If you were to die tomorrow how would you want to be remembered?

More importantly would you have any regrets before you took that biggest leap of faith into your next journey to your next stop, heaven or hell, or into a new being or into oblivion etc…, or whatever you believe in?
I think it would be great to be not unlike my parents who both had standing room only crowds at their funerals from all the family and friends that attended their good-bye services.
Many were kind enough to tell me how they felt about the people who were to me just, dear ole Mom and Dad and that was all I knew them for, as my parents.
Several relayed anecdotal tales of how my Mom or Dad had done this or that for them and were always there for them whenever any would call or knock on a door.
Not just taking people here or there to the store or doctor like my father would do, but for morale support and advice like my Mom would do or be a listening ear for the younger women in our neighborhood, since both my parents were ten to fifteen years older than most of my friends parents.
Dad put his brother through law school and fed people in the neighborhood for free when he owned a small grocery during the depression, yes, that’s the great one of the 1930’s…“Annie” era for you youngins, Daddy Warbucks? Woodrow Wilson was president? Ah, come on I’m not that much older than you all, nah, I wasn’t there either, not even a gleam in my parents’ eyes since they didn’t marry till 1941 or meet until the end of that decade, I think, but I was born nine years later or there about.

Any-who, my Daddy was not wealthy, just making it in those years too, but some or most were not doing well at all and so as he said he borrowed from Peter to pay Paul, which goes back to many idioms origins but I think what dad meant was more like charging more on some of his non-staple items allowing him to making it up that way to be able to give away things like potatoes, milk and bread and eggs and such… since my father was more honest than the day is long, and he did not have a dishonest bone in his body and was loved by all. I never heard anyone say anything bad about him ever or him about anyone else. This past January he would have been one hundred and four!
At their funerals a little over four years apart, Mom’s 2-1982, Dad’s 5-1986, people told me many things that I didn’t know about which was nice to hear at that time, and enhanced my memories of them; now looking back.
It was as if people who knew them as business patrons, family, friends, neighbors, siblings, aunts and uncles filled their blanks from their vantage points.
And so when or if you find your selves at a funeral I think those remembrances are the most you can do, short of actually doing the eulogy which I did for both my parents.
Dad asked me to do it for Mom and of course I did it for him too!
Love never ends in families and we should never ever take anything for granted, but you all know that… for this I am more than sure.

For me to not have only Hubby at my send off I would have too many fences to mend, but let me tell you one thing… if I did find the energy and ability to eat crow and apology for my all too blatant honesty of my feelings for this or that…at this point it would take another lifetime, perhaps two, and Geez I doubt anyone is willing to give me that!
Although, it would serve me right with the way I feel and it would be a nasty way to get even with me…
This is not to say that I have been always an ornery old witch (actually what rhymes with that), but let’s put it this way when I don’t feel well, as you all know… I tell it all!
Many call that complaining, huh?
Am I not entitled, after all this is AMERICA!
LOL!

All I wanted to accomplish was to remind my readership to be good to everyone, not to be like me. I suppose I was nice at one time, even altruistic some might say… but being jaded by some instances changed me, but I do have the ability to change back!
How about that, we all do, for this I am more than sure…

On that note which was sweeter than my title allow me please to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you to kindly count all your blessings and to share your overages and we will too!

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

Have you ever felt that being too honest was to your detriment?

I don’t know about you but I think that it can.
As most of you must know is that I suffer deeply from foot in mouth disease.
Lack of filters on my brain, mouth and fingers has gotten me in trouble quite often, and I wonder why at times?

Sure I know that sometimes what I say may not be what the world at large wants to hear, but it’s the truth when I say it!
Oh, sure there are times when my information is not quite right or probably just plain WRONG would be more accurate, but how would I know that until after I say it, hmm?
Fact checking is for paid professionals, not people like me, writing hackers, who just like to see the rate that they can produce a somewhat literate essayistic moderation of opinionated material!
WHAT?

