Daily Thoughts

I’m selling some items on Craigslist. One of them is microphone stands. These are generic, standard, $20 mike stands. I’m selling them for $10.

Someone contacted me about them, and wanted to know if I was ever in Sarasota (30 miles away), and if I would be willing to drive halfway to BeeRidge Road (20 miles away) to bring one of them to her for her 5 year old.

I thought she was pretty stupid, and probably had more money then sense. Sarasota women tend to be spoiled, rich women who marry for money, and never really develop any common sense. I told her that it would not be worth my gas or hers to do this, and that she could buy one for $20 in any music store. I was trying to be nice. Nice sometimes doesn’t work…entirely.

She wrote me back, said thank you for being honest, that she “didn’t realize” how far away I was. Nice, but still stupid. Ever hear of MapQuest? Then she closed it with “Which music store?”

WHAT!! I’m sorry to say I lost it. For one thing, we had already established that I do not live in her city, so how on earth would I know that??? Sent her a reply telling her to please use her brain and the yellow pages and look it up for herself. I admit, I sprinkled a couple of expletives here and there.

O.K., I earlier in this blog established that I’m NOT the kindest or most patient person in the world, but I did feel bad the minute I hit the “send” button. I thought I should write and apologize, but really, it wouldn’t do any good.

Anyway, someone who has enough (or little enough) sense to have a 5 year old child should have enough common sense to know how to find a music store in town, right? I thought so too.

Just for a moment though, I had a picture of her in my head, calling a friend to ask them instead.

So I got my iMac today. It came from a person I write for.  I was so excited, then I got a shock.  I thought I was guaranteed a certain number of articles this month, and found out they had given most of them away already.  They say if I write them they’ll pay for them, but it just sort of makes me wonder, you know?

I am a person of my word. If I say I’ll do something, barring unforseen circumstances, I will.  If I make a promise, ditto.  So when someone tells me something, I count on it.  I guess I just think other people will too. Now I know better about this one, I guess.

So I’ll do these articles, and then keep working for them as long as they are paying me, but I foresee problems in the future.  Nobody can pay for articles that aren’t sold, right?  How do they know they’re going to sell them?  

You know what they say about ducks…??

But I do love the Mac. It’s an awesome machine. I made a deal that I would write the articles for a certain amount of money if they sent it to me, so I’ll keep my word on that.  I did price it, though, so I’ll know when I’ve paid for it.  Might take awhile.

Oh well, life isn’t always like we want it to be, but it would be nice if just once it was. It would be nice if just once you could believe people and not think that if someone’s mouth is moving, they’re lying.  Just once…

This morning, I had the song “Slip Sliding Away” by Paul Simon running through my head, especially the part where it says.

I know a woman
became a wife
These are the very words she uses to describe her life
She said a good day, ain’t got no rain
She said a bad day is when I lie in bed
and I think of things that might have been

That pretty much how I feel lately, except that I’m not anybody’s wife…thank God!

So I decided to go to my favorite online forum. Someone has been blathering on for weeks about how people have left, somebody got mean, somebody got their feelings hurt. These are all reasonable adults, supposedly. So I’m saying I hope it wasn’t me who hurt anyone’s feelings, and that I hope everyone comes back. Then I get this email saying it WAS me who hurt this person’s feelings and ran everybody off.

Seems this guy was ragging on the U.S., and I told him that if he didn’t like the U.S. to go the f*** back to his country. I know, sounds harsh, but here’s the scenario.

I’m a patriot. I’m totally wrapped up in red, white, and blue. I feel like I have the right to criticize my government because I’m a citizen. It doesn’t matter how you get to be a citizen, you can wait your time and be naturalized, but as a citizen, you have certain inalienable rights. One of these is to not be happy with your government, and to express it as loudly as you damn well please.

I do not feel like these same rights apply to people who come here with absolutely no intention of becoming citizens, partake of whatever the U.S. has to offer, make themselves reasonably successful because of our great country, but still long to return to their native shores, and are only waiting for the opportunity to do so.

I have to say one thing here. I rant a lot about moving to Jamaica, and I would do it. I would go somewhere I could be more at peace in my life if I found I couldn’t find that peace here. And if that country allowed me to be happy and reasonably successful, I would not be bitching about how horrible it was. I would be thanking my lucky stars that there was a country that took me in and allowed me to flourish.

This guy was not happy with Obama being elected President. I don’t really remember the conversation. The thread was deleted, and it was close to the time my mother died, so I seriously don’t know what I said or did back then. I could have shot someone and not remembered, I was that upset. So my nerves were raw, and someone who isn’t a citizen at all had the audacity to attack our next President. I probably lost it.

But to be honest, if my mother were alive and well, and I wasn’t financially and emotionally stressed to the limit, I probably still would have let go on him. Like I said, I have the right to do what he did, he doesn’t. That’s how I feel. I will never change that feeling. If you hate this country so freakin’ much, go the hell back to where you came from.

Nevertheless, I apologized, simply because I did not at the time remember what I had said, or why. I also left the forum. I loved that forum. I had been posting there since 1999. Now it’s lost to me, because someone went behind the scenes whining about how abused he was, and how hurt he was (oh for Christ sake, buck up and be a man!) and turned people against me for saying what any patriotic American could have and probably would have said.

