWN.

Looking For Miracles in All the Wrong Places???

2011-06-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to write this blog for some time and didn't know quite how to get into it.   Well, dear old things, just to prove that procrastination doesn't really pay off, I still don't. However, when has that ever stopped me before?......my life often gives a different meaning to the phrase "Ignorance Is Bliss"......if I said it once, I've said it a thousand times....."oy, had I but known what I was getting myself into I would have duct taped myself to the chair till the impulse passed by:")

I never cease to marvel at (and be grateful for) how some of my unplanned, spontaneous and accidental and even foolish actions have resulted in the most amazing outcomes.   If you have been reading me for some time you know about some of the things I am talking about. (i.e. meeting my hero, Magic Johnson, on my BD and, what's more, accidentally having my camera with me so I can prove to myself that I didn't dream it). You may not agree but I call them my small (and not so small) miracles and no one will ever convince me that they aren't. Well, I offer up the following story and if you don't agree with me that it is a blooming miracle..........well, I have to just feel sorry for you. And regardless of whether you agree with me or not, there is a reward waiting for you at the end of this thing.

I really do not have many friends. (I truly believe that the blog world has changed that a bit, but let's not get bogged down in semantics here......) From the time I was a child I have not had a huge circle of friends, but the ones I have had and the few that are still hanging in there are more precious than rubies etc. When I lost my ultra - shyness some time back and became the intrepid talker to strangers, you might think that that might have changed, but when I became more outgoing I think I also became much more particular and consequently my precious circle has remained small....and that is OK with me because I find it hard to spread myself too thinly.......I mean, there is only so much Lois to go around, ya' know?

Anyway, one of the things that I love to do is to offer, nay, slather, praise unreservedly where it is deserved. I deplore the fact that so much goodness goes unthanked, so much brilliance goes unlauded and unrecognized. It really breaks my heart that mediocrity barely one step removed from dog dung gets all the medals and true genius so often does not even get a superficial pat on the head for trying. Now, if I were running things......sob....but I digress.

So, where was I? Ah, yes......so in my old age I have taken to not only thanking every dear soul who holds a door open for me, I have taken to...... shamelessly writing fan letters. (there, I've confessed).

Some years ago I happened upon some animation gems created by one of God's gifts to the world, a real genius named Bruno Bozzetto. I had never heard of him but as soon as I saw a few samples of his work I immediately found my way to his website and gobbled up all the goodies he had set forth and I was totally overwhelmed. I found that in Europe he was sort of the Italian Walt Disney but with a huge difference. His art and humor was for adults and, thank heaven, was being properly appreciated by garnering every award offered. (In fact, I found that he was nominated for an Academy Award in the U.S a few years ago, but lost to.....well, I am not going to go there....just let me say....he wuz robbed).

After a few days of replaying all of the bits of his work I could get my hands on thru the Internet, I calmed down enough to collect my thoughts and sat down and wrote him a fan email. I truly do not remember if I included a sketch of myself worshiping at his feet in that first letter, but I blathered on endlessly in my usual unreserved fashion heaping mounds of praise on the poor man's unprotected head and finally ended with "Love, Lo" when I ran out of superlatives.

I felt good at having at least made this already recognized genius aware that one more person in the world appreciated his talents. Then I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and went back to my important tasks of making the north hollywood humming birds too fat to fly and really forgot about the whole thing..

You can never know my amazement and joy a few days later when I saw in my email the name "Bruno Bozzetto" and found an utterly adorable and charming email in slightly broken English thanking me for my kind words. (He apologized for his English with lovely self-deprecating humor describing it as being in the category of "Me Tarzan....You Jane".) (It was NOT).

Since that moment we have been in constant touch........he writes to me about his current activities and family stories. We send each other hand drawn greetings for different occasions. He has showered me with gifts of his works....some original Cells from his movies, tapes and a full set of CD's of many of his productions. I have been lucky enough to be able to reciprocate by sending him some things he wanted and it has been altogether wonderful. A few years ago when I was planning a trip to Venice I checked on the map and found that there was Italian rail service from Venice to Milan and Bergamo (his base). I cheekily wrote and told him of my trip and asked, if I were to take the train up to his area, if he would meet me and let me buy him a cup of coffee. He wrote back excited and enthused, told me his (adult) twin daughters also wanted to meet me and the 3 of them would drive to Milan from Bergamo and take me to lunch.

