Midnight Musings

I have some notebooks that I write down all of the quotes I find. Well, most of them. Some aren’t worth the effort of pulling the notebook out and writing it all down.

My collection grows a little bit every day since I subscribed to a site called “Inspirational Quotes” a week or so ago. A new set of quotes every day makes my day. I just wish I could say something that others would be impressed with enough to quote me. There is a quote I use frequently, said by my brother a few years ago when I asked him a question. “I don’t remember if I remember that or not”, one of the few things I DO remember that he has forgotten. My brother has a Ph.D in Homiletics, and taught at Brescia University for a few years before his health forced him to give up 2 of his 3 jobs, Chaplain at a convent, pastor of the neighboring parish, and professor at Brescia.

Funny thing about that brother. He had a “D” average in school before beginning High School. An IQ test there showed him to have the highest IQ in the history of the school. The former “D” student was just bored out of his skull for 8 years. He tried to teach me how to use the computer way back when I got my first one. Went through all the steps so fast I couldn’t keep up, then told me to “play with it” before leaving. Oh, I played with it alright! And ended up erasing the entire hard drive! Now that takes talent of a different kind! A kind I don’t recommend.

I began this post a few nights ago right at midnight, hence the title. It is now 5:43 a.m. at least a week later and I’m not sure what I was musing about that night, but it must not have been much since I saved the draft which included only the title and moved on to playing as many kinds of Solitaire as I could find, working a few jigsaw puzzles on the computer, colored a picture and did some word games while trying to get my brain to come up with something to write about. It hasn’t worked yet. I am definitely not a genius like my brother.

I do have 3 or maybe 4 quilts in progress at the moment while trying to embroider some flour sack tea towels for my granddaughter. Kinda too much to ever finish anything, but yet they all manage to get finished. I finally finished the quilt I started for my son’s birthday about 5 years ago, and just in time to give it to him this year — yesterday, in fact, letting him know it is for the past 5 birthdays. Fortunately he has a sense of humor.

Now I have to finish something special for my youngest kid who will have his 14th actual birthday next Thursday. He will be 56, or 14, whichever way you look at it. Since he mainly acts 14 I find it easy to treat him that way. But I still say he should have been a girl to really appreciate that special birthday. How I wish I only had a birthday every 4 years! I would be 20 again. Hmmm, 20 wasn’t all that great to be, so being a Leap baby might have a few drawbacks of its own.

The clincher is that my daughter, oldest child, has a birthday one week from the youngest. I call this birthday season, beginning with Feb. 22, ending with March 7, with all of us still wondering exactly how to say Happy birthday to Mike, Feb. 29! He wasn’t born yet on the 28th, and was a day old on March 1. I do keep threatening to call him at midnight to try to get in between the 2 days, but of all the times to fall asleep!

Okay, I’ve mused enough. I’m hungry and have some yogurt and a bag of popcorn waiting for me to dig in. It sounds disgusting as a snack — eating the 2 of them together, but some days it works. Other days it just makes me want to hurl! Oops, too much information there.

It’s another one of Those nights when sleep won’t come; or if it did it didn’t last more than an hour. So much to do and only 24 hours in a day to do it. I’ve heard that sleep is important but how do you sleep when you can’t?

t’You can lie in bed and toss and turn, but I can’You can lie in bed and toss and turn, but I can’t breathe in a bed so I sleep in a recliner with my head elevated. I also have quilts in progress, embroidery projects, myriad pillows, my cell phone, Kindle, TV remote and other items I find the hard way surrounding me. A real nest inhabited by a dodo bird.

Let’s Get An Early Start On 2024

Don’t know about anyone else but I’m ready to bid farewell to 2023. Have been since the first month of it! All we can hope for is a better next year. I don’t think I’ll hold my breath until that happens though.

