Clarity

I didn’t know that I have a real problem.
It appears when I received emails that have to do with people talking down to me that I want to shout back you don’t know me at all!
I suspect it has to do with the fact that these last few years I have been quite reticent as far as my involvement goes with anything public in nature!
The yearning to set people straight has been most frustrating to me at times since I know that I have had an incredible attitude about life and was totally unselfish and lived life to the fullest for a large part of my existence… but some people feel the necessity to tell me to do all those things that will fulfill my somewhat empty existence they ( here we go again with ‘they’ who are ‘they’ really?), somehow feel that I have! And they don’t know how much that hurts my feelings… and so below you will find my bio on my Facebook page … in all its glory! Hang on it could be a bumpy ride for all you newbies! HA!

“Over the thirty-two years I did work I had been co-owner of three businesses, a wicker store in Toms River NJ, one restaurant in Ormond Beach FL and underground sprinkler business which was the second largest in NJ, plus I worked in promotion and advertising as well as being a district manager for an international environmentally safe products company, as a department and credit manager for Lord and Taylor’s in Ridgewood NJ, and a sales and floor manager for Ohrbachs in Paramus NJ. Not to mention nearly forty years on and off of working with non-profits as a volunteer. Almost any ill you can think of fund raising, as a board member, teaching classes, advocacy and co-president of support groups. Also with my husband with Boy Scouts when he was scouting co-coordinator for Ocean County NJ and assistant soccer coach and Fire Chief in NJ too. And if anyone was wondering I also had the privilege of visiting 40 US states and eight countries all before I married.

I have recently been informed since I am not in business anymore that this is just my personal Facebook page not a business page and I am retired actually real-tired, and NOT a realtor or a life coach or in marketing and do not need to sell my home in a short sale and have no authority to sell anyone else's that way either! LOL So now I have put my lack of ambitions right out there for all to see...this is purely for my selfish entertainment of learning about new and different people and their lives from all over the world and here at home in the USA! PS if I wanted to have someone tell me to be positive in life I would do it to myself in the mirror, where I would actually see and hear it! And so as much as I appreciate the goodwill you all seem to have in a jar from that stockroom called never ever give up, and all is always going to turn out all right...I have been there too, and from personal experience which my sixty years have given to me! So there! Please stop preaching to us in the choir gals and treating most of us like we don't know a thing. And if I wanted to be a millionaire don't you think that I would have done that by now? That is not the only answer to happiness... peace and quiet, good honest loving friends, and family that you actually care about and they about you are worth more than all of that moola!
Now you are all informed and this is my disclaimer to any other thoughts you may have had about me... so there! I just stuck my adult tongue out at you too!
I'm getting older and not much better and "disabled" with MS and arthritis, half blind and barely can walk, but otherwise, OK, now but still thinking, although some may question that concept.
I did also attend Paramus schools from kindergarten through my sophomore year of high school, but moved to Emerson and graduated from there in 1968 in NJ; then on to LIM. But have been living here in Florida since 1986, nine years on the east coast in Ormond Beach and then almost four in Punta Gorda and the last twelve in Port Charlotte.
I write a nightly Blog: see below for the link...
It is me at my best and worst! And it's all I got these days to feel really good about! That is that I can still think; I think! LOL!
PS: Now my Blog is called Speaking My Mind! The link below is my blog:
http://tobi-adayinthelife.blogspot.com”

OK, so perhaps it is a wee bit verbose although with a touch of tongue in cheek humor for any who can see it, but we all know that is me; it is all true too!

Listen I love my readership and have no qualms about you all since you have been there listening and I do believe you really know me…it’s the others who, oh dear here we go again… ‘Assume’ ( making an ass of you and me) that I am this or that!
Also that I do not care for soldiers why my dead brother was in the Air Force as a Medic during the Korean War since he was nineteen years older than me and my own younger son was in the Navy for six years and was in their nuke program and an officer and now is a nuclear engineer in the private sector for nearly ten years, and it is war that I hate not the soldiers! Let’s get this straight, and I also do not like people to tell me that their religious beliefs should be mine, sorry that is just me! No more Zealots please!
I am not anti-religion I just do not like people to ‘assume’ that I believe what they do, ok?

Boy this rant felt good once again…
Sorry if I am boring you, but I am sure that you would also love a forum for setting others straight with their assumptions of you too!
Not to be mean only to remove the unsettling feeling of being so misunderstood is what I am saying…

And so on that elongated concise, strange to some, reasoning of mine I would love to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to all ask you kindly to count all those blessings and share all those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Homework?

