Another one is here.  Will it be better than the last?  I doubt it, but I still have hope.  The political issues aside, there is so much wrong right now I wonder if we have the wisdom to fix any of it.  Having said that the word happy still opens that greeting.
So, what do we have to be happy about?  If you’re still breathing after midnight, that’s something to be happy about.  You bring a healthy new baby into this mixed up world, the world may be mixed up, but that baby is still something to be happy about.  If you haven’t found that right person yet maybe the new year will bring him or her into your life.   Let’s hope they’re a good.  LOL.
Unless something really drastic happens, the sun will come up tomorrow, it might be raining where you are, but the sun will still come up and that is damn sure something to be happy about.  Someone somewhere will smile at you New Years Day, wait and see, and that something to be happy about.  Someone will probably piss you off tomorrow and if you manage to walk away without killing them and going to jail, that’s damn sure something to be happy about.
Tomorrow a lot of you will be sitting down to dinner with family and friends and if there are no, usually filled, empty places, then that’s not only something to be happy about, it’s something to rejoice in.  If you get up tomorrow and nothing in your body hurts, you probably used good sense at your New Year’s Eve celebration and that I’m happy about.  It means there is still hope for the human race and that something for us all to be happy about.  If you can make an enemy a friend that something to be proud of.
If you have a family member who has pulled away from the family and they find their way home to you, God bless you and them.
I could sit here and wish you a prosperous New Year, but let’s face it, unless you win the lottery or some other extremely unusual occurrence takes place that’s not likely to happ but I do hope you have the finances to keep a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food on your table, and a job that pays you enough to limit your worries.
I do hope your home and life is filled with love, hope, trust, and happiness the whole year and few tears find their way out of your eyes unless they are happy ones and if that’s the case, I hope you spent the year crying a lot.  I wish you more laughter, smiles, and kindness in your life.
As for me, I’ll be happy to wake up in the morning and even happier if I wake without something aching in this aging body.  Hey, it is a part of growing older and as long as I’m doing that then I’ve got a whole lot to be happy about.
Again, Happy New Year.

For good reasons, I’m not sure why since this is an actual review I wrote for another site, I have replaced the name of the company in question with THEM.  Actually, I do know why I have done this.  This website scares me.  You’ll understand after you read this and some of you will probably know which site I’m referring to in this little tidbit of wisdom.
If someone doesn't like something now some people turn it into a political thing, but I don't think this has anything to do with left-wing or right-wing. This is more like a bunch of tenth graders deciding who is worthy of their little clicks. When I started spreading out on the social media sites one of them was THEM. I'm a writer and I'm going to use every media site I can to promote my work.
What I found was this point system and them telling me to 'do this' but when you do, they come back with 'you're doing too much of this.' Do what? I stopped using them. That was two years ago. Recently, very recently, I decided to give it another try. Yes, I forgot why I stopped messing with them. One attempted post and I remembered why I stopped wasting my time with THEM. Now they have brought bit coin into the whole thing.  That alone is enough reason for me to back away but this, you can’t post something without gaining points, come on.
Anyway, I was going to play by the rules and go through the feed and see if anything struck me.  Actually a few things did.  They weren’t small things either.  They were stories about one thing or the other and I wanted to comment on them.  The first one they put on hold and the second one I got the ‘you’re doing this too often’ message and it told me to wait a minute.  Finally it let me post the comment, the story I had read was good and I wanted to express that, and with the point I earned I wrote one of my own.  Yes, it went against the rules of the group I posted it to but what the hell.
Once again I’ve backed away from THEM and let’s hope that I never, ever forget again why I did.  Just in case you might be interested in the little story I posted I’m including it.  Not because I’m trying to gain readers here but because it expresses the way they made me feel.

You Have To Wait
I looked at the words flashing before my eyes unable to believe what I was reading.  I have to wait?  Wait for what.  I made a comment was all.  What am I waiting on?
I decided to take a different route and post something and once finished I was surprised to see that I was only allowed to click the draft button.  The post button was unresponsive.  Now it says I must wait for a notification.  Seriously?  Wait for a notification?  For a post?  What the crap am I waiting for?
Then I saw it.  Oh my stars, surely not.  I watched as the hand holding a pistol with a very long barrel pushed its way out of my computer screen.  I never even had time to scream.  The loud ear-splitting bang was the last thing I heard.  Obviously, I didn’t have to wait for that.

