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 If you DO want to know, welcome to my blog |
For those who actually want to follow my thoughts, ideas, moans, and gripes, this is the place for you! For those of you who are returning...I question your judgment, you poor souls. 
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| The Fridge. No, I'm not talking about William Perry, although that big boyo might have been easier to move. Saturday, I bought a new refrigerator. $on sale--$1,500 down to $1,100! ELEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS! I think it would have been cheaper to move to Minnesota and keep my shit out back in a stream. But I really don't think I could stand to be"On the Road Again" so... Came to ~$1,300 with warranty and delivery. Well, I got kinda lucky: "All we have is the floor model, but I can give that to you for $700 + warranty." Woohoo! "Also, we can't deliver it. Shazbat! So, the store loaded it up on the back of our pickup truck, the one that was recently filled with Tetris/Jenga boxes. They used this cool thing that was a cross between a truck liftgate and a palette jack. It was pretty snazzy! We got thing all strapped down, after going back in to buy a bigger ratchet strap (additional $14.73), and got on the road. Carefully. And I had a 40-minute anxiety attack over whether it was strapped tight enough or if it would fall over...probably taking the truck with it. 40 minutes later—about 4 years for my cardiac and nervous systems—we pull into the driveway, pretty excited about our brand new fridge. (The other one was a side by side that weirdly had lots of room and no room at all at the same time.) We get out of the truck and smile up at our shiny new edifice. Then we look at each other with the same question: "How the hell are we gonna get this modern-day Stonehenge off the damn truck?!" 2 hours and several bad ideas later, I was literally sick with anxiety. "Well, we'll just leave it on the truck for tonight and see if Billy can help tomorrow." Oh goody, an entire night of stress and worry! Next day we decided that the french doors were the best way to bring it in the house...if Billy was actually able to help. Now, we keep those doors screwed shut and plasticked-over all year long. So I had to move my office (one desk and some cords, really), several pieces of pet furniture, and excavate my door—all while trying not to throw up from the worry. A half hour later, the doors were openable and I was ready(?) to get the monolith off the truck. Billy did show up, and we recruited an extra neighbor, a bear of a man also named Bill. We moved and maneuvered the giant scalding-hot (it had been in the sun and it was now past noon) stainless steel block to the edge of the truck. Then, the unthinkable happened: we got it off the truck without a scratch in about 45 seconds.  Big Bill wheeled it in the house on the two-wheeler. He took over the project and I was happy to give him the reins. So now we have two refrigerators: the old one, unplugged and ready to ship out to the son who can't seem to get along with his live-in girlfriend, and the shiny happy new one. Good news: the new one has much more room but takes up about the same amount of space. So only one more time to load and unload a dang fridge. Tell ya this much, though, next time we're hiring the local baseball team to help unload mothertrucker! That's it; I'm done. I can't anymore. I gotta go decompress. One might even say, I'm gonna go chill out. |
| Painting. Packing and Moving. Plumbing. It's the trifecta of things I hate in this world. Packing and Moving is probably the worst, though. And of course, I just did that. Not my own stuff—I think I'd rather cut off a finger than move again. Nope; this time I was moving my son. Again. This is the...let's see... third, no fourth, um...damn, the too-many-eth time hauling this kid all over the place! He's led a hard life, and he has trouble keeping a place to himself. But that's a different entry. This is less about him and more about the FML of moving things. 7:00: Prep the tiny-ass trailer on which we're going to move all this stuff. This involves trying to open the tailgate of the trailer only to realize it's welded closed; laying down perfectly good wood so oil and road much doesn't get on the stuff we're moving; and attaching an out-of-date license plate to the trailer becuase the guy who lent it to us doesn't have one on it! 7:30: Start emptying the shed where 80% of the stuff is staged. Oh look, it has taken on moisture and we have to clean some surface mold off some stuff. Fantastic! 8:00: All hands on deck to finish emptying the shed. "I said ALL HANDS ON DECK! Finish your damn coffee and get out here!" [Grumble, grumble, curse...] 8:15: Grumble and curse under my breath some more, blaming all my worries and woes on this one person. 