Today I Began.

Today I did the unthinkable. I am throwing away magazines. I am going through my favorite save magazines and ripping them apart to save just the articles I am interested in. So far I have 30 pounds in the trash. And about 18 ounces of good articles on decorating and the odd recipe or two.
You see I am moving 2700 miles northeast. I will be going to a new climate, with four seasons: almost wintah, wintah, still wintah, and road construction.
Yes. folks, I am moving from deep south Texas to Maine. Everything I have to wear here will not be warm enough there unless I wear three days worth of Texas togs at the same time. In fact I am in shorts and a tank top now! All the decorating ideas need to produce a feeling of warmth and coziness. I am moving from a 1940s bungalow to a 110 year old New England gothic revival( cheap version); from 4 rooms to 12. So I will have a lot of decoration to do once there! However there are some repairs that need to be done and I may need a new furnace since it seems to be not as sound as reported. ANd all the fun stuff will have less money so I need to be frugal but wonderful.
BUT before I can decorate I need to drive with 22 cats 2700 miles in March. My husband will have the caper on the pick-up truck and I am in my Toyota Carolla. The hard part is the weather. And the way we wanted to go through Dallas has about 300 miles of road construction going on so we need to go through Houston. So from now on until I can find a separate Blog place this will be about the "Great Pack and Move and Drive 2700 mils with Cats Adventure. I hope to have Wifi in the motels so I can upload pictures and post daily about what is going on. So stay posted to this site and I will update daily( or more since we are not leaving until March) about the packing and getting ready to move from here to way up there! I will share hints and helpful tips about moving packing and all that kind of stuff like that there!

Life lesson One

The most important lesson to teach our children is that being a child is a short term deal. They will be adults for a lot longer and the fun they have now will amount to not much if they do not make it as an adult. I am not saying be all huff and puff adult with out joy and discovery, magic and all... but when push comes to shove how we behave and live as adults is more important that these “things” we are raising and letting be teenagers as a social group. Pampered, spoiled, over indulged, and rude will not get them very far in the real world...which is not on TV or in the fashion magazines or (GASP) Face-book or Twitter! Any 16 year old(boy or girl) should be able to and do on a regular basis: the family laundry, meal cooking lunch packing, house cleaning, yard work. Not only for their family but for their grandma and grandpa, elder neighbors and anyone else in their area that is unable to do for themselves. No mother of a teenager should have to cook every meal of the week or do the grocery shopping. If they can’t do it by 16 then there will be some real problems down the road. All this pampering of teenagers is stunting their emotional growth. They need real responsibility and be a full member of the family. They need to learn how to save money rather than piss it away on the trinkets and gewgaws made in China. If girls want the latest fashion then sewing is a good thing. Same for boys. Pierced and tattooed but can’t read a book and needs to be online every minute... I don’t think so. Life’s major lesson is to learn that you are not special just because. We are all dime a dozen. There are 1000 people who write better than I do. But I am trying to better the world from my own experience. I have seen many of my family members destroy their children with no rules and everything “I wanted to do but Mom would not let me”; and now they are useless since those children lived the life they wanted as a teen and not the rules our parents put on us. I see 50 something useless adults with out any maturity and now their 30 something teenagers who can’t hold a job, had no push into some education but could party hardy and that is just in my family.

Life is not easy and it is much harder if you can’t mature, but just grow old. The bloom of youth wears off fast. It may be fun for a while but someday you need to know how to cook beans because that is all you can afford.

FutzFactor

I created the Futzfactor decades ago. It is that intangible something that needs to be qualified into dollars. Once that is created the cost of something you want to buy or sell becomes easier to deal with. Want $66K for your house but it needs work & moving is looming up. How much is less money now verses fixing, showing and that heart break when someone does not like your house? And maybe the movers arrive and the house is still not sold......What is it worth to you? The old adage of a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush is the foundation of the futzfactor. This works in other aspects of life. Want to entertain people? Go all out and cook, clean, decorate and what? Oh I do not eat this I am on adkins or some such, that candle is giving me a headache, we can't stay but decided to pop in or do not show up at all!!... I mean these are an endless list that has shown up many times with people I have had to deal with. Futzfactor is invite to a restaurant everyone chooses what they want, eat, chat then go home. I get the check and I have a nicer time and if the food is not what they wanted they it is their fault they chose it. Buy curtains or make them,..... the list of things that the Futzfactor can help make life easier. What are your limits? What are your futzfactors?

Say No To Walmart

What's new?! Well I have spoken to 2 real people and got the run around by the fascist corporation of Walmart. They are the exclusive sellers of the 8 in 1 brand pro-pet Fresh Results clumping cat litter(yes it is still that topic), Walmart has systematically been reducing and eliminating the supply and availability  of this product. For people across the country this is a problem. There are 4 very good reasons this is a good product:

1: It is light weight and clumping. This is good for older people and those with disabilities since the total amount scooped is not heavy and easy to manage. Makes cleaning the litter box easy and safe.

2: The scent does not trigger allergies in people (tested on a super sensitive migraine sufferer and a person allergic to the chemicals in nearly all the scented clumping litters, blind testing)

3: The cats like it, their feet do not get itchy and they retain the hair on their feet and bellies. Where as other litters cause skin allergies and sneezing in several of my cats.

4: It is priced right and affordable to use by those on fixed incomes.

