Family | Piss and Moan

FREEZE!

Posted on August 8, 2019 by backuphill

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Me: Freeze, Dirt Bag!

Daughter: Dad!

Me: I said freeze! Now, put down my chocolate chip cookie and step away.

Daughter: Dad, it’s just a cookie. Lighten up.

Me: No, it is NOT just a cookie. It is MY cookie and you are not authorized to touch it, let alone eat it.

Daughter: Dad…

Me: You are seriously jeopardizing my ability to love you right now. Drop it!

Daughter: I swear your old age is making you crazy…

Anyone else like chocolate chip cookies as much as me?

Anyone else not like sharing them?

Anyone else feel like your job as a dad is to eat all the chocolate chip cookies before you have to share with the kids? Yeah, me too.

I swear if I have to share another cookie with my kids…

Broken button

Posted on August 7, 2019 by backuphill

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It’s broke. The thing works intermittently so I know it’s there, but today it isn’t working.

My excitement button is broken.

I haven’t the energy to get excited about anything. It’s been this way for a while, but today I realized that it wasn’t something I consciously was aware of. As I look back over that last several weeks, I now see that it’s been broken for a while. I am not sure when it broke. It just is.

Have you ever experienced a time in your life where good things are happening but you just don’t feel any joy around them? Have you ever had a time where life felt like things had evened out but experiences or things just didn’t generate a response like excitement? It’s a weird feeling to think about the things in past that got me excited only to have them happen now and it feels like no big deal.

Am I too tired? Am I too apathetic? Am I too calloused? I am not sure.

Where is the joy? How do I get it back?

Do you have joy? Excitement? What get’s your juices flowing and give you joy or excitement? Drop it in the comments!

Getting real old

Posted on July 29, 2019 by backuphill

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This last weekend was for the ages.

I went to two birthday parties for old people. My grandmother turned 90 and my father-in-law turned 79.

This isn’t really a complaint about relatives getting old. I love them. But what it is a complaint about is that people are getting old, and that just means the inevitable is getting closer…and I don’t like it.

Not only is it getting closer for them (it’s hard to admit, because really it could be any time), but it is getting closer for me too. That’s the frightening thing.

Not that I am scare of death. I know where my Peace is.

But, I am scared because there seems like there just isn’t enough time and there are places I want to go and things I want to do and suddenly I feel selfish because I feel like I have to let those things go. I am scared because there are things that will happen in the future that I might not get to see, experience, enjoy with my daughter (and grand kids, when she has them in the future). Time just keeps on ticking and often I think I am no closer to some of my goals now, than I was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.

I look at the people I love in my life and they’re getting old and time with them is slipping by. There aren’t as many at family gatherings as there used to be. Oh, to have that time back, right? Just make the best of it now. Cherish it.

Getting old is getting really old. My body feels it. My mind knows it. My eyes see it.

How do I move forward and make it not feel this way?

Do you worry about getting old? Do you wonder what will happen in the next 10-20 years for you? What do you take solace in?

Deep breath

Posted on July 26, 2019 by backuphill

Time to breath.

It was rushed this morning. Not that it isn’t most mornings, but when you’re leaving town directly after work and not returning home beforehand, well that adds an extra dimension of stress.

Did I get everything? What am I forgetting? Have I taken care of everything at home so I don’t have to worry about it while I’m gone?

Yeah, it might be a bit of self-imposed stress but it is stress nonetheless.

The thing is, we don’t really need to stress about it. If we forgot something, just go to the store. Right? Yeah. Not really that big of a deal, but we do it to ourselves anyway.

So, I sit in my cube and recount the morning…check, yes, ok, check, check, um…check, alright. Let it go.

Just let it go.

Quiet time

Posted on July 24, 2019 by backuphill

black and white black and white depressed depression

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I like my quiet time.

I like time to be able to just be. I don’t do it often, but when I do I want it quiet. There are also some expectations when it comes to times of the day when it should be quiet…like when it is time for bed.

Now, I don’t mean silent. That would just be weird. Crickets singing. Birds chirping. Fan blowing. None of those really disturb the “quiet time”. However, there is a reasonable expectation that something won’t be louder than those things, which would then be a disruption to the quiet time.

Neighbor’s barking dog. Disruption of quiet time. Neighbor’s barking dog for hours in the evening and into the night, like after 10:00pm (the presumed quiet time of the city)? Yeah, down right infuriating.

Noisy, loud campers at a campground. Disruption of quiet time. Noisy and loud campers in a campground carrying on until after the POSTED quiet time of 10:00pm? Yeah, down right infuriating since the walls of a tent are literally paper thin.

What’s up with killing the quiet?

Don’t answer that. Keep it to yourself. That question was rhetorical.

I am trying to be quiet over here.

Quiet.

Legs of lead

Posted on July 18, 2019 by backuphill

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Isn’t exercise supposed to make you feel better?

Sure. Right. Liars.

I started a training program because I don’t like my body. There is an end goal but getting there is gonna be tough. I am outta shape (yes, even round is a shape, I know) so getting started on the program is hard.

My legs are lead today. They hurt. But I actually finished the whole workout today.

Liars. Exercise doesn’t make me feel better.

