The Lynnster Zone

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I’m As Tired of This Woe Is Me Stuff As You Probably Are, But Bear With Me Another Sec

Posted by Lynnster on June 26, 2009

So one of the things I’d been meaning to write about this week was sort of a little clarification to what my situation is/has been. I know (especially after talking with KathyT this morning, and talking with her and Aunt B. and Kat Coble in recent weeks, though I can kind of tell from what Kathy said today that I probably don’t really understand the full scope of all this just yet) – anyway, I know there’s been some stuff going on on my behalf, more or less, and I really don’t have words to express the gratitude and appreciation I feel about that, no matter what Kathy is bringing to me Sunday. When it comes to things like that I pretty much just dissolve into tears and sniffles, I’m worthless that way.

Anyway, that said – even though I know anyone and everyone involved would probably insist I don’t owe anyone any explanations – I feel like I still need to sort of clarify some things and attempt to explain a little, or at least some of what I possibly can publicly, about how and why things got this bad. Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot I can really go into here on the blog, for several reasons.

As many of you will remember, things were already kind of bad and shaky prior to last fall, though looking back NOW, those struggles look like a piece of cake compared to what I’ve been dealing with the last many months.

The best way I really know how to explain what’s happened now is for those of you that have traditional jobs, or have had them up until recently, to imagine not getting paid since, say, October or November. Or imagine only getting paid enough every month to pay your rent or house payment.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been dealing with, more or less. I can’t really say more publicly – not because of anything illegal, or anything of that sort – just out of respect for other people’s feelings due to the circumstances, I am choosing not to talk about it at length publicly. I have shared more of the details with a few, and if I know you, I’m happy to forward a copy of the e-mail I sent in those cases, or they can, or whatever, or we’ll talk about it over a meal sometime if I ever get to Nashville again or whatever. I don’t mind my friends knowing more about the situation, I’m just not going to blog about it on that public level.

But that’s pretty much what happened, and I’ve been scrambling ever since trying not to drown under what’s been a flood of never-ending stress and anxiety and I suppose terror, even, because of all the behind-ness that situation has wrought. All that behind-ness usually made even worse because, for a while there, every month would roll around and something still wouldn’t have been taken care of, so now there was an urgent need to get this paid or that paid – which has meant ongoing late fees and, on several occasions, overdraft fees trying to keep something or another from getting canceled or cut off. I’ve probably paid another year’s worth or more of car payments alone just in late fees all these months, but there was nothing else that could be done about it.

In all the cutting back and cutting out, somewhat fortunately I guess there were a few things that weren’t an issue when things grew so dire. I actually cut out cable a few years ago, when I still had a regular paycheck coming in, because I was spending so much more time online anyway and everything I watched much was available online, I just really couldn’t justify shelling out that kind of money every month anymore.

Same thing with my cell service. I’ve never been a big cell phone user and mainly carry mine for emergency purposes more than anything else. I couldn’t justify all that contract money anymore so I went to cheap and prepaid ages ago, and not only have been all the better for it but have more coverage than I did with my previous provider anyway and rarely any of the problems I had before with dropped calls and such. My mom has used the same prepaid service for years so now that’s just part of my birthday present every year, air time, and I never use a whole year’s worth in a year anyway.

So those were not issues – everything else has been, in any case. My mom wasn’t going to let me starve or anything, and has gone far and beyond the call of duty again and again and again all these months trying to help save me from disaster, to the point where she really has no extra to keep sparing. What I hate the most is that, for months and months, she believed everything was going to be okay the next month because I thought it was going to be – only for that month to come around and nope, and there we’d be scrambling to keep my utilities from getting turned off or this paid or that paid. She didn’t go on her usual vacation last year because of me, and if it weren’t for Social Security kicking in this year, I’d probably already be homeless and she would not be on vacation right now. Then there’s the boyfriend who is unable to work right now and wants nothing more than to be able to provide for me/us, and maybe in a couple of years we will be a two-income family and all of this current stuff will just be a bad memory – but that’s then, and this is now, and now sucks.

Anyway, as I wrote before, after this many months of struggling like this, it had gotten to be end of the rope time, there was nothing left. Have sold almost everything I had left to sell other than the one thing(s) that are the only “family heirloom” type thing that is just mine, no one else’s, that I have left, stuff I mentioned in a recent post – and that may well still go, and is not worth all that much anyway. Well, there is one other thing, but I’ve got to get up home to be able to do that and haven’t really been looking forward to dealing with that anyway (i.e., potentially shipping some things that are very, very breakable) and am actually probably going to make a blog post about it next week – this is something that is not only a pain to think about selling and shipping via eBay or something, but is also something really only a small percentage of people would be interested in owning. I’m thinking with the power of the Internet, I might find that person between now and Christmas and solve this problem; otherwise, it’ll be going up on eBay probably about the time people start Christmas shopping.

But yeah, really, like I said – think about your job, if you have one. And then think about not getting paid or only getting paid one bill’s worth every month since last fall, and that’s pretty much right where I am, and have been.

Other possibilities – there’s so many people going for every job that comes up, and a friend of mine here in town who is in charge of hiring where she is told me lately it’s nothing like it has ever been. Instead of 25 or 50 resumes coming in for every job she posts, she’s getting 200. Then there’s the other ones – the ones I’m way overqualified for and so is most everyone else – someone I know who hires for a place like that put it this way: why would he hire anyone that’s likely to leave as soon as the economy gets better or something else comes up? He, too, is seeing hundreds of applications for every position that opens, and in the case of his business, he says about 90% of them are overqualified, or maybe qualified to have HIS job – but not the position that’s open.

But the other thing is – and I think maybe there are some others out there that missed this, because Kathy didn’t realize it, though I know not everyone missed it because several, including The Awesomest Squirrel Queen in the World, commented on it when I mentioned it before – I actually AM working, besides what I have not been paid for. I actually really like my new gig doing QA work, it doesn’t pay much but it’s steady, but at least it does pay SOMETHING. I also do some other freelance work to bring in a little, and then there’s my other venture, which many of you have been aware of for a while, which is still continuing to steadily grow, though penny by penny, and that’s pretty much literally. It is growing, however, and I’ve built a foundation of what should (unless the whole industry hoses) continue to be residual income that grows. As it is, what started out as a little venture with big plans brought in over a year’s time what would have been nice “extra” money… if it hadn’t almost been my ONLY money.

I really do almost nothing BUT work to bring in what little I do – if I’m not working on one thing, it’s something else, or something else, or doing QA work, all day every day. Sleep for three or four hours, get up and scramble to bring in some money some more. Just been a constant ongoing thing and probably needless to say, I stay exhausted.

But I am, much like I said before, finally at a point where if I can just get a grip on the backlog, getting by month to month again is within my reach. It may require 80 hours a week of doing QA reviews, but I’m finally to a point where being able to get by every month, even if it’s just barely squeaking by, is possible.

But that’s what’s so frustrating about all this backlog that has just been stacking up and stacking up all these months struggling through this and staying perpetually behind – two months behind on this bill, a month behind on that bill, every once in a while three months behind and barely saving myself before cutoff/cancellations or losing everything. That much stress and anxiety is not good for anyone and it’s just consumed me daily for months and been downright frightening plenty – I probably need to be on medication at this point but much like my glasses that have needed to be replaced for a couple of years now, teeth that need to be fixed, my stupid broken windshield that got broken while sitting in my driveway during a storm (yep, that’s my luck) and some other stuff that I have just had to put on hold (including stuff people normally absolutely do not NOT pay every year – read into that what you want and you’re probably right) – well, anything extraneous is just out of the question completely right now. My glasses may be all scratched up and my prescription’s probably long since changed again, but as long as I can see out of them, whatever, and I still have a partial supply of contacts left from a few years ago that probably also need a prescription change, but for going out of the house purposes, they’ll do just fine until I can actually do something about it all again.