Walmart has refused to allow other stores to carry this product. So Walmart has monopolized the availability of this product. There is no shortage of 8 in 1 Fresh Results, no problem in the supply nor the demand side of this product citizens are struggling to find this product. Walmart, for its own arcane reasoning, has chosen to deny the citizens who desire this product to be able to buy this product.

 This is part of the corporate fascist state we have let happen because of our desire to buy cheap goods made cheaply. We have denied the right to a living wage for ourselves and others in this world. We have let a multi Billionaire corporation dictate what we can buy. Walmart stores run other stores out of business. They have destroyed the ability of smaller and independent companies to do business by their corporate greed and avarice. We are to blame by patronizing Walmart. We were suckered into their stores and like a drug dealer we have become addicted to their cheap goods, bad attitude and manipulation of the marketplace. Try to contact Walmart! You will not get a person but an endless list of choices that are not suitable to your needs.

Suck It UP America and Say NO TO WALMART. Buy at anywhere else but Walmart, or do not buy at all!

I Hate Walmart

I hate Walmart. The stores are full of cheap products and mostly junk food. The produce is seconds at best. I never get a bag or oranges that last a week with out some rotting or rotten inside. This never used to happen when there was a real grocery store to got to. But since the Walmart Super Store has moved in the local grocery store has aped Walmart. The prices are not that reasonable because the quality is very low. Socks that I buy today have holes in 2 or 3 months, like I have sandpaper feet. But I  have socks 15 years old that have no holes. Why do I shop there? I used to shop there because the cat littler I like was there and it was easier to shop one store in this godforsaken heat of Texas. I feel sorry for the people who work there. I look at those who shop there and I am sorry I have to look at them. I tried ordering my litter on line it worked once. I was told upfront online that this item qualifies for free shipping if I order $45 or more. Hooray. So I made an order that big. At check out I was then informed that it can not be shipped! Ok I will pick it up at the store. I get to the store and they sold it to someone else. My money was refunded. I still do not have what I want. There are no other stores to shop at except Walmart in this city of ONE MILLION PEOPLE! Can you imagine that? The products at other stores are the same quality as at Walmart (crappy made in China). This country has become the country of lowest common denominators. People buy at Walmart from a sense of greed or avarice to be what they are not (rich) to ape the people who are famous for no real reason. Walmart is what we have become as a country, cheap. They roped me in like a drug dealer, letting me buy my product for a while then upping the price and now deciding they are not going to carry it anymore.... so here I am...... writing about the one place on earth I hate.

Lowes was right

Not wanting too respond in a knee jerk reaction to Lowes and other corporations pulling their ads and support from the Muslim family reality series, I have been mulling it over. And they were right to do so because this is a Conservative Christian ruled country. The Evangelical Conservative Militant Christian Fundamentalist (ECMCF) rule this country with an iron fist and we should not disobey them. If America stands for anything it stands for the ECMCF!
    President George W Bush set us on this scared path. And Americans have enthusiastically embraced this change in our governance. It is a soft revival of Adolph's early speeches and desires. One need not look very far to see how many of Adolph’s speeches were paraphrased by President Bush’s speech writers.
    The USA stands for the true creation of the great manifest destiny. And most Americans are all for the Evangelical Conservative Militant Christian Fundamentalists they may not say so as yet and hide behind libertarian or liberal or middle of the road terms as of yet, but they are shy. However they show their support in their speech and postings. The peek out from behind the old saw “Freedom of Speech is my right, not theirs”.
    This is the bedrock of the new America. The new attitude and mind set both foreign and domestic policy. It is what America wants that counts.
    Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.

The Post Office V. Internet

If you don’t send a lot of snail mail, if you use the internet for for bills, banking and communication then the news that the Post Office will be cutting back on service does not bother you. But It should.
    Slower to less frequent to none at all mail service is the next step to the Steampunk version of the fascism that this country is assimilating. Millions of pieces of mail go through USPS-United States Postal Service. USPS was one of the first departments created after the revolutionary war with Benjamin Franklin as first Postmaster General.
You are on the internet why should this matter to you? For at least two reasons for now.
The first is the most important. The government will and can control and keep surveillance on everything that goes through the internet- your banking & buying habits, what you say in emails, on social networks ...everything. Think not? The internet is too big? China has over One Billion people and the government can filter and block any internet activity it desires and does so. With every new bill passed there is some rider, tacked on, something extra that further narrows the scope of the freedoms that had been once America.
    The second reason is the jobs lost in this process of downsizing and not just in the Postal Service but the ripple effect that will touch everyone- maintenance people for postal vehicles, makers or the postal vehicles, janitorial services, artist who design stamps, printers, paper makers, stamp collectors, small mail order businesses, large mail order businesses, Netflix and other types of movie rental by mail, rural people who do not have reliable or fast internet service. Those who have no computer. The services that support the workers in any of the branches that are the post office and extended services. This list can go on and on.
    The way the current regime is operated is so far from efficient that anyone who thinks we live in a free and democratic country is either a fool or delusional. Not one elected official or wannabe elected official has this nation as their first priority. We no longer are citizens but consumers and cash cows. Elected officials are in it for the power and the money. We are now a miltiary-industial fascist government and like the pot of frogs the heat has been increasing for a long, long time, and those at the bottom are feeling the heat first. Soon all of you on the top will too. The Post Office is just the canary in the mine. If you can not send a private letter with any speed, and if people do not see that this is alarming then this county will deserve what it gets. I plan to send Christmas Cards.