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

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

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.

Promises, Promises

Oh, Shit !  

The Rapture or whatever doesn't seem to have happened.

I guess I'd better go clean the kitty boxes.

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?.......One (Crazy) Woman's Opinion

• The serious ab workout for people who don't have the time or energy to workout
• 150 perfect contractions per session
• Contour Does Your Ab Workout for You
• New Moms - Strengthen and tone your abs
• Improve your posture with stronger core muscles

And that's just the teaser.

Those of you who really follow me faithfully may remember that  a few  blogs ago I promised to tell you about the wonderful, weird gift I bought myself?   Well,  here I am to fulfill that promise, as a benevolent service to my fellow bloggers.......no, no, don't thank me yet........having found what I consider to be a little  electric miracle machine I am glad to share the magic with anyone who might feel the need for such.  (I am not an official spokesman for the product nor do I receive any remuneration.)  I am really doing this out of love for the product and the desire to give you the opportunity to be as charmed as I am.)

But as usual with my long winded blogs, we must backtrack 20 or more years for the preface.  Through most of my young and middle and approaching my sort-of-oldish years, I valiantly fought the battle of the bulges.  Not only did I diet unmercifully, but I exercised (before it became fahionable) did Yoga, walked,  rode bicycles, let those rubber-belted torture machines agitate my hips and love handles, roller skated, swam and danced (my Mom taught me the Charleston and it was better than Jane Fonda's workout tapes)......anything to work off a bit of excess blubber.  Very few of the above exertions did me much good at all as far a getting skinny, but it did, I suppose do some good as far as keeping my body in a toned state.  At that time I did not give a fig for a toned state........NON-FAT was what I wanted to be......and  like a water-starved wretch crawling across the desert toward a mythical oasis, I kept on crawling toward the dream.

My eye was always peeled for any new methodology and one day I saw an ad for a salon in Pasadena that had a newfangled machine that was supposed to attack fat with electrical vibrations and exercise your muscles while you lounged on a couch and imbibed lime coolers.  Sounds too good to be true?  Yeh, yeh, I know, but the desperate fall for almost anything, so I hied me off to Pasadena and signed up for a series of treatments with the new gadget......at great expense, incidentally.

The first treatment was a bit offputting as they connected me up to the magic machine with various little pads and electrodes across my middle expanse, flipped the "ON" switch and subjected me to an hour of funny ticklings, pricklings and odd tuggings.  After I got used to it, I found it rather pleasant and because it was so utterly different than anything I had ever felt, I had high hopes that some fat cells might succumb.  Little fool that I was, ten or so sessions later I emerged from this snazzy salon, considerably poorer, sated with lime coolers, tingling around the tummy, but with at least the same number of fat cells as I had when I started, but boy, were those underlying muscles toned to a fare-thee-well.

Fast forward 20 or 30 years and we find dear, old Lo with considerably more fat cells than before, no longer aspiring to "skinny" but merely to be  "mobile" and, worse yet, with muscles un-toned and in such decrepit physical condition as to make it nearly impossible to tone them with regular exercise.  Then lo and behold, (no pun intended) there appears on the laptop computer screen a bit of spam that promises those things you read  at the beginning of this blog.  And it tantalizes me by offering a trial for 30 days at the paltry price of $14.95.  How could I resist.

Incidentally, the device has FDA approval and both my internist and my Cardiologist were delighted to hear I was trying it and encouraged me to continue since they both considered it a very theraputic workout for a battered old soul such as myself.

So here I am about a week after receiving the magic machine which happens to be a little belt sort of like a fanny-pack with 4 sticky patches which you place on your abs when donning the belt.  

Then you activate the brain of this incredible device and tell it how long you want it to tickle you and how strongly you want it to prickle and tug you and then you go about your business for 45 minutes blogging, or watching TV or working in the garden or whipping up a blueberry fruit bread for breakfast or just lying there sipping a lime cooler.

After a week of try-out I was so .....you should excuse the expression,,,,,.tickled that I called to make my full payment and I was even more pleased to find that, by paying for it in a single payment I would get a $20 discount, so instead of it being $199.95 it was only $179.95.  Now that may sound like a huge amount of money to some of you....it sounded like huge amount of money to ME....but when I considered how much better I felt after using it for just a week I decided it was cheap at twice the price.  Not only does it feel good while it is potching and tickling me, but it has really strengthened my core muscles and invigorated me.

Not only can I schlepp my bod out of a chair more easily, but I can fix the kitty plates without having to lean on the sink and I have even been able to go out into the garden and dig a bit.  For me a real dose of magic if not quite a miracle.

If anyone is interested in how to reach Contour's website, just ask and I will post the address here as a comment.  If this helps even one more soul I will be content.

And, if any of you are wondering.......I must confess that I think I have exactly the same number of fat cells as I had last week....the only difference is that it is much easier to schlepp them around.