8:30: Start playing a strange combination of Tetris and Jenga to stack all this crap in a pickup truck, on this tiny-ass trailer, into the back of a car, and into the seats of said pickup truck. Make sure NO ONE can see out of their vehicle except for a 10 inch by 10 inch square right in front of the windshield. 10:00: Consider what can be left behind and thrown away. 10:15: Score a small victory by actually deciding some things can be left behind and thrown away! 10:30: Finish the load-out and strap it all down. 11:00: Stand around impatiently while everyone rushes around getting last-minute things together, realizing they forgot to get some tings ready, rushing around to get some last-minute things gathered up ready, then actually getting the last-minute things ready, and finally getting in the car. 11:15: Sit in the car with it running, wondering why we're not going anywhere yet, grumbling and cursing out loud because I have the windows closed and it's safe because no one will hear me and I won't get yelled at for being an asshole. 11:30: On the road for an hour's trip. 12:15: Turn off on a weird side road so my son and his girlfriend can have a fight wherein she gets out of the car and walks off down the road insisting she will not ride with him anymore. 12:30: Chase the girlfriend down the road and load her into the pickup truck like human Tetris. 1:00: Arrive at the destination where everything is suddenly fine between son and girlfriend. 1:15: Grumble much more loudly. 3:00: Fast forward, because I'm getting aggravated all over again...everything's in the new place and we leave. And grumble. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm getting to old for this nonsense! And it's not over! We have to get them a refrigerator and a washer/dryer, too. I repeat: TOO OLD! *Sigh* I just want to stay home and write and play some Minecraft. But that's not gonna happen. Cos I gotta go measure a refrigerator to make sure it will be big enough for me to get a hernia or collapse a disc in my back. TTFN! [Grumble, grumble, curse...under my breath...] |
| "Summary of your Results" "Walmart Automotive Center" ""This page intentionally left blank." Internal Medicine an Northfield Park" "GimmeMyB00ks!" That's what surrounds my in my office right now. That's the strange range of my life. ...Also, there's a hole in the ceiling, a herd of Lamb Chop dog toys (yes, an entire herd of the damn things) drying on the cookbook shelf; an unopened baby stroller for a grandson we may only ever see sporadically; a yoga mat for people who get uncomfortable just watching yoga on the TV; and a couple of bums pups trying to sleep off a long night of more sleeping. ...Oh, and an empty coffee mug. (Recent and disappointing development in the last 10 minutes or so.) The things with which we surround ourselves define us, to a degree. My definition seems to be barely controlled chaos, disorganization, and incompleteness. ...There's a couple of bins of recycling that need to go to the recycling center, a curtain rod hung with mere nails and bare drywall behind it. A Minecraft Creeper mug with pens and...something else in it. (Not sure what that is; guess I'll find out later if its overdue or not.) "But First, Coffee!" reads the placard on the corner of the desk, just behind the defunct computer-cum-monitor that is still there for whatever lazy or sentimental reason my other laptop—still running on Windows 8.1—is still sitting on the filing cabinet. Perhaps this all says I'm on my way to being a hoarder. Don't misunderstand...the recycling is waiting because the center is not open on weekends, not because I can't bear to get rid of trash. Well, obvious trash. But what about the old computers that don't even really work anymore? I've gotten all our old pictures off them, and whatever files I may have had on them. What strange definition does that make of me? ...Wires. Adapters. USBs. A red stapler someone gave me over a decade ago as a joke. A gun safe with no guns in it (they're all in the bedroom; where else should one keep guns?  ); a vacuum cleaner; six beds for two dogs. Oh, and look over there: there's a spare monitor I could be using on my desk instead of the defunct computer-cum-monitor I can't seem to bear to part with! Handy! ....The browser I'm typing in right now— tabs grouped for programming, school (not programming school), AI, writing. Not random at all, Jeffrey; everyone tries to look at everything all at once. It's the great get-into-it-all-and-get-nothing-done enterprise! ...Cookbooks and cat food (hopefully not to be used together). Printers, pictures, and projects aplenty. Crystal and crosswords. ...Definition? Or detritus? What we surround ourselves with is often how we silently define ourselves. Look around. Who are you today? |
