Good morning all on this wintry afternoon!   Winter arrived way too early this year, just wasn’t expecting that at all.  But that’s the way it goes.  Winter is just not my favorite time of year.  At one time I actually liked winter.  There was always a lot of extra things to do.  Such as snowshoeing.  Which I enjoyed.  And all the winter birds that would come to my feeder.  It was fun.  I was strange back then.  Now winter is just cold.  With snow.  And cold.  And wind.  And cold.  Back to putting on 50 lbs of clothes before going outside.  And it’s still cold.  After all, it’s winter.  And winter is cold.  No matter how insulated a person is with the warmest of clothes…it is still cold.  Can’t get away from that fact.  Just stay inside and drink COFFEE!  Poor Muffin.  She also does not like winter.  Because she can’t have the door open anymore.  She likes having that door open, she figures it is much better than just looking out the window.  Even though the bird feeder is right outside the window.  It’s still not as good as the door.  Sigh.  But all the extra bandages on my feet help to insulate them a bit from the cold.  Somewhat.  Sort of.  Actually nothing really works.  My feet get cold easily.  But then, so does the rest of me. And it is much worse now than it used to be.  Feeling the cold that is.  That’s part of the post polio syndrome.  Naturally.  Now if it would make me feel the warmth more instead.  But then, it would likely only happen when it is summer.  Sigh.  Speaking of phones.  I have one.  It’s the old fashioned kind.  You know, a landline type.  The kind that sits on a table and you can’t carry out the door with you.  It doesn’t fit in your pocket type of phone.  Nothing fancy about it.  Doesn’t have call display or anything like that.  It’s just a phone.  Most things that people today call phones are not phones.  They are mini computers that people carry around in their pockets.  Well, okay, they actually carry them around in their hands.  And they never put them down, no matter what else they might be doing.  Like the person at the ATM.  Trying to do something, I think it was a deposit.  But this person would not put that phone down.  And was constantly making mistakes on the machine.  And then had to start over.  It was enough to make a person jump up and down, bang their head on the wall, roll on the floor and, and…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! It’s okay.  I’m fine.  I’m calm.  But it can be frustrating.  Same thing happened at the store.  A lady trying to pay for her groceries with her credit card.  But she would not put down her phone.  And she kept putting in the wrong pin number.  She finally had to use a different card.  Still didn’t put down the phone.  Not sure how she managed to keep texting through all this.  Though she did make mistakes there too, at least twice!  It was enough to make a person jump up and down, bang their head on the counter (no wall close by), kick the cart and, and…AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!  It’s okay.  I’m fine.  I’m calm.  Sigh.  My phone isn’t like that.  It’s just an old fashioned phone.  It’s used for talking.  That’s it.  I think I got sidetracked.  Hmm.  Oh, right.  I got one of those telemarketer type calls the other evening.  This nice lady said ‘hi’ and then proceeded to talk about some survey she was doing.   Finally after about 5 minutes she actually stopped to take a breath so I was able to say something.  I thanked her for talking with me for the past 5 minutes and politely told her I wasn’t interested in taking part in her survey which was interrupting my very not so busy schedule and said ‘goodbye’ and hung up.  She seemed to be speechless.  Sigh.  They always like to call when I’m not busy doing something else and they think I should give up this valuable time to take part in some survey which I am not even interested in doing when instead they should offer me $100 for participating in the survey and then I might take time out from my not very busy schedule to participate in their survey which I am not at all interested in doing but for $100 I just might be willing to do it and I think that would be fair since the person on the other end of the phone is getting paid so I think it is only right for me to get paid as well and it needs to be a sensible amount like I just quoted so it would make up for the fact of giving up my time that I wasn’t doing anything with anyway and that way it would be profitable for me to do so even if I am not interested in the survey that they are doing which usually has nothing to do with me anyway since it usually has to do with odd things like what TV programs I watch which is easy because the answer would be none or which radio programs I listen to and I say something like, ‘you mean they still have radio?  Wow, I haven’t even owned a radio for years’, and an answer like that can leave them speechless as well, I know, I have done it.  Sigh.  It’s winter.  It’s cold. It’s snowy.  Sigh.  Time to stay indoors for the next 5 or 6 months.  That’s it for today.  Sigh. It’s been one of those weeks.  Speaking of weeks, enjoy the remainder of yours, God bless!