And it happened just like that and it was heavenly.

I remember it like it was a dream......3 gorgeous Bozzettos and me having Risotto and salad and expresso (though I cannot remember eating at all). He is a handsome and charming and amazingly humble man and his girls are exquisite and delightful.....I hope I can find the photos we took so I can post them here. (if I cannot find them now I promise to publish them soon.)

And we still keep in touch....the girls just wrote to me and have involved me in helping them and Bruno critique some English translations of a new script they are working on and, of course, I am honored to hell. Who would believe? And all I intended was to say "thank you" to someone who brought me some joy. What a reward!I am thrilled and honored beyond words to have this remarkable man and his family for my friends.

Now, I ask you......is not that whole thing a goddamned miracle or what ?

And now, for an encore I present you with a website which offers 8 little 5 or so minute works of the fabulous Bruno Bozzetto. I believe there were 13 in all....I do not know what they were meant for. They are wonderful little gems that just show a bit of his whimsical humor and vision of the world. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/user/otrokrisank#p/u/1/3gX7il1_R8A

Odds and Ends

2011-06-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am......at least most of me, or perhaps that should be some of me............I think I dissolved or decontructed during the various BD celebrations and the strain of my siege with the Driving Test to get my License renewed. Since then I have been lolling about in reclining chairs gasping quietly waiting for feeling to return to my limbs and clear thought to my brain..........I fear my memory is beginning to get a bit frayed around the edges...........(I spent two days last week trying to remember the name of the tree with the lavender flowers that blooms in June and finally came up with Jacaranda....I didn't even know how to Google that one). I am periodically overcome with the terror of approaching Alzheimer's and have taken to making lists of my lists......but that is another story.

Anyway I had made a few notes of questions you had asked in your comments and that I had not yet answered and figure that might not tax my poor limp brain too much, so here goes:

Cathy of "Still Waters" wanted to know, after my miraculous Magic Johnson BD encounter, what I would do for an encore next BD.....and that one is easy.......just make sure I am around for the next one.

Maybelline of "Maybelline's Gardens" whose sharp mind has a tendency to slide dangerously near to the line of demarcation between good clean fun and soft porn asked whether, in the photo of Nina, me and Magic Johnson, I am invisibly clutching, patting or stroking Magic's butt........no, believe it or not my arm is around his waist where I did detect a tiny bit of a love handle on that magnificent bod. If I had had all of my wits about me, which I didn't, I might have surreptitiously stroked that wonderful backside, but, woe is me, I didn't think of it.

And speaking of butts, Bobbie of "Cottleston Pie" referred to my comment about the Mark Harmon movie that had a beautiful scene in which the Gorgeous Man is shown totally nekkid from the rear. She asked me to reveal the title saying, "Inquiring minds want to know". I will happily tell you that it is called "Fourth Story" and co-stars Mimi Rogers. It is definitely not the best of Mark's movies........for one thing he plays a bumbling, nerdy Private Detective with horn rimmed glasses which he is always misplacing......a part you cannot imagine Mark Harmon in unless you see it with your own eyes. I swear I believe he modeled the character after Woody Allen (whom I adore, but not in the same sentence or genre with Mark Harmon....it was definitely a character he had trouble getting into). However, he does fall out of character a few times and it is worth watching just for the scene in which a noise makes him rise out of Mimi's bed (having finally shed some of his nerdiness) and he walks stealthily through the apartment sans any garments whatsoever. Beautiful back view from head to toe.