Have you ever wondered enough about something that you felt the need to investigate further that would be nearly as time-consuming as homework for high school or college once was?

Although, at this point in our lives, for most of us that is a choice that has very few ramifications, since it is us who can only decide how important that search would be and we have the luxury to do it whenever we so desire.

Yes, if you are a newspaper journalist or on camera for news stories daily then you must do all that with deadlines (excuse the expression) included.
Why we the consumers of your daily or nightly product/production are deserving of that!
And any of you worth your grain of salt, “A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man, and takes a ‘grain of salt’ with everything he says to her,” Helen Rowland who was an English-American writer is where that quote originated, 1876-1950, and due to the era this is from, perhaps I should rethink my use of it, since it appears a wee bit sexist?
Nah, it is what it is.

So many of the writers and authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were either racist or sexist, bet you never thought about that with any of those classics we were made to read in school, huh? And some were even considered to this day amazing; today we would shrink away and wince at the passages if we were made to read Mark Twain or many other famous and renowned authors of that classic sense when we were young.

Do we all know now how sensitive our language has become to being aware of others tastes, feelings and needs, which I am so happy to know that we have managed to all grow from these irreverent prose’s that used to be common place but are still great works of art? I know that sounds hypocritical but most things in life are.

Sadly though that was a different time and what was the norm then was so different too, and no one meant any harm to anyone or so that is what was told to anyone who cringed at the wording of certain phrasing or words themselves and at that time they would have been in the minority to say so, since so few were brave enough to speak up or out or even knew it was wrong… or could it be blamed on just that a lack of knowledge; something to think about, true?

Oh well, as I said before we have come so much farther along then those times of words being so prevalent clashing with our now current mores of our times, right?
Oh no? Hmm that is so true many feel certain politicos have the ability with harsh words to insight to riot? Well, we as a nation has come of age knowing the differences what that exactly means, right?
Oh no?
Personally I am still so confused but I am not that bright.
I suppose it is for the rest of you to decide and I will try to deduct from your reasoning or what you conclude if that is what I will abide by…or not.

On that food for thought or not I would love to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you all to kindly count those blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And next time to please be here or be square, ya hear?

Advertising

Did you ever notice how we as people have this thing not unlike the ole town criers of yore that we love to tell the world something, anything, especially when we are happy or even when we are angry or I should say very angry?
Human nature again; we have been doing this thing called advertising whether it be for our wares or our cares, how did you like that gem friends?
The announcements are extremely anxiety driven at times or filled with elation or just plain damn enthusiastic but we are our own source of new, better than ever, just what you needed or didn’t know that you needed fluency of information at our fingertips that will make your life the best right now or definitely at a time in your near future! But I bet you all knew that, huh?
And wow some screechers are over the top, but feel the need to succeed!
They let us have it from whatever medium we prefer written or visual/audio, even just audio too.
We are their target for their whatever, and for some of us it may be the only human, and I use that word loosely, contact that we have in any day of our week.

I personally have felt the need to shout to my friends or relatives when I thought that I had useful information, totally guilty here…and sometimes I am commended and other times I am held to task for divulging such useless crap.
Let’s face it who hasn’t on occasion also suffered from foot and mouth disease, why that at times has been my Mantra…yes! That is to try to keep your foot out of your mouth again, one mo time; PS that is me speaking to myself.

And so this morning I felt I was doing a neighborly thing, which I on occasion have done before, I announced to my local peeps by emails and on my Facebook page about the Arts and Crafts Show at Fisherman’s Village in Punta Gorda. Well, to say that it was a raging success would not be up to me, but I must admit there were a lot of people there, not unusual on the weekend though. The show goes on into tomorrow and the thing that got me was that this time they even made room at an adjacent parking area for their overflow, which was not present when we were there the need for any overflow space that is; we found a handicapped spot up real close.
To be fair we did go rather early shortly after ten a.m. when it opened, but it was a bit disappointing since there were not that many vendors, not more than ten, I bet but I did not count them and they were spread throughout the complex, so I could be wrong.

One vendor that had a unique product to me was Glass Bottle Art out of Newport Richey Florida he will be there again tomorrow his email for more info is: corky4811@yahoo.com, he had melted looking glass bottles to be used for cheese boards, crackers and other food related displays for that wine and cheese party. He explained that he has a computerized glass high heat vat/kiln system that keeps the temperature just right for the process. Personally I sort of collect unusually shaped blue glass bottles, I just love that deep dark blue; don’t you?
I have just eight now in total, is that considered a collection? And they are displayed currently atop one of my high kitchen cabinets thanks to Hubby.