Anyway, so there you have it, what I can say publicly anyway, and I don’t want to keep going on about it here but it’s sort of my understanding that several people have been involved in trying to help and even though I really don’t know the full scope of it all yet, I just wanted to clarify and better outline a little more than I did before, maybe. Especially in trying to give an example of what it really is I’ve been dealing with, and also – especially after realizing that Kathy didn’t realize I am working at all – to clarify that I am doing work, and doing other things to try and fix all this. It’s just not much money, but at least it’s a little.

I’m also going to do something that I never intended to do, but it was suggested to me by someone else that maybe I ought to put a donation button on the blog in case there were those that wanted to help but didn’t want to take a chance on embarrassing me by asking, or whatever. Believe me, at this point with things as bad as they’ve gotten and after months and months of struggling and dealing with this stuff, I’m beyond any embarrassment or anything of the sort about accepting any help and stuff. I know some have already done plenty and they’ve done enough, and I’m not going to think anything negative about anyone who doesn’t, but for anyone else who just happens along and wants to, or has, I’m humbled and beyond words when it comes to appreciation and gratitude of those who do or have. So there it is and I’ll be putting it in the sidebar to stay, I guess.

I just can’t really put into words how not only depressing but just plain frightening it’s all been. My anxiety and stress levels have been so high and so constantly for so long, and with a pretty huge family history of both stroke and heart disease, even all the more frightening to be that stressed out all the time. There was a very scary couple or three days in December that I really don’t ever want to relive again, and I’d like to think I’m handling all that anxiety and depression a little better than I was at that particular time, but then there’s weeks like last week, when ’round about Wednesday evening, it occurred to me that the reason I was feeling sick and dizzy was probably because I hadn’t really realized it, but I had spent most of the last three days holding my breath repeatedly because I was so worried about how I was going to take care of what needed to be paid that week. That kind of anxiety.

I just want to be able to breathe again, and not be in a constant state like that almost 24/7 for weeks and months at a time. And be able to sleep more than a fitful three or four hours waking up worrying some more. And maybe only spend, say, 18 hours a day desperately trying to make some income instead of 20 or 22. That would be an improvement.

I do know this. I may not have much else left at this point, but my family and loved ones, and friends blogger and non-blogger alike, and an awful lot of acquaintances as well – you’re all just treasures. I wish I had the right words to fully express how grateful I am and how much I appreciate and heart all of you, but as I said above, times like that, words just start failing me and I just start getting teary-eyed and sniffly instead. So please just know I do. If you’re reading this, then you are most likely one of those treasures and you’re just so fabulous I have no words left to say but that I’m proud to know you and that you crossed my path, wherever and however you did. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Posted in a family thing, blah, blogfolks, friends are good, my so-called life, the economy sucks | 2 Comments »

I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Posted by Lynnster on June 15, 2009

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, blah, blogfolks, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are good, in memory of..., my luck sucks, my so-called life, west tennessee | Leave a Comment »

Merry Merry

Posted by Lynnster on December 25, 2008

I think this is the first time in my life I have ever been alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It won’t last – my sister couldn’t leave Nebraska until after work Wednesday, so Christmas for us is pushed back a day, my Christmas Eve will technically be tonight and Christmas Day tomorrow.  In fact, I’m on my way out of town shortly today to get that ball rolling.

Several days ago, I wrote about my frustration and sadness about not really being able to “participate” in Christmas for the second year in a row.  After I’d posted that, my godmother, who I love dearly, commented that it didn’t matter how many presents we had or did not have and that we would all still have a good Christmas and enjoy being with each other and laughing and having fun like usual, and well, she’s right, that’s all true.  But I still can’t help but be frustrated and sad that I couldn’t do much, and what Newscoma wrote the other day about her own Christmas pretty much hit the nail on the head for me too when it comes to Christmas:

This year is a lean, mean Christmas but I’ve gotten into the spirit to a degree. No, there isn’t any big ticket items. People are getting small gifts that I tried to put some meaning into. I’m a gifty person. I like seeing people’s faces when they open their presents. I’m weird.

That’s always been the fun for me as well, at least ever since I was old enough to do my own Christmas shopping.  You won’t find socks and underwear under the tree in our family – well, you will, but they’re the least important – we do gifts that others would probably think silly and certainly unconventional, but everybody gets stuff they really wanted (and some stuff they didn’t but are resigned to getting every year, like my brother-in-law getting sheep in various forms – a family in-joke) and we have a blast.  I like getting just the perfect things for people and seeing their faces when they open their presents, that’s the big thing for me.

And ever since my parents got divorced, my main priority has always been making sure my Mom gets the stuff she wanted.  And I couldn’t do much of either this year, and it depressed me.

As it turned out, I actually was a little better off than I thought I was.  I thought I only had one thing to give one person, and as I was getting things together getting ready to go out of town and kept finding things I’d forgotten about – including something my mother was supposed to have gotten for Christmas probably two or three years ago – I actually wound up with one gift for each person that will be at our family Christmas.  So I guess that’s better, but I’m still pretty frustrated and depressed about it all.

Really when it comes down to it, I’m about at the end of my rope in general.  Last week I spent three days in such depression, fear, and panic about just everything in general that when things improved just a little bit and I felt a little bit better, it was really concerning to me just how bad it had gotten.  It’s a little bit scary to get that far down.  A lot of those things that people will say things like, “I don’t know how he/she could have done that”, things I used to be able to say – I know why people do those things now.  I can tell you for a fact that if you get knocked down and desperate enough, things that may cross your mind, if only for a fleeting moment, are the kinds of things you never would have thought would do so.

But I don’t know, for some reason I’m still here, although sometimes I wonder if the only reason I haven’t just thrown up my hands and given up yet is because somebody’s got to take care of the pets, and if I weren’t here… well, the cats would probably be taken care of, but I know what would happen to my dogs, and it wouldn’t be what I would want.

So I just keep going, but I’m so tired of all the panic and anxiety and not knowing anything every month – how is this going to get paid, how is that going to get paid, how am I going to be able to eat next week, etc.  The car insurance and phone/Internet miraculously got paid this month – which the latter, you know, I’d probably do without too, but without Internet, then there’s NO income at all.

I still don’t know how the car payment’s getting made this month or catching up on the utility bill, and then January will come and all the panic just start’s all over again.  Right now I only have one for sure, every month, monthly check coming in and it will only cover either rent, car insurance, or car payment, so that’s what I consider my rent check.  The rest is pretty much all up in the air every month right now, which is just… yeah, panic-inducing, frustrating, and depressing.

But for a couple of days anyway, I’m just going to attempt to enjoy what there is of Christmas this year and put the rest behind me for a little while.  There will be plenty of time after Saturday for the panic and worrying again, so I’m going to see what little bit of Christmas spirit I can muster up and go with it.