When it comes to this country, I am well aware of the faults and fallacies and downright lies we have to face every day. But I’m sick and tired of bowing down to people who come here for our freedoms and protections, but don’t want to pledge their allegiance to this country, in hopes they can some day go home. In my opinion, political asylum should be abolished. Terrorists have come into this country for years claiming political asylum, and disappeared into the population. From there, they blew up our buildings and killed our people.

This is my country. I don’t care if I hurt your feelings. If you don’t like it, get the hell out! Go back to whatever freaking country you came from, and don’t come back here ever!

I have decided that I simply must set goals for each week.  Setting them is one thing, of course, and sticking to them is another.

I get lazy sometimes, and don’t do the things that I should. Today was a day like that. I usually start off my day by walking with my friend, but she had to go somewhere else, so I walked up to the grocery store alone.  

I don’t know if it was the change of routine or what, but I just couldn’t get into working and writing today. I ended up wasting the day watching old t.v. shows on Hulu, reading, and just messing around.

I hate wasted days. It’s not like I can make it up, and I’m having way too many of them lately, when I really can’t afford to. I made myself a promise that I would take my writing seriously, but so far, I’ve not been able to buckle down and treat it like a real job.

Psychologically, that’s bad enough, but financially, it’s a disaster. I’m torn some days as to whether I should work, or just work on selling everything I own and moving out of here.  But where I am wouldn’t change anything.  It’s not where I am, it’s me, and I know that.

Sometimes, discouragement sets in, like the fact that one site seemed like it would be a sort of easy source of decent money, and now has turned out not to be. I tend to put too many of my eggs in one basket, and then ending up kicking myself for doing so.

So today, I seem to have spilled all the eggs, and now have a yukky mess that I need to clean up. Where’s Mr. Clean when you need him? 

I was going to give up this blog, because I was depressed about someone who was trying very hard to make my life miserable. Then I found out that this person is twice as miserable as I am, and I decided to do something else.

Today is going to my first positivity day. I’m tired of being down, and depressed (a physical condition, but I’m fighting it), and negative. I’m going to be positive from now on, and try to turn every day into rainbows and sunshine.

Yes, I know that’s impossible. I know some days I’ll get angry and depressed, but if I can carry one positive thing away from that, I’ll be happy with that day.

The first thing I’m going to do is to say to anyone I’ve had problems with in the past, I’m sorry. I fully accept my part in any problems that we may have had, and I am releasing all of that right now. For my part, you will see no more clinging to past hurts. Yesterday is gone, and there is nothing we can do about it. We may never be friends, but at least we can have a truce, a cease fire if you will.

I’m a creative person. Every day, I’m going to create something, be it a craft project, a writing, a garden spot, anything positive and creative. You can only change the world by creating, not by tearing down.

Don’t get me wrong, I will continue to fight injustice, such as the Google issue. I am sick and tired of corporate greed, and I see my struggles, and my triumph over those struggles, as something positive. Perhaps I can show those with similar problems that they, too, can fight the giants and win.

I struggle daily with financial issues, self-esteem issues, depression issues, and plain out old laziness. My life is just barely liveable. I intend to change that. I’m the only one who can. I’ve been sitting around like Rapunzel waiting for a prince to come and rescue me from my self-built prison tower. Today, I’ll leave the tower and see what good I can do in the world.

If each of us honestly tries to just do one creative, helpful, or positive thing a day, we can change the world. There are more of us than them. Just look at what happened after 9/11. Over 3,000 people died, but millions of people rose to the occasion and brought this country back from the brink of destruction.

Our country is in trouble, no doubt. It’s in trouble because of the greed and avarice of a few very powerful people. Believe me, these demons are laughing all the way to their private planes as they leave our government. Their main goal was to rape the economy and get out. So here we are, some of us, like me, in a real financial crisis. This country has seen worse. We have come back from worse. We can come back from this.

But we can’t come back by expecting the government to bail us out. We can only do it by taking positive steps in our own lives. Start today. Let this be your positivity day as well.

I have lupus. That means I frequently have a condition known as “brain fog”, which is exactly what the name implies.

I’ve been trying all day to think. Not think of anything in particular, just think at all. I had a plan to write a certain number of articles today, and that didn’t happen, because I couldn’t think.

Thinking is a necessity for a writer. A writer’s block is one thing, while brain fog is quite another. I know what I want to write, and the research is done, I just can’t put the thoughts together in my mind and get them down on the screen.

Well, I did get four articles done today, and a draft in the works, so I’ll just have to work harder tomorrow.

If my brain decides to work.

We’re having a cold snap here in S. Florida. A cold snap for us is anytime the temps go below 40 degrees, because tropical plants don’t like it that cold.

So tonight it’s supposed to get down to 35, and I just spent over an hour bringing in dozens of potted plants from outside into the house.

Every year, I say “no more”, and every year here I am again. I said last year that I was going to build a greenhouse type shelter, just so I wouldn’t have to do this, but that never got done, due to no money.

