NOTE: If you don’t know what happened, here’s a link but be warned there’s bad language. Because we live in a world full of judgements, let me be clear, I’m NOT making fun of autoimmune diseases. I have lived with RA for two decades and generally I don’t laugh at sick people. But human behavior? I will laugh or wield sarcasm so I don’t cry in despair. 

So onto my questions about or related to The Slap:

Why wasn’t Will Smith removed from the stage at the Academy Awards by security after the slap heard around the world?

Where the heck was security?

Was security even there?

Is slapping only wrong if the slapper or slappee isn’t famous?

Do two wrongs make a right now? Or not? I feel like a really need clarity on this point, because my mom insisted two wrongs did not make a right. If she was wrong, I need to know that before I see her again in the afterlife because I want to tell her she was wrong. Wait, oh crap, I think I taught my kids the same thing. What if I was wrong and they find out???? I’ll never hear the end of it. I’ll never live it down!

How am I supposed to take Will Smith seriously as an actor when his solution to a cruel joke is a slap in front of millions of viewers?

And exactly what kind of jokes did The Academy, the rest of the entertainment industry and viewers, expect from Chris Rock? I mean he isn’t known for dad jokes or knock knock jokes, right? I didn’t watch the awards because I had zero interest, but I got a news alert on my phone about the incident. (And sadly, I clicked on the replay, so I’m part of the problem, I guess.)

Which brings me to another question: What is happening in this ridiculous world when that’s the breaking news alert on my phone when there are real problems happening daily? Women are murdered by husbands, children are abused and killed by parents, scammers are stealing retirees life savings, and oh yeah, there’s a dangerous war happening…but I get breaking freaking news about two children dressed in suits playing grown ups on TV. One mouths off, the other one slaps and I’m supposed to care…why?

Was this event staged for attention because the only way to get coveted recognition for overblown egos in a world inundated by desperate people vying for notice is to be outrageous rather than good at something, or you know, just a decent, respectful, and kind person?

I just have so many questions. How about you?

Saturday, we took Maggie with us and went to our lot. They’re doing rough plumbing, so they have pipes laid and sticking up in key places, and board outlining the house around piles of dirt. This was a bit of a reality check for us. We knew intellectually that we are downsizing our outdoor space significantly.

But knowing it is one thing, seeing it is a stark reality check. I remember the same mental adjustment when we moved into our current home which has about half the backyard of our first home. In the new house, adding the sunroom and patio cover really reduced the already small yard we would have had, but they are a better use of space for us. Like I said, we chose this lot knowing all this. And the good news is that there won’t be any homes build behind us, and the house on either side of us are terraced which gives us more privacy.

Maggie was interesting when we were walking around the lot with Wizard. She’s used to walking all over with me, but she was anxious when we went specifically to out lot. At the time, I assumed it was because she didn’t know how to navigate the open trenches and around the piles and piles of dirt.  I led her safely from the front to the back and returned to the front again, and she was better but not totally relaxed.  Then on a walk yesterday, we went up to the house from the back side and crossed onto the lot. She effortlessly followed the same path I’d showed her to the front with full confidence. So either she was just unsure the day before, or she was misreading Wizard’s intense concentration as anxiety while he was walking through determining each room and layout. I suspect it was a little of both. It’s be so cool if they could just tell us their worries so we could help them But it’s my job to figure it out.

Otherwise, the weekend was just a weekend. The highlights were a long walk with Maggie and stopping by youngest and his wife’s house to visit for a short time. I got to play with my grand dog Phoebe as a bonus. You guys had to see her work out what to do with her beloved ball when I offered her a carrot (she loves carrots). She finally chose to put the ball down, but her golden retriever brain had to ponder the impossible choice for a few seconds, LOL. She’s such a character and I adore her.

So that’s my weekend, how was yours?

TGIF! Time to share five random things about our week.

