What I Wanna Do

What I really want to do is what everyone (well, working everyone) really wants -- my own business. I could have a nice little niche business -- but it would work so much better (Translation: make more money, interest more people) if I lived somewhere else.
Not that I couldn't live here and commute, as so many, many people do, it's just that IF I'm going to have my own business, I'd expect to have it on my own terms.

Ideal terms would be to have a big ol' house, and the business could be in the front rooms. I'd have a big picture window for displays and for light inside, and inside there would be dimmer areas, for computer work and desk work and things of that nature.

My business is a "Writers World". For profit and pleasure, I'd sell office supplies -- papers, inks, pens, pencils, posterboards. For pleasure, I'd have Book Nooks and Reading Rooms, with coffee and maybe vending machine type snacks. I'd like to offer sandwiches and stuff, but that would be too much starting out. There are necessarily more complicated health and safety standards when selling made to order foods. So, I'd start out with packaged foods. People could pull up a chair, curl up on a couch with any Recycled book from the shelves, tables, or baskets.

Of course, they'll be able to buy the books if they want to. Or trade them. I expect the books to be the real draw for most of my customers.

I'll also have a 'business center' for people who want to work on computers, or draw at desks. Maybe a few phones -- probably not pay phones as I once envisioned -- for those who need to use a public phone of some sort. There are so few, and still a need for them for a few people. It wouldn't be difficult to include a few within an established business. It would be good for those needing this service to have a place to sit and a desk or table top where they could spread out their paperwork and write down their notes from the calls.

I'd have a children's section, and mats, and maybe a play area -- I'd have to check local laws on that. I won't be a babysitter at my business, but I love having kids around as long as someone else is responsible for them. I'd have books for them, and easels and crayons and miscellaneous creative stuff, because kids should have fun. I'd probably need "Not Responsible" signs, and maybe waivers, and would still need an exorbitant amount of liability insurance anyway. (Or I could 'take my chances'. That's usually not a good business option.)

And I'd have a selling section -- I'd sell handmade stuff and arts&crafts and self-published books and even secondhand stuff. I'd have to be careful there, because I could turn anyplace into a Hoarder's Haven with secondhand stuff. I hate throwing usable things away. I'd sell this stuff for a percentage, so I'd probably have a decent chance of making money -- or traffic -- with that aspect.

Lacking the big front rooms, I could rent a storefront. There are plenty of storefronts empty here in town, but they aren't for rent, and, at this time, I couldn't afford them. Doesn't stop me from looking and wanting and wishing, though. That blue house would be perfect. One window for books, baskets, and chairs, the other window for the best of the crafts and clothing.

That's what I ultimately would like to do.

For now, I would be happy to find a flea market close to home where I could sell my recycled books and 'stuff'. They are all too far away and possibly too expensive, especially after adding in gas and food and drink.

But that's what I want to do, and how I think I could start. Would you like to be my customer? I'd love to have you as one.

Who's Hungry Now?

I am getting sick and tired -- and mad -- over the defamatory snide comments and patches and things about food stamps. That includes, big time, the media slanders.


First, some facts.
There are more people than ever needing help,.

These are people who have been working for 25, 30, 50 years and they have never -- NEVER -- had to ask or look for any help whatsoever for daily living. They have been paying into the system for years, even decades, and taking nothing out of it.

They have been living on savings and retirement funds and are 'just now' running out of money.

Or they are just now entering the work force and the unemployment line -- returning soldiers come to mind.


The 'advertisements' for food assistance is NOT advertising. They are Public Service Announcements, meant to inform those who don't know where to begin of a place to start. If it's your son returning to his wife and children from overseas, should they go hungry out of ignorance? If it's your grandparent forced into early unrecompensed retirement, must they starve because they bought things when they were working? Your gramma should stand on the street corner selling her Ipod you gave her for Christmas last year because you don't think a person getting assistance should have 'things'?

I thought not.