I am ashamed to say I do not remember who asked me which restaurants I celebrated in during my 2 day BD extrvaganza, but for any of you who plan to be passing through North Hollywood and Studio City I will gladly reveal that the site of my encounter with Magic was a wonderful Italian restaurant at Laurel and Ventura called "Louise's (if you go do order and share the appetizer "Grilled Portabello Mushroom stuffed with Cheese and Spinach. And the source of those mussels in broth and the incredible profiterole was the "Outtake Bistro" just as half a block east on Ventura. I can definitely recommend both of them without shame and also wish to mention that their prices are amazingly reasonable.....(Hell, you all know how cheap I am but I demand both quality and reasonable prices).

And finally, I must clarify the subject of the California Driving Test for License renewals. It is only half blind folks like me who are subjected to this torture every year or two, and in all fairness....how can you blame them? My neighbor who is a year older than I am but who can pass the vision test with both eyes just had her license renewed for 5 years without having to take the driving test, only the written test and the eye test.
The Inspectors who administer the Driving Test are Devils who manage to find 21 mistakes you make even when you think you did everything perfectly. It is impossible to guess what they are going to chew you out about so all you can do is pray that they do not find 22 mistakes and fail you. As for the maniacs out there on the streets who are determined to kill or maim you and wouldn't know a correct driving procedure if it bit them on the ass, they don't have to take any damned driving test from first license until they reach the age of 70.....their renewed licenses are mailed to them automatically prior to their expiration.

The moral of that story is that, of the gazillion drivers who are licensed to drive in Los Angeles, half of them are in their dotage and are half blind, they know how to drive well but are physically unable to do so for one reason or another......the other half are younger people who have forgotten every good driving rule or choose to simply ignore them all while they drive, chat, text, apply mascara, eat subway sandwiches, move wildly to the beat of their blasting stereos, or simply drive with their heads turned backward while they scream endlessly at their kids in the back seat and rarely cast an eye to the front at all.

When you think about it, it is a bloody miracle anyone in California who sets foot in a car survives to do it again another day.......

Huzzah! Clear the road! Lo Is Licensed to Drive!

2011-06-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Just a quick report today......I finally got all the Eye doctors' reports completed in time and this morning I shlepped all the papers to the DMV and was "allowed" to take the Driving Test to get my Drivers" License renewed.

The happy words are: I PASSED !

Tenks Gott. Now I think I will go back to bed. Have not slept well for 2 weeks since this whole nonsense began. Have another drink on me, everyone!

More later.

Horrors....a Huge Error and an Abject Apology

2011-06-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Short and to the point.

Ugh. Red faced I beg your forgiveness........ I have had some uneasy moments since using the word "misogynist" in my blog the other day to describe my hermit-like, people avoiding behavior. Something told me I was misusing the word so I just Googled it and, Oy, am I embarrassed.

According to the various definitions the word rally means "woman hater" and that is absolutely NOT what I am nor what I intended to convey. I am not sure at this moment what word I should have used but I want to proclaim to the world that I am definitely not a woman hater....To paraphrase Henry Higgins, I happen to think we are a Marvelous sex. For fear of getting my foot stuck in my mouth permanently I will not go any further.

Please forgive me if I misled anyone, disappointed anyone or wounded any of my lovely female readers. Sob. I love words, but someday I fear they may be the death of me......

And while I am apologizing, I must beg everyone's pardon for doing such a lousy job of trying to be satiric.......my last blog where I mused about virtues/sins/heaven really went afield and some of you thought I was serious about it all.

Goldurnit....don't you guys know when I am just funnin' with you? Again, sorry if I misled you or offended anyone. I WILL try to do better in the future. But don't worry....no matter how badly I screw up, I will not quit.

Dangers of an Empty But Not Idle Mind

2011-06-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

When a person gets up into the high decades, a person begins to examine his/her life for glaring fatal flaws of the soul and embarrassing patches of dubious backsliding or cowardly non-development. At least, this person does. I have been ruminating a lot lately and falling into periods of deep introspection. This has brought me to several unsettling conclusions.

