The End of the World

Doing a bit of research, I found I had more questions than answers. It is no secret if you want to dig that there is a huge rift in the military between those who are actually working for the Defense Department Contractors and the real military that are following the orders of our Commander and Chief. The former wish to get us deeper and deeper into war for their profit. The latter are idealists that actually think they are doing something good.

It also became apparent with a minimal amount of digging, actually just scratching the surface, that the Hawkish “Think Tanks” are all Right Wing Conservative Christian groups financed by Defense Department Contractors.

However, here comes the question. How much money can you spend? As a group, this select number of people have more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime or three. It is what is commonly called blood money because someone, somewhere has to die for them to make it. How can someone spend 7 months in Afghanistan, living among and eating with the very people each day they send out to die for their profit? After 10 years working in psychiatry, I can state that not even the worst psychopath can hold up under that kind of strain. Imagine sitting at breakfast with a group of young men, hearing their banter, stories, hopes and dreams while calculating you will make a few thousand dollars for each one of them killed that day or for the women and children they kill. Let that sink in for a minute. The people you are smiling and waving goodbye to, are the ones who will die simply so you can make a profit.

How do you knowingly poison an entire city's water supply knowing you are going to kill the children and elderly and sick and damage the healthy for a profit? And yet, the people doing this show no remorse, no guilt. They are almost giddy they did it and for what? Once again, they already have more money than they could possibly spend. Not even power keeps your conscience at bay in the middle of the night.

Our Corporate Leaders have allowed the planet to be ruined. The oceans are dying and they will take us with them. The bees are dying and taking our food supply with them and our leaders have known for 15 years what is killing them and covering it up to make a profit. Global warming may have reached the point we cannot hope to slow it down and the oil companies knew this 30 years ago and yet, for profit, they have destroyed the planet. Where are they going to spend that profit when everyone and everything is dead? It is these questions the average person simply cannot wrap their mind around. The complete absence of carrying about the end result. What kind of person can do this?

That was the final question whose answer I sought.

The answer is really very simple. You have to believe that death now is better than what awaits these people.

But, wait you say. Aren't they causing the end result?

No, they have to be convinced the end result is beyond their control, will happen to everyone and only a select few can escape a horrible death and it will take a lot of money to have the resources to join that select few.

Science has now established two mass extinction events both of which were most likely caused by the same comet. That comet broke up on the last event and its pieces hitting earth raised the temperature enough to melt the ice caps and flood a lot of the earth not to mention initially causing huge tidal waves or tsunamis. This is the basis for the flood myths of every culture.

Now if we want to wave the Bible around, we can claim the whole earth flooded and everything died except for Noah on a small boat. Face it, compared to a modern day cruise ship, the ark was a dingy. But, if you would like to take it from someone who has been in a tidal wave, that is not exactly what happens. When the first wave hits the shore after pulling a huge amount of water into the ocean to form, the next waves are more swells. The actual flooding is less than a single story and more likely 3 feet which recedes in a few hours. But when the initial wave backs out, it takes most everything with it. So, Noah was probably on his little boat when the first wave hit and when it receded, it took him out to sea. Considering his location he probably drifted toward the equator where is known to rain for more than 40 days and nights during the rainy season. There is nowhere in the Bible that says this boat had a method of propulsion or navigation. Hence he drifted until the currents took him back to the coast which would have happened eventually.

Here are the facts which I uncovered while researching a book I am writing. There is not enough water in the form of ocean or ice to flood the entire planet. If every drop of water melts into the oceans, parts of Florida will be above water! Surprise! Well, it sure ruined my plot line. It would ruin the plot line these idiots have been sold. You see, the debris field that was this asteroid or comet circles the solar system and is headed back our way. They have been told that through some miracle, that no scientist knows about, they have discovered a 22 mile wide chunk in that field which is going to hit earth and create the next big extinction event. Curiously enough, a number of cultures predicted the last event and knowing a nasty meteor shower was coming their way, moved their population underground. They also predicted the next round which would be coming up. The difference is the comet/asteroid broke up. That means the track was moved.

Let me explain. A car barrels down the expressway. With no friction it will continue to go straight. However, if it breaks up, part of it will continue in the forward direction but most of it will go in other directions and the largest part continuing forward has little chance of remaining in the exact path the whole was going in. Now throw the car into an orbit which is determined by gravitational pull which is exerted on each individual piece based on its size and every bet is off as to where it is going on the next rotation. So, although the ancients accurately predicted the second coming, the third is now hopelessly skewed.

As I said before, you cannot flood the entire planet and the previous civilization managed to escape underground. If you think about it, that would be the last place you would want to be in a flood. You would drown. The bill of goods some religious nutcase has sold the people with money and power is just that, a bill of goods with no substance. It isn't going to happen. Unfortunately, if you do not take the power back and refuse to play their war/religious games, you are going to be very dead by each others' hands and for what? You'll just get to see them staring at the sky on a ruined planet proven wrong.

The Cook as a Healer

A while back I had a vision of a different world in which crystals and herbs were acceptable methods of

healing.

I have been feeling really bad and my usual sinus infection managed to take over my entire body. I was puzzled by this as we usually have a truce going but I was getting unbelievably weak. I asked for some help from whatever guides were around or my subconscious depending on how you want to look at things.

What I heard was the statement that the highest calling of a cook was that of a healer. Meals are meant to heal. That is why the breaking of bread with guests was such an important symbolic gesture. That is why gathering the whole family around the dinner table is so important to the family.

I set out to make some vegetable soup like I always do, but as I tried to gather my ingredients, I couldn't find the zucchini so I decided, insanely, to substitute a winter butternut squash. I bought a carton of sliced organic carrots, an onion, and a bitter melon. The bitter melon was for my diabetes. It has no effect on blood sugar, by-the-way.

I decided to try stir frying the bitter melon with some onion and those little sweet peppers that come in yellow, orange and red. It took over 15 minutes to cook and the melon still was tough as leather. It didn't cover the flavor, nor did liberal amounts of catchup, and the whole mess went into a baggie while I waited to make my soup.

A few days later I felt the time was right for the soup and the carrots and squash went into the slow cooker with two cans of organic tomatoes and one can of tomato sauce (I never add tomato sauce to my soup), some celery, an onion, a can of okra, corn and tomatoes, two baby Bok Choys, a dozen of those little multicolored peppers chopped into rings and the baggie of stir fried bitter melon, peppers and tomato.

I let it cook and surprisingly, I woke up at exactly 13 hours of stewing on low and got a bowl. All these ingredients did not eliminate the bitter twang of the bitter melon but it was now palatable after one spoonful. Spoonful two and it was tasting better. Suddenly, I had eaten the whole bowl. Even George ate a bowl full.

Then something very odd happened. Both of us were more awake than we had been in weeks. The world was clearer. We had energy, real energy! The effect lasted over 24 hours. I am really feeling a lot better and I have a few jars of this soup left.

My guides or whatever, said that the reason I became so sick with my sinus infection this time was something had torn a hole in my aura and I was leaking life force like mad. This constantly weakened me. Aside from an auric/chakra patch that I have yet to make, the soup was to stop the flow of life force from leaving me from the inside out. The patch will work on the outside, like a huge medicated bandage except it doesn't have to be placed over the hole, just on the body. It has to consist of 5 appropriately colored minerals joined together with copper wire. That is why I have been practicing my wire wrapping so religiously. The bigger the stone, the easier to wrap but the devil is in doing smaller rounder stones. Now if I could figure out to make a flexible, resin bandage like holder for the string of minerals so they could touch the skin, it would be perfect.

Try making the soup and see if it helps restore your energy levels. It sure worked on George and I, and neither of us had any idea what to expect. He just thought he was eating a weird new recipe I had concocted.   