I’ve made up my mind to have a plant sale. I’m going to get rid of these things once and for all — well, all except the ones I’m sentimentally attached to. For example, I have an aloe that my mother gave me for my birthday when I was 25. I’ve managed to keep that thing alive for 31 years. No, I’m not joking…31 years. Aloes are evidently very tough, because I’ve killed plenty of other plants in the meantime.

I lost my mother this year, so I want that plant to live until I die. I’m sure that my sons will not care about the significance of it, and will let it die or give it away at that point. Maybe I’ll beat them to it, and give it away myself to someone who will love it and care for it.

It’s silly, I guess, to get sentimentally attached to plants. I should just get rid of all of them, but I won’t ever do that. I am a horticulturist, after all. What’s a horticulturist without plants?

I’m a rules person. I tend to think that rules are very black and white, and that people should obey them. I don’t see the grey area, for instance, in a rule for a site that says that you can only post in the city where you live or closest to where you live.

Yes, I’m talking about Craigslist. More particularly, I’m talking about the people who think nothing of spamming Craigslist to get page views.

This isn’t as bad as those who spam Craigslist with porn ads or hookers who post fake personals, but it’s still against the rules.

I had someone tell me that the way to get page views was to go post on the “general” section of every large city in the U.S. and Canada. I’m just not going to do that.

You see, I use Craigslist for legitimate purposes. I sell things, I buy things, I post on forums — in short, I use it the way it’s supposed to be used. I obey the rules. I do that because I’m not keen on the idea of having my IP address banned.

I should mention that I’m probably 2 to 3 times as old as most Craigslist users, if you don’t count the pervy old men who frequent the personals. I’m almost twice the average age of today’s internet user. That means I grew up in a different generation.

In my generation, we didn’t talk back to teachers, or we were sent to the office to get our bottoms paddled. If they didn’t paddle us, they called our parents, and they paddled us. None of us died from it, at least none that I know of.

When my mother said something wasn’t allowed, I didn’t do it. When I was 10, I got mad at my mother and started packing a bag to run away. She asked me where I was going, and I obediently answered that I was running away. She said “Oh, that’s not allowed.” I angrily unpacked my bag and sat crying on my bed.

My son, on the other hand, somehow grew up believing that “no” meant something other than what the dictionary definition says. I see that a lot in the younger generation. They seem to live in some grey area between right and wrong, and think that rules are simply there to keep people from being sued.

I’m glad I’m not like that. I’m glad I’m a rules person. I’m glad that I obey the rules on Craigslist, and I’m not afraid to speak out against those who don’t.

I’m glad I was raised in a time when right was right and wrong was wrong, and there was no grey.

It seems to me that we haven’t heard the last of Sarah Palin. Since she was cleared of the ethics violation, she is in a position to further her political career.

It doesn’t seem like ethics matter much to the citizens of Alaska, considering how they voted for a Senator Stevens after he was convicted of 7 felonies. There has been talk that when he is expelled from the senate, that Palin might just run for his seat in the special election. That is certainly a possibility, and would get her back into the Washington scene a lot sooner than 2012.

If she were to win that seat, she would be in a much better position to run for the Presidential nomination in four years. She might want to cash in on the moment, to jump into the spotlight while it is still on her.

Certainly, we know more about Alaskan politics now than we ever wanted to. It always seemed almost as if Hawaii and Alaska were just two foreign countries that happened to be states. No doubt, with the attention these two states have gotten in this election, we will be hearing much more about them in the future.

I’ve had one of those days you’d just as soon forget. Full of promise, then ZAP! — it was gone, and what did I have to show for it? On days like this, you have to make a list of the things you did, so you don’t sit around kicking yourself for not doing anything.

Things I actually did today:

1. Fed the animals. Some days I just don’t want to, and today was one of those days, but I did it.

2. Finished a book. I simply could not stay up last night another minute, so I finished the last 30 pages over my morning coffee. I also read an article in a magazine I had borrowed from a friend, so now I can give it back.

3. Watered the veggies. I have a couple of tomatoes, a pepper, an eggplant, and some other stuff out there that I had to water today. I noticed that the beans I planted just to be doing it are coming up. Cool! Don’t hold out much hope for the cucumber seeds, though.

4. Removed all my posts from Hubpages. Long story. Would rather not go into it. Now I just have to wait for them to clear off of Google. I also put in to Google for a few of them to be removed from cache. Will do more tomorrow.

5. Joined a writer’s forum, and read and posted a little. Found out about a site where I could possibly sell some articles.

6. Joined DailyArticle.com. That’s the site I found out about on the forum. I’m planning on submitting a few Thanksgiving and Christmas articles there to see how they sell.

7. Copyscaped an article I had removed from Constant Content. It passed, so I submitted it to DailyArticle.com. Hope it sells.

8. Tweeted a couple of articles here on Twitter, got a few PV’s from that.

9. Came here and posted this, now I’m done for the night. Gonna go read some more, and try to get rid of this headache (probably from staring at the screen too long).

So maybe I wasn’t too lazy today. At least I got something done. Not a day lost after all.