Dobie is not doing very well at all and just had a bath today – which just made him all the more furious with me – my Mom doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming to visit for Christmas too (thus the bath).  I’m hoping hanging out in a warm house with carpet and a bed to sleep in all by himself with me for a couple of nights, and some turkey and who knows what all else there will be, will perk him up a little bit, or at least make what I am fairly certain now are his last days a little nicer.  He hasn’t shown much interest in food lately, but I kind of expect he will be thrilled about the turkey and whatever scraps.  Sure, table scraps aren’t really good for dogs, but he’s old and he’s dying, as far as I’m concerned he can eat whatever he wants (and whatever he WILL eat).

It seems like this year has just been a never-ending cycle of bad news.  Times have been so tough lately and not just for me, seems like half of nearly everyone I know has been going through something or other – friends losing jobs recently, another recently finding out hers will be terminated at the end of the year, others losing family members here right at Christmas.  It’s just all got to get better sometime, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hope everyone who stops by here had a really super nice Christmas.  Some of you I miss so much and hope to see in the coming months.  In the meantime, I am on my way in a couple of hours for my own Christmasing, scanty though it is this year.  See you again soon.

Posted in a family thing, blah, blogfolks, dobie is a dog, dogs, friends are good, holidays, lynnster's zoo, my so-called life | 3 Comments »

The Usual, Unfortunately

Posted by Lynnster on December 15, 2008

Here’s yet another example of how rotten my luck is (and notably has been for some time).  I was getting ready to work on a project a couple of days ago that I badly needed to work on and finish before Christmas got much closer, and as I sat down at the computer all motivated and ready to get productive – the power went out.  Because at the house next door, they were chopping limbs off a tree… but had to get the utility company to kill my power line to do it.

The power was out for, I don’t know, seven or eight, maybe nine hours.  Just mine.  Not the house where the tree is.

In fact, the worker chopping the tree got through about 3:45, and had made several calls, but over two hours later, the utility company had yet to come back and put the (live) line back up.  So I called them too.  They finally showed up after 7 p.m., and by then it was really too late to do anything.

There’s something else I need to get done, but I need a large shipment of (free) Priority Mail boxes from the postal service to be able to do it.  I’ve been waiting a while.  I realize it’s the Christmas season and all with the mail, but just yet another monkey wrench thrown my way.  At this point, even though I badly need to get this done, I’m thinking maybe I’m better off waiting until after Christmas anyway.  Maybe people will have more money to spend on stuff they want but don’t necessarily need (which is what this project mainly consists of) by then.

In any case, I just can’t really catch a break lately.  There’s always something somewhere throwing a monkey wrench into everything.

I applied for a couple of jobs recently.  The very next week, both organizations announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

It’s too bad I have to buy groceries at all, since it seems like nearly all the things I have to buy that are necessities have gone up 75-100% practically in the last few months.  Some of them have even gone up that much – yet the packaging has gotten smaller, there’s less of whatever it is in the package.  Other stuff is the same price but now, like, 11 ounces of whatever instead of 16.

Seems like I’ve been saying for months when will this all end?  Seems like it’s not going to.

People close to me will help, but by the time I’ve gotten another round or two of groceries and other necessities or bills paid, there’s nothing left and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make $1.49 or so stretch out for weeks again.  I need to put gas in the car again later this week and I’m thinking, OK, now how am I going to do that?

I eat maybe three, four times a week.  I know that’s not good.  But I do things like last week when I made the mistake, after having craved it for days and being hungry as heck anyway, of spending a little extra (less than ten bucks) on a spaghetti dinner from a fave joint around here.  Now I’m wishing I hadn’t and had that ten bucks back.

I have cut back virtually everything, pretty much, until there is no more.  The utilities are almost two months behind again, as that’s pretty much stayed for months now – it’ll get paid somehow.  I wouldn’t have Internet anymore I suppose, except since that’s my sole source of income I can’t very well not have that – of course if the utilities get cut off – well, you know.

Christmas?  I don’t get to participate in Christmas for the second year in a row.  I mean, we’ll have it, and it’ll be fine and nice and all that.  But I can’t buy anything for anyone, and just be opening presents I’ll wish nobody would have bought me since I can’t do anything myself.  I do have one thing for my sister that I just happened to wind up with, but I didn’t really intentionally go out and get it as a Christmas gift.  That’ll be it.

I’ve built up some residual recurring income.  It’s small now, but it will get better.  It’s just stuff that takes some time to grow and is going to continue to.  But it’s not going to solve any big problems right away, that’s for sure.

I do some work but there are issues with that too.  Always issues.  I’m actually constantly working, almost around the clock, sleep here and there when I finally crash, get up and get to work on something else again.  It’s some income, but not enough.  Working on other things too but again, more stuff that’s going to take time for anything to come of it.

I’m just really, really tired of it all.  Sorry.  I probably wouldn’t read here anymore for all the repetitive doom and gloom there’s been either.

Dobie is in such decline that I don’t really think we have much longer.  He is so frail and skinny now, it just breaks my heart.  And that in itself – him getting so frail and thin and pitiful, as well as blind – has posed all kinds of new problems, like today when he got stuck somewhere I wasn’t sure for a while I was going to be able to get him out of.  Last week he got a foot and claw stuck in the old furnace grill and I wasn’t sure I was going to get him loose from that either.  I keep thinking what if he does something like that sometime when I’m (rarely as I am) away from home and is stuck like that for hours?

He and the only other extremely elderly pet left are really throwing me for a loop.  Neither of them are eating as much as they should, although the cat is really doing all right otherwise for her 17 or so years.  It takes her hours to eat when she does eat, though, and she spends most of her time in there talking to her food.  Which is kind of funny, yes, but she’s always had this habit of talking to inanimate objects, starting with a roll of duct tape that was on the floor once years ago.

I always was big into Christmas.  I was thinking the other day of how nice it always used to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’d have the tree up and on every night, and my parents had all this Christmas music on a couple of reel-to-reel tapes that were usually playing every night, and I’d just hang out laying with my head under the Christmas tree listening to music and looking at the lights and ornaments most every night.

Back when people used to have time to enjoy stuff like that, anyway.

I’d do the same at my grandmother’s house.  I remember what all the Christmas decorations she used to pull out every year looked like – probably because I was always helping get them out and put them up – even though I haven’t seen most of them in 25 years.  I guess my aunt still has most of them, I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s really anything I wish I had of all that stuff, except for maybe the little lighted Christmas trees that probably actually originally belonged to my great-grandmother.  There were two of them – one was silver and one was green – they weren’t anything special, just aluminum or tin with a light inside, and colored cellophane or something that made them look like they had lights on them.  Probably from the Fifties or Forties, maybe earlier.  They always sat on the end tables in my grandmother’s living room which, before that, was my great-grandmother’s living room.

I’m older now than my mother was when I left home for college.  Have I already written that here before?  I can’t remember.

So, enough joy and good will to men from me for now.  Maybe sometime I’ll have something better or funny to write about, there just isn’t lately or I’m too busy anyway.

I was about to write that at least Tojo has been staying mostly out of trouble lately, but I just reached over to move him as he was standing over Maggie looking like he was about to jump on her (again), and he bit me (not hard).  So there’s that, too.

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, blah, cats, dobie is a dog, dogs, getting older sucks, holidays, lynnster's zoo, my luck sucks, my so-called life, neighborhood rants, the economy sucks | 6 Comments »

The Thanksgiving Crab

Posted by Lynnster on December 5, 2008

I don’t remember where I’m stealing the idea behind this post from – I think I read and responded to someone talking about it in someone’s comments somewhere last week – but I was in total agreement with it.