By the by, has anyone but me noticed how prolific this stream of consciousness style of my writing has been? Yes, I go on, whether anyone cares to read it or not…got to count for something I would think, huh?
I mean I have rarely taken a night off, (except when hospitalized or very ill) and I think that I have been pretty much varied in topics, could it be a brain tumor? Not funny, it reminds of that movie Kindergarten Cop, (Circa 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger before he was a gubernator and philanderer that got caught!) when the child said to the cop when cop said that the children were giving him a headache; “that maybe it’s a brain tumor?” Sure hope not! Damn headaches…though, not funny! (Again last night)
Or am I some sort of savant? Since I can remember things that I should not be able to…
Scaring me!

I do know when I was writing my novellas the joy of doing so had me writing, if I recall, ten thousand words a day, would you believe?
Yep, I would get up before dawn and it was as if I were possessed by a likable, no lovable writing genie that installed themselves into my body like a willing host.
Not quite an alien’s story, you know due to it being happy and not scary at all… oh all right a wee bit scary since no one wants foreign beings taking over their minds or even their bodies, but still for the good, not for the evil, right? LOL!
Imagination is a wonderful thing when it’s in your childlike brain working over time and as we grow into adulthood we are told to, ‘get real’, and be logical, or just told come on grow up, hmm? Sadly, then most of the performing/visual arts would not exist… something to think about, huh?
Actors have jestingly been called liars because that is what they do for a living, make you believe that they are someone else, and writers make up stories for you to believe too, hmm…
Maybe lying can be used for good?
Something for us all to think about…or not?

On those rather odd ideas from my compromised (Legally) drugged, but sleep deprived brain allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and ask you kindly to count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!
And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

Heights and other phobias...

Funny how we all are afraid of something’s, and if you say that nothing frightens you then I won’t believe you! So there, and now I am sticking out my adult tongue at you!

We all know that snakes are big on many people’s fears’ lists; as well as flying, and heights, speaking in front of a large group and on and on...

Some small children are scared of the dark or monsters in the room at night…

But what we must realize that most fears are unjust in the ideas themselves, since most people will always tell you why, which usually interprets as not as logical reasoning as they may think, hmm?
Avoidance is the way most of us with fears deal with them, or me, yep sure I got them, but not the ones that you may think.
Although, I may have mentioned some on occasion here but I will be darned if I can remember; an hour go and I will go on as if… this is new news…I know; what did she say?
Compared to old news, bud dump bump; besides it’s all new to me…this discussion…

Any-who, sure I mentioned my fears of getting worse with my illnesses, who doesn’t worry over that, dying, is the worse from any ill, but I am talking irrational fears…
Like my fear of falling into the Grand Canyon, yet when I was there as a fifteen year old it never entered my brain. But Daddy said don’t get too close to the edge and I looked down and it was really far down… but I did get to ride a mule/ donkey/burrows/jackasses, whichever those four legged working equestrian carrying critters are, that made the trek all the way down into the cavern with me a willing passenger, wow what a nice remembrance, then why do heights frighten me to this day? I do know I fell off of a ladder while washing my windows in my mid-forties and broke my leg, but I had gotten back on that ladder again after.
I loved horse back riding as a child even though while taking a lesson the horse decided to lie down but I got off before he rolled over on me, quite high up there since he was sixteen hands high, but nah that can’t be it.
I have flown so many times that I have lost count, and no problem there, except with turbulence, yuck and oops…

So I still don’t get it?
I love all animals especially dogs and I have been bitten three times in my life, from pure stupidity.
Once at the age of five by a Chihuahua when bending down to pet it and telling it how cute it was. To the doc for a shot, dog put in quarantine.
The second time I was a preteen visiting my aunt and her door was open so my Mom her sister and she yelled hello, no answer and I went into my Aunt Lilly’s bedroom and her cocker spaniel named, Count, were lying on her bed and I thought I would say hello by petting the dog, forgetting that 'Count' had a notorious reputation of biting people, including her whole family of men, my uncle and my two boy cousins but never ever my Aunt Lilly! Growl and snap! Second bite accounted for. To the doc for a shot, dog put in quarantine.
Third was my fault I still believe and I suppose the others were too, since neither dog had good reps. The first I didn’t even know and the second I knew, but thought I was invincible and to be fair her reputation was only on assaulting/ biting men, and so I thought I would be in the clear.