Remote Healing

Often I get early morning messages from another side of the Universe. This morning I received instructions to create a series of symbols based on your astrological chart that could be used as a personal address for healing or energy work.. These are the ones from my chart though not in the proper order because I was a little spacey at the time. They have to be in the proper order so you have to know your time of birth and place to do this.

Then they gave me instructions on how to make a "chakra patch" to prevent your vital life energy from leaking and the patch can be used with the symbols for remote healing.
I am still working on the chakra patch as it requires some minerals and metals.
Vital life energy begins to leak when you are not leading an authentic life.

Living Authentically in the New Year

Nikola Tesla said everything is energy and so has every avatar since the beginning of time. We are energy beings and every exchange we have in this life and the next is an exchange of energy or between energies.

My single resolution is to live authentically. In that way, I will survive. At my age, many things have drained me of energy and I am intimately familiar with them. I thought I might tell you a little about them.

The book titles all tout protection against psychic attack, psychic vampires or this or that diet that is going to fix your brain fog, exhaustion, aches and pains and all else that is making your life a misery. They aren't going to fix a darned thing because although those things might be kicking around you, they are not what is wrong. If there wasn't an underlying problem, these things could not touch you. They would be quivering in the corner with their own kind.

The underlying problem is your aura, that energetic shield that protects you, is wide open and full of little holes. There are ways to reinforce that shield but have you stopped to think what might open it up and allow the creepy crawly things in?

Think for a moment about how you reinforce the energy shield. You do a guided visualization that builds a nice wall of some kind and plugs the holes or rather, covers them over. What happens every day when you try to be someone you aren't? You are building a new bubble around yourself with what you happen to know is a facade. You begin to place all your energy into building the facade and no energy into maintaining your real self. What do you think is going to happen? The outside looks great but the inside is decaying and rotting.

By living authentically, you first have to know the real you and not be afraid to be that person. Then you have to be careful to align yourself and your actions with that real self. You must remember that you have an unconscious mind that pretty much has the emotional age of a 4 year old. It sees things in black and white with no shades of gray and the moment you go against its grain, it smacks back. If you declare yourself in solidarity with working man and then show up every week in the great market that you know screws its employees so badly in salary and working conditions that they have to get food stamps to survive, your authenticity just went down the toilet. Money is not a concept your energetic self understands like you do and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that you can do without less to stay out of those places. Your energetic self sees you exchanging money energy with a place that is bad for people and thus you must be bad, too, or something is wrong and it will work on getting you away from this place.

If you proclaim every person is beautiful and has value and then hang around with people who make fun of others and devalue them, your authenticity just took a huge hit. I had a simple rule when working, I didn't participate in “bitch fests” about my employer, even when I worked for a brief time at Walmart. The thing that puts the food on my table is not the thing I am going to be complaining about. I will do my job to the best of my ability no matter how much I hate the work because it is paying me and I guarantee, I will be looking for the door to get out as fast as possible. In my dotage here, I would know not to apply for work there. But when I was there, I was the best, most authentic employee on the floor, aside from the head games I enjoyed playing with security. Then again, that is the authentic me.

The only way your energetic self has to get you out of non-authentic situations is energetic. You have heard people say they were in these situations and got really sick or had an accident and that propelled them into their authentic life. The energetic self deals in energy and getting whacked with a moving object or sick through a loss of energetic protection in an area of the body is how the authentic self will move you if the hints don't work.

What hints should you be looking out for? You have a brain. You know when you are doing things that are at odds with your authentic self. If you have been at this for a number of years, you may have lost track of your authenticity. It maybe time to ask who you are and what you are. If you are truly perplexed then here are a few signs. You are alone. People have a sense of when someone is playing a fake part and they avoid relationships with them. You usually have no idea what is wrong, but people drift in and out of your life at high speed. No matter how good a part you play, if your energy doesn't match the person you are attracting with the nice facade, is going to leave and their answer is going to be, “it just didn't feel right”. Let's hope you never attract someone as fake and lost as you are. Free floating anxiety is a beginning symptom. You don't know what is wrong but you know something is wrong. This symptom grows into full fledged panic attacks. A panic attack is your authentic self trying to escape the fake self you have built and you feel like you are dying because the authentic self is trying to get rid of the fake one. Unaccountable weight gain is the authentic self trying to build a nice buffer between itself and the facade that is rubbing it the wrong way. You are weak, sick and ache all over and the doctors can find nothing wrong and nothing helps. Trust me, if you are truly in pain, pain killers work. If they don't, I not saying you aren't in pain but the pain may have an energetic rather than a physical source. Either one hurts like the dickens, but the pain from an energetic source can't be fixed with a physical remedy because it isn't physical. That is why drugs and alcohol do not solve any of your problems.

When you no longer have a score sheet as to who owes who what, when you stay away places and things you know are not energetically good for everyone, and when you no longer need hours to get ready for the role you are about play by stepping outside, you are authentic. You stop worrying about what others think and start becoming yourself. If they like it, it is going to be wonderful. If they don't, no loss, you just didn't belong with them. Fish do not try to live on land and minnows stay away from sharks. People leaving is good because being in fake relationships is going to wear you out. Eventually, the real psychic vampire will be the fake self you have created and maintaining it will drain you of all energy, happiness and health.

Many years ago, I started on this path because of a sign in a second hand tire shop. It basically said, everyone got the same price because it was just too much work to lie and keep track of who gets what. The owner said he had better things to do that he enjoyed more. I bought tires there until he closed the store and retired.

If you aren't enjoying your life, it may be because you are spending too much time on the things you don't enjoy, like keeping up that fake persona. So next time you are tempted to make changes and lie to be part of the in-crowd, you really should be asking: the in with what crowd. When you find yourself about to hand over your money which is a result of your energetic efforts in this world, you need to ask if you agree with what the place you are in is doing to people and what it represents. All these things are exchanges of energy and if the exchange isn't equal and balanced, you are giving more than you are getting no matter how much you think your are saving. Eventually it will take its toll.

Now, I know I am psychic and I know I am more “sensitive” but that just means, I see and feel more. It isn't a bad thing or a weak thing. To put it bluntly, I am going to survive in the wild because I do see and feel more and it keeps me safe. So let me describe my last trip to the big W. I normally would go no further into the store than the garden department because rescuing the poor plants sort of balanced out the horrible company they are and anyway, I knew they were losing money on the plants I was grabbing off the bargain table. Then one night I needed a yogurt maker and they had the ONLY one. I ordered and paid for it and all I had to do was pick it up. Trust me when I say they were at their usual level of efficiency. Finally I got my paid for package and headed for the door as the garden department was now closed (remember what I said about usual level of efficiency, I started with plenty of time to escape). I got to the front of the store and felt panic sliding up my spine. I looked at the people and like Don Juan, I saw energetic blobs and I must have looked like a fresh killed steak to them. I was also out-numbered. Well, no need for the lines, I was paid up! I ran for the front carefully avoiding looking like prey until I had the realization I had no idea where the door was. I couldn't find it. The whole front of the store which at one time had windows was now solid kiosks that felt like hungry ghosts reaching out for me and I was trapped. Finally I sort of flattened against a wall and watched the flow of people. Experience said they were either headed for food or the exit. I picked the largest group and followed. Once through that door, I knew why prisoners describe their first breath of air outside the prison as being physically sweet. It was. I walked around the store to my van feeling like I had escaped death. The air was sweet and the whole world was beautiful. Let's face it, the W's parking lot is nothing to write home about but that night, it was beautiful. I have never been back. I don't care what they have, I can do without it. I am living the authentic life and I am not a fresh energetic steak for a pack of people so drained they are energetic cannibals.

Do people even notice psychics?

It's great being psychic, most of the time, but it always amazes me how people just don't notice. I had someone ask me for a bandage today, just one. She didn't notice I handed her 2 or that it turned out she actually needed two.
See, we pass among you and you never even notice.