I’ve sorta sat out most of 2023. Not sure how but by keeping my hands occupied with needlework and not turning the television on I almost got through unscathed. But then, about three months ago my cell phone died and nothing would bring it back. You just haven’t lived until you try to do CPR on a cell phone. I’m not sure I wanted that particular one back anyway. It had an unfortunate habit of hanging up as soon as someone answered my calls. And the only calls I answered were spam that I didn’t want to talk to. I’ve discovered that I really don’t care for things that are smarter than I am — i.e., cell phones, TV’s, all the things that advertise themselves as “smart”.

When my old TV died a couple of years ago I tried to find another “dumb” set. Never found one. I wonder if they even make them now. Ended up with an Amazon Fire TV. It worked well until the day after the warranty ended. So now I seldom turn it on. I can get music and movies on it but not regular TV programs. I know that if I try to replace it I will have to get another “smart” TV and at my age I’m just not ready to have another device that is smarter than I am.

Guess I had better get busy now. I have some more sewing to do and it’s only a matter of time before the computerized sewing machine decided to take a vacation on me just like all the others.

Oh, but now let’s take a look at my laptop! One day after the warranty was off on it I couldn’t turn it on. Had to get a new charge cable for it. In the past year I’ve had to replace the cable 4 times. It stopped on me again a week ago so I stuck it in a corner, resisting the urge to kick it to save my toes from being broken in the process. Finally I tried again and it had learned it’s lesson this time. Can’t say too much because I want it too continue working for a little more time until I can afford to replace it with an upgrade. All I can say there is that I told someone I was going to find someone to do an exercism to get rid of the demons that possess all of my electronics.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year, and I sincerely hope it is better in all ways than this one was. Realistically I know it will be worse because of the election, but I can still hope,

Progress of Sorts

A few new changes in my room are creating even more space — I think! I’ve been busy, at least the time I have been awake. I think I’m catching up on several months of lost sleep.

My TV was mounted on the wall today, opening up a little bit of space on the sewing table.

The top photo is the half cleared sewing table with the pictures to be hung still waiting. They have promised Monday for sure. Waiting impatiently now for Monday.

The bottom photo has the walking stick my brother carved for me as a Christmas gift. Check it out! He said his original idea didn’t work out so he had to start over. I think for a mistake it sure looks great. He hollowed out the top of the stick and poured epoxy in to fill the space. The most impressive thing is that he poured in the right color. Unless of course he thought it was red or green. JRG is colorblind. He can only see the color gold. No reds or greens or blues. I can’t imagine not being able to tell one color from another, but who’s to say I see them the same way others do? I’ve never looked through another person’s eyes.

Things just get better and better here. Just one exception — rain, rain and even more rain. I have to keep reminding myself it IS March, after all. Oh geez, it really is March! What happened to January? We had Christmas at the right time, complete with snow and below zero temps, then the silly groundhog saw his shadow here where the sun finally made an appearance, and now the calendar says it’s March. We were also under a tornado watch yesterday. Is March the one that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? If so I hope it goes by as quickly as February did, I’m not fond of tornadoes.

Most of the damage done by the Christmas morning water pipe burst has been repaired, but they are still not completely finished.. I’m not completely finished with putting things away though, so that’s okay by me. We had a movie and popcorn afternoon with one of the old movies that always makes me cry like a baby! Fortunately I had finished the popcorn before the waterworks began so it didn’t get soggy during the final part of the movie. Hey! you gotta find some way to laugh in this world today, right?

I think I am now going to watch a movie on my newly hooked up TV now. For the first time I have Dish Network instead of cable and just want to see if I can turn it on. Stop laughing! I have a “smart” TV and have to admit it is smarter than I am. I looked for a dumb one but they don’t seem to have them any more, I knew how to change the channels on the dumb ones. Sigh!

Oh, For the Good Old Days!

I’m sitting here at 3:50 a.m. Sunday morning, wide awake and thinking about the old days when the world looked so much larger than it does today. Of course, I was so much smaller then and had never been outside the small environment of Highway 81 and the childhood that now seems to have been a magic time. Just one old woman thinking back to days that now look perfect at a time when there is not much perfection in this expanded world we live in.