And the third was with the collie/Shepard mix that was our younger son’s dog, Andrew, a victim of that hurricane of the same name that I gave to him for company in college, which he lived in an apartment not a dorm and he gave him back to me five years later when he went into the Navy!
Maybe that’s what made Andrew, Andrew, all the confusion, anyway the day he bit me was when I was writing those five novellas back in the late 1990’s and editing through the early turn of this century.
Any writer knows once in the zone they can all relate being in that zone.
In those days I chained smoked and chain drank, coffee friends, that’s all… well… Hubby was up in Tampa a hundred miles away for a hurricane conference and it was a Sunday afternoon and I still had on my jammy’s and had not entered the shower, which meant I was on a roll with my thought processes and no one and no thing could stop the flow!
Until, in my excitement I got up to refill the java cup and rolled back into Andrew lying directly behind me!
I must have gotten his tail since let out a mighty howl to put all others that you may have thought of in your past experiences, even worse than wolves at bay, whatever that means, always wondered, any-who he was hurt and Mommy did it!
And so I bent over to see if he was OK, what would any of you do, huh?
And he went berserk when I asked the rhetorical question, “are you all right”, and his answer was an enormous engine grinding, ‘GRRRR’ and rip roaring chomp! Yep, forty stitches worth, shot, Augumentin and dog put in quarantined although we had proof of all his shots including his rabies shot. I drove myself to the hospital after I washed my falling off upper lip off in a quickie shower so I could dress; the insurance was there for me then.
Even so they called in a plastic surgeon that apparently was at barbecue and so it took him five hours to show up…and when he got there he nearly refused to stitch me up since he tried bartering with me to quit smoking before he would touch me!
Some might remember me telling this story but for those who did think of this as a reprise.
And I have never ever once not had a companion that I did not love of the four-footed persuasion and others too… quite a menagerie at times here or wherever we have lived.
And some might say you should be afraid very afraid!
But nope, just heights and causing too much expense to my family with all my ills but that’s it!
We live in our third ranch style home since we have been living in Florida and so the heights thing rarely if ever comes up, but one never knows, does one?

If you analyze your fears perhaps they will not be so scary too…who knows, what’s the worse that can happen?
Sure we could die, but don’t we all eventually do that anyway?
Be fearless and I will try to too!

On that note of do as I suggest not as I do; please allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you to kindly count all those blessings and we will too!

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

PS thanks for reading!

Eye if...

I do not know for sure what is going on with my eyes right now, but it is not a very good feeling.
All I can say is that my eyes and my head are still not co-operating in the get better feeling game of life.
Today I had my scheduled appointment with my neurologist, which is every three or four months… and guess what; she is pregnant with her first, a daughter and due in November! I tell you that must be contagious since you see that a lot all over the place, why another gal on tonight’s news was in that condition too! Gosh not everyone is obese, ya know? LOL!
This sort of fat is the good fat, for a reason fat, temporary kind…I remember that one.

Any-who, I almost did not post tonight due to this pain I am having even while so overly medicated. And oops I almost forgot I happened to mention to the neuro doc about all this recent baloney of ills and the money thingy causing me to become depressed and so she asked me if I wanted another prescription. This time I almost said no, but she said that Walmart had it for a bargain price of $4, but her office is close to that new pharmacy we just started with and we were going there anyway to pick up our Centrum Silver which we had a coupon for. Charlotte Pharmacy had would you believe for only $1.99 for a count of thirty of Citalopram tabs 20MG, my new anti-depressant? And so of course we got them there with the vitamins and free baby aspirins 81 mg. 30 for each of us, a special deal. So the whole bill was under thirteen bucks. Even the doc took off 20% of her bill, and since she will be taking off for maternity leave, my next look see with her will not be until January! A reprieve! Now wouldn’t it be nice if nothing were to go wrong or happen where I would need to see her covering neuro doc?
Boy, what a worry wart I am sometimes…new mantra, be well, be happy, and smile…
Everybody repeat after me, be well, be happy, and smile!
Again, and again, etc!
We will see… I can only hope since lefty is misbehaving terribly badly for the last few hours thus my reasoning for not doing this tonight.
My other thing is I do hope that with all these foreign substances in my system that these docs and the pharmacist know what they are doing!
My feeling better is an up and down sporadic sensation that’s why I hope these chemicals are not going to make me worse… and then I think do they know what they are doing?
Or should I toss them all out and just go commando, in this case it means without any drugs, not undie-less, folks!