Any-who, we left fairly quickly since we saw it all in a very short period of time, and so we went for a short drive to the Historic Park and nothing was going on there and then we were home in time for lunch!
We had our darling canine and noble pal Skipper with us and this time again it was too cold, brrr in the low sixties but with a chilling wind, to eat outside for us no blooded Floridians and that is why we came home.

And that is it for tonight’s yelling of my doings…
Please allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to all count those blessings and kindly ask you to share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Tantalize

Is it underhanded, teasing, tormenting, ingenious or perhaps just desperate to know what works?
Now go with me here…
Some nights I have people reading this thing by the masses what I euphemistically call my beloved drivel.
And then some nights it appears I would have to sell my young to get your attention, what gives?
Don’t you all know that this is FREE ENTERTAINMENT!
Not unlike non-cable or non-satellite TV or if you spied on your neighbors, not that I would ever do that or think you would either, ha!
But you must admit some are more than interesting, the neighbors, that is …when you casually glance out the front or back picture windows you had installed to capture those great Florida views, right?
Any-who, this is all coming from someone who has much too much time on her hands, ha!
Silly has worked before with most of your tastes and so maybe that is what I should do, huh?
Let’s step it up and put it up for discussion; what makes you read anything?

Interest in the topic I would assume, but we all know what A-S-S-U-M-E means, oh you forgot? Nah, I won’t go there, ask someone you trust.
That being said that your interest is based on that what actually gets your attention; I think my tonight’s title may have fit the bill?

“Only time will tell…if it was time well spent”, “If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.” a couple of Jimmy Buffet quotes., apparently my kindred spirit, on alternating days that is; I forgot that we were on the same wavelength, how wow, ya think?
Or perhaps all my thoughts are caused by the subliminal teachings and listenings from my teen years during the nineteen sixties ( hey wait a minute, Jimmy was there too!), so many of us Baby Boomers are…indirectly or directly a product of those times, which if you ask any of us they were the best and worst of our lives.
So many of our personas are shaped by our environment, no one would argue with any of that.

Ah memories… we all have them… did you know that when I was just sixteen years old that I was a Go-Go dancer? Is that tantalizing enough for you? Well it’s true, with a couple of bands from high school and we did it totally dressed, in mini dresses and boots, if I recall my friend and I, and it was at a couple of churches too! Wild times they were!
Oh how cute we were, her mom was the seamstress and so you have to know the mini dresses were short, but only a couple of inches above the knees but tasteful and in bright reddish Asian prints with black satin ribbon trim, rather exotic. Considering we were both blondes it was a unique look. Do you have any secrets in your closet?
I am sure you do… you devils out there!
For the younger folks who may not know what Go-Go dancers were I shall give you all a brief definition: They were started with the discotheque scene back in the early 1960’s and many were considered the exotic dancers that were scantily clad, but I have revealed our fully clothed costumes to you; and the dancers would be the decorations for the bands either dancing on either side of them or there to encourage the people to dance or for their entertainment with their own unique steps to teach the crowd. I suppose that is about as good or as close to it I can get. The actress/dancer Goldie Hawn ( Kate Hudson’s Mom) started her career as one of them at the Peppermint Lounge on route 4 in Paramus, NJ (where I was raised and lived then too) and then she later became a regular dancer/comedian on the 1960’s TV show, Laugh In.

On that ending wee bit of trivia I would like to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you all to count those blessings and kindly share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Confusion

How many people do you know know anything about medical disorders or even care?
I suspect most healthy people do not unless they work in the medical field.
But many who are associated with different non-profits in any capacity or have family members who are ill but not necessarily themselves then they too would want or care to know something in order to help their loved ones or even the strangers that they are volunteering to help, correct?
That said and not ever being a medical student unless the fact of reading about things that I need to know about for myself or others I have been able to glean information on many topics that have effected my family or myself.
I believe my interest was spurred by the sudden death of my mother when I was thirty-one and married with two sons, not that young but traumatic to anyone who loves their parents, my father died also from a stroke four and half years later.
Yes, within eleven and half hours my mom only seventy at the time, a week from her seventieth-first birthday had a major massive stroke that killed her instantly but machines kept her alive for those additional hours. One thing I was relieved about was that my father was still here to make that final decision of shutting down the machine, with a DNR, ‘do not resuscitate order’; I was off that horrendous decision roster.
To this day I wonder if I would have been ever able to make that choice for her.
Anyway, my mom had rheumatoid arthritis and survived breast cancer when this occurred, both her knees needed to be replaced and she used a walker and refused anymore medical intervention although my parents had excellent medical insurance Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NJ.