These newly broke bought and paid for their stuff when they were working, just like the SuperSnobs have done. When you lose your job or get sick for a year, will you be selling your car? Your house? Your electronics that depreciate faster than an automobile?
I think not.

So quit dumping on people for having things. You don't know where or how they got them, or why. Could have been gifts, for all you know.Things could even not work properly but it's all they have.
You may see they have something. It may be something that you don't. You probably have something that they don't.


Big effing deal. That's life.

Too many people are going hungry, are letting their children go hungry, because of ignorance.
The ignorance of the self-important self-approving.

Chaos in Colorado & the Right to Know

Last week, there was a shooting in Colorado. No doubt everyone has heard of it by now, and they've heard misleading quotes, incomplete assessments, rumors, outright lies, and everywhere the young man's name all over the news. We've seen it and him and he knows he's going down in the history books, so now he's going to act or claim crazy. (As if a sane person would shoot up a theater and booby trap his own home.)

I'm not naming him. There are enough people and mechanisms doing that, and that is what this young man is eating up. He's FAMOUS! He's INFAMOUS! He's on the Front Page, he's the LEAD Story, he's on YouTube, he's shared and reshared on Facebook and other social media.

Everyone knows his name. He can sit back and wallow now. And that's exactly what he's going to do.

To most of the public, especially the politically attuned, the Horrible Happening is a new reason to scream and open debates about gun control. It is somehow the fault of the guns that they were amassed and misused in this fashion.
To me, the issue should be about the media. The Fourth Estate.
We have freedom of the press. That's a good and wonderful thing.
Until something like this happens.

The  media is helpful when there is a question of locating a perpetrator or suspect. The media is at its best when reporting events as they unfold. The media is a force to be reckoned with when someone in the public eye is trying to hide secrets. The media tells us we have a right to know, and they will inform us. They can keep us informed of all rumors and speculations as long as they say they are rumors and speculation. Reporting of the booby traps may have saved lives.

But what, exactly, do we have a right to know about? What is needful and/or entertaining and informative? Do we need to know, on a national level, speculation and gossip?
 Is it right to be shoving their microphones into the faces of families waiting for someone to come outside from the scene of a massacre? Is it our right to know when they finally accept the unbelievable unacceptable fact that their loved one is not coming away from the scene?
Is it our right to know what a mother thinks when her son has admitted to this type of horror? Has she no right to the privacy of thought?
Do we have a right to know about every clipped toenail or late bedwetting incident ever in the guilty person's history?
Do we have the right to decide -- believe -- he's guilty before there is any sort of due process?
Does the media have the right to claim our right to know gives them the right to lionize punks and publicity hogs?

There are no easy answers, which is why the problems have been unresolved for so many years. There is a right to know, but who can or should decide what anyone else has the right to know?  Is there, or should there be, a time that it's right to know.

Difficult questions that need to be looked at and discussed and worked on as intently as gun control or defining insanity. It's no wonder that policing authorities try to conceal identities and evidence from the press. Irresponsible reporting compromises deaf, dumb, and blind justice.

And then, there  are young men like this "joker" who do the deed, then, when the media is fully present, walks up to the police and says "Yeah, I did it," then spends the next three days -- or three months, three years, three decades -- smirking and preening and posing for the cameras.


He has the right to know how important he is

Fear of Phobia

I'm becoming, I'm afraid, a borderline agoraphobic.
No, I have become a borderline agoraphobic.
The becoming I'm worried about is the full blown phobia.

I don't think that will ever happen. I have too many chores and a granddaughter. That should be enough to keep me getting out on a fairly regular basis. And there are doctor's visits for my husband, and going to the pharmacy, and grocery shopping.

Those things should all keep me going, keep me out and about. I'm not so sure they will. Even if they do, I'm not sure that some of those things count. I don't enjoy them. I don't relish going to Walmart after prescriptions. I don't stop at this store or that and peek and poke and just enjoy myself, just enjoy getting out, even though God knows I rarely get alone time except in the car. Maybe alone time isn't really that important, anyway. I can always be alone inside myself. Inside my computer, or lost in a book. (That's not really alone, though. There are people in those books, and some of them are stupider than the ones in real life. Who'd've ever thought that was possible?)