Friday, 12/19/2015, Living the Psychic Life.

Ever wonder what the life of a psychic is really like? To start with, we don't have those earth shattering visions that Hollywood would like you believe. But that doesn't mean our life is what you would think of as normal.

Today I had a doctor's appointment. I set my alarms and got up feeling horrible. The sinus infection had me in its grips so I hit snooze. By snooze two, I started having an uneasy feeling about my appointment. Being psychic, I am going to listen to that little feeling. After about 10 minutes of convincing myself I would be able to drive and make it there in plenty of time, the nagging unease persisted. Something was wrong. I reached out to my van it was fine. The cats were fine. The nagging was getting worse, so I called the doctor's office and was assured, the doctor would NOT be in this afternoon.

Patiently I dug the card out and read it to the woman. She then had a devil of time finding my records. Finally she asked when I made the appointment and I explained it was my 3 month checkup. Oops, something was really wrong. She found my records and told me they had changed systems and my information must have dropped out.

So she made me an appointment for next week and I laid down to nap for a while and fight the good sinus infection fight. BUT, if I had not paid attention to the constant nagging, I would have dressed and dragged myself down to a closed doctor's office this afternoon.

It is simple things. Last week I went to the grocery and had an avocado in my hand. Those things are a dollar a piece and I heard something say, "Kip will be by this afternoon with one. Don't buy it." I put it back and sure enough, Kip brought me a beautiful avocado. I had no way of knowing if Kip was coming by or bringing an avocado though he has brought me avocados before. You have to listen to that internal voice.

One day I arrived at my best friend's house, who is also a psychic and walked in with a gallon of milk. She had just that moment discovered her milk had gone sour when she went to get her guest some for her coffee. She took the milk without batting an eye as this was something that happened all the time. The woman freaked out. How did I know to buy milk when she didn't even know she needed milk? I just knew. After I left the lady asked never to be invited over when I was around. At first my friend thought it was funny until she thought it over later and realized everything the woman was saying about me, applied to her. Psychics don't have that many friends once the friends start thinking things over carefully.

Listen to your intuition. It really is your friend. Sure, you will have some off the mark intuitions, Everyone does but it is more likely you misinterpreted the information. Once I got a psychic reading and the gal said she saw all these doors opening in front of me. I was elated. Finally I was getting a big break. When I opened the back door for the 12th time to take my dog out who was having bladder problems, I realized what she really saw and opportunity wasn't it.

On the other hand a dear person told me she had a horrible intuition that if she crossed a bridge she was going to be in an awful accident that would total her car and put her in the hospital. So, I asked what she did. She drove over the bridge, was in a horrible accident that totaled her car and put her in hospital. Why did you drive over that bridge, I asked. Well, she couldn't back down it. Oh yeah, a couple of people will attest to the fact that I can do just that and the honking car that whizzed around me was probably the source of the horrible crash I heard a moment later. It is amazing how quiet a car can get after that. That's the real reason they put blinkers in cars: for psychics.

Monday is what you make it.

Good Morning Smile Warriors

Give Negativity the
RASPBERRY!

It's Monday, October 28^th, 2013 and I know you don't think there is anything good about a Monday.

This probably means you hate your job. You hate getting up early to go to work. So, I wonder, have you ever wondered how you got into this. The very fact that you spend the majority of your life hating what you spend the majority of your life doing means the system is seriously wrong and you are equally wrong for putting up with it. You are just making everyone miserable so maybe while we are smiling out there, we should really think about fixing things so we are happy 24/7.

I am not going to say I have had a wonderful weekend. There are people and energies out there that simply hate anyone who raises their vibration past the commonly miserable one. Yes, I am afraid if you haven't encountered it, you will as old Mercury is Retrograde and that my friends makes what goes around, come around and slap you up side the head. I found a good article on Facebook about how people who work to raise their vibration and push out of the mundane box often find themselves attacked for no obvious reason. It then went on to discuss the reasons people would attack you. It boils down to jealousy. They know deep down they want to be happy. They want to feel good and when they see someone who empowers themselves, who is happy and who is living not the high life but the good life, they have to take them down a notch or two and make them as miserable as they are. They refuse to admit they are the ones who have failed themselves. They have to show them the error of living their life the way they want to live it because after all my friends, it is Monday. You should be miserable. No, there is no reason you should be smiling at them and it will totally destroy them and their little black cloud of despair. Our job is to lift them out of the mundane for a moment or two, not join them there. Always remember that.

As to me, well as I said I know some very sorry, pitiful, miserable people who thought for some reason that if they could imitate, steal my life or just stay around me, their lives would be wonderful. For some there was the shock that I actually worked. When you have a store as I used to have, you have to keep regular hours and can't just take off for shopping in the middle of the afternoon. You have to keep your appointments and if you work for someone, you have to show up. Yup, that really shocked a few people. If money grows on trees, I haven't found the right botanical species, yet. For some reason, the power company, phone company and all the rest refuse to take good vibes as payment for their products. There are a lot of people who think I should take good vibes as payment for my services. Well, good vibes are nice but they don't keep a roof over your head or get you dinner.

Others were shocked that I have my bad moods and bad days. Just being around me didn't solve a single one of their problems. They simply didn't understand that life is a DIY. No one can make you happy. We, Smile Warriors, can give you a lift, but you have keep yourself up there. We just provide the example and the incentive by showing what kind is like and how it feels. I just met a whole bunch of Smile Warriors due to efforts of a few of these little black holes of doom and gloom.

Huh, you say. Well, it works like this. Ruin the holidays and my usual work/income for the really fun holiday of the year and I will be reduced to miserable. Now this is how it really worked out for me. I wasn't doing the usual Witches' Ball this year because we are working on remodeling and I am having a lot of dental work done. So the little 'cause problems at home spell' hit our well and we had no water on the night of the Ball which we weren't going to anyway so no one needed a shower. Thus, I just booked a couple of nights at my favorite hotel where I get high speed internet, cool a/c and a wonderful free breakfast George doesn't have to cook and I don't need to wash up after. If the black holes of negativity hadn't worked so hard to ruin things, I would not have slept on a wonderful bed with light fluffy pillows and no cats to share it with, but please don't tell them. I wouldn't have met a bunch of Smile Warriors whose job is to lift your mood and get you out the door with a smile on your face. Yes, hotels pay people to be Smile Warriors but don't get your hopes up because this little group of us isn't paying, yet. Oh, and I am enjoying a really good cup of coffee I didn't have to make, either. I have gathered a bunch of cups and plastic glasses that will become plant pots when I get home. Freebie recycles are always a plus.

Now, everyone stick your tongues out at the negativity and give it a big old raspberry. Oh, and AARP saved me money on the room! I think I'll just chuckle for a while. You can't defeat us. We have learned the secret of happy and everything you do will just transform into happy. We needed to work on the well set up anyway and the weather is perfect. Oh, let me put a cherry on this sundae. While getting the supplies to fix the well, we found a good pump on sale at a great price so now we have an extra if the one at the shop or house kicks the bucket....okay...that was a bit of a pun, but I think I'm allowed.

To recap, you have a choice. You can be a black hole of need and all the crap in the Universe will rain into your hole upon your head or you can be Smile Warrior and instead of crap, good things fall on your head no matter how negative they start out. Yes my friends, life is good. Let's go forth and make it a little better for the rest of the world. As to me, I am smiling and joking with the paid Smile Warriors here at the hotel and getting ready to try a little Facebook and Farmville before going home to work..and I know I'll have a nice clean room, free coffee and some food we scrounged from the breakfast room. No one is really here on Monday, anyway....no point in letting a good chocolate muffin go to waste....I forgot something. On the way back from Lowes, we stopped to get some filtered water and I ran into Western Meats for some of the GREAT orange juice you find in the veggie department. On the way out, I detoured to the bakery and they had their famous pumpkin cupcakes. I really, really want that recipe because it is the best pumpkin cupcake I have tasted and I have tasted a few hundred in my life. They only make them during October and November. I have savored them all night. Another thing that wouldn't have happened without the little black hole of gloom and doom.