Why couldn’t the Pilgrims have looked to the sea, instead of the land, for their Thanksgiving feast?

I know, I know – I KNOW the answer to the question and the Indians and the harvest and being thankful and land and blah blah blah and all that.  I’m just saying I really, really wish the Pilgrims had done that instead.

They were right there by the danged sea.  There must have been lakes and rivers (and heck, ponds!) nearby.    Couldn’t the Indians have taught them how to fish instead?

I am not, and never have been, a big fan of turkey.  Most of the rest of the usual Thanksgiving fare, I like just fine, but the turkey is usually the least eaten thing on my plate.  Most of my favorite Thanksgiving dinners have been the ones where there was ham as well as the turkey.

And then there’s the dark meat thing.  Put any branch of my entire family together – there was only one person who liked the dark meat.  My father – who’s been gone many years now, and really, even before that, pretty much since my parents divorced twenty years ago, and I usually spent holidays with my Mom and family – there’s nobody to eat the dark meat.  It’s useless, except to give to the cats and dogs (obviously they like that idea).

Post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches (with lots of mayo) are fine – for about a day, maybe two, then I’m over it.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat the after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches at all.

The turkey was fun the one year when dinner was over, and my Dad put the carcass and scraps out on the deck for all the then-outside cats we had at the time.

A few minutes later, we were a bit shocked to see the carcass appearing to walk by itself across the yard.  The female cat who was, over the years, often referred to as “The Turkey Monster” was a great deal smaller than the carcass, so that was a pretty hilarious sight.

But turkey – for me anyway – just sucks.  I know the difference between good turkey and mediocre turkey and bad turkey – but I could almost just about eat cardboard instead, really.

On the other hand, seafood – now THAT’S a Thanksgiving feast I could love.  Lobster, crab, salmon, scallops – yum.  There’s really no seafood I don’t adore, except clams.  I’m a little picky about fish, but most fish is okay.  Heck, give me a Thanksgiving catfish or a Christmas catfish!  That would be A-OK with me.  Thanksgiving catfish, Christmas lobster, Easter salmon – oh, yes!

So, I think that one day – if I ever evolve out of extended adolescence and actually become the kind of matriarch that is the cooker of all Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) feasts – I will begin the tradition of the Thanksgiving crab.

In more ways than one, I’m sure.

(Although I really would have been even happier if the Mayflower had drifted down to the Gulf of Mexico and landed in far south Texas near the border instead.  Thanksgiving fajitas, Christmas quesadillas, and Easter tamales – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!)

(And no, I don’t know why I included Easter in the above.  Every good white Anglo-Saxon Protestant knows you have ham on Easter instead of turkey.)

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, cats, fun with food, holidays, lynnster's zoo | 6 Comments »

These Hands Weren’t Made for Manual Labor

Posted by Lynnster on August 8, 2008

The trip home to lay Schuyler to rest wound up a real comedy of errors.  When it comes to hard manual labor, really I am pretty much useless.  Edge has marveled before at how it’s not just that I don’t have much strength, it’s like I have NO strength.  I don’t think that’s a totally fair assessment; after all, I carry 40-lb. bags of dog food around often, or at least from the shelf to the cart, the cart to the car, the car in the driveway to inside the house.  No, Mr. Sacker, I don’t need help with that, I do it all the time, thanks.

But suffice it to say that even if the ground in my mother’s back yard had been more willing, I don’t know that I would have gotten all that much farther than I did.  As it was, the ground back there is little better than digging into solid rock.  I’m sure the fact that it’s been so dry and there’s been no rain didn’t help, but I’m not sure it’s much better during wetter periods.  I had one of the two old shovels of Dad’s I have with me and then was using Mom’s shovel too, which several times I was afraid was about to BREAK.  That’s how hard that ground was back there.

It’s also one of the oldest neighborhoods in town, although for the most part houses weren’t built there until the turn of the century.  Just about the time I started thinking, “You know, I really hope I don’t wind up digging up a Union or Confederate soldier back here,” I hit something that for a minute I was afraid was bone, then discovered it was just a very large tree root.  Every little once in a while I’d dig up a small piece of red clay and think where is the REST of this clay, and why can’t everything back here be like that?!?!  Between the roots and the rocks and the plain old just about hard as rock dirt, things were just getting more fun by the minute.

Even though I didn’t start ’til well past 6 p.m. since we were having yet another almost-100 degree day that day, it was still hotter than Hades and even when I was STILL out there at 10:30 that night with Mom holding the flashlight, sweat was just pouring down my face, into my eyes – ugh.  The neighbors probably wondered what questionable ritual we were carrying on back there and the temporary state of the resting place may not help that rumor.  I couldn’t dig nearly as deep as it probably should have been, but it was deep enough to do the job, and we covered up the area for the time being with a small stack of concrete blocks to keep any critters from trying to dig Schuyler back up.  We’ll move most of them back later on.

The concrete blocks were a nice little surprise too.  We don’t know why they’re back there, but there’s been a large stack of them there all along since we bought the house.  Nothing else in the immediate area is made of those blocks save for (maybe, now I don’t remember) an ancient barbecue pit so maybe they were left over from that.  I walked over there to the stack expecting to pick up, you know, your usual garden-variety concrete block.  With hollowed-out holes in it.

Nope.  They were SOLID.  And weighed probably 40 pounds or more each.  There was a bigger one that probably weighed closer to 60.  There are now about ten of them on top of the little grave site.  Ain’t nothing short of King Kong digging that cat up.

My hands are all blistered and cut up and sore and my arms are still aching but at least it got done.  For a little bit there I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get finished and didn’t know what we were going to do.  If there’s ever a next time, we’re getting a pickax this time.

So now I’m back home in Memphis and things are getting back to normal.  Three of the puppies (I know they’re not puppies anymore) are surrounding me sleeping underneath the desk and Dobie behind me.  My old white kitty – who would not leave my side the whole day and night that Schuyler ended up leaving us – is snoozing on top of a super-soft winter bathrobe that I got out for Schuyler to lay on that day and he wouldn’t, but my white cat and Maggie have been loving it.

And my oldest cat, Little, who has had a habit for years of talking to inanimate objects – rolls of duct tape, whatever – is talking to her food right now.

So everything’s back to normal again, sort of.  It seems much quieter in here though.

Posted in a family thing, cats, lynnster's zoo, west tennessee | 2 Comments »

Mystery Solved

Posted by Lynnster on July 4, 2008

Guess who came home for dinner?

She’s fine, a little dirty and a little skinnier (but not that much), no wounds, and otherwise none the worse for wear.  Thank goodness Mom had put up the flyers, as it was someone in the neighborhood that had seen Snow walking past and called Mom.

She now has a belly full of tuna and water and was sitting in Mom’s lap being petted last I heard.  Silly old cat.

Posted in a family thing, cats | 5 Comments »

The Case of the Vanishing White Cat, or, White Cat Missing in Downtown Paris TN – One of the Two

Posted by Lynnster on June 27, 2008

So I have just returned from one of the most bizarre 24-hour periods of my entire life, I think.

My mom has a cat that I pawned off on her many years ago, having pretty much achieved my limit of foundlings at the time. Snow had originally belonged to a neighbor who moved off and left her to fend for herself, and after a few years of that and never allowing me to get near her, she finally made friends with me. My mom has always been a little partial to “pretty” kitties and Snow was, true to her name, a solid white semi-long haired cat who needed a home, so of course I orchestrated the whole thing and basically she couldn’t refuse, and the two went home together about, I don’t know, 14 or 15 years ago and have been best friends ever since.

