Yeah.  How about that?  Ain’t this something, though?   I never thought I would ever find this place again,  was I lost or WHAT?

What?…..me lost?  Well maybe not actually lost, like in not knowing where I am or anything silly like that —— I may have taken a wrong turn a while ago and fell into a really deep hole and for some reason I couldn’t get out of it.     Very bizarre.

I don’t have a clue why it’s been so long since I have tossed my usual mishmosh of words onto this machine.  Not gonna worry about it though.  Why bother?  No matter what I write it won’t make any sense anyway.   That is what is so nice about this senile dementia thing,  I can use that as an excuse for just about anything stink-o I write about.  Good deal, eh?  Har Har

Never a dull moment on Planet Earth, though.   Got my usual quota of  email pleas to send each of those (admittedly) good & dedicated organizations who are still hopeful those inhabitants who actually believe what scientists, astronomers, new outer space discoverers, biologists, geologists,  all engineering disciplines,  and so on and on…….. fan the small spark of interest by humanity to acknowledge the pathetic, but going to happen!!,  death of  this itsy-bitsy planet pretty damn soon.  If not sooner. 

Just about everything that points to Planet Earth’s demise, along with all living organisms on it, has been noticed by CONCERNED, INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED, DEDICATED, HOMO SAPIENS all over the world.    Let’s just say, for now anyway, that the general consensus of way too many people is that *stuff* started about 2,000 years ago.    This, of course, makes absolutely no sense but I ain’t gonna argue about fairytales right now (Like “Creationism”,  what a joke on any human being who actually believes in that senseless, willful ignorance of belief that  something  has “created” this planet and set it down in a teensy corner of the 15 Billion Year Old Universe === (since the Big Bang.)  Ya know?….I hate to admit it but I do not have a clue what the heck the “Big Bang” was supposed to be all about.   Does anyone?

I’m  just gonna go right on out on a limb.  Of course it will have to be a very strong limb,  I ain’t no Twiggy, fer shure!

Oh-Oh.  Someone  —-something?  Is a-knockin’ at my door.   I suppose I should mosey on over there and see what/who is there, eh?  Nah, they’ll go away sooner or later.  Hell with it.  It’s past 3:00 in the afternoon at the moment.   I have not eaten any solid food for many hours.  Well, a couple of hours anyway.  Heck, I don’t remember.    Only joshing about the knock-knock.   It was just the UPS delivery person.   I am a tad addicted to shopping online,  it’s so easy.    Paying for a shopping spree?……..not so much fun.

This is my cat.   Her name is Snickers.   She already had that name when I adopted her from our Humane Society shelter, and since I knew she would resist having to learn a different name,   I decided I didn’t want to go thru the bother of rearranging her limited brain cells to accept something “new”……..    [actually she's quite intelligent].  She’s 98%  Maine  Coon]    So it’s Snickers.  Guess I’ll be her obedient servant as long as we both live.   Ummmm, don’t tell Snickers I said this, but I would actually prefer  a Golden Retreiver than this spoiled feline but alas!   — a small apartment is no place for a big ol’ clump of a dog….*snif*  Boo-Hoo

I am going to get me something to eat right now.  Sure hope something yummy crawled into the refrigerator while I was piddling around all morning doing absolutely nothing — neither for me nor the cat.    THEN I am going to really make a  dedicated effort to publish something (using actual words and stuff like that).  I shall return.

“FLYING HIGH” – This link won’t make any sense except to someone from my Facebook wall who discovered I was a  military enlistee  (because Facebook took it upon itself to broadcast that bit of trivia when I updated my profile)  then a new *friend* noticed that item and dropped in on me at FB.  SHE also was over in Germany about the same time as me.  Small world?  You betcha.

Well, this is it.  I guess I will finally have to concede that I am completely razzlefratzed at this moment.  At this point in time,  it is the next day.   The second day of  HOT.   I really, really hate HOT  — as in like, Summer Hot. Actually I hate Summer.    I  hate to SWEAT.   OOooops   Excuse the gaffe.   Horses—sweat.  Men—perspire. Women—glow.