1. Dang it’s hot here. The birds have been loving it, chirping a cheerful song from early in the morning and throughout the day. Maggie’s been enjoying her favorite hobby of chasing lizards. But we’re supposed to get some desperately rain next week.
2. We are all up to date (at the moment) on all the design upgrades and signing docs for our house.  They “broke ground” on our lot this week.
3. We bought a new desk chair. It sounds boring, but our old chair was shredding, and both of us were picking up pieces of vinyl between vacuuming every danged day. I don’t know why we let the chair get so bad, but we finally went to Staples to buy a new one, and paid a few extra bucks to have it assembled. Wizard can and does usually do that, but he’s been doing so much on our landscaping (normal stuff he does every year at this time) that I made an executive decision before he could even answer the guy. Totally worth it.
4. I’ve been looking for a new desk. I have a huge oak desk that I have treasured for decades. We bought this whole oak set– desk, credenza, filing cabinet and two oak bookcases customized with cupboard doors on the third with my very first advance. But it’s time to downsize, so I’m looking for a desk and it’s not going well. I want to find a desk so I can figure out if we’ll keep the bookshelves and filing cabinet (maybe sand and paint) or I can sell it all as a set. There’s no rush, but even if for some reason we stay here, we will downsize the desk to fit our current lifestyle. On the other hand, nothing has to be done. We could always move the bookshelves and filing cabinet, and use a card table until we find something.
5. Yesterday I helped Wizard buy bags of mulch then we spread it in the back planter. Maggie thought that was great fun.  In fact, I’d gone in the house to put a roast in the crock pot real quick before helping in the spreading part, and when I came out, I found Maggie curled up outside the door waiting for me with her very own chunk of mulch by her. It didn’t look as if she’d chewed on it, so I guess she was just curious and brought it over to her spot. Maggie isn’t one to carry things around (except lizards or feathers from dead birds, LOL), so I’m always surprised when she does. She’s such an easy dog.

That’s my five, now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I just read a cute little romance where the heroine inherited a bed and breakfast on the beach in California. She’s thrilled, this is the answer to her lousy jobs, crappy ex fiancé and aimless life.

And I’m over here going: Who in their right mind dreams of running a bed and breakfast that requires daily cleaning and dealing with customers????? And how is a bed and breakfast romantic? I’m not drawn to it even as a guest as it feels like I’m a guest in someone’s home rather than a paying customer in a hotel with a certain expectation of privacy and boundaries. That’s probably because I’ve never stayed in one and therefore could be simple ignorance on my part.

For the record, I’m all for inheriting a beach house! If I have any unknown relatives living in a beach house looking to pass it on soon, I’m wilding waving my hand. Unless it’s a bed and breakfast that I have to manage, then I’ll politely pass

That’s just me, though. I know lots of people have this romantic idea of a bed and breakfast. I see this whole “heroine inherits a bed and breakfast” set up a lot in romances (or it feels like a lot to me) and I usually mentally roll my eyes because I consider it hard work, not romantic. But I have to admit, this book sucked me in anyway.  I actually wanted to go to the character’s beach house bed and breakfast for a writer’s retreat or something like that, LOL.

Of course it’d help if I was actually writing, but I digress.

The point is that the idea of owning and running a bed and breakfast is a major NO for me. I’ll read and enjoy the story in a romance, but I’m not going down that road in real life. What about you guys? Would you ever be interesting in running a bed and breakfast? And/or do you find bed and breakfast lodgings romantic to stay in?

Good weekend!

Friday, Wizard and I went to lunch. It sounds like a small thing, but we realized we hadn’t been doing that with each other lately. It was nice and we talked about doing a wine tasting weekend soon. It doesn’t matter if we actually do it as soon as we hope, what matters is taking a little time out of our day for each other and making plans future together aside from the house or around the kids/grandkid.

Saturday I worked on the cake for Turbo, and I made some non-dairy cookies for Youngest. I don’t have to make anything extra for Youngest, he’d have been fine. I do it because he seems to appreciate it so much. Plus those cookies are pretty easy, I made the dough on Friday, put it in the fridge, and baked them Saturday when I was done with the cake.