I always had an idea of her age because I knew the neighbor who originally owned her fairly well and knew when she had acquired Snow, so she is pretty close to the 20-year-old mark – even older than my elderlies. And has really been in great health all this time until fairly recently when she was having some problems. But she improved and has really been doing pretty well ever since.

But we’ve, of course, known she was really, really old for a cat, and have sort of been in that trying to be prepared for her time to come any time now for the last couple of years or so. You know, you don’t want to think about it, but when I look at my oldest cat now in failing health and knowing that Snow was significantly older than mine in cat terms – well, you know.

So the other night, my mom lets me know (though I didn’t read it until yesterday morning) that she can’t find Snow. Snow has not been outside (nor even tried to go outside again but once, a long time ago) in the 14 or 15 years she’s been at Mom’s, and while she has her napping and hiding places like any other cat, it was unusual for her to not be seen before Mom went to work, when she came home for lunch, AND after she got home from work. And VERY unusual for her not to pop up when I walk in the house as I did yesterday – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So of course, we feared the worst and knew that time had probably come; that more than likely, she had curled up somewhere and gone to sleep and just didn’t wake up.

What we didn’t count on was the cat just having VANISHED into thin air, apparently.

When I finally read the e-mail yesterday morning and called my mother and confirmed that Snow still hadn’t turned up, I thought about it for a few minutes and then knew I was getting on the road. I didn’t even call her back to let her know I was coming, I just figured I’d throw some stuff together (thinking at the time I’d come back to Memphis later that night) and drive up there and find her before Mom got back home from work. Even though Mom had said she’d already looked all over the house, though there were a few spots she hadn’t checked yet that were hard to get to without a ladder and such like that.

So that was my master plan – I figured yep, I’ll drive up there, I’ll have found her by the time Mom gets home, then we’ll bury her in the back yard or something, and I’ll drive back. Snow’s never been much of a hider and we know all her usual places plus the rare ones she does go hiding in, like underneath my bed up there among the mattress springs. I had no doubt that by the time the sun went down Thursday night, she would have been found. I was just SURE I would find her by the time Mom got home from work, but at the very least, was certain we would find her by the end of the evening.

So I get there and unlock the door and walk in.  No white cat comes out to greet me (which was really what I was hoping most, of course – that me showing up would finally bring her out – though I knew it was unlikely and was pretty sure wherever she was, she was no longer alive). I start searching pretty much ALMOST everywhere, though there were a few places I needed to look more thoroughly but couldn’t locate a flashlight. But after a couple of hours, I had done a pretty thorough search of the most probable places in the house and even some fairly improbable.

Then I went outside to look, and locked myself out of the house. House keys, car keys, cell phone, and pretty much anything I would have liked to have had for the next two hours – sitting on a chair in the kitchen. The only possible way I could have gotten back in was through the basement, but I knew the door at the top of the basement stairs was bolted and locked twice because – yeah, go me! – I’d locked it back myself after going down there to look for Snow, even though I knew good and well she couldn’t have gotten down there.

So having nothing better to do for a while, I walked around the neighborhood a couple of times looking for her. We were pretty sure she hadn’t gotten out of the house – there was one single moment she could have, but we thought it pretty unlikely too, or at least unlikely she wouldn’t have been seen doing it. Plus she’s a little skittish around people she doesn’t know. That cat getting out and not winding up practically right back on the front porch crying to get back in – also unlikely.

At some point, I knew what time it was because of something I totally forget about living in the city as I do – the courthouse clock chimed four o’clock. So I watered the lawn and the plants outside, since there was nothing better to do, and looked around for other stuff to do but found nothing else I could really do to make myself useful without certain things that were, nay, inside the house that I’d locked myself out of. So at that point, I figuratively throw up my hands and take a seat in the rocker on the front porch and wait for Mom to get home from work. Once she did, aside from our break to go grab some Italian food for dinner, the search began again.

I am telling you we have looked EVERYWHERE in that house, all places probable as well as totally improbable. I have crawled up in the top of closets with ceilings taller than two of me. We opened doors and cabinet doors that have probably not been opened in three years. After I searched under the aforementioned bed again, we eventually picked up the mattress and turned the box spring upside down and looked again just to make absolutely sure. We’ve looked in the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, the stove, and every other appliance that wasn’t open anyway but just to be sure. We’ve looked in trash cans (under trash that was already in there), toilets, behind and under and top of every single thing there is in the house to get behind or under or on top of. By this morning and totally baffled, we were looking in places a mouse would have had a hard time squeezing into, much less a cat, just to be sure.

We have looked at and in and around every single inch of that house. It’s like she just evaporated.

Now, common sense would tell you okay, she just got out. But we really don’t think so (though going to keep looking). And granted, as much as we love her, if there’s a deceased cat somewhere in that house, it’d be nice to find her BEFORE she’s inevitably found due to other reasons I don’t think I have to describe in detail.

But I am 99.9999999% sure that cat is not in that house. I’m STILL trying to think of places she could be, but I swear to god I have looked at and poked around in and shined a flashlight in every single solitary inch of that house that she could be in.

And I’m almost as sure she is not outdoors. Yes, common sense would tell one that, but you just don’t know this cat. It is so very, very unlikely in her case, but even if she did, it would have just been impossible for her not to have been seen exiting the house by the two people that could have.

We are grieving and sad, of course – she’s been a part of the family for such a long time – but after the last 24 hours and much more than that, we are simply dumbfounded. I have never experienced anything like it. We’ve had a million cats (well) since I was a kid, I know what cats do. We scoured every centimeter of the house, two and three times over in most cases. She disappeared. Vanished. Again – like she just evaporated.

I of course have a LITTLE hope that she did get out and maybe someone found her and took her inside, but that cat is skittish around ALL people but us and certain members of the family – I don’t see it happening. Traffic’s not really a danger in the immediate area – we’re close to downtown, but not THAT close. Other animals – possible but unlikely, besides, she lived on the streets before, she’s not un-street-smart.

I’m just really going with the vanished into thin air thing right now, after expecting a million times to find her any second yesterday and last night, for hours. If she’s in the house, I guess we’ll find out sooner or later (sooner probably). But I can’t imagine where because I’ve been EVERYWHERE in that house now, and beyond. It beats all I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot with cats in all these years.

I wish I had a picture but I don’t seem to have one on this computer, but she’s just your basic solid white cat with orangey-sorta eyes, medium haired – mostly short, not long – not real big but not that little either.

Well, so anyway, if you’re in or around the downtown Paris, TN area and see a solid white cat – please catch her if you can, and get in touch with me, and even if you can’t catch her, please let us know where you saw her. (PS She is a total fiend for tuna.)

I don’t think she’s out there, though. I don’t know where in the world that cat is – or at least her physical self – but I’ve about decided wherever she is, it’s not anywhere in this plane of existence the rest of us are in. Jeez. Dumbfounded, just totally and completely dumbfounded here.

Posted in a family thing, cats, west tennessee | 4 Comments »

Father’s Day Marketers Beware

Posted by Lynnster on June 11, 2008

My pal CeeElCee brings up a good point about all the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Father’s Day (and for that matter, Mother’s Day, for the same reasons) that I’ve been thinking about myself in recent weeks, and have in the past.

We are all mostly taking it in stride and being tongue in cheek about it over there in comments, but obviously all of us whose fathers are deceased have had pretty much the same thoughts about it all, as I’m sure folks who have lost their mothers thought the same in the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Mother’s Day.