Our radio played only the good things back then. “The Shadow knows, heh, heh, heh”, Bobby Benson as the young (and I was certain HANDSOME) star of our favorite show, B Bar B. In retrospect I can remember that the world that looks so perfect and small back then wasn’t really all that small or all that perfect. This country was engaged in a “Police Action” called Korea at the time, but since we only listened to the radio when our favorite shows were on we were sheltered from a lot of the world news.

I did hear some of the news at selected times when the family was together and we all listened to the radio. TV wasn’t around this area at the time so we listened to George Burns and Gracie Allen, Abbot and Costello, Jack Benny, still some of my favorite people who remain alive to me via the now seemingly necessary television, on now and playing some of the old songs that came along after I was grown and more in tune with the news of the day.

I have found a TV channel that plays some very old shows with George and Gracie, Jack, and on Saturdays even Abbot and Costello. I still find the first two fun, but the slapstick of Abbot and Costello seems a bit extreme now. There is too much real violence surrounding us now to get the same laughs at two men hitting each other with what would be called lethal weapons these days. The difference is that back then there were no school shootings, no daily reminders of brutality against everyone that is not just exactly like us. Back then I had no idea that one day I would be typing on a computer, a contraption that wouldn’t fit in anyone’s home back then, a very large contraption that filled entire rooms and had to be kept cool to prevent fire and explosion. Now I use a laptop or a tablet, small, compact, easy to use when it is working okay. This is something that was not thought of back then when my world outside the Highway 81 environment was delivered by radio.

I know I gripe a lot about the frequent breakdowns of all electronics. I’m fussing right now because my early morning clumsiness has my fingers on the wrong keys and typing nonsense pages while my brain is trying to tell my body that it is morning albeit a very early morning, and I shouldn’t put so much pressure on the keys. The TV is a Fire TV, also known as a “smart” TV, and I’m listening to John Denver singing “It Makes Me Giggle”. My life seems to be oriented around all of the “smart” electronics around me and I don’t always like that. It’s difficult for me to depend on electronics that always seem to break down. I now read books that I don’t even hold in my hands, but can read on my phone or mainly on my Fire tablet. I used to turn pages by using my fingers to turn the page. I usually had to lick the fingers to get traction on the page I was reading so I could turn it more easily. Now my hands have problems holding on to those wonderful books, so they are all loaded on my Amazon Fire tablet. To turn the page I simply tap the screen with my finger and the next page appears. If I fall asleep while reading the tablet turns itself off, saving my page until I turn it back on. Incidentally, while writing the above paragraph i had to delete rows and rows of “r’s” that my finger tapped accidently. Didn’t even have to lick my finger to make those lines and lines of r.

Oh, for those good old days right now. Memories partly faded by the ravages of time, typing keys so sensitive that I can fill several pages with the wrong stuffrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr — case in point, but caught before it went very far. I’m going to stop while just a little bit in control. And I’m going to look for photos from those old days, if indeed I can hit the right buttons to look for them!

And today will be the good old days 20 years from now! Imagine that!

Frustrating Day

Have you ever had one of THOSE!!! days?  The kind where you should have just stayed in bed all day and still accomplish more than you have during the entire day of being up and active?  That is just a fraction of the past 4 hours — NOT the entire day, but just the last 4 hours of my day.  I can’t get into my email, couldn’t remember the password to try to recover the access, couldn’t find the book where I keep my passwords just two minutes after putting it down — SOMEWHERE!!!  Managed to disable almost every method of recovery I had,  lots more that I don’t remember if I forgot it or not.

I wonder if this is all because my resident poltergeist is at work again.  It all started out as such a bad/good day that I can’t figure out how it all went bad so quickly.  For several hours I was unable to access my WP account, found a place to hit a button and it all came back.  Just can’t seem to find a button like that for the email.  Aaarrrrhgggghhhhhhhh!