What I think this boils down to is someone has found a way to turn this site into something that almost has a mafia feel to it and that’s scary.  I made the mistake of clicking a little button that said give the contributor points.  When it popped up asking for my bank info I was shocked as Hell.  Sorry but there was no other way to put that.  I strongly suggest that you be very careful on that site and read everything you can, including whatever they have on their site, before you get too involved with THEM.  Not much scares me but this site does.
 

These past few days have been trying to say the least.  I love my girls with all my heart.  My husband is the other half of me, for those of you who say that like I do what you don’t get is that when it’s true it means that neither one of you would probably be worth a crap if not for the other.  If you don’t believe me look at really good happy couples and you’ll see what I mean.  With couples like that, there is just something about them that fits together like pieces of a puzzle.  These couple if separated and alone would be as lost as ‘Hogan’s goat*’ as my mom used to say.  I adore those four little darlings that are my grandchildren.  I’m even fond of the three young men who come with those family units most of the time.  However in mass, things change.  You would think that someone who grew up in a large family that often meant twenty to thirty people sitting down to Christmas dinner I would be at home in such, what to me, a small group of people.  Nope.
Where when I was younger I had the patience of a saint as I’ve gotten older I’ve turned into a cranky old lady and my patience ran out a long time ago.  In all honesty not all of it is my fault.  I swear when one of my son-in-laws got out there playing Star Wars with my grandson and was backing away from the boy I wanted to climb under a bush.  I yelled at this gentle soul playing with this child and told him to give back as good as he got.  My grandson was out for blood.  The gentle soul came back with I don’t want to hurt him.  You’re playing with plastic light sabers there’s not much chance of hurting the kid.  This went on for a short time with me trying to get the gentle soul to put some effort into his side of the battle but to no avail.  At one point as the gentle soul was backing away from my grandson he honestly comes out with ‘don’t you want to read a book?’  Are you kidding me?  My grandson is four.  All he wants to do is beat the crap out of you and he has every intention of doing just that.  At one point the gentle soul goes inside and hands me his light saber to hold while he goes to do something inside and turns just as he enters the door and yells back at my grandson to get me.  That was not the thing to do.
My grandson makes his way toward me with that devilish glare in his eyes and a wicked grin on his face.  I popped that light saber out and looked at the dear child and I said, ‘Sweetie you don’t want to do that, I’ll fight back and I’ll send you in the house crying.  My grandson backed away.  Who do you think taught the boy how to play with the darn things?  I have two light sabers of my own and they are bigger and badder.  You have to understand I was raised with four boys so I learned to fight back and fight back hard.
Now part of the reason I wasn’t in the mood for playtime Christmas night was because I managed to bang up my right thigh earlier in the day and then turned around and took a nose dive into my desk that ended up hitting something that managed to clock me in my left jaw, bang my right knee into something, and somehow managed to smash a couple of fingers that even now makes it hard for me to even type.  The left side of my face is swollen, I have bruises on top of bruises, a knee that is screaming at the moment, so anyone wanting to go into battle with me Christmas night was not a good idea.  I would have been out for blood and someone being four wouldn’t have had any effect on that.  No, the whole story of me and the nose dive is for a later date.
So we finally get through all this and I’m ready for a quiet little day yesterday but at one point I needed to go to the drug store to pick up a prescription.  Nothing interesting just something this old lady has to take every day and I didn’t realize I was out.  I get there and find out I don’t have my wallet.  This isn’t good.  I was fairly sure it came up missing at my oldest daughter’s house because every time I turned around Christmas night someone else was tossing my purse to another location.  I was wrong about losing my wallet there although the tossing was for real.  No, somehow it ended up under my sofa.  The thing is I didn’t know this at the time so I was pissed.  My husband came in and after me tearing into him, no there really wasn’t a reason but you should see him if he loses his and he does it a lot more often than I do, he runs back out the door saying over his shoulder there’s nothing he can do about the situation.  If he had walked back through that door after saying that I would be a widow today.  I would have been in jail but I would have been a widow.  Hell if anyone had come through that door after he left would probably have met the same fate as he would have.
No I’m not in the habit of losing my wallet and I’m still not real sure how it managed to get to almost the very back of the sofa but it did.
Anyway thankfully Christmas is over for another year but we’re supposed to go to yet another gathering this afternoon and I’m looking for a good reason not to go.  I NEED THAT PEACEFUL DAY.
For those of you who don’t know where the phrase Hogan’s goat came from here it is thanks to;
Tribune
News For Todays Senior Citizens
From October 10th, 2013
Legend has it that Hoek Hogan, a European farmer, was responsible for an incomprehensibly hideous creation. The year was 1855. Apparently, farmer Hogan had bred a goat so smelly and ugly that people remember it today, honoring the poor creature with the phrase Hogan s goat, which they use to refer to something that has been screwed up beyond all recognition. Don t touch my car s engine! You don t know what you re doing, and you will screw it up like Hogan s goat.