Anyway!  What I am talking about, I think, is emblazoned in that ridiculous title I gave this blog entry.   When I check my site meter I’m always surprised at the number of  “visitors”  recorded for each day of the week.  Plus another chart below which displays “Number of pages visited” (and the lengths of the visit)  and so on blah blah blah.   But none of these “lurkers” have ever posted a comment for any blog I’ve slapped on my site.  Thus,  are you a lurker or just bashful??   Oh what the helk.   Who cares.   hahahaha

The world of  Blogging, where billions of people have poured their hearts out on their very  own website (usually designed by themselves or with help from platforms like WordPress and the rest of them…….has today been reduced to quickie sound/sight *bytes* on a gazillion topics and it’s name is FaceBook!   What a phenomenon, eh?   I don’t care a whit for Facebook, simply because I am way too overbearing and offend many people’s tender feelings by saying what I feel and WHY……….If I don’t see any logic or reasonable hypotheses for an issue others are totally glued to (and it doesn’t matter a spit whether what they *think* is right is usually way off into what I call the Land of La-La)…….if they are wrong because they are stupid or because they make no effort to LEARN  real truths about what *they* think, in no way can anyone truly contribute anything of  meaning to others.

My favorite “never happened that way”  feeling I always got whenever I’d hear a misguided (dumb?)  American citizen proudly announce  that  “This country was founded as a Christian nation“    Did these blockheads  not absorb ANY of the history of  how the  first 13 colonies turned into 13 of the very  first United States of America??  Good Grief.   —-  I’m a member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation and what a grand and glorious feeling it is to finally admit, once and for  all, that I have not ever believed in some kind of invisible being who supposedly *created* this weenie little planet we call Earth and populated it with billions and billions of human being who apparently sprung from the original four people “He” created.   What a bunch of hogwash!   People should take a good long look around  http://nasa.org  and take a few trips with the Hubble telescope which has patiently been cruising around the universe for 20 years now….I believe totally in Science.   ‘

“The religions disperse,  kingdoms collapse, but works of science live on thru the ages.”   (some really old guy said this eons ago, and it’s still true!)

FFRF is an organization whose basic  purpose is to monitor the constitutional edict that “State and Religion”  shall always be SEPERATE.   It is a serious group of many freethinkers who are dedicated to preserving what the founding fathers knew……that *religion* has absolutely no place  in our SECULAR  government,  and the citizens of America should be eternally grateful that it remains this way.    There have been small  “well, let’s do this, no-one will notice”  things.  The latest being our president declaring a “National Day of Prayer”  ———————a total and complete violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.   President Obama should know better, or so one would think.  Prayer…..what a waste of time.  Prayer always fails. Whatever you want, babies,  or believe you deserve?  —Ya just gotta work for it yourself.

DieHandtasche [this probably won't work, but I'm gonna try anyway--[it's .wmv]

Hi there!    It’s that sweet li’l old lady from the land of cheeseheads,  endless adoration of Saint Vince Lombardi. (and our beloved Green Bay Packers),  adorably cute dairy  cows gently chomping on whatever it  is they chomp on in their green pastures [grass, I believe?) — topped off in the state’s biggest city (Milwaukee)…..with its crowning glory,  Santiago Calatrava’s  Brisè  Soleil  at our lakefront Art Museum.  Which is, by the way, quite breathtaking.   If I do say so myself.   Which I just did.

I have come to a momentous decision~~~I have decided what I want to be when I grow up. Yup. Since there are probably thousands of other older faces in the  crowd and it certainly is no big deal anymore  — no matter who says so — I will just have to come out of my shy, withdrawn persona and claim the most meaningful title I can think of.   And by golly, what  else would there be?…………Well-l-l……… I guess I could always claim to be THE BEST  of the OLD BIDDY BLOGGERS, but I get tired just thinking about the tough competition hangin’ around the blogesphere. just waiting to knock me off the No. One perch, ya know?    Yeah, right..  Nah, who really cares at this point in time, eh?   Blogging isn’t the fun it used to be……now it’s that dumb Facebook thingie.  What exactly is the point of being “invited” to be someone’s *friend*, especially when it is someone you have no idea even existed on this planet before he/she asked to “be your friend”.   So silly.

