Moving Stats

Jumped out of bed this morning (not literally) all spitfire and reeling to go (mentally but not physically) so I zapped a cup of yesterday’s coffee and looked around thinking “okay, what next?  What can I do sitting down?”

I’m packing.  No, I have not yet been offered the apartment but I cannot wait until the last minute.  Or even the last week.  I have too many days like this one, where the mind and body refuse to sync. 

I went shopping yesterday down at the Almighty Walmart on South Avenue in Boardman.  I hate that store because I never, ever get a motorized cart there.  Either they are all dead because no one puts them on charge, or they are all in use.  The store up in Liberty seems to have more motorized carts AND greeters who tend to them, make sure they are plugged in between use.  The entrance is nicer up there, too.  I only went to this store because my daughter asked me to meet her there.

I thought I was in luck because two customers were parking carts when I walked in and there were two ladies  who looked like sisters waiting, one seemingly very abled bodied and the other questionable, she might have something going on so I assumed they would take one cart and I would get the other.  Wrong.  Apparently the healthy woman likes to get a motorized scooter to go joy riding around the store with her sister.  There’s nothing wrong with that, if there are plenty of carts for disabled shoppers.  Even the woman getting off the second cart assumed that I would be the one who got it as she patted my arm and said, “honey, there’s still a good charge on there for ya.”

I didn’t say anything.  My son-in-law did.  He went over to talk to them and came back shaking his head while I was getting a regular cart.  I hate it when I can’t get a scooter cart because it limits my shopping time and area (can’t walk all over the store) and usually means that I am going to hurt something fierce and have to deal with limited mobility that night or the next day. 

I also hate that store because they remodeled it backwards.  Every other Walmart around here has “ladies to the left” as you enter the restroom.  This one has the mens room on the left side so I have, on more than one occassion (including yesterday), accidentally walked into the mens.   Their restrooms are another “pet peeve” for disabled people because most able bodied Walmart shoppers believe the handicap stall is the best place to poop.

Oh well.  So, what can I do sitting down today?  It drives me nuts to be all stiff and sore, to wake up feeling like a rusted tin man, when I want to get things DONE! 

I’m packing down to essientials, like I am not going to be throwing any dinner parties so I don’t need stacks of plates or a cupboard full of pots and pans.  I kept out my colored pencils, packed other art and hobby supplies.  I could go months living with just bare basics.  In fact, that has me debating almost every item, what to pack and what to part with.  There is something very liberation about living with less stuff.  If I continue to downsize every time I move, I should be a complete minimalist someday.  Right now, I am debating on whether or not I really need a microwave.  The buttons are screwed up on this one (most don’t work) so I see no sense in paying to move it to a new place.  The question is, should I buy a new one after moving or just go without?

Hopefully, I will get a call soon… the lady from the  apartment building told me to go ahead and give notice where I live now so I will have the required 30 days in to get my deposit back, so it kind of sounds like she will be calling me sometime in October to offer an available unit before November first.  I gave tentative notice here, which I can extend another month or whatever.  Worst case scenerio is the deal falls through and I will have to find somewhere else to live as I don’t want to stay here.

Guess I could pack up non-essientials in the living room today, go through all the little bin drawers in the secretary hutch, as that thing needs to be empty to move it.  I can do that sitting down.

I lit a candle for some scent therapy. 
Okay, I just like the way it smells.

Hummm….  I wonder if that nice candle man from Toledo will return to Youngstown next year.  He sold hand poured candles at the YSU art festival, forget the name on his banner.  I looked it up once, looked on the festival’s list of vendors and googled to see if he sold online.  Oh yes, Curb Candles.  Guess he used to have a candle store in Toledo as I found a newspaper article about his store closing, with a little blurp about why he had named it Curb Candles, something about if he lost his business, he would be out on the curb.  Perhaps a little tongue and cheek humor that became a self full-filling prophecy, but the date of the article was years ago so I’ve got to hand it to him… the man held onto his dream, continues to make and sell candles, even though he had to find another way to do it.  Obviously, selling at farmer markets, festivals and other events would have less overhead than a brick and mortar store.  If he comes back next year, I am going to stock up on votives.  I wish he made matching scented tea lights as that is the size that fits my favorite candle holders. The man blends some unusual scents, like an “orange & hot pepper” that smells fabulous, and I generally don’t care for fruity scented candles.

