I Need A Bigger Shovel

There are days when absolutely great ideas for blog posts occur to me as I'm zipping around the county going from client to client. Then something happens at the clients house that makes me forget. Yesterday was a too much shit and not enough shovel kind of day. Today was day 2 of the same. Ya know? That stuff gets into and onto EVERYTHING.

I have 1 client who is both bladder and bowel incontinent. She wears protective undergarments. Which, don't protect much since they're not tight on the leg areas where they should be, and trying to get a loaded pair off of an adult is...tricky...to say the least. By the time I begin to remove the pajama bottoms, you can see where the...umm...smelly situation has traveled half way down her leg. Last week it went all the way down and into her slipper.  There was a lot of it yesterday and I had to clean it off of just about everything except the walls.

So, when I came home I turned on my computer for a little Twitter fun. After yesterday, I needed a good laugh.   First tweet I read is from a young man whose take on life and it's ridiculousness I truly enjoy. He's one of the nicer young men on Twitter. Seldom picks fights with people, usually will hang in there trying to help others clarify situations that aren't making them happy. He has patience. I'm hoping it rubs off on me.

His tweet was a retweet of two posts from someone who seemed to be having anger issues. Twitter has a known bug. It unfollows people whose tweets we might enjoy reading. It seems that this guy was a victim of the bug, and he decided that the nice young man had unfollowed him intentionally. The two tweets were very angry attacks on the nice young man saying that all the nice young man posts is crap, that he's a troll, etc. I asked the nice young man if the attacker was having a bad day and wound up with a couple of nasty tweets aimed at both myself and the nice young man. The angry one even included the phrase BITE ME in the tweet addressed to both of us.

Twitter fights happen. A lot. This one, however, shocked me by its sheer vituperation under the circumstances. My own answer to the angry one shocked me even further since all I did was remind him of the bug, and tell him he was going off on someone who didn't unfollow him. I did, because I'm not perfect, say that in this particular case apparently Twitter knew more than we did. Not my finest moment, but hey...BITE ME! LOL

The angry one deleted the tweets aimed at me, but let the ones aimed at my friend stand as is. The nice young man thanked me for going to bat for him, and we both let the situation alone. There's no accounting for some people, but I have to ask myself why this was so important to Mr Angry if he didn't like reading Mr. Nice's tweets to start out with? I decided that since I don't know Mr. Angry I couldn't decide why he did attack like that. I also decided that it really didn't matter.

People online are going to behave however they choose to behave. Shit happens, and we can deal with it in one of two ways. We can either sling it around and hope it gets on someone we're angry at or we can take a deep breath, wade in and quietly clean it up.

YOU Might Be Crazy

I had a conversation in Twitter the other night with a Tea Party Conservative. I'm saying that's what I believe she is, since she seemed to believe that there really is a threatening New Black Panther movement, and because of their rhetoric, it was OK for Ted Nugent to speak his mind. I have yet to grasp how it is that 2 wrongs equal 1 right, but there ya go. Someone thought so.

I held my temper, didn't attack her person by calling her names and spent time trying to find out why she felt it was acceptable for someone to threaten the life of the President. First off, she didn't see it as a threat. It wasn't until I advanced the view that celebrities have adoring fans and not all of them are sane that she sort of sat for a bit and thought about what I was saying.

Stop to think about this. The Republican Saint, Ronald Reagan experienced an attempt on his life from someone who was trying to get the attention of actress Jody Foster. So, what happens when someone stands up at an NRA assembly and states that "he'll be in jail if the President is re-elected"? Now, I do not believe for a moment that Ted Nugent would actually try to assassinate the President, but what if someone there wanted the attention and approval of Ted Nugent? Despite rumors to the contrary, lightening can and sometimes does strike twice. The NRA's rabid defense of the right to own a gun under all circumstances is a little nutty to start out with, who's to say they're all perfectly sane?

I kept up my attitude of trying to make her see what my objection to Ted Nugent was without saying she was being stupid. Turned out, she didn't know in what context or where it was that Mr Cat Scratch Fever shot off his mouth. Which brings me to the next item on my mind. Why is it that people don't see that inflammatory rhetoric is what's standing smack dab in the way of anyone being able to find a workable solution to our problem? 

All we're doing is sowing fear and anger in people whose help we need to find common solutions that will work for all of us. What we've done so far and what we continue to do has reaped us the bountiful harvest of the Paul Ryans, Eric Cantors, John Boehners and Mitch McConnells of the world. None of whom have anything in their minds except protecting the pockets of their rich and famous friends. 

I have another hot flash for ya too. Sitting online in Twitter giving those guys a piece of your mind isn't doing one damn thing to create change. All it's doing is gathering followers for you who like your attitude, but then, maybe that's all you want? If that's what's floating your boat, then go for it. As far as I go, I'd really like to see my poor, elderly, disabled clients be able to afford to eat and take the needed medications to control their various health problems. If insulting John Boener or any of the others worked towards that goal, I'd be all over it like flies on...well...you get the picture. The proof that it's not working is that nothing has changed in Congress and it's been more than a year. Now, STFU and find a way to really make a difference? 

Older And Wiser?

In the maybe not too distant future, a new computer is going to be a necessity for me. I'm doing research, a lot of research, with the view to help me decide if I'm going to be buying the whole shebang or a laptop. At the moment, I'm leaning towards laptop. I'm also female with the genetic right to change my mind. Right now the only thing I've ruled out completely is a netbook, the screen is too small for my tired old eyes. I need a 15 inch at least.

