It's No Use....I Think I Am Unfit For Bloggng

I know, I  know......I have not kept up the great pace at which I started this project and I guess I should apologize, but, frankly, I am puzzled and a bit bewildered and don't feel like apologizing.  I think I am playing in the wrong ball game or something.  It has come to my attention that perhaps I am doing this whole thing wrong by trying to write while I am awake and conscious.

The truth is that I have not been feeling so tippy top for the past few days so I have neglected my Blog spending all my available strength and energy on feeling sorry for myself.   Arrrrghhh.....I do hate self-pity, but sometimes I fall into the pit just like the rest of the world and, once down there at the bottom, it is so much easier to just wallow than to try to climb out.  There I was wallowing away and thinking about starting a feeble ascent when I read a news item on AOL news about a newlywed who found that her new husband talked in his sleep and uttered such odd and funny things that she began to tape record him and publish his profundities (?) on a blog.  In something like 2 or 3 days the visits to the blog were up to a million or so......or at least that is how I remember it.  I wish I had made a note of the site or at least saved the story, but I was so disspirited that I didn't bother. 

For one thing, I wish I knew how they are able to tell that a million people have checked out that blog.....is there a hidden counter somewhere that I don't know about, or do all of them leave comments? (a million comments would be a little much).  I have been an abject failure at getting some of my known readers to even sign on as followers (they sneak in during the dark of night and disappear without leaving a trace), and only a few loyal and brave souls are willing to admit they have visited. I had made peace with that, I thought, and was content to continue to blather away talking to myself until yesterday when the above news item upset my canoe.


Now I can hardly remember what some of those pithy maunderings were, but it seems to me that one of them was something like,  "Don't hit him with the lobster."  There were a number of others, many of which also dealt with food, all equally nonsensical.  I didn't laugh much, I'm afraid.....they really weren't that funny to me, but obviously the rest of the world finds them hysterical.  I guess that is why I have a hard time laughing at the newest crop of nightime comedians who seem to be able to get people rolling on the floor laughing by simply uttering their universal one word punchline, "fart".  Oh where are the current talented and intelligent  likes of Johnny Carson, Bob Newhart, Steve Allen, George Carlin, Bill Cosby and Woody Allen etc????.......sob.

  Another horrendous quote I come across recently was in re the mess that has erupted on late nite TV with Jay, Dave and Conan etc.........Sadly since Johnny Carson left  I do not find any of those so-called comedy hosts (either the older ones or the younger ones) funny or even proficient at filling up a time slot but some hotshot comment writer had the infernal gall to say something like, "When are they going to get rid of those middle aged white guys who are way past their prime and let the young guys have their way?".......with what???.....127 ways to say "Fart"?   When I was younger the funniest comedians were always middle aged  white guys ......i.e. Jack Benny,  Bob Hope, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle and since they were not allowed to utter a dirty word to get a laugh they simply had to make up for it by writing really funny material and performing hysterical skits that made you cry with laughing.  Ah, but, I digress.........


To get back to the Sleeptalking Husband Blog......it seems that the wife has learned to use a voice activated recorder so that her sleep is not even interrupted trying to record her husband's utterances and so it appears that material without a single conscious thought or creative quality  is being preserved without any real effort on anyone's part other than her transcribing the tapes onto the Blog.   That it is being gobbled up by a million so people is what has me puzzled, bewildered and disspirited..........what am I missing here, folks?????  I need some help, NOW.

By the way....if it sounds like I am simply a bad sport or just a jealous, out-of-date shrew well.....that IS possible but I AM dealing with it.  And I promise that once I recover from this unexpected blow I will, indeed, continue blogging away in my usual unrestrained fashion whether anyone likes it or not.