I got my laugh in earlier in what is now yesterday when younger son called and I had to admit to him that I fell again several days ago but this time managed to just hit my head and the left shoulder that usually predicts the weather for me.  He is always telling me that if I just hit my head I’ll be okay since it’s the hardest part of my body.  Of course these last two falls have proven him right.  The trouble there is that he always tries to outdo me in everything, always doing things a little bit worse than I do.  Now I have to worry about him somehow breaking his leg, only worse than my own was.  He broke his foot a few years after I broke mine, only just a little bit worse.  Hmmm, this quarantine  is bad enough on it’s own without getting to see my kids one more time before either Mike or I manage to butt heads and have both of them split open on impact.  Like all else though, it could be even worse than it is now.  I don’t want to try to come up with ways that it could be worse at this time though.  Freaking myself out here without even trying.

Went to Kroger’s a few days ago and some shelves still are empty.  That in itself is freaky.  They are letting Senior Citizens in at 7 a.m. though.  We get the first hour of the workday.  Now how many times have you seen a S.C. finish anything at all in only one hour?  It takes me an hour to get both eyes open and then another one to get them to work together!  Shop for a months groceries when most of what I want is not in stock requires more than an hour, sometimes several hours when I have driven around the store so many times looking for an item and then forgotten just what I’m looking for — usually while staring right at it,  It’s almost like all the times I’ve held the refrigerator door open looking for something I can only hope will appear in there by magic, knowing all the time that I don’t have in but still having a childlike hope that it has jumped in there just to satisfy a craving I didn’t even know i had until deciding to look for it.  Hey, I know what I just said —- do you?

I think I’ll just follow thru with my first inclination of just getting back in bed and hoping I can stay there all day!

Just A Few Words

In case you haven’t noticed I’ve been on hiatus for several weeks.  The early winter weather has been playing havoc with my health so I’ve been taking things easy up to a certain point.

I have re-discovered the joy of quilting, especially making memory quilts, pillows and tote bags for my family.  At the moment I’m finishing up a pieced quilt and just might get up enough energy to take a quick photo of it to post.  Don’t hold your breath though, I just sat down and got comfortable after a long night of doing everything except sleeping.   Yep, that pesky insomnia is still with me and going strong.  And my computer woes are still an ongoing issue for me.  And did I ever mention the day my phones were missing in action?  Almost an incentive to no more cleaning while I have work in progress out. I was clearing a table off after cutting some fabrics and the phones, cell and home phones both, managed to get swept off the table and into the trash container.  Normally I check that particular container before emptying it because it is kept so close to my work area, but this particular day I just wanted to get the trash out, so it was already in the compacter before I noticed my phones hadn’t been ringing.  Never a good sign around here where they usually ring obnoxiously at all the worst times.  I enjoyed the quiet for a little bit, then had to go out and replace the cell phone so I could buzz people in when they visited me.  The home phone still remains MIA and might never be replaced — or maybe I’ll wait and enjoy the peace just a little bit longer.

So, here I am at 6 a.m., having been up all night and beginning to wonder what’s for breakfast, as if I didn’t know it will be whatever I make when my naval shakes hands with my spine and I have to eat something in a hurry before my sugar crashes.  I also just moved a little bit in my chair and about 25 quilt blocks that are pinned together until I get the sewing machine out again are now in a pile on the floor.  I do tend to burrow in when working and comfortable.  I suppose it could be much worse but looking at them makes me wonder how.  Now I’m going to finish this post up and get down to floor level and pick up the nights supply of work, find a good place to store them until Christmas, try to remember where that good place is a few minutes after putting the top on it …..

Have a great December!

Sunday Morning Way Too Early

And wondering why I’m still awake.  Okay, so I had to clean the kitchen first, and that led to some other things that were out of place and those led to others that led to, well, now it’s time to get up and I haven’t gone down yet.  And even worse, there is a pile of stuff still out of place to be put away.  I’m afraid to put it away though because I already know there will be more stuff every place I turn and eventually I’ll wind down and probably just collapse where my batteries run out of juice which could be in a closet or under some furniture or even scrubbing those flower pots that are soaking in the bath tub.  I might never be found or heard from again!  It could be like that old song from so long ago I’ve forgotten the words, something about the man who never returned after boarding the subway in Boston.   On the other hand, that would assure my getting some real rest, so it wouldn’t be all bad.  Think I’ll eat first though.

