Isn’t a picture worth a thousand words?

So what is going on here? Go ahead and give it a guess. It looks like some employee is filling a soda cup while a customer is waiting. You would be right, only that wouldn’t be the whole truth. Look at it again.

Notice anything else?

The employee is gloved. It’s December of 2020 and the Coronavirus is all around us.

Now here are some of the words that this picture is not conveying. The man is having the employee stop what he was doing at the register so he could wash his hands and then go over and fill up the cup for him as the customer isn’t allowed to ‘touch’ the fountain due to the virus. What’s wrong with that? The man wanted a 50/50 mix of diet coke and regular coke. You can’t purchase that on its own by buying a single bottle, I get it. When I was a youth, I would often go down to the local convenience store and mix a noxious squishy drink that consisted of mountain dew, Icee flavor of the month, and half the other flavors options available at the time.

I was 12 years old.

This man is 40+ years old.

This is corona time and this selfish prick just has to have his stupid indulgence at the expense of having the employee stop what he was doing to cater to his stupid fetish. Just order a bottle of something and don’t make this poor underpaid employee your personal bitch. Grow the F-up already.

You are a prick and are what is wrong with this country.

Were you able to figure all that out from the picture above? No, you needed the bigger picture. You needed to see beyond your own immediate need to have a 50/50 mix of just skimming the story and actually understanding it.

The electoral college was created because the founding fathers didn’t feel that the general populace wouldn’t truly understand who or what to vote for. Seeing this man, doing what he is doing, screams this.

Now I’m not saying one way we keep or abolish the electoral college so much as saying they understood just how stupid the general populace could be and thought this the best way to mitigate the damage we might cause. It’s not a perfect system but considering how imperfect each and every one of us is, things could be so much worse. We need to come up with a better system and while we are at it, stop being such selfish pricks and maybe, just maybe, think beyond ourselves and stop being such a Dwighthead.

Tootles all

So I’m sitting in the kitchen nook right now with my laptop out and I “WAS” trying to read/edit a peer piece of work for next week’s reviews. I’ve read the same paragraph well over twenty times and haven’t gotten past it. Between the wife and kids, everything requires my help. “Dad, can you help me with this?” “Hun, can you help me with that?”

This morning I got up at 5:00 and snuck out the door by 5:25 to go on my walk with my laptop slung over my shoulder in my sling bag. I ended up at my local grocery store just as they opened and bought myself a banana, an apple fritter, and a Gatorade. I then found myself a quiet corner in their lounge area and began editing the above-mentioned chapter. I made good progress. Why…? It was because I was left the hell alone.

This Covid thing is going to be the death of me.

Now I know what you are thinking about going out and exposing myself and others with my “errand”. Well, it was first opening and I just sat in the corner by myself until 7:00, which was too early for the masses. And so I would have enough time in getting back and waking up the rest of the family at 7:30 to start their days. I’m mixed on the disease. Yes, I do believe in doing what is right. Right for the general public as well as what is needed to not end up becoming a mental basket case in the process.

I’m sorry but I can’t do stupid, at least not in year-long stretches. I mean when I worked downtown under Dwight Schrute, I still had my train time, an hour each way, where I could unplug myself amid the masses and drown myself into the fictional worlds on my laptop. That was one thing the bitch got wrong in trying to go to war with me. She couldn’t defeat me because she couldn’t monopolize all of my time as the rats (Requiring Attention Toddlers & Significant other) do around me here.

TIME OUT from my posting–>

F.U. Dwight

<– TIME IN again and back to my posting

Okay, where was I?

So far I’ve been interrupted at least ten times writing this piece out. Are can openers that difficult to use? Really? Is the fridge that hard to close behind yourself? Really?

Babies, that was where I left off.

Happiness is a choice. That was the book a peer tried getting me to read some years back when I was under the Dwight regime. As you might have been able to discern already, I never actually read it. It’s one of those things, that upon further reflection, I’ve already accepted that I am a goofy fun-loving person. The thing I lack most of all is time. Yes, that is a repeat of what I’ve said so many times before on this site but it still holds true and with each passing tick/tock, it becomes all that much more real. I am mortal and I don’t know how much more oil is in my engine. I think the most frustrating thing about my existence, besides being healthy, and having a loving family, and being relatively financially secure, is that my life is in the service of others.

I swear, if I could fire my time manager because of their CONSTANT INCOMPETENCE, I would.

EEK!

Tootles all 😛

EEK!

It’s 19:34 and I’m watching the results flow in.

If I’m stuck with this idiot over the next four years…

And in other news, I got a few hundred words in on my Jessica Day novel.

WTF!?!?!?!??!?!?

I wrote something?

Yes, yes I did. I woke up at 5 am and went for a walk with my 11″ writing laptop in tucked nicely into my light jackets inside pocket. I made my way to a local grocery store and spent about 45 minutes tucked away in a corner and started editing chunk number 23.

Was it enough? HELL to the no.

Was it satisfying? Hell to the yes.

Will it be enough to keep my momentum going?

I would like to think hope so.

I don’t know with the election if I’m going to be going to bed early enough to wake up at 5 am again.

Grumble grumble

Tootles tootles

As of this very moment, nobody is bugging me.

