Google Me This

Woke up with this song playing in my head.  Okey Dokey.  Since I am always on the lookout for inexpensive (read free) ways to entertain myself I decided to take this as a tuneful omen.

Something that makes me very sad is the current situation with my family. I'm working hard at coming to terms with it,but in the meantime .....

WHY NOT GOOGLE SOME NEW FAMILY MEMBERS???!!!   What a brainstorm!

I'd definitely keep two of my sisters, all my daughters and grandchildren, at least one brother (jury's still out on the other three.  no malice, I just haven't heard from them in years so have no points of reference), and probably all my cousins, nieces,and nephews.  And sons-in-law.  That's the easy part.

As to the new members....Stick to the living?  Or include admirable deceased?  Imaginary folk, movie or literary characters for instance?  Quite a lot to ponder here.

One thing I know for sure:
         
Tom Hanks is my first choice for big brother.  I don't have one and I think Tom would be perfect.  Imagine him bringing all his cool friends over when he was in high school.  Imagine him helping me learn to tie shoes, ride a bike, drive a car.  Imagine him sticking up for me when I got teased.  Imagine him teasing me.  Imagine him telephoning just to talk simply because he needed to hear me as much as I needed to hear him.

Isn't that what big brothers do?

Resulto Bizarro

Nights here at Elder House are always an adventure.

Many of my neighbors are heavily medicated; and so tend to wander at strange hours.

At all hours.

                                            I do not wander, bad knees and whatnot, but I observe.

                      Last night there were two ambulance runs: one right after another.
                       The second rig was waiting in the street for the first one to pull out.

They were both gone within a half hour and I eventually dozed off.

REM sleep is rare for me.

Imagine my surprise at the following dream.

I'm at a wedding.

There are heavy curtains at the back of the building.

They open with much fanfare for each bridesmaid to make her promenade down the aisle.

Up the aisle?

                                                         
                          But in the dream they are not wearing ghastly bridesmaid dresses.
                                       They are wearing ghastly bridal gowns.

And I couldn't find images of gowns as hideous as the ones in my dream.

These come close.

But there were more ruffles, more flounces, more poufy things, and several of those Janet Jackson

microphone floral on the face attachment things.

So this morning I had a bit of a giggle thinking, "This is what happens when there are too many sirens and flashing lights when I'm trying to sleep."

Then I said a quick prayer for two hospitalized neighbors.

My heart is in the right place, just not instantaneously.

Expanding My Cultural Horizons

I think I was a Finn in another life.  Finnish?  Finnlander?  Finnlandian?  I mean no disrespect.

Blog trolling and I often find myself in a sea of grotesquely long words and absolutely stunning photographs.  I am drawn to the bright, no nonsense, in your face colors of the clothing and interiors pictured on these blogs.  I'll get to that in a minute.

But here's a tip:  Don't bother with the google translator widget.  It takes days to figure out how to install the damn thing and then this is an example of what you get as translation:

Playing in the park got wet today and it's pretty litimäräksi pikkunen maple had dropped almost all the bright yellow leaves. Synkästä säästä huolimatta oli hyvä tunnelma. Gloomy weather, the atmosphere was good.

What?  I give.  Anyway the photos on this particular blog are so special I decided to fore go trying to grasp any context.  The blogger does reuse pictures very often; and so I skip around a lot.  What I love:


The clothing.  Particularly the kids' stuff.  Hand knitted, bulky sweaters and scarves.  Big, big buttons.  The yarns, from what I can determine, look REAL.  No acrylic blends.  These are seriously warm garments.  It's Finland!





The colors.  The winters there last forever, right?  So it makes sense that homes are filled with saturated color.  Cups, carpets, cutting boards, slip covers, bulletin boards, plates, baskets.  On and on.  All bright.  White, WHITE walls and cabinets.  And NOTHING CLASHES!  An orange sideboard.  A green step stool.  No muted earth tones here. I adore it!

This particular blogger posts all kinds of scary, threatening warnings about reposting her stuff.  I've submitted "requests", but the language difference hinders the process.  I'm choosing to be daring.

This Is Why I Never Get Anything Done

A grey jelly bean?  This makes me tremble.  What flavor could it possibly be?  Pavement?  I was taught (probably too well) never to waste food, but a grey jelly bean is going in the gah-baj.

All at once the lilacs outside my window bloomed.  Really!  Yesterday: just green.  This morning: overwhelming blooms and equally overwhelming fragrance.  It was freezing, but I HAD to leave the window opened.  Yippee!  And thanks.

Nobody needs to vacuum anything at 5:06 in the morning!

"The pharmacist needs to speak to you about this refill."

I will reward myself with scanning.

Smoothies are my new crack.  Canned peaches (way cheaper than fresh or frozen and they are going to be all shmushed anyway), one frozen banana, plain Greek yoghurt, OJ, and honey.  Drink one glass and freeze the rest in ice cube trays.  Dee Lish!