| I'd like to interrupt your day to tell you I have nothing useful to say! I'm caught up on my homework. I finally got to my 5K fun run goal (writing). After this, I'll be caught up on my blog. Seems like I'm all caught up, right? No. I still have weed trimming, grass cutting, house vacuuming, laundry folding... It's a game that never ends. And I've been beat-down tired since two hours ago! It's Sunday! Why don't I feel like I can rest? Because my wife doesn't rest. She works around the house 7 days a week, unless she's sick. She doesn't stop and relax much on the weekends. If she's working, I reckon I ought to be. Anybody else like that? "I wanna rest, but that person is up and moving. I don't want to be an asshole, so I reckon I ought to help out." I think I might have to be an AH today, anyway. (Not like she's not used to that in one way or another.) A blog is about your life, and I usually have something quippy to offer. Today, I'm just tired and not yet caught-up. That's my life. You may now return to your own regularly scheduled tragedies. |
| "Wellnow" should be a word. Meaning: "You've touched on a subject that requires a lot of explanation, so get comfortable." Use: "Hey, how's the fam doing?" "Wellnow! Miriam's man took to drinking and gambling and lost both cars in a poker game. Her youngest is now selling meth in Florida. Her eldest is pregnant with her third daughter, but her career as a real estate agent is still going quite well. In fact, she just made a quarter-million dollar commission! Of course, most of that got eaten up in taxes and condo payments and buying a couple of cars to get back on track, but good for her. As for the missus? She's hacked off at me because I keep airing the family's dirty laundry to anyone who asks. ...How about you?" Synonym: "Lemmetellya" Antonym: "Justfine" I got all my medical bills (except for one) paid off today, and I'm also out of collections! Now I can refocus that money on paying off my other loan paying ahead on the mortgage disposable income more car repairs. Or a better roof patch than the one I'm probably going to do today. Or stuff for the new grandbaby. The grandbaby. Lemmetellya! He's a peach, just adorable, and loves his sleep! He smiles when he goes to sleep, but he's as cranky as his dad when he wakes up! Good lookin kid, too. Doesn't look much like an alien at all, which, you have to admit, a lot of babies do. His folks now... Granted, they're tired; the kid's only 6 days old now, and they are new parents. But they were staying over the other night, and at six in the morning, while were watching the baby downstairs, they got in a screaming match upstairs, to the point where my wife actually went upstairs and told them to stop acting like children and go the hell to bed, and never let the baby hear them act like that again. 30+ years old, and still like kids themselves. Christ in a sidecar, this is going to be an adventure that takes a lot of guidance. The roof: not justfine. You might have read that it began leaking—POURING in—during the Indiana flooding. There's a hole in the sheeting i can see from the inside. But where is coming from outside? Further up the roof? Hidden under shingles? As Shatner says, "Well...that is what we'll try to find out." Without destroying any of the already-****ed up shingles. And without coming through the roof. And without, as doctors promise (bot don't always deliver) to first, do no harm. Which is more than I can say for my pocketbook. Because there's also the car. It tries to asphyxiate me at stop lights, thinks the car is in a skid and applies the anti-lock brakes when I first start is, and generally sounds like a friggin combine. Dropping it off to the mechanic today with my eyes closed and my teeth bared. "Well, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" I know, I'm just a ray of sunshine. Hey—the last post was positive, now I get to have some fun and bitch for a while! But that's over now. Time to go jump off work on the roof! |
| I'm not a people-person...but I like me a pat on the back. At work, every now and then, I'll get a thank-you card from the boss. Not my immediate boss, mind you, but the CEO. (It's a small company, but still...) It makes a huge difference. One little card that says "Thanks for doing your job and not being a slacker" re-energizes me to double down on my efforts and work to be even more effective. I'll reread that card 5 times and wallow in the praise like a pig in the mud. When my daughter finally gets her job and says thank you to us for supporting her and pushing her along her journey, it gives me a lift to be that much more of an effective and compassionate advisor. I get little merit badges and trinkets here on Writing.com, and I get that little dopamine rush. 7-Day Visit Streak. Woopty-do. Anyone can get that. ...but it matters. Merit badge for reviewing? Guess who's going to review even more next month? Quill Award? Holy Shit! It all matters; it all counts. To me at least. It kinda keeps me going. I'm not a people-person, but I guess I crave their approval anyhow. How's that for a setup for disappointment? Well... nothing terribly clever or impactful today. Just some personal reflection shared among friends. ... (...sure hope everybody likes it!) |