You know you’re a real sicko when someone tells you they have bodies in their basement and you don’t even respond to it.  I’m not talking you are too shocked to respond, I’m talking you accept the statement as if it’s the most common thing in the world.
I just did.  There wasn’t the question of ‘you have bodies in your basement?’ or ‘why do you have bodies in your basement?’ I’m talking no response but merely an acceptance.  Do or did I think she really had bodies in her basement?  Well I’ve known this lovely young woman a long time and honestly…There could honestly be a few down there.
I’m not saying she would have killed them, although there might be a slim possibility of that, but that she is a crafter and if she thought there was a way she might could use one for something she came up with I wouldn’t put it past her to drag one down there if she saw one out somewhere.  She really is a lovely young lady, inside and out, and would do anything for anyone, including turning them into a lovely piece of art.  She really is quite talented.
Me on the other hand find them to be too messy and prefer to dispose of them in a much more permanent way. With bodies being so messy running freezers for several of the things can run a utility bill way up.  Which reminds me, I didn’t ask her if she was keeping them in freezers, oh well I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.
Understand I’m not saying she actually has bodies in her basement, after all I haven’t seen them, nor am I saying I have done away with any myself.  That would just be stupid on my part and I would never want to cause this dear girl any problems.  If she is then she is, and you’ll just have to live with it, or not.
Speaking of bodies.  My daughter did have two hamsters die on her when she was a teenager in the dead of winter.  I’m talking so cold you couldn’t dig a one-inch hole in the ground little on digging down a foot or more to bury anything.  Me being me, I wrapped the dear little bodies in appropriate and reverent material, placed them in a lovely little box and stored them in the rafters of the garage to wait until the ground thawed out enough to bury them.  I forgot the little dears.  For a couple of years to be honest.
Anyway, many years ago I moved not only out of that house but out of that town leaving those little bodies in the rafters of that garage.  To this day I wonder if the people who bought the house ever found the little things.  If they have, I can only imagine what they must have thought about when they found them and if not, well those little dears should be nothing more than little skeletons at this point even if I did seal them really well.

I’m a lover of dragons.  I have been since I was a small child but that only intensified after I read the novella ‘Wyer Search’ when it was a Hugo winner in 1968.  From there it became a life long love affair for not only dragons but for the Dragon Riders of Pern series.  I was hooked.
This was a love I passed on to my daughter and hopefully someday she will pass it on to hers.  If you’ve never read any of these books, you should.  They are a mix of fantasy and science fiction that takes you on a journey like no other. 
I’ve read every book and used to dream of someone someday actually making a movie out of one of them but at this point I see no way anyone could do the books justice.  I hope I’m wrong in this and with the graphics we have today the dragons wouldn’t be a problem.  It’s the cast of character that would present an issue, although I do have one in mind that would make one hell of an F’lar.  LOL.
I’ve been collecting dragons for over thirty years now and although my collection isn’t what you would call huge it is substantial but had to be put away when the grandchildren came along.  They break one of those and someone may get hurt.
When I lost my mother I tried to think of a way to honor her memory every day.  Like all children no matter how old we get we miss our parents after we lose them.  It’s just the way it is.
One day while attending a local festival out of town I came across something that caught my eye and it was then that I knew how to fulfill my desire to always remember my mom.  It was only a simple license plate.  On it was a green dragon and you could have something written on it.  I turned to my husband, and said I want that.  He never questioned my request but quickly bought it for me.
When the guy asked me what I wanted written on it I told him ‘Gone Between.’  The man looked at me with a rather funny, oh Hell the man looked at me like I had lost my mind, so I had to explain what it meant and why I wanted it.  By the time I was through he had tears rolling out of the corner of his eyes.  He took extra special care in putting those words on that plate for me.   I lost my mom in Sept 2006 and we found that tag in the late spring of the following year.  I’ve had it ever since and wouldn’t take anything for it.
What does gone between mean?  Dragons in the Pern series can go between from one place to another in mere moments and the place they go to get to the other is called between but when someone refers to someone or a dragon as gone between it means they are gone for good.  There is no coming back.  My mom in my heart is thought of as having Gone Between in September 2006.  So, if there be dragons I hope with all my heart that my mom is somewhere riding through the sky on the back of one.  She would love that.  I miss you Mom and Merry Christmas.