Well, the sun is up.  I should get busy, if I can will my body to move.  Maybe I should put on a fresh pot of coffee.

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Shutdown 101

An unauthorized, unsolicited opinion of what is happening in the United States government by a somewhat intelligent and semi-informed  grandmother in Northeast Ohio who considers all politcal news is like eating fish… got to spit out the bones.

Okay kiddos, remember High School Civics?  That chapter in the book on how a bill becomes a law?

That is what started all this nonsense.  A bill called the “Affordable Care Act” was introduced, debated, tweaked, and put up for a vote.  Both the House and the Senate PASSED the bill and it was signed into law by our President. 

The people who wanted the bill to become law were very happy and the people who didn’t want it to become law were NOT happy.  In fact, the “losers” were royally pissed, partly because most of the people who didn’t like the bill were still pissed off that the guy they wanted to be President had lost. 

Okay, so they started a corporate backed pretend grassroots movement called the Tea Party with some really wacked ideas… like ONLY people who think exactly like they do are “real” Americans, like the rest of us are all fake, hate our country, don’t shoot guns, and all sorts of other nonsense.

Anyway, they believe that THEY are the ONLY “real” Americans and they need to take “their” country back, so the corporate backers threw a lot of money into the off year elections (when only about a third of the voters actually show up to vote) and helped get enough tea party members elected into the House of Representatives for the Republican Party to seize control of the House.  Yes, the tea party ran on the Republican ticket, some as Independents, but most ran as Republicans.

There is an odd dance going on with Republicans and the Tea Party.  The Republicans need the Tea Party so they can be in control, but the Tea Party are freaking radical right wingers who may have slept in Civics classes as they don’t seem to understand HOW our system works. The Republican Party need them, but they cannot control them.

So… we have extremely bad losers elected by bad losers for the sole purpose of throwing a monkey wrench into the gears pretty much controlling the House of Representatives.  That’s what’s going on.

Okay, back to “Obamacare” as the Affordable Care Act is often called.  Remember how the losers were really mad when that bill passed? 

In our system, we CAN overturn “bad” laws.  There is a way to do that.  Usually, a new bill to repeal the bad bill (or to replace the bad bill with a better bill) is introduced, debated on, tweaked, and put up for a vote.  Same process as the original bill went through.

They tried that.  It failed.  So they tried it again.  And again. And again.  Like over 40 times!  Maybe 45, and every time, it failed. 

Do they give up?

No… remember we are talking about some very sore losers here.  They are so mad that they CAN’T overturn that law (at this time in history) that they found a way to BACK DOOR jam it ineffective by refusing to pass a routine “time to pay the bills” measure unless the bill they don’t like is defunded. 

Yes, after 40 to 45 FAILED ATTEMPTS to overturn or change it the “right way” per how our system works, now they are trying to FORCE what THEY want onto everybody else, to “win” by cheating.

Basically, they are holding the country hostage like bratty little kids screaming and carrying on, refusing to eat their veggies because they don’t like veggies, they want candy.  Unfortunately, we cannot spank them or make them sit in a corner. 

Our government is “shut down” because the funding measure was not authorized so they money needed to pay for things was not released. 

They talk on the news about how this will hurt the economy, but the bottom line is this nonsense will hurt the “we the people” and when “we the people” hurt enough, we will retaliate at the ballot box. 

So, of course there is a lot of propaganda circulating social media trying to spin it off as the Democrats and Obama’s fault.  “If only they would defund that bill or delay some of the requirements” spin on things.  They are like bratty little kids about that, too.  Finger pointing at each other saying, “he did it.” 