Here’s the cake designed exactly as Turbo asked:

He really liked the cake! He ate Marshalls leg, a chocolate paw print and reasonably small piece of cake I was thrilled. It was a homemade chocolate cake with a cookies and cream filling. Turbo loves both chocolate and cookies and cream I was also thrilled because it’s the first time middle son and his wife had seen any of my cakes in person, and they were surprised. Middle knew I was doing this stuff, but he said, “Seeing it in person is a lot more impressive.” I was honestly and happily surprised at their reaction. But mostly I was happy that Turbo was happy

As always, it’s nice to be with family.

How was your weekend?

TGIF! Time to share five random things about our week. Here’s mine!

1. My computer is slowing. It’s old and I’m begging it to hold on for another year or two. We just bought tires yesterday and it’s been a wave of those kind of things lately.
2. This weekend I decided to clean all the doors and the casing (molding around the doors). I’ve done this many times, but realized I hadn’t done it since my surgery. Evidently for a reason, LOL. I’m short, so this requires a lot of reaching over my head and my neck has filed a painful protest. It’s the close I’ve come to actually feeling the plate in my cervical spine. Anyhow, I’m perfectly fine, just cranky that I’m not 22 and full endless energy anymore. Thankfully I had been dusting and spot cleaning the doors, so this wasn’t terrible in that way. Just a heck of a lot work and now the doors are all clean, which feels awesome! If I keep doing this deep cleaning, I may go back to writing out of self preservation!
3. I got a text from youngest with a picture of his dog, saying, “She (his dog) said you have to visit as soon as tax season is over.” I saw youngest just a few weeks ago, and I’ve texted or talked to him on the phone. But tax season sucks, and I give him (and oldest) space, because I know what deadlines are like. But this one little text made me so danged happy. It told me that he’s thinking of me even when he’s too busy to breathe. Sometimes all it takes is a little text, you know? I need to remember that too when I get lazy about communicating with family and friends.
4. I made another Marshall (from PAW Patrol) that’s a little smaller yesterday. he came out okay, but not as good as I think I could do if I wasn’t wilting tired (my own fault). I think I’ll use him for the cake. I’m doing this cake as my grandson requested, not as I’d design it But what matters is that he likes it!
5. This weekend is about Turbo’s birthday and normal life stuff.

So that’s my five and now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Sometimes I regret not listening to reviewers. In this case, it’s the latest  murder mystery I’m trying to listen to.  I saw somewhere in the reviews that the listener couldn’t sort out the characters. I ignored it and am regretting it now.  I’m half way through the book and giving up.

The story set up is two men who didn’t know each other meet in a warehouse and are murdered. Their wives are the story protagonists trying to find out who murdered their husbands and why. But all the characters blend together into one big pile of I don’t care anymore.

At first I blamed the narrator and tried to mentally latch onto characteristics to tell them apart, then realized…the author has written all the characters as if they’d been cut from the same loaf of bread. They have different backgrounds but the only way we can tell is when the author reminds us, not by differences in in the way the characters move, speak or act. As if he forgot to give them different personalities as demonstrated through the character’s actions and words. It’s maddening as a reader. It feels like the author could just narrate this story without the characters. Bland. Boring. And why should I care?

It’s possible that listening to the book is exaggerating the problem, but I’m done even trying, This author is on my do not buy list, I’m not going down this boring rabbit hole again.

I’m also mad at myself because I ignored the reviewer comment that should have warned me. But the stupidly arrogant voice in my head said, “The reviewer probably just wasn’t paying attention.” Um, hello? I’m often doing something else while listening so I’m guilty of not paying close enough attention if the author doesn’t have solid grasp on creating individual characters. I will zone out of I lose interest too. Which I kept doing in this book because I was lost.

Anyway, that’s my reading gripe today–characters need to be fleshed out as fully as three-dimensional people that I can identify from their way of speaking, moving or reacting, or I’m going to lose interest.

Do you have a reading/listening gripe you’d like to share?