Any-who, if my mind remembers correctly sometimes that could be the way to go, but I am in so deep now with all this legal junk.
Who knows…if I would do more harm or good?
And so I will lull my dull brain into a resigning of accepting my current medicinal fate…its times like these that I wish I had a gatekeeper.
Gatekeeper, you know with certain types of insurances they oversaw it all to make sure it was distributed appropriately for the right purpose, if I recall correctly?

On that spark of my old world in my memory, since now I have to fend for myself in all this. You see, Hubby is not into anything medical, even with his own stuff, allow me to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you kindly to count all your blessings and kindly share all those overages and we will too!

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

Forgive

Guilt overcame me when I thought about what I had said so cavalier to all of you last night that sort of in my recollection that too bad the photo of my excerpt in the book was too small to read and that you all would have to purchase the book in order to know what it actually said…Now I ask you how rude is that, hmm?
I feel so ashamed and so tonight I took a leap of your faith in your true nature of curiosity and with much personal difficulty to my own limited abilities these days I think that I have copied it verbatim for your viewing…
You see, I felt that what I wrote, when I looked it over once again aside from the mention of contractors and insurance companies that you could replace it with senators and other government officials and of course the enemy hurricanes could be the economy and lack of jobs etc… or instead of just a state while all of the states could be included in the revised version, but I am more than sure you all know personally what to replace those things with for this I am more than sure, its meaning might be also apropos for our trials and tribulations of our today’s daily journeys difficulties… But I could be wrong as you all know I have been wrong so many times before and I am sure that I will be again and again… but let me assure you not due to malice of forethought or any other such legalities…LOL! You all know what I mean or perhaps not…

Formula for a Return to Normalcy

By me, on page #58 in the book entitled, ‘Summer of the Storms’, published by the Peace River Center for Writers copyrighted 2005 all rights reserved

We are in flux, but soon we’ll be able to return to what we remember as home.
Hurricanes have caused all to be in an uncontrollable situation. We must take back that control!

As a state we must reconnoiter all options to regain our strength as a whole entity, train ourselves to be valiant, reclaim what we lost and make it better.

We can network our knowledge and resources.

We can show compassion for one another in this horrid commonality of misfortune.
The old adage is true, misery does love company.

Understanding, first hand, what others have been through gives us something we all can relate to.

A TV show psychologist stated that to cope with such traumas, we must turn emotion into motion. Simply said; do something! Energy should be well spent in a positive productive way. This way we disallow negative thinking to take over.

And yes, we all have plenty to do to accomplish our tangible tasking.

From simple, annoying, repetitive calling of insurance agents and contractors to physically getting in there and doing the work to repair or replace.

Life has never been simple, but with a recipe to regain whatever we consider our normalcy, this unreality too will become familiar, bringing us again to what our lives once were.

With a bit to think about, I can only hope that I have taken a wee morsel off of your heavily burdened shoulders with some positivity and on that note please allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you to kindly to count all your blessings and to share your overages and we will too!

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

Anniversary

Anniversary is annual observation or ritual of a past event, happy or sad.
Today was the seventh anniversary of the devastating event of Hurricane Charley Friday the thirteenth 2004, our seventh.
Below is the experience of that day remembered on the fifth anniversary in 2009.

Friday August 13. 2004
Today is an infamous anniversary; the fifth one of Hurricane Charley, and yes it was a Friday the 13th.
I was trying hard to write for you a time line of what actually occurred here that day, but I must have put quite a bit of it out of my mind since it did create most of us to go into mild shock due to what we experienced that particular day.
Not at all that different from post traumatic stress syndrome I suspect.