In some ways, I feel I've been heading that way -- this way -- for all my life. I've never been able to easily or naturally speak to other people, sometimes not even those I know well. I have had my electricity and my water shut off because I was unable to make the telephone calls to make arrangements to pay. (Many years ago; not recently.)

But now I leave reluctantly. Not even my writers group holds the same interest for me, because my life has so changed. For a year I had limited contact with the real world.
I had no telephone and no internet. Because of Rex's hospitalization, and his doctor's and medicines, and having to pay other people gas money, the bills got way behind. So there was little talking with anyone, except when I needed something. That doesn't encourage socializing from either party involved. At least I didn't feel that it did. .

No car -- I had to get rides, or arrange rides, everywhere and anywhere. Few trips were worth the trouble. My writer friends were the ones with the most available help, but my sisters were always there also. The writers happen to live and work closer.
But even with their help, I was isolated and alone, and there's too much to handle alone, but I did it.



I did it all, from the safety net of my home.

I'm afraid, often. I'm afraid to leave because I worry about Rex getting sick or falling when I'm gone. Some nights I can't sleep, because I'm afraid I'll wake up and he won't be breathing. I'm afraid to drive anywhere, because what if I'm involved in an accident and get hurt? What will happen to Rex when someone else brings him that kind of news? Who will take care of him while I can't?
My God, what if I get crippled?
What will happen to Rex if I get killed?

Rex, bless his heart, encourages me to go to my group, and to go to family events, if he knows about them. I usually don't tell him, because he won't /can't go. And I don't want to leave him alone for hours at a time. All the what-ifs come alive when that happens.

I can't let this progress. It must not be allowed to get any worse. Even I cannot live that self-contained. There are chores that must be done, errands that must be run. And what kind of example am I setting for Hailey if I turn myself into the Hermit Grandmother? It's bad enough that Pappaw is already that way.

Thank goodness for summer, for the season of picnics and reunions and weddings. Thank God for sisters and friends and other family who will coax me or bully me out of my little blue hole. They, more than anything I can do, are what keeps me straight, keeps me trying. Keeps me on the sane side of the line,

I can thank none of them enough. Ever.

bone crushing

My husband had to go to the doctor Monday. The office called him and made the appointment. You can bet that set off alarm bells. He has so many health concerns we didn't even know which one to worry about. They did say something about his spinal x-rays, but that really didn't narrow it down a whole lot. Because we have had things show up in x-rays that are not what he was being x-rayed for. An enlarged kidney showed up in chest x-rays.

We were referred to a urologist who saw Rex once, sent him for some kind of test at a hospital that had to have cash before doing anything, and we never heard from that specialist again. Don't know to this day what, if anything, the test determined, in spite of calling and both asking and leaving messages. When our family doctor bulldozed us into this appointment, she felt the matter was urgent. Then, she left the group practice she was with and has apparently fallen off the face of the earth. Could it be his kidneys?

He fractured his spine forty years ago, could it be something from that?

Did something in his lungs show up in the background?

He has osteoporosis. Well, he's had that for a while, but this is advancing, which means getting worse. We've been referred to another specialist, this one out of state. His spinal column is collapsing and disintegrating. The T1 through T4 vertabrae are crumbs, with 'significant wedging' on almost all the rest.

Our doctor, who is new to us, says he has never ever seen anyone with such an advanced case of osteoporosis.  Especially not so young. Especially not a male.

We discussed smoking, we discussed heredity, we discussed childhood malnutrition. All factors. But, to figure out what to do, he needs to be seen by an endocrinologist. My guess is that they are considering he'll need the IV type treatments. (He was on Fosamax but began having too much bone pain in his hips and thighs, and we dropped that stuff like it scalded.)

