Notes from The Over Forty Crowd

THE OVER 40 CROWD!

THE SPOILED UNDER-40 CROWD!!! If you are 40 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning....Uphill...barefoot...BOTH ways YADDA YADDA YADDA

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that..... I'm over the ripe old age of forty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our rear! Nowhere was safe! There were no MP3' s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. Cause - that's how we rolled, dig?

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your rear and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-pills!And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove!

Imagine that! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,The Over 40 Crowd

Found this over at Melli's blog

Your Name is Green

Your name tells people that you are harmonious and balanced. You've got it together, and it shows. You are hopeful and optimistic. You know it's not over until it's over, and you keep fighting until the end. People see you as peaceful to the point of being zen. You won't allow anything to get under your skin. You struggle with envy at times, but you never let it show. You believe that jealousy is a weakness, and you try not to let yourself indulge in it.

What Color Is Your Name?

Blogthings

Somehow or other this post and the one about the CCC got mixed up. Further proof that my life is so mixed up right now.

Civilian Conservation Corps

Sunday night there is a new series coming to tv about the Citizens Conservation Corps that was conceived during the Great Depression by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal. Young men who were without work were hired to create the National Parks we enjoy today. My dad worked on some out in West Texas at Palo Duro Canyon. We have been to Palo Duro several times and each time I feel my dad's presence there. He told me he really liked working for the CCC. He and his step father worked on our Will Rogers Coliseum.

Ken Burns wrote and put together The National Parks--the most beautiful show ever seen, so the write up said. It is a 6 night 12 hour documentary that begins Sunday at 7 CDT and 8 EDT and runs from Sunday through Friday on PBS. The parks are called America's Best Idea.

It has been a thought that it might be a good way to help some families and to provide men and women with work to start up the CCC camps again. I think my dad went to work for them so he wouldn't starve and he would send money home to his parents to help them keep their head above water until things got back to normal during the depression. I think our "downturn" is not over and it may get a lot worse. The shelters they built are still being used today and there are a few around Fort Worth. They are not elaborate, but very nice to have a place out of the rain or snow. During the years they worked 3 million men received rehabilitation, learned a skill, and economic relief.

We love going to National Parks and when we get my husband's parents settled we may head out for a short trip to one. This year is the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I've wanted to go back to the Smokies for a long time. If you have time, take a little trip to one close to you and enjoy the beauty....and if there is a little shelter look to see if it is a CCC built one.

A close call

It appears we nearly bought the farm yesterday in Dallas. A terrorist tried to set off a bomb in a truck in a downtown office building. Fortunately it was an FBI sting operation and he was not given a real bomb.

We have become complacent, since no huge attacks have happened after 9-11. My most profound thank you to the FBI agents for being brave and in touch with all that we do not know about. The Yahoo news page says there were attacks scheduled for all over the country, including New York.

If you haven't seen the story you can read it here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/yahoolatestnews/stories/092409dnmetbombarrest.1b177db8b.html
and here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts924

It is time for me to start getting my grab and go backpacks and shelter in place supplies replenished. They are a good thing to have even if it is only for the aftermath of a tornado and not terrorist related. I think we have used most of the duct tape for other purposes. My husband may get that generator he has wanted for so long. Funny how my mind shifted gears in the instant I read these articles. We saw the headline on the news last night, but missed the actual news coverage. My priority is still to find some really cool shoes to wear to the reunion and not new hiking boots for now anyway.

The new provider blues...

Thank goodness things have finally calmed down here at midnight. We switched internet and tv providers today and oh my! That was a lot of learning for my husband and for me and for the poor techs who were trying to talk us through a lot of stuff. I've got a handle on some of the things and am hopelessly lost on others. It will come with time and YAY! it is Friday tomorrow and there is nothing on our calendar. We won't know how to act and on top of that the sun is supposed to shine and keep on being cooler.

We finally gave in and stopped taking the newspaper. It had reached a point where it was becoming costly and I get most of my news from the internet now anyway. I know it is a hard way to make a living or to stretch another paycheck. I feel sort of guilty reading my local news online. One of the main reasons was that the newspaper was coming in the front, having the bag removed in the kitchen and then going straight to the recycle bin. That is wasteful on many fronts.