The Strip Tease Continues

I have no idea whether anyone cares, but I have finally been inspired to create a Bloggers Biography.  For those who know me there may or may not be some nugget therein which you didn't know about me and, for those who are just getting to know me,  there may be a fact or two there that would explain some of my odopsynchrasies.......oops......no.....that is not precisely what I mean but I will leave it because it looks like a wonderful word that should exist even though it doesn't........what I meant to say, of course, was "idiosynchrasies".

I noticed that the Bio page had been referenced 60 some times.......hmmmm.....who were all those folks who wanted to check me out and went away mad?????  Or, was it you loyal faithful few who kept checking to see if the day would come when I would finally be brave enough to describe myself in my own words?  Well, perhaps another 60 will wander by and stay now that I have added some meat to the bare bones.  And, then again, perhaps the next 60 will run screaming from the site, fearful of being contaminated with my insidious madness.  Only time will tell.

The Price of Living in Eden

I considered calling this entry, "Bloggin' in the Rain".............We are in the 3rd or 4th day of one of a series of winter rain storms and it is forecast that we will have 2 more days of downpours, then a weekend respite followed by a new storm next week.  I think we had some rain a week ago and possibly the week before that.  In Southern California terms this is a wonderful winter/rainy season but I have to tell the truth......already I am sick, sick, sick of it.  There.....I have just broken the #1 So Cal rule..........to complain about rain is not only  a sin but a crime punishable by death (or waterboarding at least.)   Now, it is difficult for outsiders to comprehend, but in southern Cal we definitely have a thing like a tropical rainy season AND a dry season.......Rains CAN start around the end of October and usually end around March.  That doesn't mean that it will rain for sure....only that it is possible a rain cloud will appear during that time and, if any do happen to gather, they are allowed to dump their load.  For the other six months of the year .........nuthin', not a single wee drop.  We are so far into a cyle of droughts that our normal water levels will never catch up but every 10 years or so we have a really wet winter that helps a bit and I guess this is one of them. There is no way to depict a Brave Smile using a keyboard so you will have to imagine me baring my teeth in one right about here.  That is because I just had to go out into the garden to fill one of my 9 or 10 hummingbird feeders and had to wade through huge puddles about 5 inches deep to get there.  Soggy bedroom slippers for the rest of the day.

Incidentally, I have read that after the first few dampenings all of the precious rainwater simply runs off the soggy land and gushes down the storm drains to the ocean.  What a revolting waste!  (don't get me started on what they shoulda done......but it does seem like there might be some way to save all that good stuff...)The main thing that keeps us all from drying up into raisins is the snow pack that builds up in the mountains when the rain is falling on the flatlands. 

So we have occasional floods and mudslides in the winters and disastrous forest fires in the late summer and fall and, of course, there IS the San Andreas Fault which shakes us up every now and then with an earthquake, and I have to consider those to be the Cost of living in a Weather Paradise.  After all, the folks in Kansas have to put up with tornados and I do not see that they get many perks in Kansas for having to do so, whereas we have a gazillion days of sunshine and flowers and even when it is burning hot, it is, as they say, a DRY heat and I do not know a single soul in this vicinity who owns a snow shovel or a windshield ice scraper...( a lack to be devoutly grateful about).

So, I may be a bit grumpy and soggy and a bit exhausted from runnning back and forth from door to door at the behest of hysterical cats who want to go out and get some air and, who, when I let them out onto the porch to see for themselves, slouch back in glaring at me balefully, convinced that it is my fault everything is so wet, but I am still not really complaining.  I consider it all the price of living in a kind of garden of Eden.

Now you must excuse me.....a loud, merciless, complaining  cat is nudging me to open the door and prove to her that it is no drier than it was 5 minutes ago........." Wassamattawithyou........I promise you it is still raining...........why can't you take my word for it????? ..........Stubborn like a mule as my sainted Mama used to say"......sigh.

Apology for Not Blogging

Damn, damn, damn.........I suspected that this wonderful vehicle called The Blog would have a shortcoming or two.  It takes me back in time just like Wild Willie did when he tickled me into being 14 years old again.  Now I am about 15 and can hear my Mama's sweet voice nagging me, "Don't forget to write a letter to Grandma and Grandpa..........you are their life......they count on hearing what you are doing.."  And of course I did write, every week at least.....not with the quality I have since developed but with much sincerity and dedication.

