Stocking stuffers

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Honestly, if you do stockings for Christmas, either for a spouse or children/grandchildren, how much do you spend? Do you have a budget for your stocking stuffing?

The things I am seeing advertised as “stocking stuffers” is kind of ridiculous, if you ask me.

Who buys a car for someone and drops the keys in a stocking?

Who buys a refrigerator at a stocking stuffer? (never mind the other implications of buying an appliance as a gift…)

Who spends hundreds of dollars to fill a stocking?

I know companies gotta sell their wares, but seriously do the people that write these commercials or the marketing department even consider that most people are working on a budget and can’t afford the lavish gifts they are pushing as stocking stuffers, let alone as a gift during the holidays.

People in the real world gotta work within a budget and I don’t think my budget has ever been above $50 per person ($60-70 if you include all the stocking stuff). That happened to be a pretty generous year as I ain’t made of money and isn’t typical at all.

Besides, Christmas isn’t about gifts anyway…well, at least it shouldn’t be ya dang heathens…

Single issue

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While watching a couple hours of TV last night I was struck by the type and tenor of the commercials. In about two hours of watching Hulu I saw roughly 13 commercials and 8 of them were political ads. Those political ads were all from Democrats running for office (incumbents and challengers) in the upcoming vote. All 8 ads mentioned a single issue – the “right” to kill babies.

Democrats are so scared of losing this election that they are focused singularly on one issue that is an emotional hot button topic, but really irrelevant to most voters right now. Its like their platform has a single, tired plank.

Other issues in this election? NOPE. Gonna focus on the need to kill babies all the time, any time, because that’s what the people need right now. Not national or local security. Not illegal immigration. Not the explosion of drugs. Not the poor education of our kids. Not the high prices of everything that makes having a budget difficult. Not the homeless. Not the infrastructure. Not the high cost of health care. Not corruption in and of the government. Just killing babies.

Anyone else find this interesting?

Total turmoil

If you have noticed that it’s been a little quiet around here…thanks for noticing. If you haven’t noticed, that’s fine too.

Baseball analogy time: Life around here has been in total turmoil as life seems to throw only curveballs, all the time, and I can’t hit them. It would be nice to have a fastball or a changeup, but instead it has just been a steady diet of curveballs.

Trying to keep up with the changes over the last year has been draining to say the least. The last month, month and a half, has been a blur.

I don’t mean to sound selfish, but I don’t wany any of it. I don’t mean to sound heartless or uncaring, but I am losing my ability to care.

I am tired of the constant family trials, difficulties, challenges.

Once again, life has gotten extremely uncomfortable. If you have been around here long, you are probably familiar with some of the things/people I have referred to in the past. Once again, the past issues are now current issues again.

It’s just…turmoil.

There and back again

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Labor Day weekend had me on a long road trip. I left home on Saturday, Sept. 3 @2:30pm, and returned Tuesday, Sept. 6 @8:30pm. That’s 3300 (+/-) miles in four days.

Home to Tucson and back again.

That’s a lot of time in the car to think.

Nevada is mostly boring.

I like my bed.

Found out I can do it.

Trying to catch up on sleep and other stuff.

More next week.

Hairy soap

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I’m a body wash in a bottle guy for a reason. I don’t like hairy soap, plain and simple.

What do I mean? Well, I have had a bar of soap in the shower in the past. Obviously, I use it to clean my body, every day without fail. But, I use my hands to get a lather and then use my hands to spread the lather over my body parts – which usually also leads to more lather as well. I do not let the bar of soap touch any part of my body directly because I do not like hair on my bar of soap – even my own. It doesn’t even have to be hair from the nether regions of the body, just hair in general.

Now, imagine that I have managed to keep my soap hair free for several months and things are going swell. No worries in the world.

Then imagine a guest staying at the house who does not follow the same “soap rules” as I do. They take a shower, they use the soap in unacceptable ways, which is of course unbeknownst to them. They think nothing of it.

I am sure you can now imagine my surprise when I go to pick up the bar of soap and notice hair stuck to if from the previous user of the soap – obviously not me. Surprise probably isn’t really the right word…but I’ll keep the discussion family friendly. Bar of soap ruined.

Toss that slippery mess right into the trash! It is now contaminated beyond help.

Weird? I don’t know. Maybe. Anyone else out there hate this?

Thus, I am a body wash in a bottle kind of guy. Problem solved. No extra hair, anywhere.

What choice?

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Choice #1 = crap; Choice #2 = bigger crap

There are a lot of situations in life where you just don’t feel like you have a choice. Of course, it is presented to you as though you have a choice in the matter but you know dang well after hearing “the choices” that there isn’t really a choice.

Don’t you just hate it when someone thinks they have a great idea and you just hate it but they tell you about it expecting you to think its a great idea too and then you have no choice but to go along with it because if you don’t then you know dang well you’ll catch hell for however long they decide you get to catch hell?

Why do I keep having this happen? Well, because someone in my life thinks they are helping someone else when all they are really doing is making things worse. Surprise!