While pondering a few things recently I realized that all the supposed good deeds I have done in my life may have been done for all the wrong (like selfish) reasons. Because, while the intention may be to benefit the other person, the doing of the good deed makes ME feel good. So, the question is......am I really a good samaritan or am I a self indulgent wuz? Oy, Oy......Where do I go from here with this? Do they still count as good deeds? Or do they all get reclassified as sinful black demerits?

First, let us assume for the sake of this blog, that the concept of "heaven" has some basis for belief. If they are indeed sins I wouldn't stand a chance of getting anywhere near the pearly gates much less gaining entry. I am shaken to my very foundation by the realization that some of those qualities which I have assigned the name of "virtues" can just as easily be considered sins (of the darkest kind).

It also occurred to me that, based on what I understand to exist in the rulebooks of many established religions, the more heinous the sins and the more blackhearted the sinner may be, said black sheep gets preferential treatment on getting into heaven if he acknowledges his sins, accepts into his heart the particular Savior, repents and begs forgiveness. Does this mean then that those who have sinned less often and less grievously are relegated to the tail end of the line, perpetually delaying their chances of getting into heaven by having not been evil enough and therefore unable to repent enough.......etc.?

Oh, dear.

Using this premise then, it appears to me that maybe the only folks who have been getting into heaven for quite some time are the dirtiest rottenest scoundrels who are wise enough to take advantage of this loophole thereby getting moved to the front of the line, while those of lesser faults are still cooling their heels in the antechambers or outside the gates altogether. Now, I know that life is not fair, but this seems to overdo the inequity of things a bit much, wouldn't you say? Damn!

Hmmmmmm........I am really sorry that I started on this line of thinking in the first place. It appears that the only way I will get out of this corner that I have painted myself into is to fall back on the blessed argument of symbiosis.........the delightful condition where you sort of get to ask, "Mmmmm......was it as good for you as it was for me?.....and the other person says, "Mmmmmm....even better."

Some Cockamamie Thoughts from Southwest Limbo

2011-06-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

I have, for the moment, ceased to worry about being addicted to Blogsville. It appears to be a relatively harmless addiction and, it IS free so I am just going to accept it's presence in my life with gratitude and let it be. Then again, I have been eavesdropping on some of my private thoughts lately and perhaps I really should be worried. Like, for instance...........

Sometimes it seems to me that relating to people in the real world is sort of like Facebook or maybe Twitter or a cocktail party.........lots of people...you brush against them and talk briefly to a few or to many.....you mouth meaningless trivia....usually 50 words or less.......you keep moving and circulating....... if it is a cocktail party, you keep drinking till you are so blotto that nothing matters or hurts any more and you "friend" everyone (even people you normally loathe and wouldn't be caught dead with) and, worst of all, you think you are having a good time.

Though you are dealing with real people you are really not plugged into anyone unless you happen to make a soused connection with someone of the opposite sex that you are inspired to take home with you for the night.....otherwise your connections mostly feel superficial, feel like dust and taste like cardboard.

On the other hand, sharing thoughts in the blog world can be more like sharing a fabulous cup of home brewed French Roast coffee and an apple streudel (sp?) with a dear friend while you both lean toward each other giggling, nodding and lounging at your kitchen table. You listen to what the other person has to say and they listen to you, and you make real contact and feel that your inner self has been touched. You are warmed and nourished...... and....satisfied.......and amazingly, 10,000 people (or in my case 141) can all be having the same or a similar experience at the same moment. Awesome.

I am not saying that you don't or can't have pleasurable experiences with real people in the real world.....just that they are very different experiences and the more I think about it the more I feel that I, for one, really need both kinds in my life.

I wonder, is it only misogynous old hermits like me who feel this way, or do you more normal (?) social, gregarious types ever feel this way too?

I would really love to hear your thoughts on this........I think.

A Few Questions and Some Answers or Does Lois Live Her Life Nekkid

2011-06-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

One of my main problems and shortcomings since I started this blog has been responding to my precious readers comments. I tried at first to toss an acknowledgement back at each commenter, but I found that didn't work for me. In my feebleness, it took a huge amount of time and strength and did not feel satisfying to me so I took the easy, selfish way out and decided I would better use the time to comment on YOUR blogs and thus it has continued.

