It’s been rather difficult for me to post lately.  The area that everyone was saying wasn’t going to be affected has been affected pretty badly.  The company my husband works for laid off 25 people.  Another company in town laid off over 200, and oil wells are closing down.  It’s become as bleak here as it’s been in the rest of the country all along.

The other day, I was walking during lunch and feeling sorry for myself when I noticed someone kneeling behind an electric scooter working on it.  I stopped to see if he needed any help, and the nut had come off the wheel in the back, and the wheel was in danger of falling off.  Someone else found the nut, and the giy said that his disability check blew out of his hand when the wheel had fallen off his scooter.  I looked around and didn’t see his check.

I should be grateful, I have both hands and both feet.  I am able to walk where I need to go, and I am able to work.

Then there’s this last weekend.  Wildfires devastated Midwest City and left over 100 people homeless.  They lost everything.  I remember going through what they’re going through.  Our trailer burned when I was a sophomore in high school.  We lost everything.  Even the electronics melted to unusability.  We only kept our pictures because they had been put in the addition.  Now, I can’t imagine going through that.  I have my laptop and another computer, all with priceless information.  Pictures uploaded to my computer that I could never replace.  It’s scary.

I need to be grateful.  I haven’t lost my house, I still have a place to live and still have a job to pay my rent.

Things are tight all over, but there are reasons to be grateful out there.  We need to be conscious of our decisions.  We need to stop focusing on the bad, no matter how bad things are around us.  Unfortunately, the media has a tendency of focusing on the bad.  They escalated the problem with the AIG bonuses until there were death threats made to the executives.  Now the media doesn’t know which way to turn.  There may be signs of improvement, they may not be.  They have no clue what to say so they keep going in circles and contradicting themselves.

My feeling is, don’t focus on the big picture, focus on what’s around you.  Take the time each day to enjoy the fact that we’ve got one more day above ground.  We have another chance to get things right.  Hug your families and give thanks that we have each other.

I obviously haven’t been keeping up with the national news.  A week after my last postm I see the picture of Michelle Obama digging for a garden and the information that they’re encouraging everyone to plant one.  Oops!

*edit, I just found this in my drafts dated 3/26.  I thought I published it, but I must have gotten sidetracked.

I have a couple of tips today.  The first one was one that I got in my email this morning that I hadn’t thought about in awhile.  Ideal Bite sent out an email reminding everyone that you use less printer ink if you set your printing to Draft when the print quality doesn’t matter.  Save paper by using both sides of the paper, and you’re saving money there too.

My tip is to start a ‘victory garden.’   You can do this even if you’re in an apartment.  Buy plants that work well in pots like tomatoes, and water them daily — I’ve tried this and it’s harder than it would seem here in Oklahoma, so I’m working on a way to keep everything watered.  I’ll be sure to share with you when I do.  You can also buy a herb window garden to get fresh basil and thyme for your recipes. Or you can plant the basil with your tomato plants, basil is a natural repellant for the bugs that like tomato plants.  Other plants that work well would include broccoli, and cauliflower.

And if you have a bit too much basil, cut a piece of it and stick it down the garbage disposal, leaving your kitchen smelling like basil instead of whatever it was that last went down the sink.

So this week, don’t let the idiots on Wall Street get you down, do some planning to see what vegetables you can have in your garden.  Since seeds are fairly cheap at the moment, you’ll save money and have help keeping food on the table this summer.

Ok, so I forgot to wish everyone a happy Pi Day.  Though as Steve and I were commenting tonight, it won’t be a true Pi day until 3/14/15 (get it 3.1415 LOL).  Ok, we’re geeks.  Though I guess I can’t say too much according to one of Adam Savage’s tweets this morning (link here opens in a new window)

You can all have pi, but c’mon, that’s irrational . . . (heh. heh. get it? irrational number? Pi? No? sigh. Never mind)

*grins* so I do get a kick out of Twitter some days.  I have a few people I have their tweets sent to my cell phone — I get free text messages.  The messages are always good for a giggle, or a gigglesnort.

Since I’m an avid reader – otherwise known as a bookworm – and have become a writer of sorts, I’ve noticed I’ve developed a pet peeve.  Maybe it’s being nitpicky, after all it’s just a minor annoyance. However, if you’re writing advertising copy especially for the web, you really should make sure you know how to spell and know the difference between any homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently) you might use.

