I'm About to Lose Control and I Think I Like It

I've been so desperate for a belly laugh lately, I spend about ten minutes every morning on You Tube looking for my attitude fix for the day.  You know, something to put you in the right frame of mind if you're not already there during roll call.  Some days you just need an adjustment to all the Division Orders; Oil, Gas and Mineral Leases, the ding ding of Quick Books transactions, the Avaya telephone's staccato ring and the same old "Mr. G's Office!"  And THE PAPER, ALL OF THE PAPER, paper in files, letters on paper, paper mailed, paper stapled...PAPER, PAPER PAPER!!!  Oh and don't forget the descriptions:  the Southwest Quarter of the Northeast Quarter, the North Half of the Southwest Quarter of the Southeast Quarter.  So may I share with you a couple of attitude adjusters?

Now that makes you feel better, doesn't it?

Ruffinism for the day:  "A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed." - Sam Halpern

Get Off of My Cloud

I have joined the Netflix heaven.  It's the instant streaming movies/tv shows website.  The "no downloading necessary" hook is what got me and now I am being reeled in (no pun intended) by WiFi technology.  I do have DirectTV and have a DVR but things take forever to download.  With this new technology (or perhaps it's been around for years), I can stream a movie and/or TV show in seconds.  I have a wireless router on my computer in the living room and a Wii hooked up to the bedroom TV.  Netflix sent me a DVD to insert in my Wii and download a program and "voila" I can download in less than 10 seconds a movie or a TV show.

Now I've begun to watch "The Tudors" (fabulous) and my 23 year old son says Dexter is good.  And I can get just about any old movie I want when I want it instead of waiting for TCM to play it.  It has tons of movies you can download instantly.  This is promising, as summer has mostly reruns on TV.

Breaking news:  Did you know that Monday was the longest day of the year?  Yep, winter is just around the corner.

Back to Netflix.  It let's you queue up movies/tv.  It also asks you to rate some movies/tv so it can make recommendations to you (which is helpful).  And Clif says the more you rate and the longer you're a member, the more right on they get in recommending.  Well color me HD.  I'm in for the long haul.

And when they come to pry my cold, dead body from my 42" Sony TV?  "My, my," they'll say, "what a waste of life."  But I'll have a commanding knowledge of entertainment in the afterlife.  Genius.

A quote from Sh*t My Dad Says:  "We're out of Grape Nuts... No, what's left is for me. Sorry, I should have said "You're out of Grape Nuts."


."I just want silence. Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more."

YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK IF YOU SERIOUSLY LIKE TO LAUGH.

The Babysitter

My 32" HD Vizio TV.  My babysitter.  In my bedroom  For me.  At night.  For as long as I can remember, I have always been afraid of the dark.  As a child, my door had to be cracked so the hall light could come through.  My dad called me a baby which stuck to the back of my throat like gristle most of my life.  I basically got over my fear of the dark when I replaced the hall light in my teenage and adult years with a TV...on...all night long.  With the volume blaring, and now that my hearing has diminished in my old age, earsplitting and shattering.  God I amaze myself by waking in the middle of the night and wonder why the neighbors have not called the TV police on me.  LOUD.  However, my Vizio is my sanctuary.  I can crawl in there any time of the night and watch Turner Classic Movies or The Nanny or Roseane or Cops or Taxicab Confessions (just kidding-is that even still on?)

It's not that I like to wake up in the middle of the night necessarily, but sometimes my kidneys give me no choice and other times, well, it's probably because I have the TV on.  But it keeps the boogey man from coming into our house.  And I know this is going to sound silly but I like to wake up in the middle of the night because I know I have time to go back to sleep for a couple of hours.  It's kind of like a pat on the back for a night well slept.  And look Susan, you get a bonus...you get to sleep a little longer.  Crazy huh?  But very consoling.

In the summer, I like to kick the A.C. down to 66 or 67 degrees so that my comforter is inviting and silky.  And I have a half dozen down pillows at the head of the bed that I fall into.  Lord, I know that if my bedtime routine is this glorious (even though I have to have a babysitter), heaven must be some kind of place.

Ruffinisme for the day:  Consciousness; that annoying time between naps.

Aura & Aura Week

Well, I've had a couple of weeks off for "Rest" and "Relaxation" but it has not come without a price.  My breathing sucks.  Jim and I went down to Lake Sam Rayburn for a week and boated and sat in the sun...and swatted biting flies...and sweated...and bickered.  No just kidding, but the biting flies forced me to wear Off! for perfume the whole time.  Jim was on a mission with his flyswatter.  I've never seen a man take such erotic pleasure in popping insects.

I don't know what kind of pollen was high down at the lake but it kicked my ass.  My breathing was labored.  I have COPD, diagnosed a couple of years ago in a lab in the hospital consisting of one huge giant breathalizer machine and three hours of my time.  Doc calls my ailment bronchial asthma but that's just a nice word for emphysema.  So I have what I call a puffer that I use on bad days and on real bad days I have a nebulizer that finds me at my dressing room table breathing mist in and out through a tube for 15 minutes.

What's the point of this?  Hark back to 1969 in the backseat of my sister's pea green Pontiac Le Mans at 7:15 on any school morning with her and her best friend, Diane, and me riding out at Addicks before highschool.  Picture us rolling reefers in the car.  Now picture us OUT of rolling papers and my sister gets this bright idea to roll the weed in NOTEBOOK PAPER and smoke it.  My god people, have you lost your minds?!  Why not just put your lips around the tailpipe of the car and breathe, morons?!  And get this, my sister tells me to take a hit and hold it in my lungs as long as I can, "cause you'll get a better high."

Now, flash forward to Doc two years ago showing me how to use my Combivent inhaler.  He told me to take and puff and hold it in my lungs as long as I can, "cause you'll get better relief from the medication."

God's got a sense of humor.

Enjoy some of my pictures from Rayburn during the end of May and first week in June.

How I spent most of my time...chair leaned against the RV, looking up:

View from our RV:

Swimming hole:

We finally got the boat out and spent most of our days on the water, some gorgeous houses.

And the final house below that I've had my eye on for years and waiting for it to go on sale:

Ruffinism for the day:  Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. ~Jane Wagner