WHY???

I know I have talked about this before, but why do things I like get discontinued? 

One of  my daily indulgences that has been consistent for at least 20 years and maybe more, (I am unwilling to do the math), is eating a bagel with cream cheese every morning. Whatever happens during the day, wherever I go, whatever I do, my day won't start right if I don't have my bagel and my tea. And it's not just any bagel, it's a Lender's Onion bagel with 1/3 less fat Philadelphia Brand cream cheese. 

I'm very specific, aren't I?

My son does most of the grocery shopping at my house (can't beat it) but he called me from the store one day saying "It's not good news, Mom." Holy cow I thought he'd run over a cat or something! But no, the bagels I eat were on clearance. He asked how many packages I wanted. OMG! Not again! Why does this happen to me??

I don't have a big freezer so I had him pick up (he paid for them) 5 bags. 

And then they were gone.

Apparently the company was sold, and when I contacted the new company they said the bagels are still being made but they couldn't tell me the distribution. 👀 Um .. what?? They also said that during the pandemic the demand for bagels has risen and it has been hard to keep up with the demand.

Pandemic bagel eaters? Who knew? (guessing it's not really a thing)

It sort of felt like I was being placated, so it just may be they are gone forever. We will see. In the meantime, my son is buying different types of onion bagels for me to try and so far they have all had one thing in common - they don't taste much like onion. 

Blargh. Somewhere I think my onion bagels are dancing with my Stouffer's Noodles Romanoff, laughing at my discomfort. 

Cuh-razy! It's official.

My laptop decided to give up the ghost a week ago, turning itself off for no apparent reason whenever it felt like it. Enter new laptop. It took me a week to transfer what I wanted to the new computer, moved some stuff to an external hard drive, took my time to get it all right.

This morning I pronounced it done. Being the geek I am, I thought I would try a restore on the old laptop which basically brought it back to Vista (shudder) and completely wiped out its memory of having a wireless card. Plugging into my access point was unsuccessful.

Oh well. Worth a try.

Played with the new laptop for a while and then went to do the dishes. When I came back to the living room maybe 15 minutes later - blue. Screen. Of. Death. On the NEW laptop! Rebooting didn't work, recovery disk didn't work - the only thing I can figure is that I am such a horrible user that in seeing what I did to the first laptop - this one killed itself before I could.

The cuh-raziest part? I feel immobilized without my computer. Like since it is not working, neither am I. I don't know what to do with myself. Apparently I need to know there is connectivity available to me - even if I'm not using it. I have to laundry tomorrow. How will I do it now?

Yep. Cuh-razy!

Posted from my iPhone.

C'est la vie!

.

Whatever will be, will be .. oh wait.  That's que sera, sera .. they both mean the same thing anyway.  Basically.  So no, I did not get the townhouse.  There was already a contract on it and well .. it's time to look elsewhere.  They say things happen for a reason right?  I mean - it's not like I cook or anything, why do I need a perfect kitchen??


Anyway, onward and upward.  Something else will come along.

Ever have one of those days . . .

Crap day at work. One of those days when you are crazy busy but at the end of it feel like you've been running in place all day and haven't moved forward at all. Toward the end of the day a co-worker came to visit my little cubby/office/room to tell me he had just resigned. Circumstances beyond his control forced his hand, and he is leaving. Forces having nothing to do with work. Suffice it to say he does not want to leave but his personal life requires him to right now.

ANYWAY! Can't I ever use just a couple of words? No. I should be used to my wordiness by now. So he came to tell me he was leaving and it made me very sad. Not only is he leaving, but tomorrow is his last day!

Have you ever had a new person start in your office, who you just knew was not going to fit in? And conversely, someone new who seemed to fill a gap you didn't know you had and just "got you" right from the get-go? Yeah, that's him. The 2nd one. A twinkle in his eye and fancy square toed shoes, a Latin dancer with a heart of gold. I will miss him bunches.

As I was talking to this guy/co-worker/friend - my brother called and left a message on my phone. My brother lives in New Jersey, and my mom lives with him. He is actually ill himself, but my mother wanted to live with "a man in the house" because you know, if the hot water heater goes out, he will know what to do. I didn't say it made sense.

He told me that mom has been falling down on a daily basis and she is starting to hurt herself. It's getting to the point that when he leaves for work he worries about what he will find when he gets home. It is time to discuss our next step. Brother #1 told me that brother #2 is visiting him and Mom right now, and apparently does not want to talk about "the next step. He says "oh but she'll be sad, she'll get depressed . . " and is coming up with all kinds of reasons not to even think about her living anywhere but where she is now. Considering HE lives in the northwest - all the freaking way across the country - it's easy for him to sit in his home thinking (hoping, wishing) that my mom is just fine alone all day when in reality she is probably going bing! bing! BING! And ricocheting around brother #1's house all day like it's a pinball machine. I'm not angry with him, and I'm not saying out of sight out of mind. It's just - if you don't want to face something - it's easier to do long distance.