Say whaaa….???

My mother, the kids Oma, is visiting and is supervising two of the younger ones with painting some rocks they found on their walk. The middle one is off to dance class and the eldest is sitting iwth me out on our porch patio in the shade doing her homework.

WTFFFFFF

I just exhaled, heard myself doing it, and it felt good.

…

Okay, I take part of the above back. My daughter just had me google an ear wormed song from some years ago that was possessing her thoughts.

The song in question was

On other thoughts…

The debate is tonight. I can’t wait to watch after the trainwreck that was last week between “the screamer” and “the sleeper” (not my words). I have a candidate in mind but unfortunately, that person isn’t going to participate. Yes, I’ve outed myself as a blue but its only because Green isn’t one of the color choices available. Now having said that, I believe that in some of my views I’m right-leaning and in others I’m left-leaning. I believe, as does every other nutjob out there, that I’m basically towards the middle of the political pool. There is nothing wrong with having a little bit of green in your pool… errr… anyway… (It’s better than having yellow, right? Right?)

I believe in the right to own weapons, only they are registered, just like a car. I don’t believe that everyone should have a bazooka under their beds but provided they prove themselves to be relatively sane, they should be able to own a weapon.

But I think that’s enough about my lack of sanity.

On to other topics…

So… how about that sports team nearest your local city? Did you watch the latest sporting event where they did that play? Wasn’t that cool?

A few weeks back I forced my kids, 10 & 14, to watch the original Airplane movie. They couldn’t figure out what to make of the movie and thought it was thoroughly stupid beyond description. I couldn’t but help break out with a grin and explain that this was the point of the movie. I can’t wait to show them, the classic Val Kilmer movie, Top Secret.

Okay, it’s now 17:50, about time for me to wrap this up and get back to the kitchen bitch duties and then go pick up the middle girl at dance class.

The feeling of freedom is starting to fade again.

Tootles (my bitches, from a bitch himself)

😛

It’s been well over a month since I last posted something. Things haven’t gotten any better. Kids are still homeschooling and I’m still on the verge of wrapping them all up in duct tape and taking them down to the river.

I kid.

I (kinda) kid.

Hey, they say a vivid imagination is necessary for author type peoples. Guess that means my imagination is doing several consecutive life sentences and will never see the light of day again.

See what I did there? I mixed meta jokes a bert my inner sanity ants hovv crazy i ease going and bees with all diss homie-skooling.

I’m being bugged again so I have to get back to tortur-err-tutoring these precious innocent minds.

“Dave… can you help me????”

“I’m thirsty…”

“I’m hungry now…”

“How do I do this?”

* Things randomly get dropped on the floor

* Somebody tripping over other things

* Pencils breaking and not being able to use a manual sharpener with any kind of precision (Really? Your NINE years old)

* Placing pencil down on the keyboard haphazardly and wondering why their volume level suddenly went down to zero

I swear the only time I’m going to be able to find any time to write is if I call in sick from work.

Will I get any writing done today?

Does this count?

In the background, the kids have Alexa blasting the song “cat party”.

The short answer is NO

In order to write, I must have…

Be well rested enough so that I’m not mentally tired.

Be left alone so that my thoughts can focus on my stories.

Not have anything else pressing or blowing up around me (Cat Party isn’t ‘playing’ or is ‘skipping’).

Trancing music is also nice but isn’t necessary, but I must admit that it does help a good deal.

Habits are good but oftentimes they require predictability and repetition. NOW LEAVE ME ALONE so I’m not feeling so ragged and pulled in every direction.

That is all.

Tootles 🙂

No new writings since march-ish.

I need to be out and away from my fam-distractions.

That is all.

So in the last week I’ve managed to do a number of odds and ends around the house, such as build a tool shed I ordered back in March that had finally arrived (thanks covid-19), and other things. Granted now that the shed is built, and placed where I had wanted it, my novice-ness bit me in the ass. I hadn’t taken into account just how unlevel the ground was where I was placing it. It’s not totally unlevel mind you but it has enough of a slope so that the 7-foot high structure’s top, with its base being plush against my house, now leans away from it about four inches. Angles are funny things as the inch or so drop that the shed sits upon isn’t that noticeable until you put something tall on top of it. Guess what my next project is?

I finished the murphy bed in our guest room. I got one of the side cabinets also completed. Just do me a favor and don’t ask about the second one right now.

Anyway… have I done any writing?

Nope.

Zilch.

Time.

Tick-

Tock-

Tootles for now peeps!

So I’ve been starting to fancy doing some writing again. I haven’t found the time as my family keeps bugging me with stupid things like “feed me” and “help me wipe my butt (because I’m an incompetent dweeb)”. Please note I’m not giving away anyone’s ages due to the fact that they can vary wildly in my household. I swear I’m always on ‘hover duty’ seeing something always goes wrong (like every ten minutes). Is it that hard to check the status of the role of TP before you sit down? I’m not finding the mental time to relax and ‘get away from the chaos’ so I can get into the mood.

That’s it for today. Just a little bitching session and my feeble attempt at making this (writing, not bitching*) a regular thing again.

Tootle’s peeps 🙂

* You know who you are…