| "Fear, fire, flood! Awake!" Well, that's the alarm cry in Tolkien's Crickhollow, at any rate. Thank goodness there was no fire to speak of around here. But flood and fear? You guessed it. I live in New Castle, Indiana, one of the towns hardest hit by the 2026 Indiana Floods. I live on the outskirts of town (not in an eight-room farmhouse, baby, thank you very much J. Cougar) higher up on a knob of sorts. The area used to be cornfields, so the roads running through the area are higher than the surrounding yards. So even though we live higher than the city, which is like a bowl, we all live in our own little saucers. My personal saucer, it appears, is a little over a foot deep, The area where my puppies do their duty (their doodie?) is right about 8 inches. I know this because I sounded it while the flood was at its crest. Sounding one's yard is a depressing act, by the way. It was about 2 inches below the door. My God, can you imagine if all that water had seeped in? It was full of poo! That just now occurred me. EWWW! The rain came pouring through a leak in the roof—a leak I still can't find from the outside. I had to dodge bolts of lightning to get a tarp up there to cover wherever-it-is so the next round of rain stayed on the outside. There's nothing like being on top of a roof in a lightning storm to keep your back door puckered! (As an aside, the insurance adjuster scowled at the nails I had to drive into the roof to hold the tarp on that is covering wherever the leak is. How the hell else was I supposed to cover the leak, my good man?!) No septic for days. Now, I was in the Marines a long time ago. There's something interestingly bonding about sitting with a group of your friends at sunset on commodes made of rocks (20 or 30 feet from each other; we weren't complete savages). It is not nearly as rosy three decades later sitting on a bucket in the bathroom. Yes, you probably could have done without that...but I could have, too. But we were lucky. Yep, I said it: we were lucky. We never lost the electric, for one thing, through what only could have been divine intervention. We have a well, so if we'd've lost power, we'd've lost water, ironically. A lot of people lost cars, houses, all their belongings. Some people died. We were heavily inconvenienced, but very lucky. It hasn't rained hard in a few days, now, but some people's saucers still have a few inches of what is decidedly not milk in them. The ground has firmed up enough to cut crass that either grew inches in days or almost completely died. It was a nice hot, fairly humid summer day yesterday. Things are almost right again. Except for people living in temporary housing hoping an apartment becomes available. That's a rare thing, because hundreds of people are waiting on the same apartment stock, which is now even more slim because many apartments themselves got flooded. My family and I were lucky. And we still are. That's important to focus on. In this world, it's easy to overlook it when good fortune smiles on you, even in a backhanded way. We're lucky. And we're okay. 'Nuff said. So we may now return to our regularly scheduled bitching and complaining. |
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CRASH! —What the hell was THAT?! That's not fireworks. Did we get struck by lightning? Was there a car crash outside? What WAS that?! At 4:50 on the morning of July 5th, the night after some great fireworks, we did get hit—but not by lightning. We did get struck, though, and there was a car crash outside—a crash that was not between two cars, but a car and my house!! Spoiler alert: the car did not come in the house. It knocked the front porch a good 12 inches off its foundation and bent the hell out of my front door; but the porch absorbed the shock and stopped the car a few feet shy of the living room. I suppose it's my fault. I forgot to erect a No Parking sign on my front porch. Also, my daughter's car is in the secondary driveway on that side of the house with a for-sale sign on it, so perhaps my yard was mistaken for a parking lot. Maybe my house got drunk and swerved into the road! (I told one of the police this is what happened. I was glad to see something make him smile that morning.) Maybe it was the county's fault for not putting up the guardrail we've asked for for five years. Maybe it was the road department's fault for not having a streetlamp at a nasty T-intersection. Or...maybe a bunch of kids simply got drunk all night, decided to drive a friend a home, completely missed the curve in front of the house, careened through the low rock wall in the yard, and embedded themselves in my porch. Interesting things heard during the course of the incident:  One of them asked the others if they thought maybe the car wasn't totaled. "Son...you hit a house!" That was what his friend said, not even me. }} As I took pictures for the insurance company: "Excuse me sir! Did we give you permission