What I do remember is watching closely the news and weather reports out of Fort Myers where all of our local information comes from; my hubby was at work as a deputy, a fairly normal day. We had made somewhat preliminary strapping’s down of things that could fly away, little did we know how stupid that would be, but it was supposed to not come here!

We were told initially that this milder storm not that much over hurricane strength was heading towards Tampa, about one hundred miles north of us, and I suppose this was on the news and weather at noon. I did worry anyway since our eldest son works in Tampa and lives not far from there, to the north about 20 miles.
The storm at this point I do believe was staying the course.
Coming from the Caribbean south of Cuba and was expected to veer towards the Gulf of Mexico where it might pick up speed, and develop into a stronger hurricane in the warmer waters there.

I think it might have been around 2 or 3 O’clock in the afternoon that things began changing for the worse for us. The weather reporters noticed that the storm was shifting direction, and it was heading towards Captiva and Pine Islands, and Fort Myers Beach, which are due west of Fort Myers, but south of us by about forty plus miles. Still in my mind too close for comfort that was enough for me to start to think ahead, and I began listening intensively to the safety procedures that were coming over the TV to get into a space without windows if you had no room that met that criteria get into your hallway and close all the doors, contain pets so they won’t scare and take off. And so I started making our small hallway into a sanctuary for me and the pets. I moved our 25 year old Cockatiel, oddly enough also named Charlie, but a different spelling in his cage in the back of the space, then I took a kitchen chair and got out the cat crate for our seven years old long haired orange Tabby Casey, the hardest part was putting him in it, and then listening to him complain about it, our Skipper was only a five month old puppy at the time and so he was at my mercy and I was able to corral him and attach his lead so I could maintain him in our safety room.
Hubby was a whole other worry, but by now we had been in phone communication and he was busy making sure the county was hunkered down for the possible arrival of the storm by securing the Marine Patrol boats and equipment as well as notifying the public in what to do, and chasing them from harms way.
By the time the storm decided to take a sharp turn towards us, via the harbor, which we are 5 minutes from by boat, I had shut our main power source off and had the battery TV hunkered down with us in our control room, the hallway. I kept hearing from our wonderful son north of Tampa; he was also monitoring the storm and wanted to know how we were doing.
You see we were not that new to hurricanes we had all helped in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5, back on August the 17.1992, and we were well aware of the devastation a hurricane could commit on a community, we had seen it first hand as well as both of our sons seeing it too.
But this was going to be different since we only went to assist after Andrew, and we actually lived over five and half hours away at that time in Ormond Beach. This time we lived here and it was coming right at us!
And we would be getting an up close and personal first hand knowledge of the horrible devastation it was beginning to seem, but little did we know for sure that this now category 4 hurricane was going for a direct hit on us, we were still hopeful it would miss us, or in denial.

I put up the puppy gate at the opening of the hallway, which allowed me not to have to hold Skipper on his lead the whole time, and it was just in time since something or someone was at the front door…I thought it might be the storm, but I looked out our very large picture window, and it was my hubby coming in! He had to grab tight the door the wind was trying to take it!
He had parked the old army truck they were using to move around the marine boats on our side pad from the driveway, the garage had been secured since the news people told that it should be, and our personal car was in there anyway.

And he did arrive just in time, because within seconds we heard a very loud noise that scared us both I had to grab hubby for him not to go and check it out; it was instinctive, but I feared for his life.
The wind was rip roaring all around us, and crashes could be heard too, but I was too scared to look and I focused on keeping the animals put. Hubby noticed the guestroom door making vibrations like in the Poltergeist Movie, and he took Skipper's lead and tied it from that doorknob on the guestroom to the bathroom one. At around five thirty, yes it was already that time, everything got deathly quiet. And hubby wanted to go look, but I begged him not to, it must be the eye of the hurricane, we both agreed, and he did take my concerns to heart and waited; all this time we were getting information from the local news, by seven P.M. they were saying we should be in the clear.

