Time management

So let’s talk about Carol Brady. Yes, the Carol Brady of the Brady Bunch Fame. We know she married Mike, a successful Architect, and at the time she had three girls. In age order, youngest to oldest: Cindy, Jan and Marcia. We know Mike had three boys: Bobby, Peter and Greg.

The four oldest were far enough long to take care of themselves, and also able to tend to the entertainment and child sitting of the younger two. This was in addition to the fact they were all six in school all day.

We also know that they had Alice, the housekeeper. Alice took care of the cleaning, cooking, shopping and day to day domestics.

We know Mike had a job that consumed much of his time.

So, here is my ponder – What in the Hell did Carol do all day? They had no internet…..so no Streaming, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or TicToc. TV had three stations. In not a single episode did she discuss any “books she had read”, and not a single hobby was mentioned. She did not volunteer at school, was not a den mother, and the kids, apparently, did not participate in too many after school activities. So soccer mom is out. I also do not recall any persons ever visiting the house that were strictly Carol’s friends. So not a socialite. She wasn’t,a jogger, walker, Yoga Master, nor involved in Pilates….so….

Can any of my followers clue me in? Anything to show she had any kind of time burning endeavors? ANYTHING at all?

The in between tasks

For the older crowd: Have you noticed that those “tasks” you used to do in between chores have suddenly become chores all by themselves? Simple things that barely gave you pause before now drain you of a day’s worth of energy? Like making the bed while you were vacuuming…and now making the bed becomes it’s own energy consuming endeavor? Like sweeping the garage after a woodworking project, but now you leave it for a “garage cleaning” day? You have to become a master at conserving energy. Procrastination is not an excuse, it is a necessity.

Another Crybaby

Let me open with this: Nadia Comanici is the best Gymnast to ever live. Seems she is forgotten in all the hype. Now on to the real topic –

Simone withdraws because of “mental issues” because people do not understand the pressures that come with being “The best”. Say what? What a crock of shit. She was endorsed and paid MILLIONS to do one thing: Fling herself around a matted floor. Nobody else knows the pressure??

• Michael Phelps had FAR more pressure
• Nadia had to deal with the pressure of scoring the first ever “10”, the pressure of realizing that a .995 would be viewed as a letdown and a disappointment
• Young soldiers everyday that go into a hostile environment where they are hunted.
• Millions of single mothers left to care for young children on a limited cash flow. Falling off the balance beams got nothing on figuring out how to feed 4 on $3…EVERYDAY.
• Navy pilots trying to land a $40 million dollar plane going 700 mph on a postage stamp in the middle of an angry ocean
• An astronaut tethered to a vehicle travelling at 7,000 mph in the void of space, knowing a simple lapse in judgement could mean becoming a satellite themselves.
• A Marine Corpsman trying to stop the bleeding of a fellow Marine who just had his leg blown off, all the while bullets are striking around him
• An ER Doctor in a NY hospital immediately after the World Trade center had two planes smack broadside

You get the idea. Biles (and I use this more as the noun than the name) is just a product of a “participation” trophy generation. She blew her first two events, so she cried, took her ball, and went home. She is not a
“Champion of Mental Health”, She is a candy-ass quitter. Pure and simple. She should have stayed her ass home and let someone else who was not a quitter take her place.

Almost done

Saul Saulinsky died in 1972. He was a radical and wrote a book called Rules for Radicals, Reveille for Radicals in which he outlined 8 distinct steps on how to turn a Democracy into socialist country. This book is right up their with Mein Kaumpf. I am listing these steps below, and many have already come to fruition, the rest are very close. The one that I am most interested in is number four. Not just because the liberals have created an all out assault on the 2nd amendment, that is already obvious, but more about how I THINK they are working to that end.

Covid mandates. Yep. If you have been following news (other than CNN, MSNBC and Huffington Post), then you know that riots against these mandates are popping up all over the world. People are saying enough is enough, but this noise is having no effect on our elected officials. Once these push-backs reach the United States (and they are coming in many States already), then they can declare Martial Law. Once they do, gun confiscations will be in order.

Of course, gun owners will not acquiesce without a fight, and then we have got real issues. So, here is the list:

1.  Healthcare: “Control Healthcare and you control the People” DONE !!

3.  Debt: Increase the National Debt to an unsustainable level.”  That way you are able to increase Taxes, and this will produce more Poverty.   DONE!!!

4.  Gun Control:  Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government.  That way you are able to create a Police State – total local control.  ALMOST THERE!!!