Remember when I bought the huge pumpkins at Target for under 4.00. Well, I went with baking one at 250 degrees F for around 20 minutes after I cleaned the biggest seeds I've ever seen in a pumpkin out of them. After it cooled, I just peeled the outside off and threw the contents in a huge bowl. I could hear my aunt telling me I would have to strain all the strings out and it was loaded with strings. Well, George bought me an Oster food processor for my birthday and I figured, get it out and try it out. Let me tell you, that double blade is sharp! Well, I started dropping pumpkin into it on low and next thing I knew I had two bowls of puree and not a string in sight. That is one mean mother of a food processor. I got over a half gallon of pumpkin out of old warty as it was known. I was licking my fingers because that was one good pumpkin. I froze most of it and have enough left for a pie in the fridge. Now I need to bake Smoothie and Sugar Baby and repeat the process. I do believe I have enough pumpkin for the entire season and who knows...they may reduce them after Halloween. I then cleaned up. Cleaning up these heavy duty appliances requires both us as we are getting up there in years and they are darned heavy. I could just hear aunt Rita saying to gently dry and buff that baby. If she had lived long enough to see these appliances do everything she did by hand for hours in just moments, she would have been ecstatic. I bet she is trying to reincarnate right this moment. Wait until she visits and sees the quilting/embroidering/ sewing machine I got cheap! She will be hanging around for a while and watching. It sure beats the old treadle machine I used to sit on the floor and work the treadle on when she got tired.

Now get out there and smile. Look forward and not backwards. Things really weren't that great in the past. I lived there. Today is really much, much better. SMILE!

Smiling on Thursday

Good Morning Smile Warriors

It's been a few days but it's Thursday, October 24^th, 2013

My dentist and hygienist are very gentle women but I still leave the office or when the pain killers wear off, feeling like I have been beat. I am not certain. Maybe when I'm not looking they sock me one. Whatever, the dentist takes everything out of me. So, I have been resting from my cleaning. I don't know if I made the right decision or not but I decided to go with more frequent cleanings verses a really heavy once a year cleaning since my mouth is in a delicate condition. Some time next month, I get another cap put on but it will all be done in one morning. I will leave with the permanent cap instead of multiple visits with temps and the dreaded string separating the gum from the tooth. That hurts like Hades. I will probably be out of it for a week. As you get older, the ugly truth is it takes more and more out of you with every medical procedure. You simply stop bouncing back and go splat.

Many years ago I ascribed to a philosophy that seems to have died. It states simply that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. So many people just do what they need to get by which amounts to a half arsed something as a result which they then need to fix multiple times. I'm lazy. Do it right once. I also subscribe to random acts of beauty. Without art, the world is just plain, boring and without life. Thus, though I make no pretense to be an artist, I randomly decorate anything that doesn't have life. I buy these watering things in a bag. They are beyond plain but they allow the water to seep out too quickly but all the way to the roots of the plant. This is better than watering from the top and watching the water run off your pot with half that expensive potting mix. I will tell you right off that if the potting soil is not moist, the water just seeps out the bottom of the pot through more than one opening but at least the soil doesn't go with it. As I said, they are really plain but no more. You can see from the pictures that a tube of silicone glue and a bag of rock chips from Lowes plus a bunch of glass thingies from the dollar store and viola, plain no more! Even the watering bottle that fits into them, was not immune on my house African violet. I think I'll leave the outside bottles plain. Well, maybe...you know me and glue and shiny stuff. I just can't help myself. It's a sickness.

The point is, you can't make a mistake. The rocks are just randomly glued on based more on the size than color. I grab the glass things out randomly and just glue. I keep doing this to pots and whatnot and the universe becomes a more decorative place. I even think the lizards like it. I know the raccoons often steal my sun/energy catchers. They like bright shiny things, too. Somewhere there is a burrow decorated with bright shiny things and some day some park ranger will find it and go WTF?!? I'll never rat them out. I mean, they do have little hands. They could be making jewelry. You never know.

 So, next time you are sitting in front of the TV, get out the glue and shiny things and make the world a more decorative place. Commit random acts of art. The world will thank you for it. I'll thank you in advance for it.

Monday, Monday, I make a new convert

Monday, Monday, October 14, 2013

I'm teaching them small.....

Yummy, that mouse was good.

I had to make a trip to Target before my 5.00 off 30.00 of food coupon expired. I only had a couple of days left and 5 bucks is 5 bucks. Pumpkins were 4.00 so I brought two home. No, there will be no jack-o-lanterns to come by and see but you might see a slice of pumpkin pie. I can always draw a face on it with whipped cream. Anyway, everyone was in their usual dragging mood. I was smiling as I had a coupon and nothing makes a senior citizen happier than a coupon off food...well, maybe a coupon off drugs but October gets you double credit in the Pharmacy toward your 5% off every day. I think I scored that day tonight.

At the end of my shopping trip after discovering my 5.00 prescription was now 5.44, I was having a little trouble getting the corners of my mouth to go up. Then I passed a little boy being drug by his parental unit and he gave me a huge smile and said, “Have a nice day!” Well, I returned that smile and told him to have a GREAT day! His parental unit was startled anyone actually responded to him and I had recruited another little Smile Warrior. I will win this frown war. I will spread smiles.

By the time we got home, I discovered something I had felt when I made the bread dough. The yeast was dead and though the sourdough did its best. It did not succeed in raising the bread. So George asked if we should put more yeast in and try again. I told him that when your bread dough doesn't rise you have PIZZA! Let the salivating begin as I fix a pizza and a garlic loaf from scratch. George is in the kitchen chanting over the yeast. Sadly, I don't think he is trying to resurrect it. I think he is trying to kill it. That pizza was delicious.

I have one tiny sweet pumpkin. You may not know this, but the little pumpkins are called sugar pumpkins and are best for pie though looking at it, you might need two or three and they cost as much as a big pumpkin. I bought one for the seeds. By spring, I will have many sugar pumpkins. I bought two big ones. One is known as “Old Warty” as it is warty and the other one is smooth. You don't pick them for hollowness as you want the meat. You get the heaviest and most solid ones. Gads, we barely got them into the van they were so heavy. Tomorrow it's scoop and bake time followed by puree and can and freeze some plus pie. Then I learn how to roast pumpkin seeds and plant the rest. If you get a good veggie, you multiply it.

I bought a bunch of the dollar plastic pumpkins to use as pots on the fence. After Halloween, I just turn them around and they become harvest pumpkin pots. In my world, everything needs two uses or more. You have to remember, we really don't have winter in South Florida and this is our prime growing season or it will be when the temperatures get out of the feels like 90 to 100F. Right now even the tomatoes and peppers are refusing to bloom, claiming it is too hot. Guess I have to sow another generation of them as these are dead on their roots.

So my Smile Warriors, Monday may be tough but you will be back in the groove by Tuesday. Get out there and make some converts. Just because the world is collapsing is no reason not to be happy. There is nothing you can do about it, so smile and be happy. Remember, an unhappy day is a day wasted you are never getting back. AND....the best revenge is living well. I have a stomach full of pizza, a garlic loaf in the oven and am looking forward to playing a little Farmville before bed. I'm all smiles and if Trouble's picture didn't make you smile, nothing ever will.

Life's not Fair on Sunday, October 13, 2013

Life is Not Fair!