I drop by there once in a while but tell the truth,  I kind of got really  bored looking at someone else’s family pictures*…..and how many ways can a person pen a comment on the unbelievable beauty and so on of someone’s baby/toddler/teenager/all pets/etc etc etc ???  OF COURSE YOUR BABY, TODDLER, TEENAGER, BLAHBLAHBLAH, is amazingly, incredibly gorgeous.  WOW!  All I regularly do is slap a petition or something similar on my wall to invite anyone accidentally falling into my space there, to take a look at my latest petition and SIGN IT,  for crying out loud !!!

My petitions will always be from the  kinds of  activist organizations who honestly give a damn about our country/our citizens/everyone’s animal welfare guardianship/our slowly dying planet, blah blah blah.  No surprises.there, for sure.

There is, apparently, some kind of very special wedding ceremony going on in a couple of days.   Over in the *Mother Country*, which is inhabited by many folks just like us “Mericans.   Except they are British, you see.  In fact, the groom, in this case, will one day be the British peoples’  KING.   And his wife will be, I suppose, the QUEEN?  Is that how it works?   This ain’t gonna happen, however, until the current Queen (think her name is Elizabeth or something like that) is gone from this earthly realm.  Lizzie is, I believe, 84 years old now so I’m sure she has a few good years left, eh?  She is in pretty good shape…….my goodness, and why not!  I can’t even imagine the pampering and care she must get 24/7, right?

Anyway!   I haven’t heard a peep from the so-called “blogger friend”  who lives over there.   He is probably embarrassed to contact me since he obviously had no intention of inviting me to accompany him to the royal wedding and the swingin’ party afterwards.   Shame on him.   Oh well.   Doesn’t really matter.   I  don’t have anything to wear, anyway.  In any case I would be very bored  — I recall, very vividly, how really, really bored I got watching Diana and what’s-his-name  (the duke of something) come  tippy-toeing down that long, endless aisle  towards the altar……..Diana’s wedding dress’ train was so long I fell asleep way before the couple finally arrived in front of the altar where the official whatevers were waiting to commence the ceremony.

Of course there is the possibility the old coot who lives quite some distance from my town wasn’t invited to the Big Par-tay and he just didn’t want to embarrass himself by telling me this.   OR he is attending the royal shindig with some cutesy English lassie.  *snif*   Well.  Ask me if I care.   Ha Ha.            Ha Ha. Þ

*Images of my incredibly gorgeous great-grandaughter are, of course, always the most adorable…….teehee.

   Just been browsing thru my messy files and spotted this little thingie.  For reasons known only to the invisible force that told me, in no uncertain terms, Hey You Old Bag!!…..Get yer lazy arse over to your WordPress link and put something down in print.   Been a long time since I’ve wandered into this little corner of my ‘puter.   You know how that goes, right?—
Like………*Time flies when you’re having fun*  or so “they” say.

-Well, lemme tell ya, that is one large load of  krapola.  Time does NOT fly when you’re having fun, or in my case, not having any fun at all.    So if I kvetch a little I have every right to do so,  I mean what the heck…..this is MY blog, ain’t it?  — And if I want to moan, groan, kvetch and just generally act like a horse’s patoot,  well,  ……that’s the way it is……..Uh Huh, Uh Huh, I like it….blah blah  (from the song whose words I do not know)