 There is a tradition in our family, as there is in most families, regarding the baking of very special cookies.  Our oldest daughter, with the help of our youngest, make these cookies every year just before Christmas.  The recipes for these cookies came from my husband’s mother and there is a unique history about where and how they came about. 
There are three different types of these cookie and I must tell you people stand in line hoping they will be a part of the lucky few who will get them for Christmas.  Yes, they are that good.  One in particular is extremely rare.  With the other two there are variations of one type of the other but this one cookie I’ve never tasted anything that comes anywhere close to it.  There are recipes for these cookies on the internet but everyone I’ve read, well, it ain’t right. 
These delectable little bites of pure heaven come out fill with nothing but air that explodes with a lovely nutty taste in your mouth that almost makes your knees buckle.  Now I don’t mean they actually exploded but when you bit into one the taste is so fabulous that there is no other way to put it.  But the key word here is explode. 
While these two lovely daughters were baking these much looked forward to delights they did explode, in the oven.  No, there is nothing in them that should have caused this and to my knowledge, or my husband’s, this has never happened before.  I wasn’t there when they were baking them but believe me, I heard all about it when I got to our oldest daughter’s house for the children’s cookie backing circus.    I was shown where some of the little bites of delight’s filling, which usually just evaporates into the inside of the cookie and is absorbed by the inner cookie, went shooting out the ends.  Others actually exploded, ending up looking like the chest of one of the characters from the movie Aliens after one of the little monsters blasted onto the scene.  I’m sorry but I do find this funny.  When it comes to making these cookies it’s almost a religious endeavor and to have anything go wrong is sacrilege.  The cookies still taste great but some have lost their traditional appearance.
These cookies are not something you can whip together in a few hours, or even a day.  It takes at least two days to make these things.  These two girls work their bottoms off every year to make these cookies and present them proudly to each and every person who is fortunate enough to receive even a few of them.   Our poor girls are now worried that the people who will, if they do share them this year, will find them lacking.  To these two wonderful young women I say go ahead and give them out.  I promise you most people aren’t going to care what they look like this year.  All they are going to be concerned about is how great they taste, and they do, and be more than happy they received them.

No, he isn’t in trouble, well not from me anyway.  I have to admit it is because of me, however.
Buddy gave me my Christmas present early.  Yesterday to be more precise.   There are a few of you who have been reading my blogs almost from the beginning and if you have you might remember when I was screaming for a new laptop.  If not, well you would have to go back a few years, about four.
It never was Speedy Gonsales I have to admit but within a few months the darn thing worked hard to try and keep up with me and it never was quite able to do that.  As time went by that only got worse.  I know, I know, technology moves forward and we have to move with it.  This wasn’t exactly the case with my laptop.  There was actually a glitch in the manufacturing of the one I had, yes it was a good one and it was new, and as time passed things only got worse.  It was a pain in the arse.
So what was my Christmas present.  If you haven’t figured it out by now it’s a new laptop.  Boy is it a new laptop.  It isn’t only new, but Buddy went to HP and had them build one to my needs.  This thing will do everything I need it to and do it fast.  The memory on this thing should last me a year at least.  LOL.  It should do me for several years to be honest.  It has all the bells and whistles I could possibly need.   The graphics are phenomenal.
Now the question is why is Buddy in trouble?  The poor man is now trying to back up all the information on my old one and that has turned into the nightmare from hell.  I had been telling him it was causing problems, but he thought I was just wanting a new laptop, I was but it was because of what it was putting me though, and I was just exaggerating everything.  He now knows different.  Poor man, I really feel sorry for him poor baby.  So yes, he is in trouble but he has one of the happiest wives around.
Oh, the reason for giving me my present early…He thought it would take a couple of days anyway to get everything moved over to the new one.  He now knows different.  It may well take weeks.  Poor man.

