A Short Post, But Oh, Thank You, Edna!!

First off, I haven't taken the opportunity to say thank you the wonderful Christmas gifts! Here is the view the table that sits right in front of me that I see all of the time when I'm sitting in my recliner:

It includes the beautiful dolly in the dress and hat I loved so much the first time I saw it on Miss Edna's Place. I'm also enjoying the last day today of January's Squirrley on my calendar. Thank you, Edna, the gifts were much appreciated. Including that pumpkin spice tea, OMG, WONDERFUL stuff!


But here I think is the extra big always living thank you on a night like this:

This is the look over the board I call my highchair table on my recliner. It's my very warm legs and toasty feet. Edna made this afghan for me a few years ago and every time we have a night like this I send hugs and kisses and a huge thank you out towards New England. Edna, you're the best and I feel proud and spoiled to call you my friend!

Weekend Playlist January 20

I know I always start the talk about my weekend playlist with the fact that my musical taste is about as eclectic as my tastes in pretty much everything. I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't like to limit myself to any one type of anything. Of course sometimes deciding between flavors of ice cream or what to have for dinner and the restaurant can you make me a bit of a pain. The truth is, and I know this is an expensive way to go, but ever since I was little kid I would rather order a few things off the appetizer menu than an actual dinner anyway. Of course as an adult unless I won the lottery on the way, I tend to try to stay away from appetizer menus as much as possible. LOL

So here are the last five songs from my music library on shuffle:

September Morn, Niel Diamond

You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone, Brooks & Dunn

Grenade, Bruno Mars

Brand new me, John Michael Montgomery

Kansas City, The New Basement Tapes

I did just notice that out of 1970 songs in my library (thank you Apple music subscription) Buddy Bat, which is the name of my iPad where I put my library on shuffle for my Weekend Playlist, sometimes get stuck in the favorites mode. Last night when I started this project it seemed like every third song was either Neil Diamond or Night Ranger. Yes, I do happen to have a lot both of those artists in my library. But I970 songs and the whole catalog is on shuffle. It sounds to me like a musical mood and sometimes I just wonder how smart our smart devices have become? My Apple devices talk to each other and I swear they know as much about me as I do and if I press the right buttons I can have a conversation with Siri for a while. I'm eventually going to have to talk about that Brooks & Dunn song because it really seems Buddy Bat wants me to. But I usually write my blog on Joey, my main computer, and Joey seems to still allow me to be in charge. 😉

This week's song is Kansas City by The New Basement Tapes. I can tell you that this is one of a bunch of song lyrics Bob Dylan wrote after a car accident… Whatever. I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan but I just happen to really like this song. The lyrics of the song don't really speak to me but I enjoy the rhythm of the song the music and Kansas City makes me think about two things.

The first and only time I have ever flown into Kansas City I got to see my name on a sign with the NBC peacock on it because I was flying in for an interview with the NBC affiliate in Topeka, Kansas. The creative services director picked me up and we drove into downtown Topeka and he took me to lunch at a very nice upscale salad bar. I don't mean salad bar as in put your lettuce and all your stuff on your lettuce and take it back to your table. I mean salad bar as you look at all the different types of salads that they have choose the 3 or 4 that you would like and they put them on a plate for you. I was thinking to myself at that time, if I get this job I'm going to spend a lot of time in this restaurant. We enjoyed lunch and talked about the job and the Topeka area including the importance of how close the Kansas City Royals are.

There were a couple of things that didn't sit so well about living in Kansas. The gas prices were just a little higher than they were in Detroit and based on the value of my car it would probably cost about $600 a year for a license plate. My gas mileage wasn't that bad but for the price of the license plate tag? Yeesh! I was not giving up my only six years old Camaro to be a creative services producer in a small market. But we hadn't discussed salary yet it was still early in the day.

The next part of the day I worked very hard to keep myself from laughing, because the NBC station was smack dab in the middle of a cornfield. I mean you saw the building and the antenna and nothing but corn anyplace else. Once we walked into the station it was an incredibly modern building and in the production area it was totally state-of-the-art. It was better equipment than I worked with at the cable company and even at Tiger Stadium and it was very comparable to the production equipment where I was currently working as a video librarian. We did lots of talking about the type of commercial production that was done there. I got to meet a lot of potential coworkers they seemed like decent and very creative people. I even got to play with a couple of pieces of the equipment and recorded the voiceover while I was there. The job sounded great. The toys were fun. Downtown reminded me a lot of Royal Oak, Michigan, a city I absolutely adore. If the apartment rental in the area was decent and the pay was okay I was ready to start packing if they offered me the job.