And so with my devastating loss of her; I wanted to know why?
My mom’s good girlfriend suggested “why do bad things happen to good people”, but I never ever did read that…I knew it just does but the physiological part is what I wanted to know, you understand that?

So I started reading about medical issues, which also took me in many other directions in that realm, and so for thirty years now I have been an avid reader of such material and that is why, but now it is so much easier with the internet and legit sites like mayoclinic.com and the clevelandclinic.com, and don’t forget cancer.org, nmss.org, arthritis.org and the like…any of these places will give you answers you can trust.
I suppose having bad genes is another reason for my interest.
Today though thankfully the medical field has made much progress!
And a lot of ills that we used to die from are being treated or even cured daily!

My optic neuritis though was baffling to me, since so far there is no cure even when it has been treated like mine with IV infusion therapy of Solu Medrol 1000 mg and that so far has not helped. Even on the news they are finding a way to help people with blindness and other eye disorders such as macular degeneration which is nothing short of miraculous! And I was confused by the initial blurb on the news that the story was going to be about a whole bunch of eye disorders and I was trying to listen intently but unfortunately I must have missed it! Or it was just a brief segment.
But I am hopeful, I keep thinking the treatment I had could take as long as six months to work and next month it will be six, even though my doctor was not so sure; so we will see…GOOD CHOICE OF WORDS HA!


My confusion nightly is also at issue here. In the respect of what enthralls you to read my blog? Some nights I meet your reading needs and desires and other nights I seem to fall short. I suppose it is like the flavor of the month club only mine is nightly…
Any-who I guess not everyone can hit it out of the park every night but I sure would love to try!

On that note of mystery to me… let me be the first to wish you a very happy good night and to all count those blessings and kindly share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Reliable

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have the ‘work ethic’, down pat and others have what I like to call the ‘Mañana Attitude’?
You all know what I mean, right?
Nothing is that important to them that can’t wait until tomorrow or in some cases indefinitely!
Well, anyone who knows in business that can’t work most days because we all have to get things accomplished and not doing some things on time are paramount to losing out on your businesses efficiency and reputation.

I was a very work oriented person when I was working for the buck and would never gold brick I felt that daily I was there to earn my keep!
And make no mistake that is what anyone is doing whether working for someone else or themselves it must be with a mission to produce whatever you are told or know that you must do for your customers, because even we entrepreneurs answer to someone and it is all our clients as well as our potential ones. And they have the power to let us know by not dealing with us!

And so I must admit I would very much like to let Tanya at my local State Farm office on Kings Highway in Port Charlotte know that we are happy to know that she did her part by keeping her promise to me and Hubby by getting back to us with a much better manageable legit value to our home for our replacement and flood insurance. Now we hopefully will not see that ridiculous increase adding on to our monthly bills! Thanks to you, Tanya Yont!
Relief! She is originally from Virginia, which I have found to be a producer of good workers with that work ethic I mentioned; many other states have it too!

When I was in my last work position as a district manager I recruited and hired constantly, either they didn’t meet the initial requirements and produce or had no concept of what we were trying to accomplish. And I did train many for hours and some for a couple of days and I did have the top five sales people in a worldwide environmental safe products company monthly!
That was hard, I mentioned it before.
Having to change the guard so often….

Moving on…
So even in these years which I occasionally call my bum years since I haven’t worked for the last few even as a volunteer which is so unlike me; it’s mostly the vision eye thing and not walking thing. And I do love the public at large and so I don’t want to endanger them on the roads with the driving thing!

If any of you read my blog a few nights ago entitled ‘Edit’, you may have an idea what I go through just to do this nightly and not being grammatically correct is sad and I am so sorry! On that one I did not apologize, but I should have. I made many excuses for my inabilities but the worst is so many typos that constantly have to be redone, which I find sometimes months later. Fortunately, this spell and grammar check seems to work erratically, and uses bright red underlines to let me know when I have goofed!
I think it helps a little.
I did try one of those online grammar ones but it seemed a bit complicated for my not too bright mind and I gave it the heave ho!

Anyone out there know of one compatible with this older Microsoft Office Word program, vintage 2003?

