Timid Critique of Some Blogs by a Somewhat Blind Person

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.