5.  Welfare:  Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Livestock, Housing, and Income). DONE!!!

6.  Education:  Take control of what People read & listen to; take control of what Children learn in School.
ALMOST THERE!!!

7.  Religion: Remove faith in God from the Government and Schools.
ALMOST THERE!!!

8.  Class Warfare:  Divide the People into the Wealthy against the Poor.  Racially divide. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to Tax the Wealthy with full support of
the voting Poor. DONE!!!     

Pretty Scary, huh?

Call me Dick Clark 2.0

Not too long ago in the past, I took a long road trip with my oldest grandson, 16 at the time. He synced his iPod up to the trucks stereo and started his playlist. At first, I am thinking…damn….am I going to have to listen to whatever teens are listening to for what, 1100 miles? Shit. Well, he is my grandson, and grandparents have done far worse for their grandkids, so I shut my mouth and gritted my teeth, and then……A 1980’s Journey song came on. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and noticed he was mouthing the words.  Yup.  1980’s Journey. Then came the next song…..I believe it was Dire Straits “Walk of Life”. Again, he was singing the tune. That made Grandpa feel pretty good…..but then came on one of his newer songs. Not what I was expecting. It was one of my current favorites, and to this day would include it as one of the greatest ballads ever written. It was Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone you Loved”.  This is when the shoe fell….he smiled when he saw old Gramps singing the tune right along with him. Yep. I was the cool gramps. I knew his music (well, not all, but enough to be on the right track).

And this is what makes an incident a memory.

When – is actually +

20 years ago, the wife and I started a journey. Call it the “Garden Journey”. We had a plane, nondescript backyard, and wanted to turn it into a Better Homes & Garden Oasis. So we talked about what we wanted, came to some simple landscape designs, and got on with the task. Pagodas, bridges, water features, bird sanctuaries, hanging baskets….the whole nine yards. All done by hand with no outside assistance. Many (and I mean MANY) trips to Home Depot, Lowes, various nurseries, and pot shops that took years and countless man hours, but in the end, we got what we wanted. Mostly. We lost many plants along the way, and had to do a lot of moving of stuff. The bridge has been fixed and replaced, water features have had multiple pump replacements, and stones/mulch/pine bark nuggets replaced at an astounding pace, and enough weeds yanked to fill a landfill..but the end result is a “holy shit” from everybody that walks through it.

Fast forward to 20 years later. Everything we planted has matured. Some plants thrived, and got way bigger than anticipated. Others got way too aggressive, some decided they did not like to share soil with other plants (yes, plants can be anti-social, apparently). In short, it has gotten too crowded, and too crowded means two things: way to much effort to maintain, and a lot of the beauty is hidden.

So we have started to re-landscape. Not by adding. Not by moving stuff….simply by subtracting. Yep. We are yanking some of the more aggressive plants, some of the more canopied plants, and some of those plants that created shade where we originally did not want shade.

Guess what? Way, way better. Easier to maintain. Easier to navigate, and in the end, more attractive. Simply put – just more beautiful without taking away from the core intent. Addition by subtraction. If you have ever gardened (not the food type of gardening), you know EXACTLY what I am talking about. Some plants just do not belong. Here is the West side:

Wok me to the oven

The wife and I alternate dinner nights. We are both pretty good cooks, and know each other’s likes and dislikes enough to make this work. That is where the similarities end.

She is a complicated cook. Likes recipes and dishes with lots of moving parts. Lots of ingredients, lots of dishes, a complete plate. I look over and see almond flour, coconut flour, garbanzo beans, coconut flakes, walnuts…and other stuff. I have learned not to ask and not to get involved. No matter, in the end, I know the dinner will be freaking delicious.

Me, on the other hand, like one dish meals…stews, stir fry, pepper steak…anything that can be thrown into a wok or air fryer, then go to bowl with a little sauce (honey mustard, bourbon, teriyaki, etc), and presto, here is dinner. Not as complicated, but still a great dinner. It works for us perfectly…….

EXCEPT

The deal is, whomever cooks, the other cleans up. So I leave less than a sink full to tend to…and she pretty much dirties everything in the cupboards. Yikes.

But her dishes are worth it, so I just suds up and get at it. I go through lots of Dawn.

To phone or not to phone

I have a prepaid program through Boost, which is basically Sprint. Been with them for years, and they have done me well. My current phone (3 years old) started to show problems about a 5-6 weeks ago. Apps just graying out, shutting down, or completely disappearing. After while, I noticed that it is was the apps I moved to my SD card so as not to chew up the precious internal memory that were going south.