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Life's not fair is wail I hear all the time to justify people being harmed. Everyone totally hates it

when I ask why is life not fair. You are supposed to just accept that statement, suck it up and continue on and I ask why. You aren't supposed to think and above all else: question. Life is not fair because someone made it that way.

You know what, before Elizabeth Warren asked why banks could borrow money at a rate close to eight times less than the old student loans when students getting out of college fuel our economy and banks get bailed out for bad decisions, no one questioned the student loan system. No one bothered to look at most other countries where students not only get a free education but a stipend to live on. Yup, they just said, “Life's not fair.”

I remember when going for my masters, I decided to take on two jobs in the department to make extra money. After all, I was paying for my education by my self and working a full time job plus working for my professor. The administration promptly lowered my salary from my professor so I was now working two jobs at the University for the same amount of money I was making from one the semester before. When I promptly suggested they f' off, the next semester and I didn't need to work any job there, they raised the amount I made working for my professor back to the level of working for two professors the semester before. Life's not fair. The Hell with that, someone in the administration rigged the system so you could only make so much money no matter how hard you worked.

Someone rigged the system so students get screwed on loans. Did you know if your parents have good credit and can afford to pay the bills off in a reasonable amount of time, it may be cheaper to put your college on their credit card than take out a loan. It is almost always cheaper to take out a second mortgage on your house. AND here is the real rigging. You can discharge both those debts with bankruptcy but not a student loan. Life is not fair because someone is making it unfair not because some guy in sky decreed it should be that way, unless he is working for the guys down here rigging the system. Or maybe the guys down here created the guy in sky decreeing life wasn't fair so you wouldn't look at them as the reason.

So my Smile Warriors, your job this week is to make life fairer for someone. If you see someone struggling, help them. A load shared is a load halved. See, you do use math in normal life. It is simple. Last month, George saw a guy with a couple of kids looking at a compressor. He clearly couldn't afford the retail price. George walked out to the van and got his bag of coupons and gave him a 20.00 off the compressor coupon so he could buy it. You don't buy a compressor for fun. You need it to work. Making life more fair for someone is as simple as that. It really is alright to help strangers. It really is alright to talk to strangers.

I know, you just had a scream well up...you can't talk to strangers! Everyone knows that. Really, why? You don't get in the car with them. You don't go home with them. You don't allow them to touch you, but then again you keep your distance from friends, too. Why can't you talk to them? Talk is cheap. Talk brightens everyone's day. A load shared is a load halved. If you were to actually pull out the statistics, more children by a HUGE amount are molested, kidnapped and harmed by family members and their friends than by random strangers. It is actually safer among strangers than with your circle of acquaintances, friends and family members. You don't talk to strangers because that way you stay isolated, afraid to ask for or receive help and guess what, when something happens that could easily have been averted by the help of another human being, life is just not fair.

Are you beginning to see the brainwashing that keeps you hurt, alone and afraid all the time? My Smile Warriors, you are brave, strong and able to go where others are afraid to tread. You are not afraid of your fellow human beings. Good people just need a little encouragement to be better people. Guess what? Bad people just need the right circumstances to be bad and those circumstances are the same ones every predator looks for; prey that is alone, afraid and weakened.

Think about it. There plenty of wildebeest on the African plain. There are also plenty of lions looking for a nice wildebeest dinner. A lion is the perfect predator. So why hasn't the lion eaten all the wildebeests? Because the wildebeests not only stick together and though singularly can't fight a lion, together they can be a formidable enemy and they make friends with the elephant that can fight a lion. No wildebeest has ever been afraid of another wildebeest or afraid to scream for help with the lion. Any wildebeest hurting another wildebeest is quickly facing the whole herd and a few minutes while thinking about his transgression, the lion.

Folks, we are the wildebeests and we have to stop being afraid of each other and the elephants in the room and figure out who the lions are and take measures to be safe, together.

Now there are some things that just aren't fair. I have not managed to plug any cord into an outlet the first time since some idiot decreed there should be polarized plugs. You know, one side of the prongs is bigger than the other side and one side of the outlet is bigger than the other one. I was decrying the fact that with 50/50 odds, once in a while I should win when I realized the odds were a bit more skewed....more like 33% odds of getting it right. Huh? Do the math. If you got the plug lined up, the outlet may be out of line. I swear they make the cords so the way you grab them is naturally twisted in the opposite direction from the outlet. Otherwise, I couldn't always be wrong. When was the last time you managed to stick your USB in right the first time? Next to never? Someone is rigging the game here and I don't know how but I swear I will find out before I die.

 And that my Smile Warriors is my job for the rest of my life.

Even life can disrupt the intrepid blogger.....

Some days life gets in the way.

Friday, Oct. 11, 2013

I had plans for yesterday and then I had to have my cap put on......

Things really were going great. I got up early though I had very little sleep. I got the business and personal banking done. Then we headed for the dentist to replace my cap that popped off. We were 40 minutes early but they managed to take me in early even though I was enjoying a magazine and would have been comfy for an hour or more in their waiting room. Hey, free coffee and tea is a senior's morning dream come true plus free ac and a place to sit. I was happy.

I had forgotten that to glue a cap on your tooth, they have to take a cord and wrap it around the tooth so there is room between the gum and tooth to slip the cap down. That cord is nasty. That cord really, really hurts but my strategy is to first ask to be numbed (mother didn't raise dumb kids) and then remember what it felt like to have a needle of Novocaine stuck in the end of my nose. That last piece makes getting your arm chopped off with no anesthesia seem like a walk in the park. Finally, the cap was on and ready to chew but I was nicely numb making it hard to drink anything so let's just forget chewing.

After making my appointment for the next cap which will be done from start to finish in one morning – I love them – and a cleaning we were off to Harbor Freight. I did notice they make the next appointments and take the deposit while you are numb. Half way through Harbor Freight when the numbness wore off and I would have let George buy anything to get back in the Van. YEEEE....OUCH. I was so thankful I had a prescription for pain medication. A drink of really ice water as most of it was still frozen had me actually thinking I was going to make it to Bedner's and beyond.

About 2 minutes into Bedner's the frozen wore off and I bought a frozen banana. They have the best frozen bananas (I went for chocolate/coconut covered), orange juice and everything else. Who am I kidding? You can't go wrong at Bedner's. I also got some organic teas, key lime juice with no insecticides and bottled (you know a pie is coming up), squash and 3 gorgeous tomatoes plus a loaf of their fresh olive bread. Their walnut raisin bread is to die for, too. The banana numbed my jaw, again.

Half way home, the banana stopped working because I finished it in the parking lot and I went back to frozen water which would work for a few minutes. By the time I got to the neighborhood, I was almost seeing double and the pain was off the scale. Off the scale in my world is probably you passed out 20 minutes ago in your world because I have one heck of a pain tolerance. I zipped into the house and grabbed one of my left over pain pills and hoped for instant effect.

Instant effect doesn't happen with pills but when it did decide to lower the level of pain I was over joyed. I will take what I can get. A few hours later, I discovered I not only had not gotten knocked out probably because my jaw was still hurting, but I was zipping around doing all sorts of work. A couple of hours later I noticed I had surpassed what I normally can do in a week and sat down to ponder this development. There was a ripple in the Force! Was I in an alternative reality? Twilight Zone music please play. Then it hit me. The Pain Pill had knocked out all my other pain leaving just the jaw which I can deal with on a good day.