Now I think about my faithful fans out in cyberspace panting for my next utterance and wring my hands over the fact that another day has gone by without my sating their hunger.  Did I need this guilt???  Sigh.  Certainly not, but it seems to be hovering overhead in spite of the fact that I already have enough.  (Actually, I am happy to be able to report that the truth is, I have cast off almost all of my guilt which had been accumulated under what I discovered were false circumstances.)  However, not only do I feel some responsibility to my followers, but I really do enjoy blogging to them so I, too, have been deprived the past few days. 

And......today is not going to be much better........sorry about that.  I have just spent all of my spare time today learning how my new printer works and coaxing it into printing out my entire Blog so that I can have a hard copy in case the entire cyber world crashes.  ( No, no....don't laugh....I know it can happen because I recently spent days trying to email my friend in Devon who has a provider with the unlikely name of "Blueyonder.uk.com" and received my words flung back in my face with the admonition that "Blueyonder does not exist".  Today, tenks Gott, Blueyonder was somehow restored to life and my emails went through.....they must have a crash cart for restoring dead internet providers somewhere out there....) 

As I was saying, not only did printing my Blog use up all my spare time, it decimated most of a ream of paper.  Holy crap......it appears that, unbeknownst to me, I have already written a book !  However, that is not what is keeping me from blogging away.  I have been invited to a neighborhood party to ease all of us into the New Year and I must stop at once and go don my gay apparel.......oh dear.....I probably shouldn't have referred to it that way.........what I meant was I have to go shed my comfy nightie and robe (yes, yes, I KNOW it is after 5 pm and I am still in my nightie.....wanna make something of it?) and put on a bra and a velour jogging suit or some such respectable garment.  I am looking forward to this party because the host and hostess are clever folk who have requested that we all bring a mystery "white elephant" gift and I have been waiting for about 15 years for this chance.......

I just decided to publish this as a teaser and to issue installment #2 when I return from the party.  You will have to wait several hours to find out what my white elephant gift was and how it fared.  Bye for now.

Chapter 2:

Ah, here I am, back from the party, and a lovely one it was.  The hosts were my next door neighbors and the guests were a group of neighbors who live either on our block or in the nearby environs.....all within walking distance which is something of a rarity these days and is a situation devoutly to be wished.........really knowing one's neighbors and having a real relationship with them is a wonderful thing which, sadly,  went out of fashion somewhere in the 60's I think, and left us much the poorer for its loss.  I consider it a blessing and a fantastic bounty to be lucky enough to be surrounded by such wonderful folk........not sure if they feel the same about me, but I hope so. 

Anyway, the company was interesting and fun, the food was marvelous thanks to Jen and Nowell, our hosts, and the entertainment of the evening consisted of a White Elephant Game in which everyone was supposed to bring an amusing gift from their "what am I supposed to do with this" closet and we all drew numbers to have the chance to select one of the anonymous unknown-gift parcels.  Actually, the rules are very complicated....one is allowed to steal someone else's goody when it is revealed rather than selecting one of your own.......  then you get to pick one for the person you just stole from.  I was inordinately lucky.  I drew number 2 and the person with number 1 got the most wonderful poster showing an incredible portrait of a cat from a Chinese Art Exhibit.   Since I have absolutely no wall space left due to my having knocked out most of my walls and installed windows therein and covered every remaining inch of actual wall with art of one kind or another, I needed another thing to hang on my walls like another hole in the head.......oh, shit, it WOULD be a CAT.......naturally, Lois, the Cat Lady of Califa Street and  The Acquirer of Random Objects d' Art never lets that stop her so I seized the poster as my own and hid it secretively hoping no one else would covet it.  I am not sure if it is a good or a bad thing that no one did and I got to take it home and stack it on the floor of my art hallway which is already 3 deep in things waiting to be hung, but I will worry about that tomorrow.