Now, I have no problem when chatting with someone online and they misspell a word, I just sort out what they mean and move on.  If I’m reading an article or a book and notice a misspelling, I wonder how well things were proofread. What really annoys me is reading a web advertisement and seeing “without further adieu.”  Uhh what? without further goodbye?  If you’re going to use a phrase, make sure you’re using it correctly. It’s “without further ado.”  And for those who speak French, I’m well aware that adieu isn’t pronounced like ado so it’s not technically a homonym and it doesn’t technically mean goodbye, it was just easier to say it that way.

Yea, ok, so that’s a minor pet peeve, really just a small annoyance, more to keep my mind off the stresses of the weekly grind.

I’m still trying to figure out the article that was in the paper a few weeks ago, about how Oklahoma has a lower unemployment rate than the national average, and the county I live in is even lower still.  Yea, that’s true I guess.  Except I was speaking to someone this week, and she said that the local temp agency said the available jobs dropped 40% in the last few months.  Except someone at church said that one of the local companies is laying off a bunch of people (I think they said 16k).  Except my husband’s employer cut everyone back to a 4 day work week.  Yea, the city I live in is still doing well, but the rest of the world has been knocking very loudly on the door.  We’re not as cut off from things as the city elders would like you to think.  Instead, they’d rather you focus on widening Randolph Ave, cutting away at people’s properties.  Or mandatory inspections for rentals and rent-to-own houses, making sure they meet a minimum code. The former I think is ridiculous, the latter I agree with in theory, though the area landlords association is against it.

Later this week, I’ll do more money saving tips.  I think we all could use some at this point.  I know I’ve been wishing I lived where my parents do, or at least in my own house where I could start a garden.  I think we all need a ‘victory garden’ this year.

Ok, those of you who know me know I don’t normally curse or otherwise use bad language.  It’s a product of my upbringing, and I’ve always felt that people resort to that kind of language when they can’t think of the appropriate ‘real’ word.  However, the more I think about it, the less I can think of a better word to use with what’s going on in the ‘real world.’  Unfortunately, the situation is more than this gal can figure out.

My first question is whether Rush Limbaugh has brain damage or if he was just  born a frelling idiot.  I mean he says he wants Obama to fail.  Does that mean he wants the United States to fall apart?  How bad does he want everything to get? Is he just totally clueless or what??? Talk about sour grapes.  This guy is pouting so much that his side didn’t win the elections, that he’s now trying to sabotage the current president and congress.  Uhh yea, idiot.  No better name for him.  Incindiary entertainer or not, the man’s a freaking genius… NOT.  Our country needs Obama to succeed because we need to get out of the economic mess we’re in.  I do have a question for Rush though.  Is he so frelling out of touch with what’s going on with the working class and the working poor or does he just not give a flying fuck about them?  Obviously he has enough money to keep himself sheltered from the problems with the economy.  Since he doesn’t want to do crap about helping fix it, does he want to donate some of his money to help those who are having trouble because they lost their jobs??? I mean even MicroSoft is laying people off.  How about donating some of his money to help those who have lost a good portion of their retirement funds from the greedy idiots on wall street?  Oh yea, I forgot.  Rush only cares about good Republicans or maybe he just cares about himself and his hyper inflated view of his own importance.  Windbag.  Whatever. That tells you how much his opinion is worth.  There are as many good Republicans having problems because of the economy as there are good Democrats having problems because of the economy.  Not everyone is in trouble because they got loans that were more than they could afford.  Some people are having to choose between paying their electric bills or buying food.  Some it’s even more basic, they’re having to choose between buying food and paying their rent.  Yea, then those people who lose their place to live and looking at losing their kids as well.  After all, they’re neglecting their kids if they’re homeless.  Yea, Michigan needs to do something about that.  That’s just WRONG.

As for the rest… well then there are the good little Republicans.  Instead of just badmouthing the stimulus package that Obama wanted to pass, they should have tried to contribute.  Instead all I see is how it’s full of pork, and how it’s a bad idea.  THEN DO WHAT YOU WERE ELECTED TO DO AND WORK TOWARD A COMPROMISE! OTHERWISE SHUT UP AND PLAY NICE WITH EVERYONE ELSE!

Can we tell I’ve been reading the news a bit too much today?

That doesn’t mean I’m going to let the Democrats off the hook.  I saw some of what’s included in the stimulus package.  Some of that could have waited. Yes, it’s pork.  The Congressional Democrats need to play nice too.

Then there are those who think that we should just hand over more money to Wall Street.  I mean the vacation packages and bonuses weren’t enough.  We, those of us who used to be middle class and the working poor obviously need to pay for those nice fat bonuses at some Wall Street firm.  Yea, I know there are strings to the new part of the bailout, but what about the money from last year?