So, we're again hanging in Limbo, and I'm bouncing from wall-to-wall maybes.

I'm also looking for information on what to expect if the deterioration continues. What do I need to be especially watchful for? How can I help? What needs to be reported to the doctors? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

And I can't find out. There are a few  million definitions of osteoporosis available on the internet. There are a few million treatments being sold, or advised, or encouraged. So far, there has not been one site that answers my questions. Apparently everywhere on the Internet is the belief that calcium, vitamin D and the magic of medicine cures osteoporosis, or at least halts it in its tracks.

Therefore, no one needs to know what advanced severe osteoporosis will do to a middle-aged severely emphysemic man with one big kidney.

I really hate that all the different websites say the same things over and over and over. Sometimes in different languages, but still the same-old, same-old.

In this great Information Age, can no one answer my questions?

Lesson Learned.

I recently saw an online ad for classes about alternative medicines. This is a subject I've long been interested in, and the thought of online classes is -- kind of interesting, especially now that I'm not working, and my husband's no longer in a health crisis. So, two weeks ago, I signed up for info.

When I signed, I did see that I had to give the school permission to call me, and that was okay. I might have questions for them, once I reviewed their online programs or looked at their literature. Follow-up phone calls are a fine thing, in most cases.

Oh. My. God.
What a mistake that was.
Not just a small mistake, either.

I have gotten phone calls.
And phone calls.
And phone calls.

Since 12 noon yesterday, until 12 noon today, I have had twelve phone calls from one number. This is after I put the number on the reject list because they have not stopped calling daily for two weeks. The calls started immediately, and have not lessened.

I have not received one e-mail from any of these schools. (Apparently there's a list of affiliates with a variety of courses, although I was applying for specific classes.) I have not received any type of information other than these incessant psycho calls. (Seriously, if these calls were being made by an individual to an individual, they would be considered psycho calls.) No e-mails, though that had to be on the sign in. No pamphlets in the mail, although mailing address had to be included.

Just phone calls.

Sorry, Ashford University.
Sorry, Kaplan College.
I don't care for the way you do business. So, I won't be doing business with you.

I do not need financial aid until I've decided when I want to take classes and what classes I might want to take. I won't know what those classes are until I see what is offered. See. With my eyes. So I can look and consider, re-look and reconsider.

I want information about what I'm interested in, not about everything else that's out there in the world. I know there's a lot of good interesting stuff out there. But I signed up to find out about a specific field, not the whole world.

If I want to hear from you, after I've seen what you have to offer, I'll call you.
Don't hold your breath.

Free on the Internet

Free on the  Internet.

Free credit scores: with a membership in beautiful benefits you'll never need or use. These can cost anything from $99 a month to $199 a year. Maybe more, but those are the ones I've looked at. The good thing here is that you cannot cancel until 30 days have lapsed, (and then there's a cancellation fee)and your informational brochures will be delivered in about six weeks.

Free samples, usually health & beauty substances: just pay shipping and subscribe for monthly deliveries. The shipping fees are more than the product. There are sites devoted to sending people free samples -- after they sign up for at least one thing off each of ten or twenty different pages. And they still need shipping paid in advance.

Free reverse phone look up: I really like this one. They look it up. They tell you the carrier. But if you really want to know who the number belongs to, get ready to pay up. $1.99 for each look up or by a membership.
The look up is free. The info is not.

And there's the seasonal. Free income tax: Step-by-step guidance while filling out your return, checks and double checks that everything is being done properly. Filling out the forms is free. Filing is not. There's a filing fee, with the tax preparation companies.

People get all enthused about all this free stuff. Then their finances are compromised as shipping, memberships, and automatic deliveries are taken out of their banks or added to their credit cards.

People: Stop and Think. How free can it be, if they need your credit (or debit) card number before they will send you anything?
Nothing is free, expect to pay.

Just know when why and how much, and enjoy the freedom of the 'net.