Our daughter may be moving to another position after only being there less than a month. Her boss suggested she put in for it and so she did. She has done well in the interviews and will hear something probably next week. I'm sure her boss wasn't trying to get rid of her. He knows she is great in a crisis and works well with him. She would still have contact with that part of the business, but will get paid a lot more. She did a switch on me today. The cable guy was working on the outside and had to leave for some reason. We decided to run out and grab a burger and we were really gone only a short time. While we were eating my cell started ringing and she was all like "Where have you been!! Is everything ok???" It was and it is. I love it when they try to mother us a little.

Hope you all have a wonderful day tomorrow and give a thought to your poor friends trying to figure out how to set favorites and why a show isn't in HD and how about that new email! I sent an email from one of the many I have to let our friends know ours had changed. In about three minutes I was already getting mail (jokes) from some of our nutty friends. It is like that email that says "Just wanted to let you know I was thinking of you today." I am so grateful for our real life friends and for our internet friends, too.

I may go out and buy P!nk's new cd...some of the songs I really like. Probably I'd better be getting a move on to get clothes all settled for my husband's high school reunion. I have some new things and may need a couple of other new things. I'm still wondering what the heck is a casual dinner at the Country Club is, but I asked a woman I've become friends with in his class and she said she expected folks to show up in anything including sweats to formals. She has a great sense of humor and I really like her. She and a couple of others planned this huge thing, but they had to do it without my friend Barbara who didn't quite make it. She died last December and is missed so much. Bless her sweet heart.



see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Loving your weird children

Since I've yapped on and on this week, I would like to make this very brief and share the most delightful family with you. It brought back so many memories of child rearing.

http://itsalmostnaptime.blogspot.com/

I hope you enjoy and love this as much as I did. I got so tickled in a couple of places I nearly lost it.

Hope to see you later in the week. The rhuematoid arthritis meds really kicked me in the rear this Tuesday. It hasn't been a fun day at all.

Night night.

As The Day Goes

This has been one of those days...you know..the kind that cause you to wonder what in the Karmic universe has come unspooled on your personal umbilical cord to the great Mother of everything. It got my husband, too. We are both so gun shy right now that whenever the phone rings we pretty much do rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, a variation of the game as played on "The Big Bang Theory", over who has to answer it. Its been like this all weekend, but just has reached a fever pitch this afternoon. Even my husband's aunt who lives in Maryland called to inquire about her brother...my husband's dad. There is no good news around here today...just weirdness abounding.

You can quit reading right here if just having a weird day is all you needed to know, or if you are brave enough to soldier on with us keep reading.

The day started well enough and I had such high hopes of possibly going to the movie or even just a short drive in the country for relaxation, but that was not to last long. My husband went over to his folks to make breakfast for them. During the week there is a lady we have hired who comes in to make breakfast, help with baths, cleaning....the regular things, and we love her because she is good at what she does and there is no longer a cat hair carpet everywhere. Also, my husband was hoping to be over there when the yard guy was mowing to be able to pay him and to come by our house to give us an estimate for mowing our yard, too. He missed Pedro, the yardman, and had been home about 10 minutes when his mother called hyterical because his dad had gone back to bed and...was just laying there. My fil had told my husband he just wasn't feeling very well today when he was there cooking breakfast. Going back to bed is just something one does not do in my husband's family. I guess if you were dying it might be ok, but nothing less than that. I cannot tell you how many times I've had to explain myself if I went back to bed and she found out about it. Hubbs tried to find out what was going on and asked her to get the portable phone so he could talk with his dad to try to figure out what was going on. She couldn't remember where the portable was even though he told her every time she came back to the land line. It is funny if it weren't so serious. Finally he left to go back over there, then she finally found the portable. Since I was the only one here, I talked to him about how he was feeling. I was sort of gentle with him, because everyone was really tense. I asked him if his chest hurt or if he was having trouble breathing...things that might be truly serious. He told me he gets dizzy and he was a little achey. At that time my mil found the land line again and chimed in with her two cents. Then she didn't hang the phones up so my phone would not work. I called hubby on my cell to let him know what I'd learned. A couple of minutes later my mil called me to say there was a man outside mowing their yard, at that time my husband walked in their door. This time Pedro was there cutting their grass. There is a language problem with Pedro who speaks Spanish and my husband speaks English...the in laws speak gibberish...and I know some Spanish, but am very rusty. In fact I was thinking how to phrase the request for an estimate for cutting our grass (huésped). Good thing I checked on spanishdict.com, because if I hadn't I might have asked him how much he would charge to "cut our guest"(césped) . Such a simple mistake, the words are so similar in sound and spelling. My guess is Pedro would have been very surprised at a request like that. Also, my husband had left his "cheat sheet", with his questions for Pedro, and the map to our house here. This afternoon we got our daughter, who speaks Spanish very well, to call Pedro. We are pretty sure he will be coming to our house at 6pm one day, Lord only knows when, to give an estimate and all. Glad I didn't ever talk with him. He and I can work out something with a dictionary and the computer. However, our daughter told us that Pedro is very difficult to understand and that he understands English, but doesn't speak it. I'm still wondering how my daughter speaks Spanish like a native. That is going to have to be something I worry about another day....and is probably because she has lived in the Houston area for about 25 years, has people who work for her who speak Spanish and well..nevermind.