My mother’s alive and well, thanks (and a frequent reader & commenter here, and regular Internet user).

But what if she weren’t? Not to mention the fact that HER parents have been gone for ages; one for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

I had a long conversation for the first time in several months with my former longtime co-worker, who lost her very elderly and extremely ill dad last summer. One of the things she and I have always had in common is that our fathers’ birthdays and Father’s Day always fell on the same week (as does her birthday). So this year, she is experiencing the June double whammy I have been for the last four years.

I get that it’s all about marketing, I understand it. And I know you can’t please everyone. I mostly – like I said – take it in stride and just overlook it. Normally it doesn’t bother me THAT much.

But it ALWAYS gets my attention, because of the circumstances – and it’s NOT the kind of attention marketers are striving for with those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day suggestion e-mails.

And I guess what kind of bugs me is that it seems like those holiday marketing e-mails are greater in number at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day than most other holidays, even Christmas. And while I do realize it’s all about the marketing, and I understand why it’s a necessary evil – it just seems like it might be a little better if many of these e-mail marketers scaled back their holiday marketing pummeling for those two holidays for the very reasons I bring up.

You hit someone like me on a bad day in a bad year – last year, not so much; this year, every day is a bad day – and tick them off, the results are never going to be good.

Again, I don’t have that big a chip on my shoulder about it, really. Generally, I’m pretty laid back and easygoing and not all that touchy about most things, I just have to work a little harder at it when it comes to this. And for the most part, the ones that come from Amazon and places like that, I mostly just overlook and hit the delete-delete-delete without much more of a thought.

Though the point is, there IS a thought… and it’s not the one they want me to have, that they’re intending with their marketing campaign of those holidays.

I have many, many e-mail boxes so I get TONS of these mails, and even more tons that aren’t coming from more traditional Internet marketers and are coming from the mega-spammers.

So it’s there that I take out my frustrations when I feel like it – which, this year, has been rather often. So depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment – well, let’s just say there’s several e-mail spammers that have been getting “My father’s been dead for almost four years, go away” e-mails back.

Not that they care, the mega-spammers. I can’t really say I haven’t thought about doing the same with some of those Amazon and other e-mails though.

Marketing’s marketing, and there’s no simple answer, I know.

But fair warning, marketing e-mail spammers and marketers of the non-spammish kind: Today would have been my father’s 66th birthday, so I might be a little less nice than “go away” today. Apologies in advance.

Posted in a family thing, blah, holidays, in memory of..., spam spam spam | 3 Comments »

Yummy

Posted by Lynnster on June 8, 2008

You can have your home baked bread and other foodie fineries. In MY version of heaven, there is always the smell of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls baking.

And West Tennessee BBQ cooking. And my dad’s hamburgers on the grill.

There is also a never-empty casserole dish of my mom’s asparagus casserole. And billions of my grandmother’s pecan pies, and it’s perfectly okay if I eat all the pecans off the top if I want to.

Posted in BBQ, a family thing, fun with food, in my head | 5 Comments »

The Nigerians, Cote d’Ivoire, & Now Dead Celebrities

Posted by Lynnster on June 5, 2008

Yeah, so my Mom opened up an e-mail the other night to find that she was the beneficiary of thousands (or millions?) of dollars left to her in the late Luciano Pavarotti’s will.

The persistence of that particular flavor of spam scam really amazes me.  How many years has that thing been going around the ‘Net?  Do people really still fall for it?

I think my favorite influx ever were the ones in German that were coming to one of my Gmail boxes for a while.  I don’t speak nor read German, but I could pick out enough words and deduce from the format that it was the same old same old.  Heh.

Posted in a family thing, giggles, spam spam spam, the internet is... | 2 Comments »

Reality Bites

Posted by Lynnster on April 25, 2008

My hometown (one of them) newspaper publishes a little blurb every day of “25 years ago”, “50 years ago”, and “75 years ago”, highlights and snippets from that day’s edition in those time periods of the paper.  Lately there’s been some 90-something years ago ones, too, that I’m not really sure what happened to do because they were there for a few days, and now they’re not.  But anyway.

I always get a kick out of it (especially the “75 years ago”, that stuff is downright hilarious sometimes) and read it every day.  And it’s especially neat to me because a lot of days my dad or his siblings, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, other relatives, and even sometimes I will be in there (though not all that much for me, since we moved elsewhere when I was 13).  It’s usually a nice few minutes out of my day every weekday, and pretty neat to read things that were in the paper 25/50/75 years ago like my dad playing football or baseball, my grandmother’s piano recital as a young girl, things like that.

So yesterday I’m reading the “25 years ago” column and – this being the end of the school year – the local high school had selected the members of the varsity cheerleading squad for the next year, and I’m reading the names, all of whom I knew because I either went to school with them or knew them from other local activities during the time I grew up there until we moved.  I was reading, in particular, the names of the girls I actually did go to school with, the ones who were in my class.

Then I glanced at the “25 years ago” again.  And then it slowly dawned on me that those girls were the SENIOR cheerleaders on the upcoming year’s squad.

Nope, it just hadn’t really occurred to me that next year will be 25 years since I graduated from high school.  A quarter of a century.  Yuck.  And just where did that time go?

I’d be stunned, but I’m too old and tired to be stunned.  Pardon me while I go take a nap now.

Posted in a family thing, getting older sucks, my so-called life, west tennessee | 2 Comments »

In Which I Respond to the Bez

Posted by Lynnster on October 6, 2007

I haven’t been able to post on any Blogger blogs in months, so I’m probably about to adopt the annoying habit of turning my intended comments on peers’ Blogger blogs into posts on my own blog.*

So, my response to Mike over at Chez Bez is: Non-Southerners**. It came from the Times, after all!

Shoot, everyone knows you if meet a new adult person down here, “What do you do for a living?” is going to follow soon on the heels of (if not before):

“Where are you from?”

“Where’d you go to college?”

“Are you married?”

“Do you have children?”

“Where do you go to church?” (in some circles, anyway, and…)

“Can I get you (some ice tea, a beer, a coke, etc.)?”

And some more, of course.  Nosy or not, I expect some of my kinfolk would have sniffed that it’d be considered rude and impolite NOT to answer those questions.  Folks in the South are just that way.***

* (Fortunately this is now a minority as most have moved to WordPress or otherwise, whew.)

** (Nope I didn’t say Yankee… but I could have. Or Midwesterner or West Coaster or whatever, natch.)

*** (Not saying I agree, mind you.)

P.S. Hee.

Posted in a family thing, blogfolks, blogger sucks, blogstuff, lynnster logic, specifically southern, wordpress | 2 Comments »

And Furthermore, Your Website Really Sucks

Posted by Lynnster on May 31, 2007

I am so woefully behind after only a week of ignoring my feed reader and trying to catch up in bits and pieces, I may never catch up. In my mostly absence from the blogosphere the past week, there’s been a bit of a dustup going on around some of my main haunts, now reported in Nashville’s City Paper, that’s the type of thing I normally wouldn’t pay much attention to or have much of a public opinion on, but in this case I kinda do. A couple, actually.

Nashville is Talking and Volunteer Voters – the two WKRN blogs involved and from whence this whole thing started with contributing WKRN news analyst Steve Gill basically calling for their jobs on a live radio show yesterday – both have a good roundup of links to the various discussions all over the past two days. Some of the commentary that resonated most with me and shouldn’t be missed came from my fellow bloggers Slartibartfast, Ginger, and Katherine Coble, among many others. The initial flames on the fire were apparently due to some remarks Gill took exception to, made by Carter about our military.