I had a total knee replacement a while ago.   It seems like a very long time since that momentous occasion, but I think the actual dirty deed was done July 2009.   ???   Well, that’s my big news for tonight.   Ain’t nothin’  real exciting to talk about, actually.   What I really want to discuss is  [drumroll please]…….my coming out.   Finally.   I am finally, and for real from this day forward,  a true-blue, dedicated and happy ATHEIST.   Whew, what a load off my back……LOL.    Been feeling that way for years and finally said to myself — “Myself!– Get with it, you know you  do not believe by any stretch of the imagination, in an invisible, never seen, never heard,  big old guy who supposedly *created* this weeny  little planet called Earth and for a couple thousand years homo sapiens have “worshipped” this entity.  Before that, though, hominids quit dragging their knuckles and swinging from a banana tree and finally got up on their two feet and wandered around in search of a warm cave………..”Hey, I think we’re kinda on our own, Barnie Stoneman, got a match so we can make a fire?”  I have no clue how these Neanderthal humans*  discovered fire or even discovered icky-looking critters tasted better cooked than raw??   [note:  y'all know that us speshul mammal-type "humans" share 98.8% of our DNA with the current primates, don'tcha??  They be our brudders and our sistahs, don'tcha know?]  Hahahahaha

*Scientists, for reasons known only to them (I certainly don’t know),  have decided the last of the “caveman”  homo sapiens “Neanderthals”  went kaput only 30,000 years ago, which is a very small drop in the bucket considering it’s known by every brainiac on the planet today that  Earth was probably smashed together approximately 50+ BILLION years ago. Atheism is nothing new but its popularity for millions of people in this 21st century now is good news………means  more and more people  have realized LIFE and LOVE and HAPPINESS,  along with contentment and so on…………has absolutely nothing to do with the myth of a ”being” having been responsible for slapping this  little planet together, complete with flora, fauna and, for starters,   actual HUMANS.    Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Lilith (Adam supposedly turned that gal into dust, though.  Nasty guy!)  I just found out that people who cling to their choice of religion don’t seem to notice, or care?, that even the Christian bible is a confusing mish-mosh of fairy tales and nonsense!  

I watch a soap opera every day.  I have for 30 years (“All My Children”)   But when a fairy tale like the Christian bible declares that EVE was the mother of all, and her sons Cain & Abel married their sisters, and so on, it surpasses any corny soap opera on  television in this century.  The goofy story of Noah’s Ark.  Good Grief!!   For ANY  rational human being to believe such a ridiculous  story leaves me speechless…..Whew!

There are at least half-a-dozen very large, well-organized  Atheist organizations, etc  all over the Internet.   Millions of perfectly normal, sane, obviously thoughtful people reject the notion that planet Earth was *created* by a mysterious entity called God.   I don’t know a doggone thing about other kinds of  “religion”  around the world, but if that’s what makes them happy,  what the heck………..go for it.   Just don’t think that being a *Christian* makes YOU any better a human being than ME.    I believe in ME.   For ME there is NO HIGHER POWER than my own conscience,  my own morality and my own pursuit of happiness.    The only result of your praying to an invisible deity for help or for whatever reason will be solved only by YOU and your own personal moral authority.    

   Putz.  I like Prez JFK’s comment, just need glasses to read it, though.  Bummer. 
He is saying — “I believe in an America where the separation of church and
state is absolute”       —- Gosh I sure did love that man!!
His wife, not so much.   lol 

Hellooo der.   Guess who’s back.  Oh shucks, you guessed, didn’t ya?   I am amazed, every week,  at the “hits” I’m getting of lurkers stopping off at meandthecat while they’re going thru the gallery of WordPress’ Thesis blogsites.  Many even stopped in at a few blogposts.  Cool.  But yeah it’s the loud, squawky, complaining, (aka bitchin’) old crone.   This blogpage operates under the domain of meandthecat.com but although I have been blogging since 2001 I sure couldn’t create a site like I have right now.  Started long ago with Blogger.com, then WordPress came along and it was love at first “site” (so to speak).  Then the WP brought out WordPress Thesis…….and what a platform that is for imaginative blogsite creators to *create*.   Alas, as talented and clever as I am and always have been  [it's hard to be humble] I never could have come up with the astonishing blogpage I have right now!   My kidlet designed this blogpage for me,  she operates under the name kitty@ink2art.com and is a whiz at website design.