I’ve asked my dear darling hubby several times what he is getting me for Christmas and each time he has come back with ‘nothing.’  Now considering that the dear darling asshole is, as a rule, a very honest man I have to wonder about this.  Is it a possibility that he wouldn’t or wouldn’t in this case?  Yes.  Oh something, usually quite nice may turn up a couple of days later just because he does like to be an ass.  This is he is so dead pan about the whole thing that I believe that may well be the reality of the situation.
Why does he do this to me?  For shits and giggles.  I never met my husband father but I understand he was one to play pranks, sometimes bordering on down right mean, and my hubby is a lot like the man from everything I’ve heard, yes I can believe there is that chance.  I have no doubt that at some point down the road there something will turn up down the road and I can assure you it will make me happy.  Buddy does love to push my buttons on occasion.  This might not be the year to pull one of his pranks.
I have to admit that when he pulls this something really special does turn up but like I said he is being way too deadpan this year.  I mean there is no emotion to his responses at all.  Usually there is that twinkle in his eye that smart ass grin, something.  There is none this year.  So either the man has gotten really good at hiding his emotions or he is telling the gospel truth. 
He already has his from me.  Maybe that’s what’s going on.  He already has his so why should he bother?  I know I sound like an ass but come on, give me a hint of something.  Yes I have to admit I’m one of those who will drive you crazy with questions trying to find out what you got but come on.
Of course the real possibility is that he has gotten me something I really want, and need, and he is determined I don’t even begin to suspect that I might be getting it.  Actually there are two thing but one I know isn’t on the table until after the first of the year.  I’m OK with that, well almost OK, because it is a really big thing and it isn’t easy to get one.  No I’m not telling what it is.  The other item is also rather big and very special so he might be trying to really keeping me from guessing what it is.  If it turns out to be that he has already lost that battle.  We have spent a long time looking for the right one and as it turns out what I want is something that is going to have to be specially built for my needs.  No I’m not saying what that is either.
All I know is that the damn thig had better be under the tree come Christmas morning.  If not I will not be responsible for my actions.  Yes I’m a spoiled brat but he has no one to blame for that but himself.  He does spoil me.  Hell he has bought so many things for me leading up to Christmas for me that me thinking I deserve anything else shows that.  OK he’s a good guy but still, that is not under the tree.  Actually if he wrapped a rock and put that under the tree I would find that so funny he could probably get away with that.  Don’t tell him that.  I really will get a wrapped rock under the tree, and I’m not talking about a diamond.  Yes I’ve gotten those too.  I told you I was spoiled.  No that isn’t what I want this year.
I’m also practical.  I’ve wanted a drone for a while now but I haven’t gotten one.  You want to know why?  I’m going to tell you anyway.  Because I want an inexpensive one to start off with because I want to get used to the thing and get comfortable with it before we drop a lot of money into one because knowing me I’ll get the damn thing hung up in a free or power line.  I lose a hundred bucks that’s one thing but something that cost over a thousand, and I’m talking well over which is what Buddy went to looking at, I really would be pissed.  Maybe that’s what he has gotten me is an inexpensive drone.  I’m good with that.  I may be spoiled but I’m not mercenary.
Oh my husband isn’t the only one who has gotten deadpan.  One of our daughters has been asking questions about hers.  She asked me last night if it was bigger than a breadbox.  I told her it was bigger than the head of a pin.  She will not get me to give anything away this year.  She is her mother’s daughter.  Little stinker.
There will be an update after Christmas, either on my website on in the local news.

