Month: November 2021

I’ve had it with technology. I’ve had it with Google, with Apple and with FB/Instagram. I’ve had it with how these companies have monopolized technology and everything G-D thing is connected to every other G-D thing.

Apple is becoming as bad as Microsoft with all the OS updates – and then nothing works right.

And then of course there is my luddite husband – he downloaded the new iPad OS and somehow – he doesn’t know how – he connected his credit card to Apple Pay. WTH?  It was never connected before. Did he, with his trembling hands, poke the wrong thing? Who knows. But his credit card company sent him an email notifying him of this and asking if he did it. No he didn’t do it – as least as far as we know.  We had to call the credit card company to get his card taken off of Apple Pay – simply turning the option off via his iPad didn’t do it.  (Why does Apple have his credit card info? Because he/we bought his Apple devices from Apple and paid for them with that credit card.)

Also – his Overdrive account, and his public library connection were disabled and I had to download Overdrive again, I couldn’t get him signed into his library account via the library web site, had to sign him up for a new Overdrive account – and – and- and….

My blood pressure is through the roof with all this bush-wah.

I’ve been playing with computers since the late 1960’s – what is that – 50 years? And yes, the old days were simpler, easier – I swear they were. (Okay, dial-up was a pain in the patootie and super slow, and you know my motto is “Instant gratification is not fast enough” but hells bells, people.)

Am I crazy but didn’t Instagram have a bunch of filters that you use on selfies? I’ve got pics of me with bunny ears and I swear I did that through IG – If anyone has any info about that please let me know

And this whole blogging thing – I wish I had never switched from Blogger to WP – for one thing, Blogger is free (aside from $18 a year for my own domain) – WP is pay, pay, pay for everything. I can’t even post a video directly to WP unless I drop a ton of money for a business account and just paying for a personal account frosts my butt.

If I want to post a personal video, I have to upload to my Vimeo account and then embed it – PITA. And no I won’t use Youtube because they tack on all those other videos onto mine plus advertising – whatever.  And yes, I’m going to say it – Back in the old days – that didn’t happen. Also, shhh, don’t tell anyone, you could download the music part of a music video as an mp3 – yeah, I know that’s stealing – my bad. Shoot me. At least with Blogger you can upload a personal video – easy peasy.

I’ve got to figure out how to unconnect things – I don’t need everything on every device I own, and quite frankly I own too damn many devices.

And since I am a total hermit, not particularly by choice, you understand, I don’t live and die with my phone. If it’s on my iPad I don’t need it on my phone and if it’s on my phone I don’t need it on my iPad – but I sure could use some of it on my laptop or desktop but – oh no, they aren’t IOS devices.

Also too – I ordered stamps from the post office website and it’s been over a week and I still haven’t got them.  I swear the Pony Express was faster.

Lets see – what else? Because I live just one mile from where I should be living, this month the Uber bill is going to be – huge. We will be single handedly keeping Uber in business this month.  Because my husband can’t walk more than 2 blocks or so before becoming exhausted, we have to Uber everywhere and thankfully they don’t mind a ride of half a mile.

I’ve got to run now – and figure out how to disconnect more things…

~ I don’t do “prompts” but there is a Sunday music thing that several people who I follow do, and today it made me think of a beautiful but sad song that I hadn’t listened to in awhile – Sing You Home by Ennis.

I’ve got my Youtube favorites playing in the background and there are so many sad songs on it. Why do sad songs, slow ballads,  capture our minds so much? Oh there are a few hoppin’ and boppin’ songs on the list but slow sad songs predominate.

~ I’m having a bit of fun with Instagram – creating a ‘post’, using Canva, of my favorite quotes. With Canva I don’t have to worry about getting the post sized correctly or editing it – it’s kinda foolproof and easy. I’m even using my own photos for backgrounds…It’s fun.

(Currently playing: Perhaps Love – John Denver and Placido Domingo. Next up: The brilliant rendition of Sounds of Silence performed by Disturbed.)

~ Ok, now I’m bopping to Mercy by Duffy. Yeah, babe!

~ Lawsy but I do love to dance.  You can bet in my day I cleared the dance floor – I never needed a partner because my body has to do it’s own thing – and it ain’t like anybody elses thing.  I could never learn dances with predetermined steps – they weren’t MY steps, MY moves. And yet, I took tap dancing lessons when I was in my late 30’s – and in my usual backward way I got the hard steps easily and the easy steps tripped me up. Had the dance teacher shaking his head.

(Goodnight Moon by Shiveree – such a great dance song, and I am.)

~ It is difficult to type and dance at the same time…I may wrap this up early so I can get out of this chair and dance on my feet instead of my butt.  There was more I wanted to write but the hell with it, I gotta dance so why don’t I just Shut Up and Dance (Walk the Moon)

That was the standard Sunday morning order at the bakery.