Anyway, enough about other people.  I have stuff simmering on the back burner that’s been charred and tossed in the garbage ’cause the “news” I was bringing to this  page got too old to blog about.   Did I mention my home state is, Uh, Wisconsin?  Milwaukee, actually.  Our newly elected Governor decided to make himself the shining example of how a  rightwing thought process would make Gov. Walker a hero in the eyes of private sector workers (by balancing the state’s really stinky budget)………..as opposed to the public workers who did not have to pay one single penny towards their health insurance or their pension benefits.   Thus the power of the [cold shiver down the spine]  Unions.   So  the public workers got a very unpleasant kick in the pants when, much to everyone’s surprise,  the Unions agreed to remove collective bargaining from the rules of warfare between corporations/municipalities and their members. (public workers)

I tried to imagine a scenario where, while in the sweaty, panic-striken mood of being interviewed by a *Human Resources* bunny for a job I really would have liked ………..
Get the preliminary “experience” and “what a wonderful, compassionate, dedicated worker you would be if lucky enuf to be employed by TidyWipe diaper service, right now.
No bickering about “collective bargaining rights”,  you’re offered a salary and if lucky,  a package of decent benefits like health insurance?—-Take it or leave it.  I took it.  Worked out just fine.  Did it all without a Union chief breathing fire down everyone’s neck.  The private sector of business generally doesn’t condone any conflict….they need a worker to do a job, they will pay XXX number of dollars, provide decent health insurance and that’s that. Take it or leave it.

But I gotta say.  I am very, very proud of our citizens…..not only in Wisconsin…..but in all our states.   The protests that went on 24/7 for such a long time (I know I was sick of watching the news, which of course went on and on and on.  Even when there was nothing to say.  The talking heads on our local stations just kept on moving their jaws like cows in a pasture, chewing on a cud since there was usually nothing new or exciting going on most of the time.   *YAWN*    The only tragedy was the mess inside the Capitol building.  The marble and granite surfaces were riddled with “tape” (protest signs) and I can just imagine how the bathrooms and everything else looked and smelled after a whole lot of healthy, robust and bratwurst eating citizenry got thru grazing from their picnic baskets.   EEeeeeuuu.  Oh, and many people slept inside the building, here and there.  Would someone please pass the
Febreze, please?  Yuck

But doggone it, bless all the protesters’ sincere,  dedicated and peaceful demonstrations.  Not a single gunshot was heard.  No fisticuffs from opposing viewpoints of people.  I am and even more so now,  so happy to be an American citizen…..Born in the USA.    Democracy still works, now if we can just find a few REAL people to run for elective office who share the same commitment to our Republic, For Which it Stands……..and make some sane, reasonable and decent concessions from both political parties.

First thing on the agenda, however? — The Republican Party and every one of those hypocritical, nauseatingly righteous, tight-assed beyond belief,  smug.
women-hating  (and quit spitting out nonsense, as one Senator did, that “women should stay home and take care of the kids”)   What a total horse’s tushy!

No more prying into a woman’s totally PRIVATE reproductive life, it is none of ANY backward-thinking politician to inflict THEIR very narrow ideas of how the FEMALES of this country, who, by the way, outnumber the weaker sex, who are stronger than men (mentally, anyway), and are not ruled 24/7 by their tatas as men are obsessed with their gidgets.  Last but not least, for the love of Heaven….Rethuglicans!!! —- Stay out of my doctor’s office  I mean it.

Who are YOU to decide if a woman should have an abortion or not?  Who are YOU to decide whether young or adult females shouldn’t have access to birth control?

Whew. I worked myself into a frenzy, but I think it is just hunger pangs.   I have been so busy ranting and raving I forgot to eat anything since some cereal about eight hours ago.  Well !!  No wonder I am feeling faint with hunger.  I need to correct this situation right now.