Nearly seven P.M. on the dot I stopped hearing most noises, and Hubby and I both agreed that we could venture from the hallway.
What we were about to see was going to change our world in ways that we could not ever believe.

The first thing was since we had drapes on the big picture window I thought that loud noise was something coming through it but thankfully it was not, since our thirty foot oak tree that stood majestically on our front lawn was lying on the ground blocking our way from getting out our front door.
Apparently, the metal stucco encased columns that made up our Spanish style veneer prevented the tree from crashing through that nine foot window!
But did block our exit from that entry way.
The other crash I inspected or maybe hubby was the guestroom; the side window had been smashed to smithereens and glass was all over the bed and the carpet, so I closed the door again so the animals could not go in. The hardest part was to go outside, our screen porch had rain coming in where it met the dinette ceiling, there was water coming from everywhere. Our fairly new wooden floors and carpeting were saturated! But searching around the rest of the house we only had the one broken window, it was a good thing we had installed new windows the year before, but why did that one break? Hubby went outside, and found out the answers to most of our concerns, our octagon Gazebo was gone, our two sheds too, and our next-door neighbors roof was in our backyard, and had hit the guestroom window and was only stopped by knocking our air-conditioner off its pedestal. It was lucky that our neighbors were not home. Our roof was still there but ripped to shreds in many places thus causing the rain indoors.
People from all over the neighborhood started to venture out, and hubby was helped by our other next-door neighbors on the other side tarp our roof. I questioned if I could used the toilet and did not get an answer so I did, and that was a mistake since that giant oak tree pulled the sewer pipe from the ground and all was shooting out into the air! Yuck is an understatement but again neighbors helped to pushed it down and hubby reconnected it. The power was off, our boat on the lift could not be seen or gotten too with all the debris, and it was everywhere, we had, had a sixteen foot arbor down to the water that was no where to be found it did have vegetation on it too. Our backyard oak also keeled over onto the fish pond and surprisingly the fish were fine, as well as the grapefruit tree, and the lemon and orange trees were both sheared. I could go on and on as you can see I have remembered so much of it all after all.
We still were alive, and when all was said and done we had, had over 80K dollars worth of damage on our tiny little home!
Thankfully, we have been rebuilt since December of that year, 2004, our insurance took care of our doing the work ourselves, fortunately I was well enough then to help a little, but our son, his girlfriend, my cousins, and another friend from the Arthritis Foundation are hugely responsible for being there when we needed them! We were one of the lucky ones; some still have not rebuilt.

On this long dissertation I will bid you all a good night, and I hope, I really hope that I have given you somewhat of a glimpse into what did transpire on that horrid day here in Charlotte County and in the surrounding communities.

That’s why when I say be safe, I mean it and when I say count those blessing I mean that too! And I do count them all, all of them our blessings that is!

Here’s additional important information from that day our home’s exterior destruction:

30 foot Oak tree fell down across our front door and driveway just missing Hubby’s patrol car!

The picture above is that same oak tree and the sewer pipe that I had no idea was out of the ground, yuck!
And the one below it is showing our side of our home where the guest room window was broken and a portion of our roof damaged over that room, but many points of shearing of the roof was evident from the fact that it rained inside.

The above picture is showing where our sixteen foot arbor was with vegetation over it, and the platform you are seeing was where our Gazebo was, 10X10 octagon latticed shaped with planters in between each opening and a paddle fan in the center. We also had two metal sheds, all gone… our boat was bought new in 2003 and had $4500 dollars worth of damage while on the lift, but all the rubble was hiding it, but thankfully it too was insured and as well as the house that had 80K worth. It took until October to get to start getting our money but we were back in our home by December of that year 2004, since we did most of the work ourselves.

At the time I belonged to a writing group called the Peace River Center for Writers and we eventually all compiled many writings dealing with our experiences of those two summers of multiple historic storms, in fact the book to be birthed from our experiences is called, “ Summer of the Storms”, and I have copied my contributory page from the compilation, which can still be purchased I believe through the center or the historical society, here’s my feelings after all was said and done..