My father always got up early, out of habit, and he would drive to the bakery and order “$3.00 of mixed buns”, buy the Sunday papers, The Daily News, The Daily Mirror and The New York Journal American. The Long Island Daily Press was delivered and by the time the rest of us got up it was breakfast and comics time.  Well, breakfast anyway, Sunday School started at 9:30am so no time to read the funnies.

What brought this to mind was a photo I saw on IG that looked like a tea biscuit, which reminded me of $3.00 of mixed buns.

I Googled ‘tea biscuit’ and discovered it is considered to be scone like, all I know is they were my favorites. The thing with tea biscuits is, very much like scones, you have to eat them fresh, very fresh, else they become hockey pucks.

I was trying to remember what other goodies were in the mixed buns mix – crumb buns certainly, probably a Danish or two, maybe cinnamon buns, I think the tea biscuits had to be a special request.

At any rate there was always one, for me, with jam and tea for breakfast on Sunday morning.

My father –

 

and I have few photos of myself – for lots of reasons. One reason just pisses me off every time I think about it so we won’t go there because today is Silly Day. Also, my husband could never figure out how to work a camera, so for all the years I’ve been married (the last 31 years) very few photos of me taken by him.

On IG today I posted my clowny photo – I bought that clown mask at the circus and wore it all night. I like clowns, lots of folks suffer from coulrophobia, I’m not one of them. I love clowns (except Ronald McDonald, he’s creepy and…bad food.)

I never dressed as a clown when I was a kid but adulthood brought out the clown in me –

Never one to pose, and tho hating to have my photo taken, it seems I didn’t have a problem mugging for the camera –

Plus photos of me wearing silly things – like parrots –

Or rubber chickens –

Or even goofy slippers (which drove the cats crazy, they hated those slippers)-

Yup, silly photos for Silly Day…

and nothing to watch.

This is us –

My husband will watch almost any crap – actually once it gets to be around 8:30pm, he will sleep through almost any crap. I have zero patience with sitting passively staring at the screen. Anything longer than 90 minutes and I’m gone.

Whenever I am passively observing, even if it is something I am interested in, I keep the remote in hand so I can fast forward through the boring parts – and there are so many boring parts. If I’m watching with with my husband I can’t do that – it annoys him for some reason.

Plus – my husband watches girlie shows, like “The Good Witch”, rom-coms and then crazy violent stuff like “Vikings”. Um, no.

What do I like to watch? Pretty much nothing, truth to tell. I’m just not a watcher.

I grew up with television – I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a tv and I’m 75 years old. I think my father bought a tv in the late 1940’s. And boy did we have that tv a long time.  It was a whopping 12 inches. Of course nowadays people watch movies on their phones – Oy.

All the years I lived alone the tv was in a closet on a rolling cart. I’d just take it out when there was something I wanted to watch. One time a friend came over and he wanted to catch a baseball game. I rolled out the tv and turned it on and whoops – it was broken. He asked me how long it had been broken and I couldn’t remember the last time I had used it.

I remember when I was a kid we watched a lot of tv, maybe I had more patience as a kid. Because I have no patience as an adult.  Thank goodness for streaming, at least I don’t have to sit through commercials.

Tuesday Britbox finally drops Season 6 of “Shetland”. Tonight Acorn will have another “Dalgliesh” and the final episode of “Manhunt”.

I really liked the original ‘Dalgliesh” with Roy Marsden. Ok, I thought he was kinda dishy, I have a thing for tall skinny men. I just looked up the series and Martin Shaw starred in the last two series. I think Martin Shaw is kinda dishy too even tho he isn’t tall and skinny.

If you decide to look up either of those 2 actors, go for photos of their younger selves.   Actually, I still think they are dishy, for their age, which is pretty much my age, so that works out.

Neither was conventionally handsome but then I never went for the conventionally handsome. Hell, when I was 11 I had a major crush on Richard Boone in “Have Gun, Will Travel”

I always had a thing for cowboys, I wanted to be one – the story of me, the carnival and the cowboy gun and holster.

Friday and Saturday were ultra stressful.  Today I am dealing with the residual stress on top of my usual stress. 24 hours a day of stress, it never abates, it is always there. I doubt I ever fall into a deep and restful sleep – even my dreams are stressful.

Last night I dreamt that I got an email from Instagram that they had taken down one of my posts because someone complained about it but then they reviewed it and thought it was just fine so they put it back. I almost got up to check my instagram account to see if I could find out who complained, I even had a thought about who it might have been. I was awake but not awake.  When I’m asleep I’m not really asleep.

We are back on standard time, thankfully. I hate getting up in the morning in the dark – it’s morning – there should be sunlight. The day starts at 6am and the night starts at 6pm, at least in my perfect world.  12 hours of day, 12 hours of night, what could be more practical? Day=light Night=dark. Simple.  I like simple. I am a simple person.

Also, not only do M&M’s not melt in your hands, they don’t melt in your mouth either. Just sayin’