Ummmm, actually I don’t really have a  “sweet baboo” —-  In what’s left of my senile mind, I call people and things I love my  “sweet baboo” —  No, it doesn’t make any sense, but do I care?  Of course not.

Oh Joy! Oh Bliss! Oh Happiness!  —–well, not really.   Shocking news.   OK, only to me, but of course since I am of the opinion that I AM the most important person in my life,  I have to go with my gut instincts…..I AM the most important human being I’ve ever known. And that is a fact no-one can ever dispute.   Correct?  Of course I’m correct and 100% right also,  I generally am.

OK then, now that it’s definitely been established that I have just lived thru the most horrifying, frustrating, boiling mad week of my life (as far as I can remember, there may have been other disgustingly horrific events I have endured in my very long march thru life, but this atrocity……this abomination and destruction of one’s very humanity…….what happened to ME in the last couple of weeks?? —- Oh the misery.  The pain.

My life, my heart, my soul (if there is such a thing, which I doubt) and every other nasty thing I can think of……all wrapped up in just a few words.  Words I can only hope I will never have to hear again.

MY COMPUTER FIZZLED OUT ON ME.   WITHOUT ANY WARNING.   YES,  IT GOT REALLY UGLY and even the cat knew enough to stay out of my way.   I don’t really believe I would have kicked her across the room and  withheld her evening ritual of getting a little nosh of “kitty cookies” as her treat of the day.   Felt like hitting something, though.   What I really needed to vent my anger and frustration with anything electronic, cordless, wireless, blah blah……..is an effigy of Sarah Palin* so I could beat the stuffing out of that and not suffer any consequences (I don’t own a gun, don’t ever wish to own one,  much less use one), — now that may have alleviated a whole lot of my frustration and bitter feelings towards that guy named Bill Gates.

*You may have heard of that person…..Sarah Palin?  “aka Sawdust for Brains” ??  “Don’t retreat, Re-load”   (Such a cutey, eh?)  Someone sent me a link to a website selling T-shirts, signs, posters–ad nauseam–online.  All Sarah Palin, with pithy little silly sayings on the shirt/posters.   Unbelievably vulgar so I won’t pass along the URL for that stinky site.

Oh nertz.  I haven’t blogged for so long I have all these words just running around in the big empty spaces in my skull and not getting to the point.  Oh well.  Anyway!   Long story short.  I did what any reasonable person would do when *things* go kaflooey.   I did a simple “Restore”,  have done it before thru the years and it always worked just fine.  Not this time.  (My new computer came bundled with Windoz 7 which I loathe with a passion I never knew I had anymore….hahaha.   Sure wish I had my Windoz XP back.)   *snif*    Oh yeah,  I even took the final step and did a System Recovery.   It got worse.

The kidlet  has so often helped me thru crises like this, but in this case the death of the computer (tower)  was beyond her help.  All I had left was “Games” and spent five days not  eating, didn’t sleep, didn’t do nuthin’ !! — but play Solitaire.  I tried two of the other games on the big menu of games listed, but they were too hard to me to comprehend.   And that definitely did NOT sit well with my ego at all So it was back to Solitaire.  Did I just say I wasn’t eating during this miserable time?   I only wish.   hahaha  Nothing keeps me from my regularly scheduled rounds to the cupboards and refrigerator daily to see if anything good re-appeared since the last time I looked into the freezer, et al.