Every now and then I think I have issued a blog with a mass "Thank You" to all you dear souls who check in here to see if I have perchance had a new thought during the week and I hoped that it would be enough. Of course an occasional random thanks for all the joy you bring me and the love I feel from you is really an puny and paltry abomination......but I can only hope that you know how much I love all of you without my nattering on about it constantly. There is no way to tell you in words what your wonderfulnesses mean to me or how you have enhanced and brightened my life.....I feel like you are all Family and I am no longer an Orphan/Widow Lady plodding along alone. What a gift! And after this weekend when you deluged me with wonderful birthday wishes I want so much to let you know what it meant to me. One more time I must simply say a huge "Thanks" and hope it conveys something of my feelings for you all.

But......(knowing me, you know there's always a "but" ) today I realized that you sometimes ask me questions in your comments and the only way I have found to answer them has been to try to email you an answer, and that seems OK, except that it doesn't serve those of you who might also have wondered about the same thing and waited for me to respond in a comment........so convoluted.......Anyway, since I can't do the tit- for- tat, comment- for- comment thing, I just figured out that at least I could blog it and answer a bunch of queries at one time. I have only had the energy to go back a few blogs and pick out some questions but perhaps this will sate your collective curiosities a bit.

First, I think it was Cathy of "Still Waters" who was puzzled by my loud and constant resistance to putting on clothing and wondered exactly how I am garbed or un-garbed normally when I am at home rather than out in public. Well, I'll tell you.....it ain't necessarily a purty sight.

You already know that I skinny-dip when I go in the pool, but that does not necessarily mean I like to run around the house and gardens bare-ass nekkid. I find that quite fun sometimes for brief periods, but it is NOT the best solution all told. For one thing.....it is dangerous to one's overall well being to cook naked. Especially when one is sauteing something in olive oil, for instance. And even though my blessed house is very private because of the front walled little courtyard garden and the excess of foliage around the property, people do occasionally open the gate to the courtyard and come to my front door. On those occasions I am in deep doo-doo if I happen to be sitting at the dining table blogging away in my altogether since the front wall of my living/dining area is mostly glass. I am NOT an exhibitionist and do not want to frighten or scandalize any Jehovah's Witnesses so I decided early on that some body covering was necessary.

I know most of my female followers will understand when I say I have always hated wearing a bra......they are uncomfortable at best, always gouging us in some tender spot or other, especially for the poor souls who carry permanent dents in our shoulders from toting those boobs around for a gazllion years......so, any time I can go without is sheer delight. First order of the non-clothing thing is No Bra. !

The fashionable among you will probably gasp in horror when I reveal that I no longer see the need to make any effort to be fashionable much less seductive in what I wear to bed......the cats don't give a damn what I am wearing when I offer them their goodies thank heaven and they are the only ones around so I have given all my sexy lingerie to the GoodWill and sleep and live mostly in very long, XXlarge, soft tee shirts....some with questionable comments across the front. That is my favorite garment of all time and, if I were going to be buried in a coffin, I would demand that it be in my favorite with the huge bull dog and the iteration "Bad Dog"across the front.

Next, I do not want to offend anyone's delicate sensibilities but I am obsessed with the truth so please do not flinch or faint or desert. To continue, (I think I have already confessed this in earlier blogs) I belong to that huge contingent of old folks who sometimes.......well..... leak, so I am rarely without my second favorite garment called "Depends". Sigh and sob.....a simple fact of extended life.

During the cold months I also don a garment I invented years ago made of sweat shirt fabric fleecy inside , with a warm cowl neck and pockets, which keeps me warm from head to toe. In the warm months I have a few of these I made of light airy fabrics for at-home Dress-Up, but usually, the long Tee suffices for all my needs and it is less to rip off when I am seized with the urge to go into the pool. I used to finish off this fetching costume with flip flops, but they now hurt my ancient toes so I wear mocs or a slipper kind of like a heelless Ugg.........