Meanwhile I watched anxiously as people selected all around MY offering but no one actually chose it till nearly the end.  Finally one of the men picked it up and rent the wrappings asunder and, instead of the giggle I was hoping for, I heard a muttered obscenity and a kind of groan.  Oh, dear....just what a silly gift needed.......someone with a faulty sense of humor.  "What the hell is this?" he exclaimed holding it at arms length as if it were either infectious, poisonous, explosive or evil smelling.  Thank heaven my friend, Julie, saved the day by seizing it and plopping it on her head in the most fetching manner and thereby carried the whole incident off without anyone being maimed.  The truth is, it WAS an odd item, but I thought that was the whole idea.....anyway, the story is that on a visit to Turkey about 15 years ago I was in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and came upon a red velvet Fez with a gold tassel about a foot long and, for some reason I have never been able to figure out,  felt that I HAD to have it. (dun't esk)   When I unpacked my suitcase upon arriving home I uttered the same kind of obscenity as the gift recipient and asked myself, "What in the hell were you thinking???"  In 15 years I have not been able to come up with an answer to that question nor any good reason to foist it off on anyone I liked  (or even someone I didn't like) so the Fez has lived quietly in my goody closet not knowing that its days were numbered, sort of.  (On Death Row for 15 years but out of the rain...not too shabby really)  I was even too ashamed to give it to a Thrift Shop but here, it seemed to me was the perfect opportunity...........well, I never said my judgment was impeccable, but this was indeed a goof of magnificent proportions.  However, Julie took it home happily and claimed she loved it so I guess the story had a happy ending after all........Fez welcomed into a new home and Goody Closet with a vacancy and the most embarrassing item removed from my sight.  I guess you might call it a win win situation and something of a miracle besides.

Well, that takes care of my social life for the next week so perhaps I will be able to blog away to everyone's delight and satisfaction.......no guarantees, but, then, life doesn't offer many of those, does it?

It's Alive !!!!

Believe it or not, I have spent the past week bringing my dead computer back from the grave. With the help of a computer guru whom I jokingly call Dr, Frankenstein  (who happens to be in Portugal right now) I learned how to open up the case and vaccuum out the 23 tons of cat hair and cracker crumbs from the innards which solved the crashes caused by a "thermal event" instantly. Then we proceeded to wipe the thing clean of programs, files, cookies and everything else and reinstall the XP op system and the programs I really need and use. I spent the week with my phone glued to my ear while he operated in a program that hooked his computer to mine and let him have his way with her while I clicked, when prompted,  on stuff here and there ........ and ran back and forth between the desktop and my laptop while we created a network. Oy, am I tired ! He did all the work, but I suffered the anxiety. However, I now have a sweet well functioning computer again and no longer have to wait 12 minutes for it to paint a screen, not to mention make its way through 15 other programs before getting to the one I asked for to begin with. At my age, I don't have the time for that sort of nonsense.

My mind is totally boggled at what David and I were able to do using rather ordinary current technology.  Just watching him maneuver his pointer around my screen and tell my machine what he wanted it to do made me dizzy with wonder.  And the fact that his telephone voice in my ear arrived strong and clear from the Algarve in Portugal as though it were a block away on Laurel Canyon Blvd is equally amazing.  I am not totally convinced that the progress the human race has made in the area of technology is really such a good thing, but it sure as hell is mighty convenient.  What a pity we have been unable to improve ourselves equally in the areas of character, compassion and civilized behavior.....

Incidentally, I am so impressed with what David, my guru, has done for me that I want to give him a plug.   Here are the details on how you might contact him should you need help.....I consider him a magician and not only talented but more than fair and even generous with his abilities and services.  You can consult him via phone or email and discuss your problem without charge.  He will quote a price for his services to solve your problems and then you can decide whether you want to continue or not.

