I'm Officially Retarded! Errrr, I Mean Retired.

I wasn't supposed to retire until the end of this month or the beginning of March. Unfortunately I overheated my SUV and blew the head gasket. Without transportation to work, and no idea when I will have said transportation, my employer decided to find new people for my cases.

My first Social Security check will arrive in April I think. The letter isn't quite clear on that. It might be March, but I'm pretty sure it will be April since they pay for the month in the month after the month.

Now, since I haven't seen much to impress me online, I think I'll go do some impressive house work since that's about all I have to do at the moment. I'd rather someone find something to impress me, but I suppose into each life some rain must fall. Or, in this case, I should say snow.

It's falling, and piling up and I don't have to drive anywhere in it. I could get real used to this retarded, I mean retired thing.

My Boring Life

I'm going to retire at the end of February at the ripe not so old age of 65 and a half. I was going to wait until full retirement age but discovered I'll only get $41 more than I will if I retire now. The problems I'm having with my soon to be ex-employers make me yearn for this month to pass as quickly as it can.

We've lost 19 employees in the past 7 months. Another agency went out of business and the owner offered her cases and the aides that wanted to go with them to the agency I work for. They were quite happy to be employed even if they did have to take a cut in pay to do so. Then they found out they would also lose their health insurance because our agency decided to limit the hours we work so they don't have to provide insurance.

I wonder how the idiot in the front office decided that 19 people given less money, fewer hours and no health insurance was going to be loyal? They gave me back my $10 per hour. However, instead of the 28 to 30 hours I used to work, I am only being given 18. According to my Social Security Estimate, I can make more money staying home.

My doctor says my job is too physically stressful for the condition of my joints. I'm suffering from frequent repetitive motion injuries because of the difficulty. I actually sprained my wrist just turning a door knob and we will not talk about my aching back.

With all the joint deterioration I'm experiencing, I may not be able to hang onto a client should they slip in the tub or some other place. I can't do transfers without hurting myself. It's time to face the music and do the things I am capable of doing and quit doing too much.

It's like she said, clean my own house, take a walk, maybe join the Y and go swimming or take the pool exercise program. Do Tai Chi at the senior center, maybe some gardening weather permitting. It's not that I can't do anything I want to do, it's that I can't keep doing the heavier things more than once a day. My joints require that I learn to pace myself to minimize the stress and there just isn't any way to do that and work the job I do unless I just don't do the job I'm paid to do. My clients would complain if I tried to do that. No sense of humor there at all.

Winning And Losing

It appears my experiment with Blogster may have ground to an abrupt halt. Like Blogstream before it, the site owner isn't making enough money to satisfy himself and is reluctant to spend on upgrades. Sometime overnight, there was a hardware failure which has taken the site offline I guess. All the volunteer "Blogster Team" can say is that there is a hardware failure and that "Tony" has been notified. Something temporary is being used with limited functionality, except the server still doesn't answer queries so functionality is more like 0 than limited.

I'm not really sure this is a bad thing. There are people there who seem to want to fight all the time. I guess that's the downside of "social media". It's not a bad blogsite, it does focus on social blogging as opposed to educational/opinion blogging. There is a very vocal, nasty bunch of Conservative nut jobs there that tend to want to rule the roost. If one wants to put forth an opinion that is more liberal, one will find oneself in a rather messy situation.

It became so bad that 18 or so fellow bloggers moved to a forum cum blogsite as a way to get away from the vitriol. I looked at the site and wasn't interested and that means I will lose contact with some of the bloggers I've met there. Possibly not a bad thing. A couple of them are over here in Blogger. I have found one of them, but the other is still lost in the Blogger vacuum.

I've never defined my style of blogging since it isn't for me always about my opinion of something. Sometimes it's a diary that I don't choose to keep private. While I can find those willing to interact on my political posts, I've not been lucky here finding the social bloggers. Maybe my fault, I don't know. This place isn't friendly the way both Blogstream and Blogster were/are but at the same time it also isn't full of drama mamas.

I can't say I'm back because I don't know that I am, and besides, who but the spammers ever leave comments here? You all do realize that thanks to the spammers my page views grew by leaps and bounds? When I left in march I think I had somewhere around 50,000 page views after 3 years as an actual in use blog. Without posting a single thing, I managed, in a few short months to triple that number and OMG, you should see the number of spam comments I need to go delete.

That might be a full time job right there. As near as I can tell the comments are almost all on just one post. I'm thinking that if I delete that post the spamming might stop? I hate to do that but if I'm going to post here, I need to do something about the spammers. I can't shoot them, so I'll try deleting the post and see if that stops the onslaught. I'm getting around 4000 spam comments a month on that post. I'm just a popular blogger I am, I am.