Now, if my computer will cooperate, I’m gonna talk a little bit about the good old dn of Highway 81 of my dreams.  So hard  to realize so many of them are gone whilente those of us still here are going strong — except in isolated cases when these cotton pickin electronics take over and try to rule my life.   And   it just ate half of my content before kicking me back to my sign-in screen,  Don’t feel like fighting a battle of wills   with a

Problems, Problems, Problems!

I have been fighting a very intense case of pinched sciatic nerve lately, and not doing much blogging.  Sorry about that, but what can I say?  It just plain hurts — actually to the point of my asking my doctor for a script for a muscle relaxer today.  Shocked the poor girl out of a few years growth, and since she is still just a child, she doesn’t need this.  Really, if you could see her you would have to agree that she is a very intelligent teenager.  So what if she has twin boys who started preschool last Sept.  Sheta probably had them when she was 10!  I can remember when all the doctors were so old, and now for some strange reason they are just kids!

I’m also still having some discussions with my computer, trying to let it know who is in charge here!  It seems to think it is running the show, but each time I sign on I have to manually start most of the apps.  I almost know what I’m doing now, all except how to save the settings.  I’m determined to win this argument though, even if I have to do it by removing the screen from my window , um, taking it down to my neighbor and asking him how to accomplish this.  He’s a computer tech and works on all the computers in the building when he is feeling okay.  Like most of us though, he has health problems that keep him from doing what he loves.  He endeared himself to me when he revealed the fact that he plays the guitar!  He also fell in love with the picture of my sis and me playing and singing, or “pickin’ and grinnin’ together a few years ago.  I’ve tried to convince my son to bring mine home so I can hear my neighbor play it the way it should be played. Ah well, if my darlin’ little boy prefers to let my Martin D 2800. circa 1970, hang on his wall like a trophy there’s just not much I can do to stop him now — except try to keep him informed about proper storage and the price of replacing it, if indeed he could ever find one like it for sale.

Okay, stopping my complaining now!  See what happens when I’m really hurting?  I make a horrible patient, just whining all the time.  It will pass when the weather stops being so horrible.  Once in a while I just have to whine about it all

Just  a few photos to cheer us all up:

 

Looks Like I Did It Again

I’m beginning to think that computers and I are simply not compatible.  I’m not sure how I got to this place, but when I turned my laptop on today — several hours ago, actually, I got a black, blank screen.  Everything I had seems to have been deleted, including Windows 10!  The worst part is that they now want me to pay to download it again, pay again for updating the drivers that have been lost, pay another time for all other updates…well it just isn’t worth it for me.  If I could figure out how I keep doing this it would be one thing, but to log off one night and try to log on the next day only to find that all information is lost is becoming a bit depressing.  I can’t even get to my computer settings to attempt to find out what’s happening.  Huge sigh!  But ya know something? I’m just too darn stubborn to even think about giving up.  That means if you hear a big roar coming from Kentucky, it will be me blowing my top — again.  I’m really surprised to find any hair at all still attached to my top.  Arrrrgghhhh.  Loud screaming to follow.  Then maybe a phone call to a friend down the hall to see if he can find any of the information for me — again.  Many hours of searching ahead for me tonight!

Yes, my ice cream churn is getting another workout as I write this.  Funny thing is that you will never know when I go over to add ice and salt to the churn.  For a second hand item, it really works well and I can feed my ice cream cravings any time I feel the urge.  I discovered this will have to work for all cravings for now.  My feet are swelling lately from too much salt intake (sour cream and onion chips). I think if I read the label on the bag I would see that salt is the first ingredient listed, probably followed by a few other unwanted ingredients before I would come to potatoes.  I definitely need a change in diet here.

Okay,  no more stalling.  Have to get back to my computer problems, but only after I eat a quart of the ice cream that is finished now.  Yep, I can hear it calling my name and getting louder the longer I ignore it.  Later (I hope) if I can find my computer programs again and make it easier to find the places I want to go.  I’m getting sleepy just thinking about it.  Later.  A