                                       DAVID GOES
                                  Patient  Computer Tutor
                               Phone:  1 (818) 627-1787 (US)
                                            Europe (+351) 961 099 685
                               Email:    admin@patientcomputer.com
                               Website:  http://www.patientcomputer.com/

He is a sweet, super-bright, darling man and, by God is he ever PATIENT !!!!


                               

Never Too Old to Feel Like 14 Again

I have to admit I am all aflutter.  After having had to desert the blog for many days due to a bizarre death in the family.....( my beloved computer expired leaving me with the choice of getting a new one and having to cope with a new Windows Op System or hiring a Dr. Frankenstein to bring the old one back to life by extreme measures......I opted for the 2nd option and have just spent about a week with the phone glued to my ear while my guru, who happens to be in Portugal, of all places, talks me through various procedures and black magic spells....but more about that in another blog).........as I was saying, I have not visited the blog for days and tonite, upon checking in before falling into bed,  I noticed with amazement and much shy, discombobulated pleasure  that I had acquired a new secret admirer in the person of someone called Wild Willie O' Orkney !  (pleasure shyly expressed by blushing, jumping up and down and shrieking things like, "Oh, goody !") Furthermore, after reading his bio and gobbling up his pithy comments re several of my blogs I found myself dangerously close to falling madly in love with him....a love affair that might just work being that we are separated by about 9000 miles or so (and an indecent number of years incidentally.....but that is the beauty of it......none of that has to matter as long as we are connected by a love of words and access to the internet).

Anyway, after several abortive attempts to go to his site and leave him a message of thanks and appreciation I decided that my only recourse would be to address this blog to him to let him know how welcome his presence and his comments are and to say I look forward eagerly to enlarging our cyber friendship.

So, welcome, Willie darling,  and thank you for stumbling somehow into my parlor.  (Don't be afraid........ I am quite harmless) I am rushing around  preparing to offer you a virtual cup of tea and a biscuit and hope you will make a habit of stopping by often.  Incidentally, I checked out the Toyboy blogsite and am enthralled with Wendy's writing, have signed on as a faithful follower and am enormously grateful to you for introducing me to this new delight. I am a bit puzzled by the absence of material on your own blogsite but I am sure you must have a good reason.  If you would care to elucidate I would love to hear it.....if not, that's OK too.  By the way, you are doubly welcome by being from the UK......I am a shameless anglophile and my best friend is an incredible woman in Devon who also has a wonderful way with words.   All in all, I look forward to hearing more from you in the future and hope I can continue to entertain you with my dithering and blathering.

Love, Lo

Don't Make Promises You Can't Keep

No, I haven't made any New Year's resolutions..........I gave up that nonsense years ago when I realized that I had probably never kept a single NY resolution made during my lifetime.  I have a huge respect for promises I make to others but I realized that all my promises to myself to lose 30 pounds, clean out my closets, get things organized and do more good deeds, when uttered at the beginning of a new year, were self delusions, simply idle wishes for a series of miracles and not anything I was apt to put any real muscle into.   I am properly ashamed of all the resolutions made and not kept and I have no intention to adding to the list much less repeating the same old chestnuts.  Lying to others may be some sort of character flaw, perhaps even a crime, but lying to yourself is a sin of the worst kind as far as I am concerned.

Not that it isn't tempting, given the clean expanse of an unsullied year stretching outward, to try to transform yourself into Wonderwoman, but how realistic can that be given the sad history of the endlessly  laughable saga of yourself as Rifka Shlumper up till now?  Perhaps I will be Wonderwoman in my next incarnation, but for this one I must be content to simply be Rifka the Shlumper who falls down a lot, bumps into furniture and says, "excuse me",  and cannot cook anything without dribbling half of it on the kitchen floor and down the front of her ample bosom. 

Now, bring on that unsullied New Year and let's see how far it will get without being festooned with tomato sauce.