We would all love to sit back and just imagine our mother is the same woman she always was. Well she's not. Time to grow up for all of us. Believe me, I would love to think my mom was aging gracefully and will be able to take care of herself until the day she dies. But it's not happening that way and we all have to put our big kid panties on and deal with it. It's irresponsible to ignore the fact that she may fall down, hurt herself, and could possibly have to lay in the same spot for hours until my brother gets home from work. Something she fears a lot, something happening and no one being there to help. She has her button - she can push it and get help fairly quickly, but it's simply getting to the point where she needs more than a button. We. Have. To. Address. It. Not a single one of us can stay home all day and take care of her. And not a single one of us is married (anymore) either. Hmmm, can you say dysfunctional?

So - I had to stop and pick up a prescription on my way home, and who can blame me for picking up some donut holes? Um. . . and a BabyRuth. That's it, I swear. But I AM going for a walk tonight. I'm an emotional eater, my weight is doomed.

Okay, call me a sap.

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I feel bad after watching Jon & Kate Plus 8. It was so obvious how far apart Jon and Kate are, for whatever reason. It seems what it comes down to is Kate wants to continue the show because it provides for the family. And Jon on the other hand, doesn't want to do it anymore because he doesn't like the stuff attached to becoming a celebrity.

It's sad to see any family break apart and I hope this one isn't heading there - as much as it looks like it. I don't know if Jon is having an affair, not my business. Or Kate - with her bodyguard? Puh-lease. I am not privy to whether or not Kate has gone from "Mom to Monster" as some of the tabloids are reporting. I just know I was sucked in when the show started, I love watching the kids - all 8 of them, and how their parents handle life with all that entails. I don't want to see it all fall apart.


I just keep remembering the evening my ex and I sat our kids down to tell them we were getting a divorce. I still count it as one of the worst, if not THE worst day of my life. That's where my feelings lie regarding this family. I hope they don't end up there. Sad.

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Sorry

A nice gal who has offered me encouragement and advice is going through a hard time right now. Boy if I could even begin to explain some of my emotional ups and downs, relationships on and relationship off, well, it would take a long time to even start. Suffice it to say - I've had my share of heart aches - and caused some too. You don't get to this point in your life without experiencing or causing any pain. But whatever has happened - I've learned from it and moved on and in a lot of ways I am stronger now than at any other time of my life. This gal is younger than me and most likely has a lot more to go through before she gets here - but she will. She'll learn from every good emotion as well as bad - and she will keep moving - getting better and stronger with each step. I wish her well ...

On another note entirely - I just visited the Etsy forums and I must admit I am astonished. People are so nice and so helpful - but God help the newbie who asks a question out of a lack of knowledge about how things work - and they can be beaten to a pulp. Sadly tonight a brand new seller set up her shop yesterday, listed her items today, then had the audacity to ask in a forum thread if it was possible to have a heart removed from her shop. She was jumped on - poor lady. Not everyone was mean, but there were quite a few people who were unmerciful and it was really disgraceful. Someone posted and said that some of their artist friends laugh at them for having a shop on Etsy because of the "middle school" atmosphere. That atmosphere turned into a stench tonight.

Turns out the poor lady mistook someone's avatar as spam - thought it was someone playing a joke - didn't know what calling out was - much less that she was doing it. At about PAGE 20 of the thread giving her a pounding and poking all kinds of fun at her expense - she emptied her shop, posted one more time with an explanation of why she had asked the question - and took her toys and went home.

Is this what we want Etsy to be? I am SO new compared to a lot of people but I recognize certain people already who are all too willing to jump on top of the pile if there is someone being crushed at the bottom. I won't buy from those people. They can say - well they don't need people who can't take a joke etc. Well - that's their choice. But I don't want to push people away (especially customers) and I certainly don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. It is really naive to think that people WON'T judge your shop by the personality they see exhibited in the forums.

Amazing. Amazing and sad. We don't know what that seller could have brought to Etsy. Could have brought some established customers of her own who might have looked around and become all around Etsy customers. Could have brought some good ideas, a fresh outlook - could have been someone who would have featured people on her blog all the time- or been great at promoting Etsy as a whole.

And she just might have been a really nice person besides. But now we'll never know. Sad.