I believe all horrendous experience needs to have similar resolves for our sanity to attack these problems with true ability by putting all of it into perspective. We as human beings on this planet have more strength than we sometimes realize, but never ever forget that we do have it!

All I can say is some things in life just stick with you forever the good stuff as well as the bad and this was just another blip in the bigger picture of things that we will never ever forget...

PS I see that the excerpt of my page 58 from the Summer of the Storms book did not photograph well, and so I guess you will just have to find it and buy it! LOL!

The felon was not allowed any illegal guns,... what?

HUH?
That was a story on this evening news.
But I thought none of us were allowed any illegal guns, but I could be wrong, it’s not like I haven’t been wrong before is it?
Gosh, our local news teams are getting our local news on the air in rapid time spans, but Geez they usually get the job done with not too many gaffes… Oh what the heck they make a bunch of them, and that’s why it’s quite entertaining because they don’t do just hard news that’s informative, but stuff that makes you laugh, perhaps at inappropriate times, but funny just the same.
Most of us though are in our living rooms, kitchens or dens and who knows besides us when we let out those belly laughs, huh?

Living a distance from a major city we have many youngsters getting their training here right out of college I presume, since most look as it they have not been weaned yet… and more than likely twenty-one or twenty two…
Cute and perky are not insulting or sexist anymore, I believe that’s what these outer limits station affiliates look for in their hiring practices. Why, you ask?
And I will tell you my opinion, but it’s just between us OK? (Wink, wink) It’s because there are way too many for them to be clones or just coincidences I think, really!

The one though that made me guffaw this evening was actually a seasoned anchor of perhaps thirty five or more. Well, I suppose he’s entitled too, exhaustion from all the information gathering to make it on air on time, I am more than sure, at his mature age too, tisk, tisk…
All I can say is keep em’coming! They are a nice respite from reality or I should say a different dimension of reality, with our nightly news so crazy, local and national and world taking us in all directions, and they are rather welcomed distractions from it all! LOL!

Producers for these faraway from major network cities, smaller markets, are not too organized since we have had nights/days and mornings where the film to go along with the story is not in the right time slot or outright not there or the wrong one is installed for a different story altogether. It must be hard to be the director of the nightly, afternoon or even the morning news here, but never dull!
Not the stories per se, not that they are not, but the presentations could be considered rather random or repetitive, since they seem to stretch hour and half time slots with every half hour repeats unless there is of course breaking news! Hubby does still believes that many are just ‘talking heads’ and read off of the monitors, idiot boxes I think at one time they were called, but I will leave that one alone for now. And that others actually write the newsworthy items and that they do not compile the stories themselves our on-air locals he thinks.
That can’t be!
Why, you ask?
I know you didn’t because I can’t hear you, but I will take your silence as a yes.
Yes, on the why, huh?
Never mind…
Because in order to have someone else writing the stories they would have to be paying additional professionals and I don’t believe they have that kind of money in their budgets, but I could be wrong, as I have said before that I have been wrong before. Supposedly these local upper management get paid anywhere from 60K to 100K on the air, not too shabby, almost as good as doctors here, nah they get twice that. And besides I’m not paying their salaries, it’s not like they could get cancelled going over budget, is it?

A disclaimer by this blogger/writer and I use those terms loosely: I did grow up back in the fifties, sixties, seventies and even lived there well into the nineteen eighties and where we received our TV news was out of New York and Philadelphia, and I do have to admit that they too had plenty of mistakes nightly or weekly, but I think it is so charming to think that even with all this techno stuff highly capable of polishing their abilities to have access to everything at a flick of this or a click of that the times are not that much different when we weren’t quite so mechanized…something to think about… that’s all I am saying.
As the expression goes the more things change the more they stay the same…

On that noteworthy observation allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you kindly to count all your blessings and share those overages and we will too!

And a special prayer goes out to a Facebook friend of all ours who not only has MS, Multiple Sclerosis, but fortunately she is in remission from her Leukemia. Although, now is having a rough time with her current meds, but if they work it will be great and be more beneficial, so everyone please put her in your prayers! I never asked for anything like this before but she is a heck of nice gal and a really good FB friend.

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