A couple of weeks ago or more our neighbors who live behind us had a GIGANTOR shed built that towers over our 8' fence. The shed is 14' and is 5' from our fence, and apparently nobody including the contractor had a tape measure so they could puzzle this whole thing out. We had to get the information about WTF happened with that whole deal on our own dowtown at City Hall. There is a city code that says sheds can't be that close to a fence and be that tall, and they can't be taller than 12' regardless. We left a written protest with the hearing committee last Wednesday, because we were just running all over town on errands...one including the paperwork to have the in laws declared incompetent. We watched the hearing on the internet after we finally got home about 8:30 that night. The committee couldn't believe their eyes and the majority said no, but there will be another hearing on Oct. 21st. This has become a nightmare for us. I do not want to look at their shed that sits on the fence line in the back center of our property. It would lower the value of our property if we decided to move. Not so much a random whim at this point. I cannot plant trees to screen it, because of power lines above. The shrubs that are there are really good for this area since they are native plants and can endure drought....but they are deciduous and for 6 months out of the year do not have leaves. So, starting yesterday the property owner has had neighbors come by our house to try to change our mind. The owners are mad at us because of this problem and they are acting crazy as loons. And the bottom line here is they need to go back to their contractor. I keep telling everyone that comes that this is not my problem, but something the contractor should address. If I ever say it will be ok, then tacky shed is permanent.

It has reached a point that my husband, the saint, and I have gotten cross with each other today and that is just crazy. We need to stand back to back like soldiers or Spartans or one of those warrior clans to protect each other from all the nuts trying to get in our business or get us in their business. Finally we called the wicked owners of evil shed, because they had left a hateful message on our answering machine and then sent a message via a neighbor (how weird is that in conjuction with them calling the evil owners MeeMa and Paw Paw and they are not related), that we would meet with them on Monday, which threw everything into a tizzy...but finally was ok with them and the hoard of them and friends who will descend upon us. I may call some police friends to keep order while they are here. My knitting group meets at 6:30, so they had better get all they want to say said in a hurry, cuz I'm out of here and my final word is a resounding NO to the friggin' shed and to leave me the he** alone. I will be at the October hearing, because maybe we will have the in laws in a facility...or we will be in one.

Some of you have noticed that I really do like sheds, but they have to be not offensive to anyone. And the owner of the shed must be nice and kind. Otherwise they are not good neighbors or good sheds.

There was much more and it involved some binge eating on my part of various cookies and a brownie. The Emmys come on tonight, so hubby will have one tv for Cowboy football and I'll have one for the Emmys. Also, it would probably be a good idea to check my b/p too. Below is a snapshot of the situation as it stands at the moment.

Our 8' fence and their 14' shed

An 8' fence is really a tall fence. If you live in a home with 8' ceilings, that is how tall it is.

The fence meets code regulations for our area. Their shed does not.