Slartibartfast fairly well summed up most of my own thoughts on the matter, aside from the fact I do not generally listen to or read Steve Gill. But I agree with what Slarti said both on his blog and in some comment discussion around various NIT-involved blogs, and will go a step or two further here.

For one thing, regarding Carter’s statements about our military – in the course of all the other discussions going on elsewhere, I have read some statements about our military which I’m sure are well-meant and with good intentions, but are just a little too unrealistic. While I might not exactly put things quite the way Carter did, he’s still basically right. Military service is an honorable profession, and the human beings serving in the military are worthy of honor and respect, but not beyond reproach.

Carter said yesterday:

When we say over and over that “the troops” are a breed apart and require our unquestioning and automatic support and reverence, what happens is that whatever these soldiers are ordered to do, right, wrong or indifferent, is, by virtue of the soldiers involvement, beyond reproach. Critics of this war thus precede with trepidation and equivocation.

Well, I’m not gonna do it. Do I respect the troops and their service? You bet I do. But I am not going to sit and talk to whomever happens upon this blog like a child on Christmas morning.

I hate to tell you this, my friends, there is no Santa Claus. There is no Santa Claus and the military is comprised of human beings who are worthy of honor — but not beyond reproach.

The military men and women I know are tough enough to withstand my words. They will hear them and either consider them, dismiss them or take them to heart just like anyone else.

He’s right, and bottom line, those serving in our military are just that – human beings. Not saints who are infallible, not superheroes. Human beings. Worthy of respect and honor, but human beings all the same.

My grandfather served in the Navy in World War II. More topically to this discussion, my young cousin, now in his twenties, went straight from high school into the Marines and was in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, and later in Iraq. He finished out his time and came home, and I am thankful for that. And no matter what I think about the war itself – I haven’t said, now have I? – I am proud of him. He did what he was supposed to, and he did a good job of what he was supposed to.

They were/are both good men, but again, just men. Not superheroes with magical superpowers. They are heroes to me because I love them and because of who they are, but they were/are still just men and human beings like everyone else.

As Slarti said in his post to Steve Gill:

What you are doing is not what our soldiers fight and die for.

And he’s absolutely right. My beloved grandfather, my cousin, and millions of others fought, and sometimes died, for freedom of speech and the right to have an opinion in this country, among other things.

And that doesn’t mean just Steve Gill’s opinion and only other opinions like it.

In short, Steve Gill, you should be ashamed of yourself. All this hoopla is little but total grandstanding BS, and calling for people’s jobs over a difference of opinion is a sissy thing to do and deserving of NO respect or honor. (I’m pretty sure my grandfather would agree that it’s a sissy thing to do, if not have said it himself. My young cousin is a good kid but has a bit of a mouth on him, and would probably just say you need to get yourself a hot, steaming cup of shut the f*ck up.)

And – my other opinion, on an entirely unrelated note – Steve Gill, your website is much too busy with junk all over it, nearly impossible to read without getting a headache, and is simply technically and graphically horrific. Even if I wanted to read it regularly, I don’t think I could because there’s so much crap all over the page it’d be sending me into seizures, and your post text is simply awful. Take a cue from the tech gods behind Nashville is Talking and Volunteer Voters, or Bob Krumm, and clean it up. Jeez, what a terrible mess your blog is. Ugh. Seriously.

Posted in a family thing, blogfolks, blogstuff, nashville, nashville is talking, politics schmolitics, techgeekchick stuff, the internet is... | 9 Comments »

Momster’s Got a Brand New Ride, Too

Posted by Lynnster on May 1, 2007

 

Yup, we are now a two silver Nissan family. She was wanting a silver Mini Cooper for a while, but I kinda think the new Versa is a better deal given various circumstances (and especially for hauling anything around). Plus it’s kinda similar to the Mini anyway, especially from the back and front. Cute little thing, huh?

Posted in * miscellaneous photos, a family thing | 6 Comments »

Coming Into My Own – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three Posts

Posted by Lynnster on April 28, 2007

A continuation of the previous post…

Sometime in the early to mid-Seventies, I started working my way towards what was really going to be “my” music and the music that was going to do some serious influential damage (heh) from then on. I already had some definite opinions and likes and dislikes, but hadn’t really quite found my niche yet. I was still listening to a lot of current radio, watching a lot of American Bandstand and The Midnight Special and other music TV of the day, and still being a preteen and in elementary school, was at the time immersed in the usual bubblegum and teen idol stuff like most girls that age. I loved the Bay City Rollers, and no, I’m not too proud to admit that the first concert I ever attended was Shaun Cassidy, okay?

Throughout a lot of those years, Dick Clark and others often had music retrospective specials of all sorts on TV, and if one was on, we were usually watching it at my house. Nostalgia for the Fifties was kind of popular by then (a lot of that due to the TV show Happy Days being on at the time), and so a lot of the content of these music specials were already being referred to as “oldies”; thus I got to see a lot of, both old clips and current performances, of many of my parents’ favorites like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, et al.

As far as bands and artists from the British Invasion years, sure, I’d already had a lot of exposure, mostly thanks to the aunts who were teenagers in the Sixties. But in the midst of all the Beatlemania going on at their house, there was an awful lot I’d not really had proper introduction to.

And it turned out that many of those were the ones that extended and increased and fed my music addiction the most. In a HUGE way.

Again, much like the previous post, most of these clips were shot before I was born or soon after, so certainly none of them I witnessed at original broadcast. I picked up on all of these a decade or a little more after the fact, mostly when parts were shown during the various music retrospective specials as mentioned above. But I think with the exception of the Yardbirds video, these are all the same ones I initially saw that whet my whistle for more, and eventually led to all of these bands heavily influencing my tastes for years to come.

The Rolling Stones (You probably knew this was coming – much more a Stones girl than a Beatles girl):

The Kinks (OH yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. And much like the Stones, a hometown fave among my musician pals):

The Who (I should probably add here that I’ve seen Quadrophenia probably 200 times… and Tommy almost as much):

The Animals (as well as Eric Burdon and War, and whatever other variations can be had and heard):

The Yardbirds – and how often have you ever seen Jeff Beck playing an acoustic guitar?!?!?!!!! Which is why I picked this clip, but I had never seen it before now:

UPDATED:  I gotta add this one ‘cos it’s my favorite:

Ah, but it wasn’t all about the British Invasion either. I bought my first Jefferson Airplane LP at ten years old, I think, and to this day, Jorma Kaukonen is a fave all-time guitar player of mine:

Next and final post in this brief series – there’s just no turning back from the thing of epic proportions that’s about to come. Don’t touch that dial.

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, music, music education 101, music junkie stuff, video music faves | Leave a Comment »

Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three Posts – The Beginning

Posted by Lynnster on April 28, 2007

Get a cup of coffee or your beverage of choice and prepare to sit a spell. We’re going to be a while here.

I pulled an all-nighter Thursday night working and had an hour or two to kill before starting the Friday workday, so I indulged a bit in a fave activity of hunting YouTube for music stuff I remember from the past but hadn’t seen in a while, or at least stuff from the same time period.

I started collecting some links and then, when I was finished, I looked at it all and just kinda went whoa. Completely accidentally, I had somehow managed to basically assemble all the pieces of the puzzle – or at least the major ones – of my lifelong addiction to music, which began as a very young child.