Unfortunately the salary the job paid was a FEW THOUSAND dollars LESS then I was making as a video librarian and I lived in a suite in my parents home rent-free and paid just under $100 a year for tags for the plates on the Camaro. The CS director brought me back to the airport in Kansas City complementing my skills and raving about my voice and still trying to sell me on how great the area was. I did realize that that meant very good things about my standing in the finalists for this job. He even brought up that although it was more expensive for registration the gas prices were better than Detroit, which they word but I didn't say that, and the weather is better so it's better on the car. It still wasn't enough to make "I'm at creative services producer and a barista with a really great roommate who I met a day ago" very attractive. I sent an email later in the day of the next day explaining that I'd given it some thought and for financial reasons I just couldn't consider the position. But on the flight home I already needed extra peanuts because I felt so bad.

I do want to go back to Kansas City though! There are two things in Kansas City that I absolutely have to see. First off, of course, I want to see a baseball game there. The other thing that Kansas City has that no place else in the world does is Shuttlecocks! Note the capital S on Shuttlecocks. I'm not talking about stopping in a sporting goods store. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, built and installed four 18-foot badminton shuttlecocks on the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, it can be done in one day but if I go to Kansas City I must see a Royals baseball game and Shuttlecocks. And I mean I've got to power wheel out there and get my picture taken just to show you how much taller than my wheelchair the shuttlecocks are.


And that's what Kansas City is to me and it's what this song makes me think about. You may get something completely different from the song. In fact it would be really weird if you didn't. It a nice song. Hope you enjoy the video.

This Year, With Work, It Will Finally Get Better

The title of today's blog is my mantra for 2019. The last few years have been torture in my brain. With the help of a couple of psychologists and some other important people who are helping me there will be some changes in my world this year, changes that will make things better.

I’ve felt like pretty crappy friend the last couple months. Getting to Christmas had been rough.. If you read a few entries back you can kind of get an idea of what the end of 2018 was like for me. For a little bit I kept up with my Sunday Weekend Playlist. But I'll be totally honest. I don't even remember a lot of November with the broken bones and the painkillers I was on so that I wouldn't feel how bad those broken bones hurt it's sort of left me with a very cloudy vision of what November was like. I remember not being happy that with the broken feet there was no way I could go to my dad's the weekend after Thanksgiving for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner. We were going to do mom’s traditional sage stuffing this year too.

I do remember one funny thing. Let me start by explaining that when we were teenagers we would take turns with everybody picking on one of us for the evening every now and then. Somehow I never got picked to be teased for the night I and I voiced concern about that. “You never pick on me. Don't you guys love me?" At that time I was told I hadn't done enough dumb things to be picked on for. I guess that was a compliment but I felt kind of bad that I got to laugh at everybody else and they didn't get a chance to laugh at me. Under the influence of some serious drugs I finally got my stupid statement that I'm reminded about over and over. In fact I love the fact that I’m laughed at for it so much I make sure everybody hears about it!

My nurse picked up one of the mini Hershey's Gold candy bars that was in the candy jar on the table next to my recliner and asked me what it was. I told her it's a Bruno Mars bar. Now I really do referred of those as Bruno Mars bars because his song 24K Magic is used in the advertising and I say with a smirk that they are “Caramel and sweet just like Bruno.” Well in my; drugged up state from the painkillers I told her “they’re Bruno Mars bars because they’re caramel, sweet and crunchy just like Bruno." Nobody, including me, has any idea what makes Bruno Mars crunchy. The candy bars are crunchy - they have pretzel pieces and peanuts in them. But what I said was Bruno Mars is caramel sweet and crunchy. Exactly what the definition of crunchy is I get picked on for a lot. And I have to admit as someone who doesn't get picked on a lot, I love it.

My Christmas shopping is usually done by December 1. This year I’m ashamed to say that the last of my gifts were bought after Christmas, but, though perhaps not as personal as in the past, I did get my gifts out. My brain may not have been working well but my heart was.

Stay tuned. I’ll share some of my favorite photos that made me smile as I was being tapered off the more mind-messing and addictive drugs in mid-December!