What's Worse to Be Cut Off From Than Sex, Booze and Cigarettes?

Damn, damn, damn!  I have found myself in the clutches of yet another addiction.  The sneakiest, most insidious one yet.  Sob.

Yesterday was a bloody nightmare from about 11 am right through to 11 am this morning.  There I was placidly munching my morning bran flakes like one of Carnation's contented cows  and clicking on the Blogger Dashboard icon when, suddenly appears the ominous message....."Blogger is not Available".  Gasp.  Surely this cannot be. What can this mean?   Seventy or eighty hysterical clicks later all achieving the same result and I had to face the fact that Blogger was not Available.

I refuse to confess all the things that went through my mind at that final moment of truth.  Furthermore, I refuse to admit the things that went through my mind all day and evening and night as I futilely kept attempting to make the connection.   By bedtime I had to accept the fact that my Bloggy addiction is nearly life- threatening.

With shaking fingers I tapped gingerly  at the keyboard this morning with fear and apprehension clutching at my heart...........tenks gott it didn't tell me that Blogger Was Unavailable............24 hours of deprivation  is over my limit I have found.........sigh.  Now I must go lie down and put cold cloths on my forehead.  I cannot blog today.

More later.

Love,
Herself

Why DoWe Blog For Free.... What Kind of Cockamamie Question Is That?

 I did not intend to do anything as rash a hit "Publish" today.......this is one of the days when I prefer to use my time to catch up on your blogs and leave comments for as many of you as my gnarled, arthritic  fingers can manage, BUT

 

Today, the Empress at    "gooddayregularpeople.com"  asked:  

                                            Why do we blog  for free?

and I just Had to answer.      Hell, there are a million reasons....

 

Because it is our chance to touch our friends in Blogville, share laughs and tears over our morning coffee, give love and feel love from wonderful people whom we may not have met but whom we know better than some of our friends in the real world. And besides all that, except for the time when I had to get up in front of the class and debate some foolishness about Railroads, it is the only time in my long life when a bunch of folks really listen to what I have to say.

 

No, I mean that.  In normal every day conditions we can have a conversation with a friend or relative or even a stranger, but rarely does one get the chance to utter a thousand words without being interrupted or turned off.  Conversation outside of Blogville consists of little bits of give and take which can be wonderful  (or not) but you never get a chance in such circumstances to let your brain develop an idea to its fullest.  I love my friends and relatives, but most of the time....or 4 times out of 5, if truth be told, most people cannot help but interrupt and put in their own 2 cents worth.  And that is mostly OK .....because I do it too...I do believe it is not in our nature to listen endlessly before we simply MUST respond.

Of late, I have noticed that the intervals in which I am allowed to speak get shorter and shorter before someone interrupts and I DO get pissed off sometimes at not being allowed to finish a sentence.  I had begun to think that it was simply because I was too boring to be tolerated, but you dear people out there have proven to me that it ain't true....Godblessand keepyouall.  So I just accept that short exchanges are all that a body can stand when in normal conversation.    I used to ache for a world where I would be allowed to put 4 sentences together  and, praise be, I have found it in the Blogworld.  

Sigh.  All I can say is, not only will I do it for free....I do believe I would even gladly pay for the privilege.

To Maybelline........just kidding.

I Was Only Kidding

Of course, you MUST know that I didn't really mean it when I said I would sit down and shut up.......if you took me seriously, what a ridiculous assumption.

However, having blogged myself hoarse for the past few days I am going to rest my voice for a bit and do some serious stuff around the house here.  For instance, I just discovered a Baggie in the cupboard of various seeds I have bought, collected  and saved for I don't know how many years........in it were about 30 or 40 Sweet Pea seeds (I adore Sweet Peas.....oh, that scent, that color.....yum)  and also 3 zucchini seeds.  ( I love zucchini...I got put off planting them a few years ago when I left a developing plant in the back yard while I went to Italy on vacation and came home to find a monster threatening to eat my house and pussy cats......I mean....how much zucchini bread, zucchini casseroles, zucchini fritters can a person make???...and all out of a single zucchini.)  Anyway, the fright has dissipated somewhat and I decided to try again since I will be here to monitor the size development and pick when judiciously ripe.  So I have these here seeds soaking overnight and I had better go plant 'em....I think I may have missed planting season altogether, but that is one nice thing about California.....you can break a lot of gardening rules.  If my crop exceeds my abilities I may have to secretly ship a few to each of you....you know me....can't stand waste.

I must go now and get dirty, but I promise to return and blog you senseless very soon......a teaser .......I will tell you about the amazing, weird present I have just bought myself and all of the fun I am having with it.  Furthermore, I am willing to bet that at least one of you may not even know of its existence.  You are in for atreat....maybe.

And now.....as I have been know to say........

Love you all.

More Later.