to take pictures of our car?!" I couldn't even shake my head at that absurdity. }} One officer asked another, "Did they rip right through that rock wall?" Nope. I just scatter rocks all over my yard to keep me on my toes while mowing. "I just had a flashback; I was the one driving." You poor, dumb, lucky, stupid kid.The porch is ruined, and we'll be lucky of the front of the house wasn't torqued. We were startled out of a good sleep.. We are temporarily neighborhood celebrities. But we did get lucky. Most everyone in the car got lucky, too. Everyone but one girl. The prosecuting attorney called me a few days later to keep me apprised of the case. He asked if I had any suggestions as to what should happen with the young driver. That one girl, one of is friends, a wee slip of a lass, a cheerleader, softball player, and track runner, broke her back and may not walk again. The Flashback Kid has to live with that every day. What can I say or suggest that's harsher than that? I'll leave that to his parents, his peers, and the experts. He's just a kid, man. All of 'em: just kids. —What the hell was THAT?! It was kids being kids—young, dumb, and indestructible. It was kids being kids—knowing everything and nothing at the same time. It was kids being kids—and growing up fast. The Offspring hit the nail on the head with that old song, y'know? The Kids Are Not Alright. |
| "Hi. My name's Jeffrey, and I'm a gorilla." "Hi, Jeffrey." I think I really need to go to Sasquatch anonymous. Everything I touch, I break. When I was a kid, maybe about 10 or 11, my dad looked at whatever toy I had torn apart and said: "Boy, I think you could tear up a rubber ball!" After several more wasted toys, I notice I stopeped getting new ones. Even the ones I had broken got broken worse. Dad doubled down: "God damn! You could wreck a steel ball with a rubber hammer!" (A few decades later, my best friend mailed me a 2 1/2 inch steel ball bearing and a rubber mallet with a note inside that simply read: "I challenge you, sir." So far, Dad has been proven wrong. The hammer is history, and the steel ball still sits smugly on its shelf, changed in no way other than a little surface rust. At least so for…) My brother-in-law is a small engine repairman. One day, my mower ka-chunked and stopped immediately. I took it over to him. He found a brick lodged between the blade and the chassis, and the crankcase was cracked. "Were you mowing a wall?! How the hell did you manage this?!" I still don't really know where the brick came from… Same brother-in-law asked me to sweep the porch. Once. He didn't ask again after I came in the house and handed him both halves of his broom. My best friend (steel ball bearing guy) asked how in the world I got so many flat tires that he had to change the tire on my spare. And last night, I broke my car key. It's one of those GM car keys that's like a switchblade: you press a little button and the key folds out from the big rectangular security transponder. Well, I dropped it…and the key haft fell out! Now its just a stick and a brick. I managed to get the haft to turn with the transponder once last night to get the thing home, but I had to turn it off and take the key out with a pair of pliers! I showed my wife the remains of the key and she very nearly wet herself laughing, telling me I was no longer allowed to protests when she told people she was married to one of the lesser apes. I think maybe she's right. After all, I get way too excited when I hear someone say, "Scrap the Caddy, Clyde!" (IYKYK) Gotta go; feeding time in the monkey house. I swear: it's bananas around here some days! |
| I like to review, although I am not in the reviewing phase of the year right now. I kind of go through spurts where I will review every day, trying to be thorough and fair. Other days, I will leave a shorter, more off-the-cuff review. But there are long periods of time where I'm lucky to review two pieces in a month. But whenever I review, I leave gift points. It's a simple scale. For shorter works, 100 GPs per star; longer works, 200 GPs per star. For blows-my-mind works, 5K GP. What makes me chuckle, a little ironically, is when someone thanks me for a review by sending gift points back to me! It's not that I am ungrateful; it's just the irony: "you won gift points for your work; this isn't the mob, you don't owe a kickback!"  I know that might sound a little uncharitable, but it's honestly not, in any way. I love to review, and that's my reward: being a participating part of a wonderful community. I only get "paid" for review requests, and I "sell" those on the cheap. Reviewing is my pleasure (when I have time and headspace.  ) Being thanked is very gratifying...but one does not seek payment for a gift freely given (like a review). Just a quick chuckle for today. Nothing particularly interesting, I guess. Except to me. Now back to the reviews for a while. |
un: 
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