 Yesterday one of my granddaughter had a run in with a garage door, twice.  She was in a hurry to get to the car and the garage door only opened halfway and then stuck.  The poor child hit the darn thing from about the bridge of her nose up.  This resulted in her glasses shattering and made a bit of a mess of her face.  The jagged edges were pushed into the skin of her face and came close to one of her eyes.  I am pissed.
This probably wouldn’t result in me writing this except it brought back a horrifying memory of what happened to my daughter when she was twelve.
My mom way keeping her and allowed her to go somewhere with a neighbor and her daughter.  I knew this neighbor and mom didn’t see a problem with her going.  There was.  Gina was placed in the back seat without a seat belt.  The neighbor t-boned a large truck making a left turn and this sent my child into the backseat of the driver.  This resulted in my child’s glasses shattering and the glass, or plastic whichever, to drag along her face.  The result wasn’t pretty.  Gina also hit the back seat hard enough that it knocked her out cold.
I was at work and was called to the hospital.  My child was such a bloody mess when I got there that I walked past her not wanting to register that this child covered in blood was mine.  My mind simply couldn’t accept that until she called for me.
In one way she was very fortunate.  One of the best plastic surgeons happened to be in the ER that day and he was the one who gave her the stitches she needed but told me that she would probably have to have surgery on her face.  It didn’t sound good.  All the damage was done just under her eye.  I’m not saying which one for a reason here.
The fact that this surgeon was so good became obvious when my daughter started healing so well.  No other surgery was needed but she was left with a rather nasty scar near her eye.  The reason why I won’t tell which eye or exactly where is because over the years it healed so well that unless you get up in her face and really look for it you won’t see it.  So unless you are really rude I don’t think that would happen especially since you don’t know which eye to look at and where.
Yes at times I still get mad at the woman who didn’t put a seat belt on my daughter, it was buried somewhere under the seat and she didn’t want to take the time to dig it out and I’m really pissed at the man who it turns out didn’t have insurance on his truck.  His excuse was he was just moving it from one house to another and didn’t think it was needed.
Anyway with the backstory, my point is someone needs to take a look at just how safe eyeglasses really are.  One of the things that scares me is me having a wreck and an air bag going off and shattering my glasses and me ending up blind from it.  Believe me I follow the rules when it comes to those damn thing.
Regardless something needs to be done to improve the safety of eye wear especially with plastic again being the product of choice when it comes to eye wear.  When it comes to our children this should be the major concern.  Children have accidents.  My grandchild’s shattered into jagged edges and one of those came remarkable close to one of her beautiful little eyes.

Yes, today way my birthday.  Now how old I am I’ll keep to myself although I guess if you really wanted to know you could find out.  So how was my day?  It was great.
It honestly was.  My husband is a good one but he was so sweet today that at one point I turned to him and asked if he was about to dump me.  That’s a long story, a really long story, and I’m not going to get into it now.  It’s late and I’m tired.  My hubby would tell you it is a really long story and he has been hearing about it for over, well a long damn time.  Don’t worry I got even.
Seriously I am tired.  Wait he isn’t dumping me he is fixing to knock me off.  We’ve ate out, I think that should be eaten out but I’m told that is a no-no, three times today.  He took me shopping and we spent a good portion of the day doing that.  No not Christmas shopping.  Wait this is sounding more and more suspicious.  Do you think I should sleep with a weapon under my pillow tonight?
Truthfully he has been nothing but a smiling sweetie pie and that was part of what I asked for today.  Happy thoughts and smiles all day.  I got that.  I got a lot more but that one thing means more to me than anything.  One of our daughters ended up in the ER late this evening, she’s fine thank God, but then we went to dinner with her and her hubby and she they were all smiles and super pleasant.  One of my daughters couldn’t go out to dinner tonight but she stopped by the house to wish me a Happy Birthday and bring me my present.  She made me cry with how she signed the card.  Something that goes back to when she was little.  She was all smiles and cheerful.  My big dinner out is Saturday night when hubby takes me and one of my besties out for both our birthdays.  Hers was a week before mine.  I’m so looking forward to it.
So yes I had a wonderful day and am really tired now.  Thank you God for giving me such a wonderful family.  I love them all.