Well, this blather is getting much too long, so in as few words as possible,  I will wind it up.   I mean, who really cares anyway, except ME, of course.   It does show however, how much I depend on having  Internet access at my fingertips 24/7 since I renew animal advocacy orgs’  memberships online,  get my bank biz online, buy stuff online, communicate online with people,  stay in touch with several leftwing liberal websites and hope they’re trying their best to print more truth than just being irresponsible and yapping about things that have no connection with reality…………..[kind of like another political party I know, the one I was always too poor to belong to.  They're called Rethuglicans]

Oh yeah.  The computer.   Was going to take it in to Best Buy,  I’d had a member of their “Geek Squad” come to my home once and he did a wonderful job straightening out a mess I made when I blundered (as usual) into ‘puter mysteries I had no business blundering into.   Now I know better, no more sneaking into the “basement” of the Windoz totally non-intelligible directions about Diagnostics and Whirlybirds and ummmm, Windows Configuration and Constipation,  and a brief diagram showing the progression of  the dreaded  “Diarrhhea Error,  How to Track and Heal”   —– Dat Billy Gates, he don’t miss a trick when it comes to his Windoz and dat stuff.

Except for Windows 7.   Excuse me while I throw up.

Yeah,   always been wondering about that — never been able to figure out what that means.   “Course, since I’ve never had enough money to call myself a true Republican anyway,  I never had to worry my little brain with such an ambiguous question, anyway.   Whatever…! I’ve had that little button in my images folder for a long time, thought I’d slap it on here and then toss it.   Unless someone wants it, in that case, be my guest — copy it and take it home with you.

But!   The cutesy banner you are looking at now  (cast your eyeballs just a tad downward, see the banner of which I speak??  — This is from what can only be from the “Olden Days”, which, in personal computer popularity describes the incredible pace in which humanity embraced the endless delight of  [drumroll please]  — Cyberspace.   The Internet.  (as some retarded mush-minds insisted Al Gore invented, where do these dingbats get their bizarre “ideas” anyway??)    As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself,   my kidlet fell into the personal PC fairy tale a couple of years before the rest of us numnutz stumbled onto the joy of our own ‘puter toy.  (I got my first computer for Xmas 1999)   She was working at our city’s huge and greatly respected hospital when she told herself…HEY!….I can design a website—complete with tutorials, graphics, bells and whistles required.   So she did.

And a lot of us happy but not terribly bright wanna-be-bloggers became newly minted  owners of our own domains —-we  had a heck of a great time yapping back and forth about how best to design our own blogpage  (using the graphics and every other  resource from FMW that  MzKitty came up with).   After 26 years as a competent Respiratory Therapist at the hospital I mentioned (where I volunteered my smiley services two days a week for 13 years after I retired in 1993 from a real job) Oh and Sunday mornings at Milwaukee’s beautiful Humane Society (volunteer), worked with wonderful Veterinary Tech and I just loved going there every Sunday…….since I am an atheist, I didn’t have to worry about going to *church*.  Whew.  I preferred caring for the cats and dogs, anyway.

Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as many  important decisions regarding our nation’s history as any of the other 42  Presidents. However, a measure of his     greatness may rest on what he did  after he left the White House.  The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was  in Independence, Missouri . His wife had inherited   the  house from her mother  and other than their years in the White House, they lived their entire  lives there.  When he retired from office in 1953, his income was a U.S. Army pension  reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was  paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an  ‘allowance’ and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.

After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to  Missouri by themselves. There were no Secret Service following them.  When offered corporate positions at large  salaries, he declined, stating,  “You don’t want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn’t  belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.”

Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the  Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, “I  don’t consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for  any award, Congressional or otherwise.”  As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.  Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the  Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have  found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the “perks” of their offices.  Political offices are now for sale.

Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, “My choices in life  were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to  tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”

—-I say, dig him up and  clone him!!

Blast from the past~~~I know what I was doing the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. Oh yes, I was pretty busy. I was “helping” my Mom and Dad clean up the “rec” room, they’d had a party Saturday night.  I even remember (nah, not really) the smell of stale cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and the sour odor of equally stale beer. Ah, to a 10-(11 in 3 weeks)-year-old, this was ambrosia. Movie stars smoked like chimneys in the films then, what did we know?  Ignorance is bliss.

I wasn’t really helping. I was sitting at the bar with a cocktail glass that had a stem and looked groovy, just like in the movies, with soda in it, and a straw as my cigarette. I was a hep-cat, boogying to the beat. (Only in my mind though, my folks had polka music playing on the radio).