Good Goddess, this is what my life would be like without inflammation from environmental poisons and Fibromyalgia which may be due to a lifetime of eating poisons from big business. I really, really want to beat the heads of some corporations to death very slowly and painfully for what they have done to you and me, because I do NOT want to spend the rest of my life on drugs that have probably been designed to kill me and you because of what they fed us to make an obscene profit for themselves. I really want to hurt them. I am really angry

Then I see your children struggling down the street. I was a pain management specialist when I could work an 8 hour day. I know pain when I see it. You can't fool me. I know the posture, the breathing and expression on your face as the lines are etched there for your old age. I know these kids do not feel good. I see the background pain on their faces as they pause at the corner more to rest than wait for the red light. Heck, when I was a kid, we would have grabbed the books and ran it. We couldn't wait to get home and drop those books and RUN outside and PLAY. Your kids can't wait to drop in front of the computer. It's not because they are LAZY. Kids want to run, jump and play. If they are sitting there, they don't feel like it.

Get a dose of speed and see if you can sit still and play a video game. Nope...have to move. Kids are like adults on speed. They have to move. Their muscles demand it so they can stretch and grow. It is a biological imperative. Birds even move while in the egg. Babies don't kick in the womb because of any cognitive reasoning. They kick so their arms and legs stretch and grow and develop muscle tone so they will survive after birth. Next time you get a groan from your kid when you want them to do something, instead of screaming at them, sit down and find out if why they don't want to get up is stubbornness or pain. It may take a while, because if they are younger, pain may be the only thing they have ever known.

Are you angry yet?

Wednesday is Senior Pill Day

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

It's Senior Pill Day

Napoleon

Ah my young Smile Warriors, you are asking who Sr. Pill is. If you are not so young you want to know what pharmacy has a discount on pills. If you have joined the 'I don't have insurance or even do but have you seen the real price of drugs' group, you know exactly what I am talking about. It's the day you (a) run out or (b) your hands are steady enough to use the pill cutter. When you grow old and poor, you learn to have the doctor, depending on the size of the pill, order it in a double dose or a quadruple dose, so you use the pill cutter, and ingenious devise with a razor blade in it, to chop your pills into halves or quarters. It is sort like a guillotine for pills. In my case, the pill is too small to quarter and they are making it harder and harder to cut. At first, you could break them in your fingers with no trouble. Then they required the pill cutter. Now they require the pill cutter and a really good eye and alignment. Then again, they went from 60.00 to 250.00 and each step of the way, more difficult to cut. Do you really think that is a coincidence?

The cats are aware I am really angry at them and walking around on satin paws. Trouble, who may have been the instigator but I am certain it was Ningee, is laying on the bed claiming true forgiveness can only be achieved if he is allowed to sleep on the bed with me and live. They started bouncing this morning at about 40 MPH from one side of the room to the other with me in the middle as the main bounce point. We are talking four, ten to twenty pound cats bouncing on your body at high speed. I am black and blue but nothing is broken. When I finally got them to the door as they were not going out willingly, I was ready to wring little furry necks. Not even the Treats would calm them down. I think it actually made them worse. Now we are in forgiveness phase and can we please have our afternoon cocktail of chicken flavored treats, please. Since even my child, Napoleon was involved, I guess I will have to forgive them.

Tomorrow, I have my dental appointment so today I tried a bit of makeup so I wouldn't look quite so washed out. I think it came out well. At least I have eyebrows today. I finally remembered to put the expensive eye drops into my eyes before the makeup and I seem to be tolerating the makeup well. Without the eye drops, I can barely see a couple of hours after I apply anything to my eye area. With age, the dry eye happens and then the red eye. That is followed by the 'oh crap I can't see anything' eye.

I am wondering if anyone besides me has this problem. I have never been able to apply any foundation without it caking. I mean since my first try as a teen, it hits my skin and instantly cakes. Nothing works. I have tried moisturizers and even my coconut oil: instant cake. I have searched the net and apparently it occasionally happens to a couple of people but my condition is constant. Anyone have any ideas?

If you haven't already, smile. It takes less muscles than a frown and when you get to my age, smile lines are much more attractive than frown lines.

Wigs, Teeth, and the Cat in the Sink on Oct. 8, 2013

Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013

Of Teeth. Wigs and Getting Old

Ninja

Did they all have to happen at once? This I ask of myself. Seems I bit down last night, on the opposite side, and my cap went flying across my mouth. I managed to save it and not swallow it but the best appointment George could get was for Thursday. Meanwhile, I am more in annoyance than pain and my gun is swollen. I don't think I will be talking much until it is replaced. Unfortunately the other side is missing a tooth from my infection experience and it is the major molar used for chewing on that side. Guess we are eating soft food for a few days.

As to wigs, some times I think the cats are out to get me. They dropped a box of wigs on me. I decided since I am preparing for an office “I lost weight” sale of clothes and whatnot’s, I might as well sort the wigs out. I had ordered quite a few to wear out just before good old cancer struck. They came in and I was confined to bed for six months. So by the time I managed to get into them and everything else, it was too late to return them. Then a few years passed, I tripped over my sixties, became frightened of hair dye and lost most of my hair. The result is I do not have anything to fasten the hair pieces to and anyway, I look ridiculous with long flowing red curls at my age and can't really wear anything that exposes the scars on my forehead. So far, two pieces have made their way into the sell bag, both never worn. I hate to sell my Rachael Welsh wig even though it is long as it really still looks good on me if you don't look closely. I know I have another box of hair pieces to sort, but there is just so much depression one can take in a day.

I should be really happy about the clothes. Much to my shock I discovered I wear a 16 now. I discovered this after waiting patiently like a large cat in front of mouse hole for a pair of cargo shorts to go on sale. They are lovely and finally the 18 went on sale...was the only size left...and I snapped it up. It will fit as soon as I extricate the sewing machine from the shop. I am not giving up a pair of shorts in my favorite color I have stalked for six months and finally captured. At least I managed some sweaters that will be too big but comfy to wear cheaply as last year I almost froze to death and a 2x is going to fall off of me. More things into the sale box. Now I am stalking a nightgown and some blankets. Hey, it's the only exercise I get! It got hot right after I bought the sweaters last year, so they got maybe two short wearings at most. Since I bought the sweaters early this year, we may have the no winter at all. That is the way my luck works.

Go forth Smile Warriors and tell some old lady how great she looks. We need the compliments at our age even though we know you are lying. Smiles are golden. Frowns shorten your life. You can't take it with you. I think the Egyptian Pharaohs proved that but the rich keep trying. Since you know the truth, be happy here and now.

Remember the story about the cups and saucers and cats in sinks. Well, I caught one of them in the sink and photographed her. Here is Ninja, Ningee's sister, doing whatever strange things cats do in my kitchen sink when no one is around. I haven't a clue. She looked so guilty when caught that it must be some evil. The night before it was her and Rusty. Now, we often find Trouble in the sink but that is just because he knows he looks good with stainless steel, black and white and wants to preen. Please forgive the counter, it needs, after 50 years, to be replaced....sort of like me.

I am noticing there is always a cat at my side. All night I get up and the cat goes out with me. I come back and a new cat comes in and takes their place. It alternates between Napoleon, Ningee and Purdy von Sweets. At the moment Purdy is taking this shift on my right. I think they are afraid I will die on them or worse, eat all the cat treats or nip.

I have found a new source of energy. Yes, I have something that will wake you up and get you going. It is a little square of raw cacao powder, dates, sunflower seeds, raisins, apricots, sesame seeds, shredded coconut, goji powder and may have rice flour. One square and you are awake. Everything in it is raw and organic and you can get them from www.nuts.com. They are called Organic raw cacao Gogi energy squares. Leave a few bags for me and don't take one at night. You will be bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Monday 10/07/13 Raccoon and Cat Stuff...no humans allowed.

Good Morning Smile Warriors It's Monday, October 7, 2013

Okay, I'm cheating.

It's really 11:46 on Sunday night but I was afraid I wouldn't be up early enough to greet you and I know how bad a Monday can be. I used to work in retail....

So, how about I give you a few smiles from yesterday.