If I were using my computer the way I used to, I'd invest in a desktop. Then again, maybe I wouldn't. Just occurred to me that I'd still be spending those minutes every week down on my hands and knees dusting the ball of tangled wires behind the desk. I do it all the time now and it still is hard to get back up on my feet afterward. You'd think that doing it would help maintain the ability to do it, wouldn't you? I seem to be at that age when despite ones best efforts, strength is not what it used to be. My doctor says I move faster at my age than all of the kids in her Family Practice Clinic do. The focus of that particular clinic is adolescent obesity. So, at nearly 63 I move faster than a bunch of obese kids do. Good topic for a future blog post.

When I think about the hours spent online daily while I grew fatter and older, I could kick myself in the ass. There I was talking to people I'd never met while growing older, fatter and causing myself all types of "sit on your ass for hours" health problems. Where are all you people who helped me waste my strength? Hopefully, you're reconnected to a walking around life that is beneficial to your health. Don't wait until you're 60 to try to get it back because it's not going to happen the way you want it to. I've managed to get some of my strength and flexibility back, but not nearly what I might have had if I hadn't sat down on April 26, 2006 and joined Blogstream. I miss many of you that I have lost touch with, but Facebook is out of the question with me. I have to take care of myself and that is leaving less time for online socializing.

Now it's 6 years later and with an acquired sense of balance so sadly lacking back then, I need to make a decision about what I want in a computer. I believe my needs would be served adequately by a laptop. I spend much of my time in face to face situations with clients, family and friends. I paint more now, which reminds me that I need to buy a frame for my last piece and I'm making time to read books. My online time has been reduced sometimes to minutes a day rather than hours since housework has become a priority for me. If I buy a laptop, I won't have to spend all that time dusting that ball of wires behind my desk. WINNING!

Baby Killers, Incest, Beheadings...Oh It's Just The Game Of Thrones

I don't get HBO because I can't afford it. So, reading tweets in Twitter from the night that Game of Thrones Season 2 premiered was a bit frustrating since I had no idea what they were talking about. A trip to Youtube and a few minutes viewing what they had there and I have never regretted being unable to afford HBO quite as much as I do now. *sigh*

Since I can't see it, I thought the next best thing was to see how much the book cost. That was when I discovered there were 4 in a series. I am an unabashed Walmart shopper. Scored the entire 4 books in a boxed set for $20 and change. Got them today. Will be quite busy reading so won't be online much until I am fully sated.

In actuality, "Game of Thrones" is just the first book in the series which is called "Songs of Ice and Fire". Believe me, there is ice and there is fire. At some point I probably will purchase the DVD's since the cinematography on this program is awesome. Seriously. I watched a horse being beheaded and saw molten gold being poured onto someone's head and both acts, while horribly brutal, were breathtakingly real.

I'm off work tomorrow since my car is in the garage. Will be doing my housework tonight and in the morning and then will be curling up and burying my nose in a book. Medieval fantasy with great characters, really, really horrible acts of violence and retribution, magical creatures like direwolves whatever they are, and dragons is a formula guaranteed to pique my interest. I haven't been this interested in anything in a very long time.

This Ain't Good

This morning as I was heaped upon the kitchen floor at a client's home, I had a moment of painful clarity. Like most of my moments it got immediately lost. Probably due to my brain coping with the body aches one finds one has when one has fallen onto a hard surface. After assessing my situation and deciding that nothing was broken, there was the monumental task of getting the heel of my shoe out from under the butt cheek that was resting on it. Said task had to be accomplished without blowing the kneecap attached to the leg that was bent in more than the 45 degree angle recommended by my doctor. Obviously I managed to unfold and stand, but for awhile there, I wondered.

This September, I will be 63 years old. That is a fact that I keep ignoring, which is how I wound up in a twisted heap on the floor. Client lives with family. They have a 10 month old baby and they keep the baby from crawling into the kitchen by using a baby gate. They bought a new one which operates differently and from the livingroom side of the gate, I couldn't see what had to be done to open it. So, I stepped over it, caught my foot on the top of it and lost my balance. Normally a little bit of dancing will help me regain my balance prior to falling on the floor. The dance does not work when one foot is on the floor and the toe of a sneaker is resting on top of a baby gate.

Most baby gates have a cross bar you simply lift up on. Not this one. It's a much more solid plastic gate that has a lever which needs to be pulled down and held while the gate is slid back. Since manufacturers like to make things look more impressively difficult than they are, the workings of the latch are not apparent unless one is sitting on the floor directly in front of it. Of course, the assembly instructions would have had that information as well. Said latch is underneath a piece of decorative molded plastic which can't be seen from the livingroom side of the gate.

I would have liked to wrap that gate around the heads of my client's family. Once the baby is in bed, there is no need to leave this gate blocking the kitchen door. Not only that, it's dangerous to do so. They even leave it up when no one else is home. My client has Multiple Sclerosis. She's pretty advanced and while she can still walk, she uses a walker that she keeps a death grip on to keep from falling. Since she is alone at times in this house, in the event of an emergency like a fire or something, how is she going to open that gate to get out of the house? It requires the use of two hands and she would be unable to stand up unless she is able to hold onto something besides the gate. Which might be why they made the change.

There's nothing wrong with the other gate they were using except that my client can open it since it's just lifting up on the bar. It seems that they feel she should stay out of the rest of the house other than her bedroom, her bathroom and the kitchen. Who knew all it would take is a baby gate? Plus, the added bonus of having me fall on their floor.

I'm not hurt badly, just enough to make moving kind of iffy after I've rested for a bit. I think I'm going to break out the supply of Capzaisin and apply it liberally before bedtime. I have to work tomorrow, I need everything in condition enough to do so. Or, what passes for that condition at my age.