Can’t win if you do (because the idea makes things more complicated and is potentially can make things worse) and I can’t win if I don’t (because someone thinks their idea is the best and telling them “No” will only make things worse in the relationship).

Rock || between || hard place

Don’t you just hate it…?

Life distracted

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If you have been following along for any time, or have gone back and read some of the old stuff, you know that I have a family member who has a mystery illness that has yet to be figured out. Specialists have looked and they basically have shrugged and said, “Not my system. Check with someone else.” When they are pointing their figers at another bodily system, which leaves us with a bunch of docs point at each other, what does that leave us to do?

We start over, I guess.

Wednesday of last week was spend (at least most of it) in an ER some 50+ miles away. Part of that was to push a referral process along and part of it was the fact that the ER/hospital is not only approved by insurance but is connect to or works closely with the specialist with the insurance parent company/clinic.

Confusing, right?

Anyway, ER time equals overnight observation and a test that hadn’t been done yet but which we has pushed for with the first specialist. Thursday was mostly spend waiting for a test and then waiting for results. As it turns out, that test revealed nothing other than everything appears to be “normal.”

Yet the doctors that have seen the family memeber agree there is definitely something wrong.

I am at work today but needless to say, I am distracted. It’s been that way since this all started. Hard to focus. Hard to get stuff done.

Actually, it’s hard to do anything in life really. I am constantly reminded or thinking of something than whatever I am doing. I am find that I don’t really enjoy anything because I am always thinking about the other person. They don’t enjoy anything because they can’t physically do it or when they try they suffer the whole time they endure it.

Endure it.

Really, that’s what life has become. Everything is about enduring every activity, interaction, location, meal, or socialization.

Normal doesn’t feel possible any longer.

Right reversal

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“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

OK, Chicken Little…or littles….there is a lot of yelling, crying, hand-wringing, and plain old threats of violence over the Supreme Court of the United States’ reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision. A decision that has been on debate about the correctness, legality, and morality since it was handed down nearly 50 years ago.

In my humble opinion, this is the right reversal. I say it that way because of two things: it overturns a precendent set in the past that was wrong from the start and it removes the ability to legally kill human babies.

I wrote all the way back in December of last year, when this case was being heard by SCOTUS, that the danger of precendent was something that the court could not and should not stand on, simply for standing on precendent. I also wrote about it way back in 2019, about precedent being danderous. I was trying to show that previous courts had made decisions that were wrong and that needed to be overturned because they were morally wrong and righted wrongs that never should have existed. When this decision was leaked to the press (in and of itself, unprecedented) early, the sky began falling then. This just confirms that there are some who clearly are going to die on this hill and that a large portion of the United States is morally bankrupt.

So, again, overturning the first decision to legalize abortion at the federal level was the correct thing to do. It’s the right reversal. There is no inherent right or implicet right in the Constitution for an individual to take a life, let alone to kill babies. It can’t be Constiutionally protected because there are no means to justify it.

It’s the right reversal because there is no moral justification for taking the life of a baby. You can’t tell me that an inch and a half (or three, or whatever amount) of skin and tissue makes the different between whether or not a baby, a child, a human is alive or not. Once it has a detectable heartbeat, no matter the time or space, it is alive. Some might even argue earlier, but a heartbeat for sure is discernable and can’t be debated. It just can’t. No argument can be created or defended that would change this fact and to do so would simply be smoke and mirrors to displace the real issue.

Once again, there will be a lot of complaining, groaning, screaming, and lying (yes, lying) about the wrong that has been done with this right reversal. For many in the country, there can no better or singular issue to demonstrates their depravity than this. Any opinoin that directly supports killing children, at any age, tells you alot about the person holding the opinion.

Patience tried

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Ya, know? Waiting sucks. Having patience sometimes can be very difficult.

Had a relative have a pretty major, serious surgery today. The person getting having the surgery has had a difficult decade, it seems, and is rather frail so there was some definite risk involved with this surgery. Information about what was happening was slow, and when it finally came time to hear the results it became unbearably silent.

Like, so silent that when the results of the surgery were supposed to be given there was an hour where no one knew what was going on at all. Everyone waiting for word one way or the other….

Thankfully, the relative made it through and the surgery and is now recovering. There is still some danger, but on the road to hopefully being better.

Silence. Patience. Unknown.

It’s hard to handle at times.

Tired choices

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Northwest living can be an actual and total grind. Seriously.

The joke around here is that summer starts after July 4 and the number of rainy, cool July 4ths I have experienced in my 50 years is pretty high. Look, it’s wet a lot up here and we all know it. BUT…

Right now the grass and weeds are growing uncontrolled because the rain literally stops for like one day, maybe two, every week and a half. As such, I am forced to make choices about what activites are going to take place outside.

Do I do something fun or relaxing outside? Or, do I do yardwork in an effort to catch up after not doing yardwork for a week/week and a half? If I choose what I want to do, that which I should/need to do suffers. If I choose what I should/need to do, that which I would prefer to do suffers.

If you choose incorrectly, it could be a long while in between being able to do either outside.

I am tired of making these choices.

How about summer start now for a change?