This is the other twin, I think

George and I were preparing for the trek to BJ's for milk. As is our custom borne of lots of broken dishes, we gather all the cups and saucers up and head for the sink. Otherwise, the cats have a tantrum and we sweep up broken glass when we get home. So single file we are limping into the kitchen where I know the small side of the sink is clean and empty. Well, that was the plan. It's seems in our absence, the Furry 7 had taken up residence in the sink. There sat two of them. We did not ask why as obviously they were doing cat stuff. We just put our dishes in the cat dish side of the sink and left. Discretion is the better part of valor.

We returned home from BJ's and George, though he has been warned a hundred times, left the box of groceries outside the gate. Fortunately, I am slower but I was behind him. By the time I got to the gate, one of our twin raccoons had found the box. The only thing that saved us was instead of acting like a wild animal, grabbing things and running, it was picking through the box to see what it wanted. I live in a very strange world.

So go forth my Smile Warriors and spread some cheer on this Monday and be thankful you do not have strange cats and raccoons because I could box them up and ship them to you. Remember, a compliment a day makes someone's day and you are the BEST!

A Lazy October 6, 2013 Sunday: invasion of the raccoon twins.

Welcome to a Lazy Sunday, October 6, 2013.

Go forth Smile Warriors and find someone to smile at. Throw compliments instead of barbs and never, ever let anyone tell you that the work you preform isn't worth everything to everyone.

Have you ever wondered where the idea that one person's work is worth more than another person's work came from? Believe it or not, in more “primitive” societies, all work is valued equally. Tilling the earth is right up there with sewing clothing and making blankets, harvesting and drying food and the shaman who heals you. They are all equal.

So, let me give you a little history lesson. Inequality came when someone decided they should have more because they were descended from God. Yes, it's called divine right. That also gave them the right to rule over the Shaman who became nothing more than the bankers for God and, as usual, his representative on earth. Some people think the Shaman appointed the kings, but kingship has ruled via bloodlines from the beginning.

The next few steps were easy. The king owned the property. The king by divine right of blood ruled and women were instantly devalued. Only a man could rule. The occupation of ruling became more important and of more value than any other and hence even though the king was often an idiot who did nothing but wave, hunt and make laws, he got all the money and power. The more money and power he got, the more he needed people to make sure he got more and kept it. Bureaucracy was born and government. To keep himself in power you now had to deal and blame the people under him. Hatred of government employees was created to deflect the blame for things off of him and the Shaman, neither of which actually had to do anything at all but enjoy the spoils of economic warfare.

Eventually you run out of things to plunder in your own area, so they invented the merchant class. These were men (only men) that were allowed to leave the land of their King and travel to bring new things home. At first it was peaceful until the things they wanted belonged to people who didn't need anything they had for trade.

That was when war was created. Since the kings and shaman and merchants were so small in number, they had to invoke God to get the peasants to go kill their fellow peasants on the next estate and bring home the loot for their God represented by the King and Shaman. The old “gee, go kill him, risk your life and limb and bring me the spoils” did work well and thus evil was invented and by the way, you, the peasant who are miserable, hungry and sick will get your reward in a better Kingdom after you die and get to sit at God's feet and serve him.

Me think they were setting up a place for themselves to be served in a possible after life with that one.

Has it occurred to you that all of this could have been averted if when the first guy said he was descended from God, everyone just smiled and patted him on the back and said, “Sure.” Then went back to what they were doing?

Now you see my strategy. Reverse the whole system. Revalue you and everyone else with a simple smile and a compliment! Take back your world one little smile at a time. You may just find as I did at 5 AM, the cats are really running things anyway.

I was being pummeled and otherwise abused by cat bodies. There were trills and out right screams. Finally I became conscious enough to get the door open and all the little demons out of the room. As I fell onto my bed and laid my aching head on my pillow I found myself eye ball to eye ball with an empty Temptations package. Ningee had been trying to communicate she need her treats, through sign language and since all she was getting were snores and snarls, she enlisted the rest of the Furry Family to get me conscious enough to give the treats. It didn't work out the way she planned.

Oh well little Ningee, if you are going to advance to the level of sign language you might as well know that best laid plans of Druids, cats, mice and men often go astray. Let sleeping humans be.

In the Fall, mother raccoons begin to deposit their now teenage babies into new territories and return to their lairs. It appears I am the recipient of twins. They do not seem to have a clue how to find food as they have dug my garden up for worms and attacked a package of nuts eating a whole bag of peanuts in one sitting, an entire pound. To make matters worse, they follow me. I have thrown everything on my potting bench at them. Squirted them and used foul raccoon language. They simply sit until my tantrum is over and then beg some more. Yes, I have hit them. My aim with a flower pot is pretty darned good. Where ever Mother Raccoon came from, someone fed her and now the twins think the new human is supposed to feed them and the new human has other ideas. I will probably cave at some point as every thing knows I am an old softy but I am not taming them. They are wild and should live their lives free. However, I don't think I can instill a fear of humans in them. Poor babies just aren't that smart. She may have been. I have fruit trees.

As was pointed out last night, if I managed to have my dream of a farm I wouldn't need to get any animals. By the end of the week, they would have found me and moved in with me. At least we don't have bears.

The Heist on Saturday, October 5, 2013

Old Age and Cunning on a Saturday Afternoon

Welcome, Smile Warriors to another Saturday, October 5, 2013 in Cat World.

Ningee

I have totally overslept and Ningee let me. That is a first as Ninsee is an early riser and needs her treats. It is an upside down day, like most, in my household. The dishes aren't washed. The water is barely drunk and I am sloshing back coffee like it is the thing that runs me. Not only that, but there is a strange black cat on my lap and Ningee, who normally occupies that position is having a bath where the computer spends the night and Napoleon has decided to get a head start on his weekend by dispersing cat hair on my clean pillow slips. I shall have to wash them later. My right eye instead of my left is hurting and I am weighing how much my ENT costs and whether he can do anything.

You see, I have no insurance which means I have to pay in cash. It is true I can get 1% back via the credit card I use and in a medical office, that becomes a nice chunk of change quickly.

Oh dear I just noticed Purdy von Sweets, poised on a stack of boxes, nose in the air, scenting the location of my coffee cup. I must get that monkey off her back without giving up my coffee...She has it....here she comes. Ooops, her ass tripped over my foot and landed in the floor. Ah, little one, you may be old but you are nowhere as old as Mommy, nor as cunning.

Anyway, I was admiring my latest accidental fashion find when I noticed the left side of my nose was swollen worse than prizefighter's after a bad bout of mat hitting. The right side was trying to catch up and that means a sinus infection is the cause of my headaches. It is Fall in South Florida and everything is blooming. With all the rain, that includes a very healthy mold population, our main uncash crop.

I tried rather valiantly to get on the government site to register for insurance but I am in Florida and the highly unpopular according to our Tea Pot of a governor site was overwhelmed with uninsured Floridians trying to get insurance. It seems mine was not a unique story among those living in states governed by idiots thinking they are in the dark ages and wanting the rest of us to join them. No Thank You! I lived in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and what is considered the 2000's. I never thought I would see this year. I didn't think I'd survive this long. I was born in 1951 so I got to see all of the 50's and all of the country as we traveled constantly from state to state and finally out of the country. I do not want to go back to any era as none of them were moral, prosperous for all or had internet. Those typewriters in the museum are what I wrote my papers on and corrected mistakes with that horrible little bottle of white paint. You may go back Mr. and Mrs. Senator but not me. In fact, I'll give you swift kick in your lower posterior to start the process.

It is highly possible my little Ningee awoke this morning to creeping age as it happens fast to cats. They go from sweet kitten to gangly rebellious teen in a the blink of an eye. One morning you find them on the kitchen counter demanding breakfast in the proper bowl and they are adults and fashion conscious. Next thing you know, the are middle age, enjoying however their food arrives as long as it arrives. That is where today's story actually begins.