Moving Day

I have moved myself to Blogster. This place has acquired too many spammers and hackers for my comfort. I was upset when Wayfarer's blog was hacked and taken over by a pornographer, but now Mr. Ornery's closed blog has been hacked and taken over. I can't deal with that on any kind of sane level. These were e-friends of mine and I'm seriously upset.

I'm getting far too many spam visitors, and am accumulating close to 40 spam comments a day. It's no longer fun here.

Since I'm aware now that closing the blog wont stop the hackers, I'm just going to leave everything exactly the way it is and I won't be back. If this blog acquires another post, it won't be me. I don't know how to protect myself from that happening. So I took this opportunity to warn you all.

It's been fun, enjoy yourselves and stay away from the spam if you can.

I Told You So

I've always wanted to say that. I told you so is such a satisfying use of 4 words in the English language, isn't it? Admit it, more than once any of my readers have found themselves with the sudden lift in spirits that the ability to use those 4 words brings. It's a rush, almost as good as winning the lottery because you aren't any richer, but you have the proof that you were right! Yay! I was right! Then reality sets in. And being right becomes less important in the over all scheme of things.

I have a really hard time dealing with people who spout the GOP theory of trickle down economics. I'm not seeing evidence that it works, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from saying that trickle down is evidence of a free market. Where? Even more important, where do people get that idea? Exactly what part of people are unemployed because there are no jobs that they have the skills to fill escapes them?  Furthermore, since they are unemployed, where is the money to acquire the skills supposed to come from?

The reality of the situation should have indicated that something is wrong with this theory, but it doesn't. I'm not surprised since we've become the type of Christian society that doesn't seem to understand the meaning of Jesus and the covenant God created with his people by allowing Jesus to die on the cross. To some degree, that becomes understandable when you realize that a large segment of Christians actually believe Jesus, born in the Middle East was blond and blue eyed. Spoke English too. After all, the Bible is English, right?

Jesus appears absent from most Christian churches these days. He's been replaced with Politics and Money. How else do you account for the hatred of the poverty stricken? If one were to follow the example of Jesus as it says to in that Bible, people would have to give up something to assist in caring for those less fortunate. Pointing fingers and ordering the "lazy" to get a job isn't quite it. But that's only my opinion. Oh! Wait! The holder of the very highest religious position within Christiandom, Pope Francis also says so. Ahem!

Another opinion I've held, is that corporations are not job creators. WE, the consumers are the creators of jobs. WE buy the products in sufficient numbers to create a demand and people must be hired to meet that demand. THAT'S the "free market" that I hear so much of these days, only that's not what we have. We have a market that bears a marked resemblance to that market created by monopoly. We've been there during the Gilded Age, we did that and it didn't work then. So, why are we trying it now?

If you need proof that our economy runs on how we shop, what we buy and how much of it, I suggest you look at Staples as an example. They're closing 225 North American stores. They are doing this in order to better serve their customers, according to them. And where are they intending on serving these customers? Why, online of course.

Instead of keeping stores open for the convenience of shoppers, they're enlarging their website to handle the increased traffic that online shoppers have brought them. Online shoppers are the drivers of this particular bus. That's really a negative since if the same volume of shoppers had gone out to the stores to buy their products, the stores would be left open and the people there would have jobs. While it is a negative, it is also proof that our economy doesn't run on the corporations as job creators, it proves that the CONSUMER is the job creator. Only, in this case the consumer is the job destroyer.

So, now I want to hear from all you believers in the poor corporations that don't create jobs because of unions and taxes. You tell me where, since its entirely driven by the increased use of the internet as a shopping tool, Staples is creating unemployment for the workers in 225 stores because of unions and taxes. And when this situation becomes widespread enough to affect  your own ability to support yourself and your family, you can take pride in the fact that you built this. Oh yeah, don't look to the government to help you out because you fought to destroy the programs you will need. For your sake, I hope you won't be successful in that but if I'm wrong, well, I told you so.

With Green Eggs I Prefer Ham, Not Spam

I have suddenly become a popular blogger. I'm not doing a single thing different than I've ever done and I'm an overnight sensation for reasons I've yet to figure out.

Since April 27, 2006 when I wrote my first blog post on another platform, I've averaged 50 visitors a day. Back then I was an eager beaver and I ran around the Blogstream commenting on other people's posts which got them visiting me in return. They must have liked what they saw since there were days I had many hours of fun in my comment section answering the words of wisdom they left on my page.

It was an easier website to use in many ways than Blogger. It was created to help the novice promote themselves so they were visible to like minded individuals. We spent hours online at a time speaking with each other and having fun. Pranks were played, parties were given and a good time was had by most. I can't say all since there were people who felt left out who wanted to be a member of the in-crowd.  Trolls and bullies exist everywhere and we had those there too. What we didn't have until the very end was spam.