Ok, so maybe I have a bad SD card. Lets go have a looksy. Well, the phone could SEE my SD card, but showed no apps. Say what? Where did my apps go? Remember this question. I will answer it later.

I went through all the quick tips with no success, and finally would up on the “nuke” option: reset to factory. I knew this was going to clear out everything, but I had nothing on it that I could not duplicate, so I let it rip.

With that done, I started to reload my apps. First one was my bank app. Except….a big except….I got a notice that it was no longer compatible. What? I have been using it on this phone for years, WTF do you mean not compatible. So I got on my landline (do not laugh, it is a safe backup) phone and called my bank. Who transferred my problem internally to about 15 other people. I finally found out that they had upgraded the app a year ago, but I was grandfathered in with the old, compatible app. But now I needed to download the newer version, and lo-and-behold, I was no longer grandfathered in. After I let loose with a jaw dropping escapade of 4 letter bad words. I found out that the new app was not compatible with ANY LG phone. Not sure why a business would screw a large part of their customers, but they did.

Ok. No bank app. As I proceeded to download my other missing apps, I noticed NONE of them would go to the SD card. Yeah, one bad app is excusable, but ALL OF THE DAMN THINGS? My conclusion? I need a new phone. The bank nerds told me the bank app was completely compatible with I-phone (sure, the $1,000 phone) and Samsung. So Samsung it is.

Went to the Boost shop. Got a really nice, new Samsung Galaxy. Way more memory that my old phone, and much faster. Seemed the perfect fit. My first task? Download my banking app. Turns out this was an ordeal in itself, one that took over an hour and 5 phone calls, but I digress. We got it up and running.

Then came the rest of the apps. Another WTF moment. None of them would transfer to the 32 Gig SD card I had installed. None. I Googled this problem. Turns out, that two months ago (about the time my phone was performing exorcisms on my apps), Android OS removed the ability to use Apps off an SD card. Yep. They had to be on the internal memory, which, by the way, is crammed full of all that stuff you do not need but they want you to have.

So there was NOTHING wrong with my old phone, or my old SD card. Not a damn thing, except I had no memory left to put my favorite apps. So, a new phone it is, and as of now, all good. Until I have to install an update, then I will spend my last nerve choking the living shit out of the nearest tech nerd.

Just a big racket. Time to go back to freaking rotary dial, folks.

Stop blaming us

I am really tired of the Boomers getting blamed for spending our kids into an unrecoverable national debt. Here are the FACTS, using the age of 20 as my benchmark for when a generation enters the workforce.

Generation X turned 20 years old in 1985. The National Debt was $1.8 trillion

The Millennials turned twenty in 1997. The National Debt was $5.4 trillion. An increase of 300%

Generation Z turned 20 in 2016. The National debt was $19.5 Trillion. An increase of 360%

The debt for Generation Z is now $27 trillion, an increase of 38% in their first 5 years.

OUR generation did not beg for student loan forgiveness. It was not our generation that learned to abuse the welfare system. It was not our generation that sent trillions to our overseas enemies. It was not our generation that opened our borders to allow MILLIONS of illegals in that sap our economy dry with free giveaways, including healthcare, phones, internet, food, and housing. We are not the generation that thinks we should spend trillions to change the weather patterns that have existed SINCE TIME BEGAN.

Our generation does not have the numbers to tilt an election away from the left. Our generation fought socialism, communism and progressive liberal politics, the very thing that is spending at a rate faster than we can earn. We are the ones that actually PAID INTO social security so we could draw it when we reached retirement age, not the generation that never put in a dime but thinks they are entitled to it because of a disability.

So stop blaming us. We did not create this fucking mess. We stopped being in charge when the debt was $1.8 trillion. The other $25 trillion is all you, ass wipes.

Surf’s up!

And we sit here waiting for TS Elsa. Official track has her going right over our coast, making landfall one county north of ours. She is just leaving Cuba, and they are waiting to see what the shallow, warm waters of the Gulf will do to it’s intensification. Right now, they are expecting a Hurricane level one. Level Ones are dangerous, and can cause serious damage, but I have sat through two level 4’s. Won’t do that anymore. Level 3 is our “get the hell out” breaking point. So we secure things, take down hanging stuff, make sure we have water, gas and our generator is ready to go…and we wait. The map says we are not in a flood zone, but this is Florida, so on a geological level, the whole freaking state is a flood zone. All we can do is……wait and hope we do not lose our A/C.