How does this become something people like? I don’t get it. Maybe it is just they results they like. I guess that’s what I am aiming for. LOL

Liars.

What activities or exercise do you dread? Enjoy?

Check is in the mail

Posted on July 17, 2019 by backuphill

selective focus photography of a mailbox

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No, this isn’t what you think. It has nothing to do with someone supposedly sending a payment and telling you the cliche “Check is in the mail.”

No, this has to do with those unwanted, unnecessary, and unsolicited credit card offers that come in the mail with checks “for convenience.”

The long and short of it, quite frankly, is that this practice should be illegal.

Why, you ask? Well, let me break it down for you…

Identity theft. Could this make it any easier for someone to steal, or at least impersonate you to get money or open an account in your name? I don’t know if anyone has noticed but mail theft is still a thing these days.
Increasing debt. Americans have a saving problem and instead have exactly the opposite – a debt problem, of epic proportions. Sending people “free money” in the mail isn’t a practice that should continue because it encourages the behavior that gets many people in trouble financially, and likely legally too.
Junk mail increase. We don’t need more crap in our mailboxes! Not to mention the incredible amount of waste it generates. Companies want to be “green”, right? Perhaps they should think about the waste they generate and environmental impact they have because of their unsolicited mailings.
Because I want it that way. Call me grumpy. Call me a curmudgeon. Call me whatever you want, but I want it my way. Besides, I am pretty sure I speak for nearly anyone with a mailbox. We’ve had it up to our earlobes with your junk mail, credit card offers, catalogs, and other crap.

Anyway, I don’t know if they can make it illegal but I am sure it would get a lot of votes it it were put to the people. It’s irritating on many levels, so it isn’t “for my convenience.” It just creates other problems the consumer has to deal with.

Who’s with me here?

What do you receive in the mail that irritates you to no end? Drop a comment below with your mailbox frustration.

Not so woke

Posted on July 16, 2019 by backuphill

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I don’t care and neither should you.

If it takes two or three (or more) “Greats” in your family tree to find someone in your ancestry who owned slaves in the US, it’s not news. Plain and simple. It’s just sensationalizing a current topic of emotion, one of which has no bearing on today.

Yesterday, a politician who is running for president admitted that both he and his wife’s ancestors owned slaves. This after, apparently, he was going to be “outted” by a media outlet for this piece of history. He’s not the only person to do this since this is now the hobby of bored media researchers who need something to make a sensational headline.

There is no news here.

Is this person responsible for what his ancestors did? No. Is he responsible for anything that happened before him, no matter how far back? No. So why are we even remotely interested? Your past doesn’t define you, or me. My past doesn’t define me, or you. So quit living like it does and quit blaming others like it does.

I don’t know if my past includes slave owners. I don’t know, since I have German heritage, if my past involves the persecution of Jews. Quite frankly, I don’t care if it does.

I am not that person and I am certainly not doing those things today.

We should be judging people based on their actions today. We should be judging how they treat people today.

We should be learning from our past, but not living in it. We can’t make the past better. We can’t change it. We shouldn’t make reparations for it. We shouldn’t scrub it clean just because it is offensive.

If you care about such things from the past, enough to get yourself all lathered up about it, then you are the problem because you are living in the past. It shouldn’t be an excuse for lack of trying to improve yourself. That’s the only person you can be responsible.

So, you ain’t woke. You are just focused on the wrong person.

Dimples and all

Posted on July 15, 2019 by backuphill

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Well, the early leave on Friday’s work day turned out to be a pretty decent escape.

I figured out I hadn’t golfed in three years, so the rust was a little thick. The front 9 was warm-up, apparently, since I scored better on the back 9, which is more difficult.

It also took me 12 holes to lose the first golf ball, which is a feat in and of itself since I am a pro at hitting the ball deep into the trees.

But, I also ended up finding more than I lost – net gain of 2!

All in all, I could find something to complain about in the golf game but since it’s been three years I’ll just let it be what it is.

Oh, here’s something to complain about…the golf shoes don’t fit like they used to. I could also complain about the overall score (107), but really I can’t complain since I was just shaking off the rust after not having stepped onto the links in quite a while.

I suppose I’ll have to keep the dust off the clubs a little more often.

Something you ate?

Posted on July 10, 2019 by backuphill

Photo by hermaion on Pexels.com

Ever have that queasy feeling that you just can’t shake?

Like, it just hangs on but doesn’t really have an effect until later? Yeah, that is me today.

I started feeling it last night before bed. I was hoping maybe sleep would help so I just skipped most of the evening and headed for the pillow. Unfortunately, that just turned into a night of tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable. There is something going on in there and it doesn’t feel right. But, I wasn’t so uncomfortable that it caused me to get out of bed.

Well, this morning it came. Maybe it was something I ate yesterday or last night. I normally have a pretty iron clad stomach, but his morning…well, let’s just say everyone wanted out of the pool.

Multiple visits to the throne room already. It’s gonna be a long day at work. Luckily (if, in this situation, that’s possible), it happens to be just one end – the bottom end – and not both.

There. I said it without saying it. Enough to get the picture but not too much.

Have an uncomfortable Wednesday, people.