From my Blogger statistics I knew I was receiving 25 to 40 visits a day. On days I posted, I might get 70 to 90. With a monthly total of 700 to sometimes as high as 900 a month. In the past week, I've gone from those figures to near stratospheric heights.  Yesterdays pageviews were 244. My monthly total now stands at 2368. I need to be careful, the rarefied air up here might make my nose bleed.

Of course, there are the usual 10% of visitors who are leaving comments. It seems, no matter where I am, my percentage of comments to page views remain the same. Since all of those are anonymous and contain invites to websites I'd rather not visit, I believe they're spam. Of course, they're nice spam, since they leave me such wonderful compliments.

The following are excerpts of some of my comments, with my answers. It's the polite thing to do.

"Hey there. This is a very well written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and return to learn extra of your helpful info". {Comment is on the post about Hubby's grandmother throwing a fork and putting out the eye of his granddad.}

Me: Well thank you for the comment and might I suggest you be very careful who you throw a fork at? Come to think of it, you might try sticking that fork in your own eye. I'd consider that a welcome punishment for spamming my blog.

"Can I simply say what a relief it is to discover someone who understands what they're talking about online?"

Me: I'm so glad you're relieved. You'd feel much better if you'd spell relief GAS-X. You're leaving quite the stink in here.

"This is the story of men and women these days. Make positive you get history into account. It also adds to the disadvantage on the mileage when it comes to the reselling of your car or truck."

Me: I bow to you. For the first time in 8 years a comment has left me speechless. Just don't ever let me catch up to you since I wield a pretty mean baseball bat and while reselling value mileage may vary, you won't get squat when my bat meets the fender and whatever else I can beat on of your vehicles. Just call it stress relief for having to put up with all you spammers.

I'm not sure at all where these are coming from, but I suspect it's from something called webwiki. It's a directory of blogs that added me in May of last year and the posts these comments are coming in on are all from that month. Most popular is the tale of Hubby's grandparents. With over 4000 pageviews it's the single most popular of my posts. It appeared here the day after webwiki added me.

Webwiki has a Facebook page. It seems to be the only way to contact whoever owns the site. I'm not interested in opening myself up to more problems via a FB page so I have no way to ask that they remove me. I never asked to be aggregated there, I've no idea how to get rid of this except to take down the offending post and there isn't any way to know that would work. I also can't say for sure that is the problem so I'm going to continue to ignore it until something happens that becomes the last straw. Now, I think I'll go scramble some eggs.

Lying To Myself

At my last doctor visit, she didn't feel I was as "far along the curve" as she thinks I should be. At first I was wondering about a possible health issue that we might be missing. I took a virtual trip through the Mayo Clinic, WebMD and other sites like Medicine (dot) net. I don't advise that. Unless, of course, it's Halloween and you're looking for a way to scare the bejeezus out of yourself.

My entire attitude towards the changes I'm making is one of having to give up everything I like which would make the extra years I'll live pretty damn boring. I had settled on a 90/10 percent ratio of healthy versus unhealthy and had you asked me, I would have said "Achievement Unlocked". Since I believed I had managed the changes I couldn't understand why my weight loss stopped, and why my blood pressure was still higher than it should be. Of more importance to me was also why I'm not consistently feeling better.

I decided that the only way to know what was going on would be to create a journal of everything I consumed and how active I actually was. It was an enlightening 2 months of recording my life in one of those black and white composition notebooks that pages are stitched into. I didn't want any of those pages tearing out.

I discovered that the incidents of consuming the bad things like doughnuts, muffins, pieces of cake, slices of pie, pieces of candy were a lot more often than I was admitting to myself. I also failed in the fruit/veggie department. Instead of the 90/10 percent, I am actually closer to the 50/50 percent which obviously isn't enough.

Activity level was adequate and would have been beneficial IF I had actually accomplished the 3 hours per week of physical exercise. I found the exercise was more like an hour a week of stretching and 0 strength building or aerobic activity. That inconsistency alone would explain the total exhaustion on the days at work where I'm mopping floors and carrying laundry through the halls of the buildings to the onsite laundromats. At the end of those days I have difficulty getting out of my rather low to the ground car.

I have 0 resistance to temptation and part of my problem is clients who worry about my lack of food intake. Someone with resolve would have no problem saying no to the goodies they offer even though it hurts their feelings. I'm going to get around that by purchasing some fresh fruits like apples, oranges or pears to take with me to eat when I'm working. I can cut them up and put them in baggies to stick in my tote bag. It's not going to stop them from offering, but it will give me the backbone to say no.

Now I have to figure out what kind of strength building exercise I can do that won't kill my knees and hip. Walking isn't doing it so I guess some kind of squats will be in the plan. I've fallen outside on the ice 3 times this Winter so anything that strengthens my legs and helps me keep my balance is a good thing. I may lack the "joy of exercise" gene, but I also don't have the "joy of falling on my ass" gene either. It's all about choices these days. And taking better care of me.