Holy, unmerciful Heavens, I cannot believe I have filled up this whole effing blog with an interminable answer to just One Question. Who will ever believe that I once was so shy and so speechless that I could barely meet anyone's gaze and could only mutter a whispered "yes" or a "no"occasionally........do you think it is possible that I have been invaded by Aliens???

I am almost too ashamed to say it, but......"More later".

I MUST Have a Guardian Angel......

2011-05-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

Gotta continue reciting the high points of my 84th BD not out of arrogance, but out of awe, wonder and great humility.

But first, a few words.....(you know how dangerous that can be....)

For many years I have honestly felt like I have a Guardian Angel......I have had so many little "miracles" and some not so small. When I look back at how my life has evolved and developed (sometimes actually in spite of me) I cannot help but think that I have had some mysterious help along the way. And, what the hell.....it does no harm for me to think that (unless I take to stepping off cliffs and expecting my GA to catch me before I hit the ground) and so I go blissfully on my lonely way feeling that I am not quite alone.

I also must go on record saying that I do not really believe in coincidences....I do, however, believe in serendipity.......sometimes amazing and wonderful things just happen and you can't figure out how or why....you must just accept, enjoy and be grateful.......

So, there I was yesterday, waiting for my old friend, Nina, to arrive and take me out for yet another Birthday Lunch.   I was dressed (bra, jeans, shirt and even shoes.......teeth brushed, hair combed, perfume (Bellodgia, one of my favorites) dabbed here and there.....and as I sat at the computer reading a last blog or two I had a sudden thought. Why not take my camera....for what reason I do not know.....( I rarely take my camera with me unless I have a real reason)..........but the voice in my head was so strong and insistent that I dug it out of the pile of stuff next to me on the dining room table and shoved it in my purse.

Nina arrived and off we went to one of my favorite restaurants in Studio City and, since it was a holiday (No, no....not my birthday....Memorial Day) the dining room was nearly empty and we felt like we owned the place. As we nibbled and gabbled away Nina suddenly said, " Who is that huge, black man standing out there on the terrace?". Of course, my vision leaves a lot to be desired anymore so I peered out and all I could see was a large dark shape so I told her I did not know and we went back to our chatting and chomfing.

When we were finished I looked wistfully at the several pieces of wonderful garlic herb bread that we had been unable to consume and thought how grand they would be as a mid evening snack and, before I knew what I was doing, I wrapped them in the napkin they were nestling in and shoved them in my purse while explaining to Nina how very much I hated waste. (Having known me for at least 50 years and never seen me able to leave a morsel behind on a restaurant table, she already knew how much I hated waste.)   As we shlepped ourselves up to leave, she asked the waiter, "Do you know who that huge black man on the terrace is?" and he replied, "It's Magic Johnson!"   (In my head I heard !!!**////^##@ !!!) I do believe I screamed, gabbled incoherently, hugged the waiter and Nina and dragged her to the door with terrible panting noises emerging from my mouth.

As we exited, my feet automatically pointed themselves toward this tall, oh my, very tall dark shape seated at a table nearby and found myself standing next to his table peering avidly into his eyes. A strange voice choked out, "Excuse me, but are you Magic Johnson?" The dark face suddenly blazed forth with that incomparable smile that even I could see and said, "Yes, Ma'am, I am."   I lost it totally at this point and remember shrieking something restrained like, "OhmyGod....you are my Idol, you are my Hero, I love you madly....I think I have seen every game you ever played and I worship you not only for your skill on the court but for all you have done for your community and mankind....Holy Moly, this is my 84th birthday and you have just given me the greatest gift.oh, thank you, thank you...blah, blah and blah........" I think I stopped for breath because he stood up laughing and managed to thank me, wished me a happy birthday and said, "Do you have a camera with you?.....we can take a picture." I was just about to wring my hands and say, "No" when I realized that, for some inexplicable reason, I DID have a camera with me, and while I was digging madly in my purse for it, praying all the while that I did not come forth and put a piece of garlic bread into his outstretched hand by mistake, I found it and before you could say "Slam Dunk" we were captured digitally by his sister and could be seen staggering away with me still in a fog still gabbling unintelligibly, but not quite as loudly.