Prescious has had another stroke, we think. We think because like all cats, he gets ill on Friday right as the Vet closes. He hates the Vet as in his world nothing good has ever come of a carrier and a vehicle and I have to admit, he, from his limited perspective, is right. He was found abandoned trying to climb onto the median strip of a busy highway. He lost his first human and home twice, driven away in a carrier. He had two ear operations, both involving a car and carrier. You wouldn't want to get in a car or carrier either! That evil man called the Vet sticks needles in him every time he sees him. Prescious is not interested in going to that place. I am not interested in taking him as at 30 +, the diagnosis is let us put him out of his misery.

The thing is, he isn't miserable. True, once again, he can't walk but he has two humans changing his bed and washing him up and feeding him. That is where today's story really begins. As soon as I entered the kitchen, being at least 3 hours late, there was a howl of epic proportions. A recording of that howl would fetch a good price for a Halloween tape. Breakfast was late. I couldn't get my fingers around the can of expensive sardines he favors so I had to go for “commercial cat food”. Yes, cats were looking down their noses at that, but they'll take it.

I was looking down my budget. I fished out his quarter of a can as he eats small amounts frequently. Frequently is defined as whenever a human walks into the kitchen. I placed the rest of the can on the mobile counter and covered it with a plastic cat dish. Then I busied myself making coffee as this day, I needed it to get going. Finally I got everything set up to write and faintly remembered the cat food I had forgotten to secure. I really wasn't worried as the Furry 7, who represent youthful exuberance, had already examined the upturned bowl and decided there was no way to lift it. There isn't without a hand with an opposing thumb. So I leisurely, the only way you move at my age unless something bad is chasing you, made my way back to the kitchen.

At my age, you always fear the dreaded senility. I am no exception. The can was not only missing, but one of the old cats was enjoying a bowl full of cat food in the middle of the floor as though I had dished it up for her. Now, George was still asleep. I am the only person here and try as I may I cannot remember dishing her a can of cat food in the nice little plastic bowl, but I must have because the can is missing and there is nary a gram of cat food on the floor. Senility is knocking on my pate until I notice the can peeking out from under the mobile center island. She has managed to knock the can and covering bowl off perfectly so it landed right side up on the floor. Then she fished the can out, hid it and began to enjoy the spoils of her raid as the Furry 7 watched from various locations in awe. They did not even try to take her breakfast from her. Once again old age and cunning beats youthful exuberance.

As you know this shopping witch has an infected ear hole from some slight only my earlobe remembers. I found my little pair of cameos I save for special occasions, but the posts are bent and I always fear losing them if I wear them casually around the house. They are really worth a pretty penny in today's market as they are the real, hand carved, not the laser, thing. We decided to find me a pair of earrings at BJ's with gold posts as for some reason when I am healing, silver irritates the wound. Only gold will do. Meanwhile, the week before, I had bought a fake pearl chain holder for my glasses as if they are not secured around my neck they somehow commit suicide under my feet. Pearl is never my choice and I had bought three other beaded holders. Napoleon has a habit of flossing on them and breaking them. My baby has sharp teeth. My decision was to buy the cheapest pair of post earrings no matter what they were. They were a nice pair of fresh water pearl studs. They go so nicely with the pearl eyeglasses holder I bought last week. You wouldn't know one was fake and the other real unless you can see a difference of about .09% in the refractive difference between plastic and real pearl. I can, but I don't let it bother me. The fact that I can bothers a lot of people.

With the help of the cats, I emerge on Friday, Oct, 4, 2013

Good Morning Smile Warriors and welcome to Friday, Day of  Freya, October 4, 2013.

Are you ready to spread smiles?

Don't know who to credit but this might
speed my morning routine up!

Each of us begins our day in a different way. When I was young I used to awaken without an hour of yawns. I know, I was strange. Most of you awaken and stumble to the coffee pot where your elixir of life awaits you. It is sitting there all hot and ready to wind its way down to your tummy and into your blood stream where with luck, it will manage to awaken you brain enough to allow you to get dressed.

I answer to a high power. In fact, the high power wakes me up. Their names are Napoleon and Ningee.

Napoleon is at a cat age that he likes to sleep in a bit. Then he wants to do the cat stretch and some purring fueled by human strokes and kisses and a snuggle or two.

Have you ever noticed a cat never gets up without stretching first? They also never seem to have the aches and pains we do.

Ningee on the other hand is an addict and her drug of choice is Temptations cat treats. She can manage about 12 hours between doses most days. Her chirping will increase to a crescendo and she begins kneading me in earnest while standing on my side. If I don't manage to start moving there is a real chance of losing a kidney or gall bladder.

By that time, Napoleon has decided he could use another 18 hours and is actively trying to get me to sleep in but Ningee is frantically trying to push me toward where I hide the cat treats. This creates an interesting conundrum in getting out of bed, a real push/pull effect. Eventually I get upright and it takes more time with every year. Fortunately, the cats slow down with age, too.

From there, cats well treated, I have the routine of washing the night's dishes that accumulate while I sleep and then making a pot of coffee. My hands have gotten to where it takes several tries at grinding as I can't hold the button down for the complete time. Then the coffee filter and finally the water. You see, I live in South Florida, home of the enormous roach we call a Palmetto bug. They are capable of flattening themselves almost as thin as a sheet of paper. That means you can't keep them out of the house or the coffee machine. Nothing quite runs your day like setting the coffee pot up at night and when you get home in the evening discovering your flavor from the morning was boiled roach when you go to do dishes.

So I fix everything fresh in the morning under the careful eagle eye direction of Lady Jayne of the Gray. Should there be an errant Palmetto Bug, she has a morning treat. My cats are all ex-feral cats. They are killers. But what she really waits for is me to spill the water I am filling the coffee pot with as that she licks off the counter. She has a water bowl filled with clean filtered water but it seems to taste better after it bounces off the top of the coffee maker and pools on the counter.

Then I return to the bedroom to write this blog with a huge stein of fresh water, no chemicals, nicely iced. You thought I was going to extoll the virtues of coffee. I have learned as you get older, you dehydrate over night really badly. Coffee dehydrates you. One of the first symptoms of dehydration is your mucus membranes dry out and hence you have the dreaded: dry eyes. The only way to combat that is to stay hydrated or buy really expensive eye drops which have who know what in them. I find a huge stein of water just as effective and my brain fog clears faster. Then I will creep into the kitchen and usually find my pot as been raided, not by the cats, but by George.

I often think the first thing they did on his last job was hook him to an IV of coffee. When we first married and he drank cokes, he used to make fun of my coffee addiction in the morning. He has with retirement learned to grind and make an excellent pot of coffee and he can smell one from half a mile away. He will drink anything related to coffee. I with almost 60 years experience, yes my mother gave me coffee at a really early age because back then they knew it was a laxative and I was impossible to wake up, prefer my coffee Cuban. That is more of a roast and blend than a technique though as years go by, it is harder and harder to get a real cup of Cuban coffee properly made. Armando, at the Witches Garden, makes the best if you can wheedle one out of him. They don't sell coffee. By my teens, the morning cup of java was a necessity to getting to school. My boyfriend who used to pick me up quickly learned to check with my mother as to whether I had finished my coffee as I was known to draw blood without it.

By an hour later, coffee is being swilled, the Furry 7 have begun their rotation as Mommy cannot be left alone for some reason known only to cats and I have almost finished my blog of the day and am ready for Email, Facebook and Farmville all with the help of my furry crew as I chow down on my blood pressure pill: the organic banana.

So, although I live an isolated life by choice, you shall go forth and brighten the life of another human being most likely after your coffee as I don't trust you to do it before. I may emerge from my cave later but probably not as I need nothing in the realm of necessities and as you get older, going out and looking around has lost its appeal.