Feel Like Complaining

Ever since I wrote about Nellie and her incident of not being able to use her back legs, she's had more episodes. Most of them were not as bad as the first one, but this one came close. We had just arrived home from church last Sunday and it's not unusual for her not to get up and greet us all the time. She whined so I came over and patted her on the head. An hour or so go by and I could see her scooting around to get from point A to B but she's not getting up. Then I asked her if she was alright (as if she's going to answer me) and her ears lie flat as if she's in trouble. She got up but only moved about 6 feet to the window and then flopped down and her back legs were visibly shaking. Daughter gets her a pain pill which she is not interested in and hubby gets on the floor to work on her spine and she yelps when he lightly touches her and tries her best to get away from him. I told him just to leave her be until she is more receptive. She is clearly uncomfortable...

My friend Mary Lou is back at Zumba! She's got 9 more days of radiation and then she'll be finished. She's still pretty weak but wanted to get back to exercising. I was watching and about 20 minutes in, her face started getting red and I thought she wasn't going to make it, but she hung in there and finished. Everyone was surprised but very glad to see her, especially me. We keep each other going and call and nag each other to go. Especially when the weather is miserable and that's about the last thing we want to do, but I'll go if she goes and visa versa. It just hasn't been the same in the 4 months she's been gone. It's not a real long time but it's sure felt like it. There's nobody to talk to, everyone is in their own little clique. Aren't we a little old for that? And a few Saturdays ago I had a complete meltdown and left about 10 minutes after class started just because some people are idiots and the attendant didn't know wha...

As I wrote in an earlier post, I had hoped we could get some dsl in our house and then wifi for all of our new toys. It was a long process for us because our then current isp didn't offer dsl to residential accounts, only business. That meant that the email addresses we've had for over 10 years for personal and business had to be changed. I slowly started switching over business emails with PayPal, Clickbank, GoDaddy, etc. We had a lot of email addresses available at GoDaddy so I just opened up a few more accounts to accommodate the business dealings. I also had to make changes in two websites to direct them to different phone numbers and email addresses. Unfortunately one of the book websites will have to go because it was built by someone else and I have not been able to reach him for several years and he has the original files so I can't make any changes. He started hosting it, then the account almost was lost because he stopped making payments. Frankly I think the man...

I stole this from our daily newspaper. My favorite columnist, Doug Clark gives these awards every year. As this is the 25th anniversary of the awards I thought I would share them with you. It's a bit long but funny, and you will appreciate the weird city I live in. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welcome to the “silver” anniversary of the Budnick Awards. Yes, today is the 25th airing of the awards that I bestow on my favorite oddball, dubious or quirky newspaper stories of the previous 12 months. The Budnicks are named in honor of Thomas P. Budnick, a former Massachusetts social worker who was obsessed with filing mining claims for the planet Mars. I broke the Budnick story when I discovered that Spokane County was the only government willing to officially file the man’s interplanetary claims. And so the stories I select for this auspicious award must be Budnick worthy. Speaking of which, let’s give a shout out to my pal (and former features editor) Rick Bonino, who graciously collabo...

The day after Christmas my daughter and I ran out to get our new toys. I bought her a new laptop with her SS money. And you better believe that I will be filling out the forms right next year! We had done some shopping around and saw this particular one in an Office Depot ad. It was 150 off and another 50 was offered through a rebate. Windows 8 is interesting; it's taking us awhile to figure it out, but it's kind of cool. She doesn't want to use the finger swipe method and likes the finger pad better. She also needed a new case for it. She saw a real nice one at Walmart which was very padded and has an extra pocket to carry a tablet. She had the money for the 40 dollar price tag but I thought we should look around. I suggested a thrift store, I always see lots of bags when I go. She agreed and a few days later we went to the closest one. We headed straight for the bags and I found one identical to mine for 5 bucks and then she found one very much like the 40 dollar one. Lot...