To be honest, I am still not quite recovered from the shock of it all. Actually every word I uttered was the truth.......I had followed basketball since I worked at UCLA in 1963 -66 and got to see a rising star there named Lou Alcindor who then morphed into a Laker Legend named Kareem Abdul Jabaar. When Magic joined the Lakers in the 80's I was a constant fan and I really adored the way Magic moved, played, scored, smiled, enjoyed and Won. It hasn't been the same for me since those fabulous days of "Showtime" and I could never express how much joy he and the other teammates brought me for so many years. Well, obviously, I still can't properly express it, but danged if I didn't try my damndest.

And, now, for those of you who may not believe in miracles......you may want to rethink that....

And, by the way.....no, I am not sitting down.....I am that short and he is that tall !

Everything But Fingerprints and DNA

2011-05-30T21:05:00.000-07:00

Well, my dears, the BD celebration continues.......another old friend took me out today for a birthday lunch and that is another blog altogether. I am still in a whirl over yesterday's delights.
Meanwhile, here is a bit of frou-frou from yesterday.

Here is yours truly ( the one with the triple double chins) with beloved friends Don and Valerie. I have known Don for nearly 60 years and Val for quite a many. Since Val's BD and mine are just a day apart we have taken to celebrating them together for the past few years and it is always a joy. I don't think Don will mind if I tell you that he is quite a talented and acclaimed actor, wonderful face, gorgeous singing and speaking voice, (having appeared on Broadway in the original production of Kurt Weill's "Threepenny Opera", in a number of movies, Tv films and shows and many, many commercials. He confessed humbly that he had won the equivalent of an Oscar for his starring role in a Texaco commercial years back. His wife, Val, is also very talented, a wonderful writer, and quite an actress...she informed me she has about a hundred videos on You Tube by now among other appearances. Anyway, When I bragged about being 84, Don topped me by telling me he was 88, and we all agreed to have some kind of blast on his 90th.

Above, you are looking at three sated souls, having just devoured platefuls of mussels in garlic, herbs and butter, fresh baked sourdough bread for dunking in broth and split a huge Mediterranean salad, and who were gluttonously preparing to attack the most outrageous dessert...(to be seen on the table in front of me) ...the menu called it profiteroles (sp?), but all I know is it was a sort of cream puff stuffed with ice cream, bananas, strawberries, doused with caramel and chocolate sauces....I think there were a few nuts tossed in there for good measure. By the way....we shared it, but as you can see it was quite a generous offering.

One of the highlights of the day aside from the food and the company was the waitress who served us. She bustled up to the table clutching 3 huge bowls containing mussels and broth and gave us each our dish along with a knife and fork. When I gently summoned her back to the table motioning at the implements she rushed off and returned with 3 mussel forks. One of us suggested that we really needed spoons, so off she went returning with 3 teaspoons.......! I think we had to call her supervisor and make it perfectly clear that, dolts that we were, we required soup spoons. Poor thing....she had probably never realized that the broth from the mussels hidden below all those shells was really the best part.

All in all, a lovely afternoon with updates, giggles, reminiscences and a warm aura of memories and much love. Thanks, dear old buddies.

Here I Still Am....And They Say The Good Die Young.........

2011-05-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

Today is my 84th Birthday folks.......I can barely imagine it........WTF.....how could this have happened?

To celebrate I just played and watched 2 old Mark Harmon movies (what a beautiful creature) and I have even forced my bod into Jeans and a Turtleneck Tee in order to be able to leave the house with 2 of my oldest (in every way) old friends who are coming by to take me to lunch.

When I return I will watch 2 more Mark Harmon movies, especially the one which shows him in full rear nakedness......and what an adorable ass he has......and I may pig out on Lindt Chocolate Truffles. (On some days I allow myself two of the blessed confections....that is really enough for me). After that I'll be damned if I know what I will do.....probably watch some old Sid Caesar TV shows which I was wise enough to get a few years ago followed by a season of Monty Python. I have also been smart enough to have kept 2 dvd and vcr players).