Speaking of the money from last year, I read somewhere today that separate from that $700 billion in Wall Street bailout money is another $2 trillion or so in money given to banks.  Uhh SAY WHAT???

Maybe everyone in congress should share whatever they’re smoking with the rest of us poor saps.  Then we won’t mind so much paying for excessive spending in government and the greedy saps on Wall Street and in the other investment banks.  Maybe they should be made to give the money back like they’re talking about making Madoff do.  That sounds like fair justice.

One of the blogs I read quite regularly is GeekMommy at http://geekmommy.net.  She’s one of the Walmart 11 moms, and often has give aways posted on her blog.  Today, I found a post stating she and several other bloggers were working in conjunction with Izea to give away a trip to Orlando here: GeekMommy’s Orlando Giveaway (Opens in a new window in IE and a new tab in FireFox).

Part of why I’ve been talking about high school so much the last few weeks is my oldest is a senior in high school.  He graduates this year in May, and is off to Marine boot camp in August.  I promised him I would bring him to Orlando for a graduation present.  Though my sister works for Disney, I’ve never been to SeaWorld and I’m sure my son and I would both love it (yea, I’m putting words into the mouth of a 17 year old, scary).  He and I both love roller coasters, so I’ve entered her contest.  My daughter would love the dolphins and other marine life, and though the baby wouldn’t care either way, it’s not like I don’t have family down there to watch him so I can focus on the oldest 2.

Just a really short post tonight, my future geek is cranky and not wanting me to be typing at all.  Guess it’s time to eat and go to bed — he is after all 3 months LOL 🙂

I’ve started contacting old friends from high school though Facebook.  I tried on MySpace, but it was just too hard to find anyone I knew unless I had their exact location and email address.  MySpace’s search for Lake Region Alumni included everyone who has ever gone there and I couldn’t sort it by graduation year.

Anyway, contacting them has me thinking… what do I want out of life?  What do any of us want out of life?  What makes our existence bearable until we “shuffle off this mortal coil”?

When I was in high school I hadn’t planned on having any kids, let alone 3.  I had planned on going into a computer related field, I certainly hadn’t thought I’d still be writing.  I used to tell stories to get my sister to sleep when we were both little.  She actually had to remind me of that, I had forgotten.

When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher published a book titled “No Place But Here” about teaching in rural Vermont.  (Yea, I grew up in rural Vermont, farming country.  The population of cows was higher than the population of humans in the county I lived in. ) His book is funny, and full of astute observations, with a few poignant memories about life in the NorthEast Kingdom of Vermont.  The dedication always makes me teary because he mentions another English teacher at my high school who died of cancer my sophomore or junior year.  I don’t remember which at the moment, I’d have to look it up.

That’s a long way for me to say this: I recently found out that Garret Keizer is writing for Harper’s Magazine among other places.  He no longer teachers for the high school I attended, instead he is a freelance writer.  His more recent writings pack more punch than the book I got for Christmas my senior year.  Probably because he was a teacher when he wrote the book, now he’s writing for a liberal magazine and is able to say more about his political views.

Anyway, you can check out a number of his articles at http://www.harpers.org/subjects/GarretKeizer (Opens in a new window or a new tab for FireFox users).  For some of these articles, you’ll need a subscription to Harper’s Magazine, others you can read the text of the article.  He’s got some interesting stuff in there.

I’m writing this tonight with my future geek sitting on my lap.  He wants to be held and the only way I can manage that tonight is to sit him on my lap looking at the computer.  He’s starting to get fussy though, so this is a quick post.

I’ve been doing more looking at social media lately.  It kinda makes me wonder where things are headed.  I wonder what my kids are going to see that I never would have dreamed of.  Though MySpace may seem ubiquitous, I’ve found out that some of my family has profiles on there.  My reading list looks like my brothers and my music choices look like my sister’s.  Very interesting how that turned out.

I keep reading about how the democrats came up with a plan for helping the economy that they made some compromises on to try to get approval from both sides of the aisle.  I really would like to see this plan to know how much is crap because the republicans are still saying it’s too much and they won’t approve it.  I’m curious how much was really compromised and why it won’t get passed.  We all know something needs to be done out there.  Someone needs to sit down and hammer out a compromise that everyone can agree to.  Playing petty games is what got us into this mess.  Oh and Pres Obama, sorry that your girls schools were closed, but that’s living in the south, especially DC.  LOL I learned that one the hard way myself.

I found out tonight that Hertz doesn’t offer unlimited mileage for minivan rentals.  That makes no sense.  People who rent vans are gonna be taking family vacation type trips.  Why charge extra like that?