There are, of course, thousands of other associated pieces I haven’t collected here; virtually everything I have ever listened to helped to formulate my musical tastes and feed the addiction as an adult, certainly. One of my most beloved genres today, as an older adult, is Australian garage rock of the late Seventies and Eighties – but in the U.S., you didn’t hear or see most of that stuff back then, and I wasn’t introduced to a lot of it until the big boom of the Internet, years after the fact. But a lot of that old Aussie stuff was heavily influenced by both British and American punk rock, old British Invasion and American surf music, and the Motor City Sound in Detroit, so in a way, it was sort of all related to what I grew up with anyway.

But all these YouTube videos I have collected here in this and the next two posts – yeah, these are pretty much the very most major pieces that created the foundation of my music junkieness (and my own musicianship, occasionally) as a young adult through today.

In the final and third post, I have collected stuff I either witnessed on original broadcast or is from the same specific time period. The ones in this post and the next one, I obviously did not see at the time they were aired because as far as most of them are concerned, I wasn’t born yet (with the exception of the Raiders, in which case I might have just been born).

And most of this first group is way before my time, but it’s important I include them. I have often said that my biggest musical influence of all was my father, who was also sort of a music junkie in his time when rock & roll was still brand new. It was stuff from his collection I heard the most before I started making my own decisions about music (at three years old, heh). My dad had a tremendous stack of 45 RPM records and LPs and was a musician himself, as was my uncle, and my dad’s first cousin was a DJ on local radio for many years, and my mom’s a music fan as well.

I get it from all of them, but it was my father and I who were most alike in music junkieness of sorts. I just took it to the next level and eventually became way more deeply immersed in the addiction than he ever was. (And some might say far more out of control, given the amount of recorded music I have amassed and things I’ll do to see my favorites play live, like take off to L.A. or Chicago at the last minute.) ;)

Must start this off with The Man himself, Mr. Chuck Berry – blurry video, but this is my favorite. We had the original Chess CD in that stack of 45s, and it probably got played in my record player a decade and a half later as much as it did when my dad was a teenager.

My dad played piano as well as being a drummer, and monopolized the family piano as a teenager, learning how to play every single thing Little Richard ever did.

And I can’t very well write about my father and his monopolizing of the piano without a hat tip to Jerry Lee Lewis. I think we had every single he ever put out on the original Sun label in the Sixties on 45 AND a few 78s (!) as well. (I sold most on eBay a few years ago for a fair amount.)

Now, both my parents were Elvis fans, especially having both grown up in West Tennessee. In fact, my dad was such an Elvis fan and did such a good Elvis, he was picked to do Elvis in a high school musical presentation and was apparently legend for it ever after; last year, when I was having dinner with my dad’s cousin and his girlfriend (both of whom graduated with my father) and talking about that, the girlfriend leaned over the table towards me and said, “Oh, your dad WAS Elvis.” Dad’s cousin decried the fact that he had to sing “I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday”, while my father got to be Elvis. Hee.

So Elvis was king, but somehow I missed the Elvis fan gene. See above on associated pieces of the puzzle of influences; certainly that’s an influence, and certainly Elvis influenced many of my later influences. I just always liked Jerry Lee better. And my dad could do a pretty good Jerry Lee, too.

My parents were both in college in Memphis in the early Sixties and frequently went out to see live music, so they got to see a lot of the Stax and similar legends perform live back in the day. So a little bit of that appreciation of Memphis soul rubbed off on me too (and is probably the only reason I still have any love left at all for this city I live in and city of my birth).

I give you the masters, Booker T. & The MGs, featuring the awesome guitar of Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn, who can still often be found playing around here and down in the Tunica casinos today. If they look familiar to you for some other reason, it’s probably because you saw them in The Blues Brothers movie with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd years later.

And another personal favorite and this song will always mean Memphis to me – Sam & Dave:

You may find it curious I have included these next two videos in this post. My aunts were teenagers when I was born and huge Beatles and Monkees fans – and later, Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, etc. – so I get a lot of that from them and yeah, The Beatles are definitely a big influence for me, but I’m not including them in these posts because in truth, there are other groups from the same time that were really a more major influence on me. And goodness knows I love me some Monkees.

Anyway, we have more or less now established that my then-teenage aunts were boy crazy schoolgirls with mad crushes on various teen idols. Probably the only other band that they crushed on as much back then as The Beatles and The Monkees was Paul Revere and The Raiders. You might not know that the legendary hit songwriting team Boyce & Hart originally wrote “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” for the Raiders – which, of course, later became a huge hit for The Monkees.

Yeah, sure, the Raiders were big teen idols of the Sixties, thanks in part to appearing on the TV show Where the Action Is every day after school hours, and being not only cute, but goofily humorous. They were also excellent, excellent musicians; in the liner notes of Raiders anthology CD The Essential Ride (an excellent compilation that really showcases how good they were throughout their career), Letterman show bass player Will Lee hat tips longtime Raider Phil Volk as his inspiration for learning how to play bass.

Anyway, yeah, my teenage aunts had various Raiders posters pinned to their walls in worship and all their records, alongside John, Paul, George, and Ringo and Davy, Micky, Peter, and Mike, and god knows who all else.

But my dad had their first album – which, for me, that’s instant rock & roll cred right there. Practically from birth, I remember it playing in our home and playing often.

These are both from 1966, so I was either born or almost at the time. This first video is really blurry and is also a lip-synched performance, but probably one of their earliest TV appearances and the song’s the only YouTube video I found from that first album.

This one’s a little later but is a better video and a live (or mostly live) performance (and be sure to check out the extremely young looking actor Michael Landon introducing them):

Next post, I start coming into my own… stay tuned.

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, aussie music, memphis, memphis music, music, music education 101, music junkie stuff, video music faves | 2 Comments »

To My Sister: You Can’t Have This One Either *

Posted by Lynnster on April 20, 2007


When I was going out club hopping in Chicago and L.A. a few weeks ago, I needed something to be able to carry cash and cell phone and ID and some other minor stuff around, since what I was planning to wear didn’t have pockets.

I found this in one of the airport shops (and it was on sale too!). It’s actually a sunglasses case, but it’s perfect for situations like the above. You can probably get them and others similar at any CNBC News store at airports that have them.

* (All of the purses she buys are tiny and usually black.)

Posted in * miscellaneous photos, a family thing, i am a mean big sister, terminal smartass, thumbs up | 5 Comments »

Would You Like Fries with That?

Posted by Lynnster on April 20, 2007

I’ve repeated the story many times (much as I was told many times) of how when my mother was pregnant with me and living in Memphis, she used to send my dad out for Krystals all the time.

And now, many (who’s counting?) decades later – Krystal Pizza.

Pregnancy craving satisfier or gastrointestinal Armageddon? Could be both.

.

HT: The most excellent R. Neal @ KnoxViews

Posted in a family thing, ancient history, fun with food, specifically southern, weird wild & whoa! | 4 Comments »

More Caught in the Act

Posted by Lynnster on April 14, 2007


Just to not leave this weekend on a bummed out note, here’s more of my “nephews”, Jinx and Tidbit. You’ve seen the Paris Hilton sex tape, you’ve seen the Pam & Tommy Lee sex tape, now get your Jinx & Tidbit sex tape via The Lynnster Zone…

Oh wait, we don’t have one. Oh well, see you Monday!

Posted in * cat photos, a family thing, cats | 5 Comments »

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