I was imagining myself in a sparkly gown with shoulder pads wide as a Packer defensive end, and an impossibly high swoopy hairdo, with the back hair captured in an equally sparkly “snood”. I was Hedy Lamarr, Joan Crawford, I was so glamorous, so gorgeous!! I was also in a “nightclub” (whatever that was) and Tommy Dorsey’s band was a-bumpin’ and a-jivin’.

Looking back, I realize how shaken my parents were with the announcement on the radio by President Roosevelt about the attack, but it didn’t mean a heck of a lot to me. Our teacher explained all that stuff to us, but we just blithely tossed it aside and skipped home for lunch. Kids really had it made then, I think.

I consider myself a very lucky American to have grown up in those days of innocence and patriotic unity. (Not to mention living a good,  middle-class life in America, where people gave their employer a good day’s work for their wages (instead of sniveling about one darn thing or another?)   — and a lot fewer citizens had their hands out to the  government for freebie entitlements!!!   (Yeah, I know — The Great Depression started not too long after I was born the end of 1930 and it was tough for everybody….but it wasn’t my fault, I swear!!)

My Dad started working at Pabst Brewery in 1926. Before that he delivered milk  around the neighborhoods with a horse-and-wagon.  Then after the Depression got its grip on the         country, he still had a job at Pabst. He firmly believed that “as long as a man had a nickel to spare he would buy a glass of beer”.  Well, maybe he was right?

Yup.  The *biggie* breweries are long gone from Milwaukee now.  Pabst Blue Ribbon — Schlitz — Miller — Blatz — maybe some smaller breweries also that were around.

The only thing I knew about beer when I was very little was when my Dad would walk  to the nearby grocery store to pick up whatever my mother instructed him to pick up….lol…..and inevitably we’d stop in at the neighborhood tavern so Dad could get a cold draft from the tap.  I was offered a bottle of Orange NeHi soda and a small bag of pretzels.I loved to go with Daddy to the tavern.

My mother always acted a tad miffed because *we* were a little late in getting back from the tavern, but Dad usually smoothed ruffled feathers with a big kiss on her cheek……. she always asked the same question, though.   “Did you and Daddy go to the tavern?”   Faithful little daughter always said “No Mommy, we didn’t”.   Alas, my orange soda  “moustache”  pretty much gave our secret away.   Daddy and I were busted.

A number of years ago there was a  neat little TV program I reeeeally liked and enjoyed……It was about a group of young people somewhere in England who were attending veterinary college.   It was filmed in what I almost believed to be a make-believe setting — I mean, Wow!  The school itself was situated in a dreamy and bucolic expanse of small rolling hills of bright green, big beautiful trees,  perhaps a couple of bubbly streams coursing over  shallow bedrock……..that’s what I mean by the scenery appearing to be almost surreal in its green perfection.  Hah.  Really beautiful.    The television series followed these [frequently] hapless young adults thru  very tough courses of animal husbandry.    There was just one itty-bitty distraction, though……….

I just had dinner~~~with “Vets in Practice” to keep me company. The TV picture was fine, it’s just the way the people talked that I had some problems de-coding. OK, maybe it’s me, maybe I’m not used to the real Briton as opposed to the enunciating perfection of British actors on TV. Know what I mean?

The British accent is so luverly, as a rule, why then is it so darn hard to understand when just ordinary people are speaking in the course of their ordinary lives? I sometimes stop chewing my food to see if that helps to understand what they are saying. Nope, that’s not it.

I turn up the volume. No help there, the mumbling I’m hearing is just exaggerated with it being louder. Here and there I get a few clear words……
The dog’s owner:: “ah so it’s a scan of her belly you’ll be wantingta borndlly signeeey farrrily blingera?”

Me:: WHAT?

The vet:: “Yeash I’ll corkknie dingalridiny
dkwooodkj not to mention her furry bottom”