On that note of a small update that really is a big help to us financially! And again begging for your kind understanding of my desire to get this better and right, I think I owe you all that.
Let me be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to all count those blessings and kindly share those overages and we will too!

Next time please be here or be square, ya hear?


PS One of the most reliable people I do know is my Hubby for he said he was going to cut back our palms and weed our front gardens and he did it all yesterday!
And he was still tweaking all of that today too.

Jackson!

After months of trying hard to determine what our dear sweet Haley’s baby boy’s name was going to be and when exactly he was going to get here, today was the day for both!
Jackson is her baby’s name, John her Hubby and she and their BIG Baby Boy are probably over the moon right now, or more than likely exhausted. Jackson is at eight perfect pounds and 21 inches long and he and his parents are doing just fine according to
Haley's colleague and good friend Jamie Yuccas who reported this earlier today to all her Facebook friends!
And we are all elated with the news!
But nowhere near what both the happy parents must be, but for us just knowing all is well is more than terrific!
And thanks to Jamie we did.
Our joy is now named Jackson, hip, hip hooray!
And an enormous hug to the entire family with a boatload of congrats too!

Moving on…
Sadly my mind shifted to not so nice thinking today, I took a short trip to my dark side when I spent some time on the phone for a few different reasons. I received a wrong number from a local senior home, but here’s the kicker they were trying to reach someone I knew.
My old chum from the Arthritis Foundation and how they got MY NUMBER is beyond me, when they had hers as well.
So I did tell them that the second number they had was correct, but they did take me aback when they at first thought I was her daughter who wouldn’t allow me to speak with her and since my friend had, had so many joint replacements due to her Rheumatoid arthritis and the last one was having her head literally attached by a rod and so she had to use a speaker phone which made none of my calls to her private. Her daughter was known to listen in.
The whole conversation brought up old horrendous feelings, since her surgery I said how she shouldn’t drive since she could no longer turn her head from side to side, but later on she did get one of those back-up cameras. And that’s when her daughter came down on me for saying that! I felt since this forty-something child moved in that perhaps now she could drive her Mom where she needed to go. But she was going back to school on her Mom’s dime which was extremely thin…and I also foolishly felt that was wrong too…this was maybe two or three years ago, I think.
The Mom also was the first one I called when I found out that both my niece and brother had died, but she was at work, ha, as a volunteer, (only recently did she become staff after I kept saying they should pay her after her volunteering for nearly forty years) and she could not listen to me since her latest medical bills were her priority! (In retrospect that was her worries and it should have been her first priority, but she appeared to ignore what I was saying and at the time it hurt quite deeply!) But her daughter wouldn’t even work while going back to school! Too difficult and then she didn’t even know what she was going to do! We all worked when in high school and college that’s including our sons and they both had academic scholarships and hubby had student loans, which we paid off years later with our wedding money and my parents paid for my college but I was eighteen and I still worked!
You see, I have come a long way since then… now I know it is none of my business after all I was just a friend not family, no business of mine at all…boy then why was I so darned pissed by the mistaken identity!

Any-who the other call was to our bank that decided that all our insurances and taxes were going to increase substantially to over one hundred and thirty-five more dollars a month, yes you heard that right, a month… and so I felt that they made a mistake and thus a call to our insurance company who is working diligently on the problem and has assured me that it will be cleared up by tomorrow. Our homes value went down like most everyone else’s in the country and the value to rebuild should not have gone up to tens of thousands more in one year? As I keep saying it is a tiny house, plus we are DIYers and we know what things go for, we have built homes renovated added on etc…
Well, who knows what will happen but I am hopeful.

Good news for my payment plan for my eye and tooth surgeries those will stay completely interest free with the amount that I determined to pay a month on both of them, until both are paid off in June of 2012! That is with Care Credit a GE company apparently, not a hospital or doctor or ambulance company who are not allowed to charge interest, and who I am still paying off too. I sure wish it was a health insurance premium instead but as you all know. Gosh, I don’t know what to say but the news today said that us pre-existing peeps are 129 million strong, well not strong, because most of us are really ill and no one wants us, and we are not at all insured so I guess it is safe to say I am not alone…

You see, this is why I question everyone’s wanting more of the pie, and feel guilty every time I do this or that, no way to live, huh?
I suppose I am not cheap just being careful.
I am more than willing to pay what I owe but not anymore than that, am I so wrong?

On that note of not escaping my Debby Downer persona, so sorry!
But let me still be the first to wish you all a very happy good night to all and to all count those blessings and kindly share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?