Anyway, you can believe whatever you want…

I will find it extremely ironic and somewhat amusing if that Affordable Care Act proves to be very beneficial for the American people.  Right now, there is too much scare tactic propaganda bull circulating about it and no one really know exactly how it works yet. 

The “mandatory” aspect IS a problem… we are Americans.  We don’t like it when people try to tell us that we “have to” do anything, even if it is beneficial.  We want to make up our own minds, decide for our own selves.  It may be better to just lay it all out, provide the opportunity to get “affordable” health insurance and let it go at that.  If it is a good thing, people will sign up for it.   If it is not for them, they will walk away. 

Ironic the tea party wants to mandate a law change over a law that make something mandatory.

Years ago, I gave an unplanned speech on another government program, something the State of Ohio cooked up in the way of welfare reform.  I called it “mandatory opportunity” – in essense, I spoke in favor of the mandatory distribution of opportunity information with the belief that the impoverished would take advantage of opportunities if they knew opportunities existed and were available to them.  At the time, imformation about opportunities was withheld as if it such information was a big secret that no one was allowed to tell. 

I also spoke out about the importance of owning your own achievements, how mandatory opportunity steals people’s sense of accomplishment.  The state program took credit for making people do what they would have done if they had only been provided information about opportunities in the first place.

I spoke out against mandatory opportunity when asked what I thought about applying for a grant to start a “Women of Wonder” program, a student organization with mandatory attendence for the anticipated increased enrollment of impoverished women forced by the state into education at the Salem Campus of Kent State University in the early 1990s.  The administrator who asked my opinion went ahead and got the grant for her “WOW” club, which everyone knew really stood for “women on welfare” and I found myself speaking out again about stereotypes because some of the proposed programs with mandatory attendance were downright insulting.  Must impoverished female college students be forced to attend workshops on personal hygiene?

Okay, so I went a little off topic, but the same thing is going on here… it is mandatory opportunity, only this mandatory opportunity is for health insurance.

That is the only “bad” thing I see about Obamacare right now.  I think there is a lot of good provisions in the law, that many people will greatly benefit.

If they took out the mandatory aspect, will information about available opportunities be distributed so people will know what options do exist?  Or will those who love to keep poor or working class people down just find ways to keep the information secret so people cannot take advantage of the good provisions?

I don’t know… fact is, its already passed into law. 

It needs to be tried and tested before we really know if it is a good law or a bad law.   If it proves bad, there will be enough support to overturn or fix it through the proper channels of how bills become laws in this country.  A bunch of sore losers holding the country hostage in attempt to do what they failed to do 40 to 45 times is flat out WRONG.

Okay, that’s my opinion.  Y’all can argue amongst your selves if you disagree.  Thank you.

Art Supplies?

Every time I take the Buckeye bus up Poland Avenue, I always think “art supplies” when we roll past the hills of rusted savage.  Here’s another view.

It always makes me smile.  I weld like a drunken sailor on dry land, so no worry of me raiding the junk yard.  I do like to make assemblages out of found objects, but on a much smaller scale.

I’m in rare form, bit happy these days tho I have moments when things go down that worry me.  Oh, just kids… par for the course to worry about them even when they are grown.

One of the decisions made in my moments of clarity is a bump that, why should I let some strangers in another part of the world discourage me from blogging on my own blog?  I have documentation of my use of “barnbees” on this internet dating back to 2009 so who cares if some rock-a-billy blues band changed their name to “barnbees” in 2012… if they don’t like me blogging as barnbees, they can buy me out, cut a deal and throw cash my way.  Otherwise, OH WELL. 

I did change my email addy, or rather just started a new one as I still cannot remember my password to access my “barnbees” email addy.  It will pop into my head someday.  But this blog AND my facebook shall remain barnbees.  Yes, OH WELL. 

Here’s one more shot of the junk yard.

The sky is pretty, funny how the fence aligns with the horizon.  I shall miss riding the back roads into Youngstown when I move out of the burbs. 

Should I tell you where I’m going?  Or just wait and snap a view out the window?