Feel Like Complaining

I was watching my favorite morning show, Good Morning America when they showcased a family in Texas who is dealing with unemployment. The husband was recently laid off and he said in a very serious tone that he and his wife sat down and made decisions on what had to be cut out of the budget. Then the announcer said that his wife is still working but their income was cut in half, DOWN TO $90,000.00 A YEAR. Are you kidding me?

The Smith family decided they could no longer afford Starbucks or going out to eat twice a week. And their poor children will not be able to go the the 'Academy' for their day care. This family is not "Coping", they are cutting out a few fluffy expenditures. I understand that the point of the story was to show that when we cut back on expenses, then businesses have to shut down.

But this family is NOT typical of the American family and what they are going through. Why not pick a family that is living on 30K or less a year. A family that can only a…

Early this morning I went grocery shopping. I was the only one in the produce section and I forgot I needed a head of lettuce. I left my cart where it was and walked about 10 feet to grab my lettuce. As I was heading back to my cart, an elderly lady started talking to me. I thought she was asking if I knew where something was. But she said "I'm going to scold you for leaving your purse unattended in your cart."

I became embarrassed and said sheepishly "I know", as if my hand had been caught in the cookie jar. I know this kind of stuff happens, a lot. But I am a very observant person and aware of my surroundings, but not overly paranoid. When I'm with my 13 year-old daughter she buckles my purse up but I only do it when in a busier store.

I surprised myself for not being angry at the woman because she was right and only trying to help, even though she was a bit pushy about it. I was actually struck by the humor when she added "I could have grabbed your p…

Well, I do. He's right across the street from my house with a bunch of his friends, working on the high school renovation. And when I say across the street, I don't mean across the street and back about a block. I mean so close across the street that I could have thrown a rock and beaned someone in the head.

I am so blessed (not) to live right across the street from a high school. They are going through a 4 year renovation project and it's been a challenge for residents and students to work around the constant changes.

We live on a busy one-way street and the neighbors behind us live on the opposite one-way street. In the past few years both streets have gone through a total re-do which meant going down about a foot below the surface of the road.

We've been detoured to death around here and it has continued with the school. I've been able to tolerate most of it, up until last night. I noticed they were working late, then it got later and later. At 10:00 pm I was curio…

I'm just going to jump right in here and say, I am pissed.

A few months ago at my regular check up I complained of memory loss, mood swings, all over pain and other things. After a full blood workup everything looked normal except that I was quite low in the hormone department. I am not in menopause yet but still low. My nurse practitioner suggested a pharmacy in town that compounds bio-identical hormones and they would be able to make me a compound of exactly what I needed instead of a one-size-fits-all medication . To me this sounded like a dream come true, because I definitely don't want to take horse pee as an HRT.

My insurance wouldn't cover this though but I was given a discount on the consultation. The Pharmacist I talked to was very nice and sweet and said I would be feeling better in a few weeks and she would make it as low cost as possible.

I picked up my medication and paid $45.00 for the first month. It's not out of the ball park but still difficult as this t…

I just heard this on the news and had to check it out for myself. Apparently Joe Francis (Girls Gone Wild) and Larry Flynt (Hustler) thinks the government should give them 5 million. Why you ask? Well, I know you really aren't asking. Neither was I.

But Larry said "With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind, It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."

Both he and Francis go on to say that if the auto and financial industries get help, so should they. They claim that xxx video sales are down about 22%.

Well boo hoo boys.

Maybe people have something more important on their minds, like how they are going to make enough money to feed their kids since they got laid off. Or how are they going to retire now that their 401K tanked. And how sad that all those homeless people can't buy your dvd's like they did before they got that foreclosure notice because they couldn't make the…

I don't really know how it happened. It started out innocent enough as I clicked on Earth to Holly's blog. She has a dog and I enjoy reading the antics of Lucy.

But then there was something so tempting on her blog that I had to check it out. It was a photo captioned SkyWatch Friday. I hesitated as I inched my mouse closer to the link. I knew there would be nothing but trouble and no way back but I did it anyway.