Steve. And Muffin.  Wrapped in a blanket and drinking COFFEE!

Good morning on this morning which is definitely a morning even if it isn’t morning where you live but anyway it is morning here even though maybe not the morning I was looking forward to kind of morning but it is still morning and personally I would like to be in bed even though it is still morning since I really didn’t get much sleep last night so I am very tired this morning and it really is a morning though quite dull and I still need to have a light on to see in here and it is late morning now but it seems more like early morning but it is a very dull, cloudy kind of day and last week when I wrote this it was very nice and warm and really a beautiful fall, or autumn if you prefer, day, but today is anything but a beautiful fall day as it is very cloudy, very windy and very much snowing out there making this a winter kind of day which then makes this a winter kind of morning and I am really not looking forward to winter and it is very early for winter but winter is here nonetheless even though it might warm up enough to melt some of this snow but not likely all of this snow and it really isn’t supposed to warm up much at all after this snowstorm so it is quite possible that winter is here to stay which would be a terrible thing since I am not really looking forward to winter and every winter gets harder than the previous winter for this old guy which is why I am not looking forward to winter this year even more than most years that I don’t look forward to winter and this morning I went out to feed the birds and squirrel and of course I needed to get rid of some of that snow out there which had covered the feeders and of course my shovel was buried behind some other stuff and one would think I would have realized this yesterday and unburied the shovel before the snow came but of course I did not do that because that would just make sense and why would I do something that makes sense so there I was trying to get at my shovel with bare hands since I don’t have gloves at the moment and one would think I would get some gloves since I knew the snowstorm was coming but no, why would I want to do something sensible like that when I can freeze my hands instead which is much more fun and of course this is also garbage day and I really do need to get my garbage out today so there I am trying to dig out my garbage can and get all my garbage out there since I have to keep it in the apartment all week because of the multitudinous bears that seem to enjoy coming around here and last Saturday night there was 2 bears on my deck no less and both were the same size around 300lbs and they were side by side finishing off the leftover bird seed and then they went after my landlords bird feeders smashing one into many pieces and feasting on the sunflower seeds and so this is why I can’t leave any garbage outside so anyway I get my garbage ready and then try to pull and push my garbage can through the snow and out to the street which was certainly no easy feat for this old guy and of course I still don’t have gloves or boots so I am not only freezing my hands on this metal handle but I am also slipping and sliding all over the place and ending up on the ground at one point which really was not a lot of fun and was also very wet since this is a very heavy wet kind of snow which is even worse and makes it even harder to get around than in normal dry type of snow and I just heard the snowplow go by which means it piled snow in front of my garbage can and I hope it didn’t knock over my garbage can because that would really not be very much fun but I don’t plan on going out again right now to check because it really isn’t very nice weather out there right now and it is that kind of weather where it is best to just stay indoors and drink COFFEE all day long and I found out the other day that Muffin really likes COFFEE because I spilled some from the can onto the floor and I am talking about new unused dry kind of COFFEE here before it gets brewed into something fine to drink but anyway Muffin always likes to come and check whenever I spill something and it is quite amazing that she even knew about this since dry COFFEE falling on the floor does not exactly make a lot of noise but anyway she came along and immediately started rolling around in it and she was acting like it was catnip which is rather strange since catnip and COFFEE are not exactly similar but she certainly enjoyed herself and if you think I was going to try and stop her forget it as I doubt I would have enough bandages for such an encounter and I just would not want to try that and, and…sigh.  It’s one of those days.  Good day to do some cleaning.  Right.  There is never a good day for cleaning.  It’s just one of those things that needs to get done whether it is a good day or not.  Sigh.  Guess I should stop.  I need more COFFEE!  Try to enjoy your week, or what’s left of it anyway.  God bless!

Steve. And Muffin.