Then, after a bit of petting the cats till they can't stand it anymore and reading a few blogs that I missed earlier, I will probably take my handful of PM medications and go to bed for my usual 9 or 10 hour snooze.

Don't feel sorry for me.....except for the part about donning clothing, that is my idea of a perfect day....

Which Way Is Up ? - or You Can't Fall Off The Floor

2011-05-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Everyone better duck or some flying fragments of some ineffable substance are liable to hit you. Not that I've sunk to the point of throwing stuff, nor are things exploding all around me.....it's just that I am in a very strange mood and am juggling a multitude of disparate thoughts and feelings.....I keep dropping some of the balls and more than a few end up bonking me on the head..........it's OK.......I'm entitled, and it's not like I haven't been here before.   It's just that the older you get (and God knows, you can't get a helluva lot older than me) the more complicated some things become. You think life is complicated when you are 44?.........wait till you hit....gasp.....84.

For instance, for most of you birthdays are a cause for celebration, inebriation and gourmandizing........maybe even an Orgy or two.    For someone who is ancient, decrepit and, more importantly, half blind it is a time of agony known in these parts as the Department of Motor Vehicles Annual Inquisition and Exquisite TortureTests. At advanced ages they no longer renew your Drivers' License automatically by mail every 4 or 5 years.......you have to start calling for an appointment weeks ahead to be sure you get the process started before your License actually expires (in Calif. on your birthday, by the way). Once you have the appointment you must tear the bookshelves apart to find the old copy of the Driving Rules and begin the worrying, fretting and hand-wringing process.

Then at some point you actually must open the book and begin studying and trying to memorize those stupid rules like how many feet from railroad tracks are you allowed to park and when or if it is ever legitimate to enter the Bike Lane with your car. And with each pass through the book it becomes more and more likely that you will never remember those idiotic facts and figures and will surely flunk the written test. Even though you have gotten 100 on the last 5 or 6 times you have taken it, this time you will surely get the one test that has all the impossible to remember facts and you will FAIL. Oh, shame, oh ignominy, oh shit.

And even if you pass the written test there is still the eye test which, of course you can only pass with one eye, leading to the need to go home clutching a form for your Opthamologist to fill out, stipulating that even though you have one eye that cannot see anything that is straight in front of you, that eye is able to see the periphery of things giving you just a bit of depth perception, while the other eye, God Bless and Keep It, sees everything like a champ and can also leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Staggering away from this department one must next go to the Appointment Desk to make an appointment to take the Dreaded Driving Test ASAP (administered by the most disgustingly adept team of sadists and Obsessive Compulsive Picky-Pickies in both the civilized and uncivilized worlds.)

At this point there is very little left of you as you schlepp the remnants of this once able and admirable person to the Last Straw Department where it says "Camera" ......a euphemism for a machine that is programmed to take the worst possible picture of you....one you must live with (averting your eyes whenever possible) for the next year .....of course all depending on whether you pass the Dreaded Driving test in 10 days.

I'll tell you it is more than a poor wretch like me can bear. And you would think, wouldn't you, that after having driven all sorts of cars under all sorts of conditions for the past 65 or 70 years, that I would have finally gotten the knack of how to drive?    But noooooooooo.....you still have to prove it to them, dammit.

So now you should understand why I have mixed feelings about my birthday rolling around and why I rarely celebrate till AFTER the Driving Test.

Now, on the happier side of things, I am tickled pink to report that my Secret Passion, (shared by many of you of the female persuasion) the delectable Mark Harmon, has been voted the most popular person on television, surpassing Oprah Winfrey. believe it or not, and his TV show, "NCIS" was voted the most popular TV series.   Ain't that grand? Except that now, the line of besotted fools (like Me) lined up waiting to wash his feet will be so damned long, heaven knows how many more Drivers' Inquisitions I will have to go through before I finally get my turn...........I'll be so old and ugly by then I will have to wear a burka...........sigh.