Oh crap, it was too late, I was hooked. Who knew it would be so instant. The drug cartels have nothing on photo memes. So now I am addicted and have decided to dedicate a new blog to cater to my new hopped up self. I didn't want to combine my crabbiness here with the beauty of photography so that's why I'm moving the Photo Memes.

Come and see what kind of trouble I am getting into at PictorialSoul.

No complaining today! I will give you all a break. We've had two days of wind and rain and all the snow is off the roof and half of it is off the lawn. I can see grass again. It's brown, soggy, and dog-poopy, but it's lawn.

I took my chains off today but almost slid down my alley hill backwards when trying to back out of the garage. Newspaper saved the day.

I know winter's not over but it's helped a great deal to have a few nice days and some sort of normalcy in my life. Now if the kids could just get back to school......

This could actually describe the weather around here today with all of the flooded streets but I really found another neat sight and would like to share my pictures. You can go here to see more Watery pictures.

This is the Spokane River taken in May of 2008. The river had reached it's peak due to heavy snowfall in the mountains of Idaho which filled Lake Coeur d'Alene. This feeds into the Spokane River. At it's peak, the river was running at 40,000 cubic feet per second. It was quite a tourist attraction for several weeks.

This morning I woke up at 2:45 am with a start, realizing that my husband wasn't home from work yet. I wasn't too concerned though as this is normal. But then the phone rang. That has got to be the worst sound in the world.

He said he was OK but the truck wasn't. He said the clutch went out. I swear to God that's what I heard and it made sense because they had been having trouble with it. So he calls again 2 hours later and said the tow truck had dropped the truck off and he was getting a ride home with his work partner.

I get up at 5:30 so I was awake when he came in. He said "I'm just glad I wasn't hurt or the other guy wasn't either".

I'm sitting there with this cartoon look on my face and said "What does that have to do with a clutch?"

"Clutch?", He said. "What clutch?" "I said I flipped the truck."

Again, the cartoon face. "I know I heard clutch, I was awake when you called!"

Maybe he was out o…

OK, I thought I had heard it all...until today. A snow-plow driver plowing a private business's lot had a confrontation with a man in a pickup. First they exchanged honks and then shoves outside of their trucks. Then the other man fired a gun at the plow driver. He claimed he just shot a warning shot into a snowbank but nevertheless, he will spending tonight in jail. I seriously think this kind of stuff only happens in our city.

As far as I know school will be back in tomorrow and I got my meds today after a long walk from the parking lot and a long wait in line. But at least now I won't pop a blood vessel. All is right with the world. Oh, that is until the rains come this week, a flood watch has already been issued. Is it spring yet?

My daughter was looking forward to getting back to school tomorrow after Christmas break. But Nnnnnoooooooo, a big ass storm is coming in tonight so the Sheriff exercised his rights and "suggested" that all schools cancel classes tomorrow.

Sidewalks are too deep to be shoveled and 4 foot berms cover up the intersections. That forces the kids to walk in the streets to school. I understand the reasoning because of the storm but things won't be any different Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Sidewalks will not be unearthed until summer. So what are they going to do, cancel school until Spring??? And make-up days just suck. They've already lost two days and now anymore closures will go into their Summer vacation.

You might think that Christmas vacation would be filled with fun times with friends. But when driving is treacherous and parents don't want to drive their kids all over town that leads to a lot of boredom. Thankfully my daughter loves to read but even t…

Seems like this naked dude by the name of Michael DICK (no kidding) enters the home of an 88 year-old woman in the Portland area. He throws her face down onto a chair. She remembers something she heard once on the news about grabbing a man in the crotch to save yourself. So that's exactly what she did, reached around and gave him a good squeeze. He managed to get away but was caught quickly after she called 911.

I'd say she's got more balls than he does.

I found this cool site, SkyWatch Friday through a fellow blogger so I am going through all of my archived pictures. This particular picture was taken up high on a cliff above Cannon Beach, Oregon, so that I think it qualifies as a Sky picture. The fog was rolling off of the hill and everyone was stopping to take a picture.