Darling Eldest Daughter told me to google "ferberize".  I did.  Yuck!

Finish the damn blanket already!  It's good, but I am SO sick of it and it is SO heavy!

Darling Youngest Daughter needs to get herself a bicycle helmet.  Don't make me come up there!!

9:05  The pharmacy just called me!!!!!  This day could be looking up.

Greenery

Can you see them?

Way up there at the tippy top?

Two brand new variegated ficus leaves!

Not only are they actually alive, but no leaves have shrivelled up and dropped off from the bottom either.

First time I ever had a ficus survive!

And here I proudly present the return of the gentian.

This delicate little lovely was gifted to me here at Elder House.

I had my doubts about its survival.

The Nazi Nun used to grow them on window sills and she had a demented system.  I was assigned to watering detail.  If they perished it was due to "that stupid girl over watering" and I was to blame.  If they thrived it was due to her strict supervision of "that stupid girl".  Me again; but she took the credit.

Ah Catholics...

Anyway, I placed my gift too close to the stove and scorched most of the leaves the second day.

Stupid girl indeed.

Google search (my trusted buddy) advised whacking off the dead stuff, watering a smidge and waiting for the plant to magically regenerate.

It's working!

Take that you crazy Nazi!

And finally...

This is what happens when a gimpy old lady forgets one of her canes.

Plant was saved.  Pot was destroyed.

A minor heart breaker: purchased pot with a weird outer space flower in it during a very happy excursion with two darling daughters and equally darling grandson several summers ago.

I could still almost walk and I got to throw paint sample cards on the floor with the little guy.

Fun

National Women's Day

If it weren't for my trusty buddy Google I would not have been aware that today is the day!

One day for Women!  More than half the population on the planet and we get ONE Day!  And, a most emphatic NO!  Mothers' Day doesn't count.  Eliminates too many of us by definition and the Hallmark Smack is too apparent. (A parent...Good one.)  Is it irony that WD comes on the day when a huge solar storm threatens the state of absolutely everything?  Props to the universe!

Zana Bayne, who always attends the best parties, posted this photo of the West gay bash in lovely NY.  I can't say why it seems so appropriate, but it does.  My daughters had an entire collection of those He Man guys.  What happened to them?

Bad night.  Even more pain in new places.  Came as quite an unpleasant shock.  I am sleepier than usual and bitter.  It's supposed to be lovely outside and I'm probably going to miss it.  Late day means late start at meds.  Which means later start to agony semi-control.  And I've got shit to do!  Yeah!  Us gimps got shit to do just like the normies of the world.

One more thing.  Pollution.  There's a word you don't hear very often.  Maybe it's because all the crapulence has ratcheted up so far and so fast that polluted is the assumed starting point.  Too bad if that's true.  Lately the pollution in my life has been of an extremely poisonous and personal nature.  So far it has been confined to the inter webs; but I bet the spread has begun.  Doing what I can to control and contain.  Difficult job.

Just Another Reason I Am Losing What Is Left Of My Mind, Or Thank God This Hideous Month Is Over

I've written before about how I am having a love affair with google images.  Not so much with you tube and their search-ability stuff.  Somehow their links seem designed to humiliate and creep one out.  Allow me to explain.

I heard some music I really liked and googled the writer's name and learned that she had been inspired by really old cartoons.  So, of course, I went straight to youtube (It's the video capital still, right?) and found this:

Okey Dokey.  Quaint propaganda that reminded me an awful lot of the "science" movies we watched back in grade school days.  Nuclear Power is our friend!  Blood should match your own skin!  How to know if your parents are commies!  Okay, I made those titles up.  But I bet if you youtube or google video search them a reasonable facsimile will come up.  Maybe I'll do it later.

One of the reasons I didn't was because I got waylaid by the links to the right of the cartoon I was actually watching.  Yikes!  Rhino sex!  Horse mating!  Dog humping old woman!  Gorillas doing what gorillas do!  Need I say:  YIKES!  Where did this come from when all I was looking at was a 50year old animation?! 

Did I peek?  Well, yeah, sure.  Who wouldn't?  Then I looked at some of the comments left by previous surprised viewers and learned that I should "clean out my history."  ANOTHER thing to worry about!  Actually, I had heard about this before, but since I am a comparatively dull person with interweb interests that are also pretty dull, I'd never bothered to clean my history before.  I don't have time for this!

I just finished reading a book called "Pornland" because the wife of one of my instructors had an article about the book published in a serious academic journal.  Quite an honor for her.  I wanted to read the book first and THEN read her article to see if our opinions synced up at all.  What I really wanted was to see if I was as smart as I am sure she is, and thus gain some unsolicited validation for myself.

(And just to show how brave and fearless I am; I just googled an image of the book's cover!  Take that!)

But I DID search the book's author's name.  And I DID carry the book with me to read while I was doing my laundry.  And it DID create quite the stir here at Elder House.  Now!  How the hell do I clean THAT out of my history?!?!?!