DRIVING MYSELF NUTS…OR AM I?

DRIVING MYSELF NUTS…OR AM I?

Well!! I know I am not alone when I write this little complaint about calling customer service (don’t get me started on the customer chat bots, or people). Any customer service. “Please hold, your call is important to us.” REALLY if it were it is NOT apparent to the customer. Let me see just got off the phone after 50 minutes of hold. REALLY! Not anything new. The demise of customer service in the country over the last 15 years, is so noticable it has become the source of snarky jokes. It has come so common place that people just accept that is the way it is. Why not just give up on the company that upsets us? Is the product they give us so important to life in the grand scheme of things? I think not. Born from a society of haves and haves, and haves. Even the have-nots have. Is that bad? I don’t know do you?

Now to talk about Jeans. Is it just jeans, or is it all items? The quality of jeans, dark denim, has gone into the toilet. It bleeds on the leather car seats, it bleeds on the furniture, it comes off on your hands, never used to fade onto things or skin. Ralph Lauren has in small print on their site when you order a notice of that fact! Not all listed but the fact it bleeds the color. Now I guess people just accept it. I have always worn jeans and good ones. Paid lots of money for them. Quality control out the window, which in itself if part of customer service. SO… it is with great sadness, that I have this year, after having my washing machine turn blue from the dye; and after sending jeans to cleaners to avoid that in my machine; and after having used every trick in the book to make them stop bleeding; after washing the dye off my body from $100 + jeans, that I have given them up!! How hard can it be for this to have a remedy at the inception of the material?

Don’t get me started on dust, dust that is like flour, which only makes sense since you get this dust in farmland, hence the reference to flour like dust. Of course, I am part of that problem since I moved to a farming community two years ago that is quickly becoming an over crowded city. Pretty soon on earth there won’t be a place to go to live in quiet and peace. Well, I am old, but at least I admit it.

Don’t I have anything positive to say? Well, yes, here in my new location since October of 2019, I have found the most amazing people, friendly, open and communicative. That includes young people. Wish I had come here sooner.

My next move, likely won’t happen, but would be to even a more remote place. Won’t happen because, as I said I am old! Well my body is almost 76 and my mind says 50 but mind and body will have to fight that out themselves. I am just on the sidelines waiting to see who wins that!

Here is the interesting thing about life

You never know where it will take you or how you will end up on any given day.  Take December for instance.  I routinely read a newsletter I get about house sitting, dog sitting, cow sitting; but not too many interest me, or the timing isn’t right, or they have had so many inquiries that when they get to mine, they have already made their decision.  So when I saw an opportunity to dog sit in Budapest, I thought perfect!  I lived in Hungary for a few months a few years ago and loved it.  This was my chance, I responded and the cards must have been right because here I am sitting happily over the Christmas and New Year holidays in Budapest on the Buda side of town in Rose Hill.  Very nice neighborhood.  Embassies abound.  Anyway, Penny, a moopoo, is that a cross between a cow and a poodle?  Well not actually, something a little smaller; a cross between a Maltese and a Poodle and probably the best dog ever!

She is good, doesn’t bark, doesn’t have to get up in the middle of the night and just loves to cuddle!!

On the other side of the trip.  Well, sightseeing is fun. Have a look at what you can expect to find in Budapest.  The weather in December a little soupy, but hey, it is all part of nature.  On the flip side my friends Opi and Zita are enjoying sunny weather this year in Switzerland.  They love it.

But back to Budapest

Parliament, what architecture! And a government building not afraid to celebrate Christmas.  Maybe be they know the chains of past oppression of political regimes. Wake up you PC people.  Celebrate everything without prejudice.

And Finally a view from a window and on the way out

 

52 Dare Challenge

There is a site that I follow and it is called #52darechallenge.  Each week for a year, the host Erin sends you a dare to fulfill for that week.  This week the dare is to list 100 things you love.  I started to do this, in my head, and then in keeping with one of the post today, have found a way to put that off for the moment by trying to enter all my writings, from notebooks, tablets, and scribbled sheets into my computer.  What a way to procrastinate!!  And to procrastinate from that here i am fooling around in wordpress!  Wow.  I am looking hard at me.

Remembrance of life in past decade.

I just want to start remembering things as they were.  So Here we go.    I hope it is not too sad for you.      It was hard for me to push the button knowing that someone would read this, other than myself that is.

It sounds like the trumpets of a circus but it is the music of the merry go round in front of the Smithsonian.  Spring just starting to bloom with her blossoms of color.  Purple violets, lavender,  reds, cherry blossoms, green buds, just sprouting forth.

Familes, children, laughing crying running jumping, birds flying, fountains with life.

Pairs of people, men and women, women and women, women and children, men with men. As I have always said “the scenery changes, but everything remains the same.  Black, yellows, brown, olive white, colors of the spectrum; tall, thin, fat, short, hippy, pear shape.  Every size shape fills the realm of life.

Somewhere the thousands, the same, huddle together, scared, crying, hopeless, no future only a past that haunts, they are the same as all their misfortunes, pawns of the political times. Feel the cool air. Swirling around the body, pleasant smells of flowers.  They feel the cold freezing air slam against their bodies. The smell of unwashed fear clinging to the air.

Lines form at the ticket booth for the carousel.

Lines form at an imaginary line for life.

Boys whining I want to go in here, I want to buy this.

Boys crying for food and shelter.

Elderly ladies sitting on park benches feeling the last moments of the sun bathe their shoulders in warmth.

Elderly ladies wrapped in coats and shawls dread the coming of night and again to sleep on the cold rocky wet ground.

Birds sing for spring.

Birds flee from bombs,

Planes fly overhead somewhere to go.

Planes overhead stop life in an instant.

The world your hand.

The world gone mad.

The world gone mad.

Guilt arises in me, I am of the first group. I can walk out. They of the second group have no hope of walking out.

Can Someone Tell me

How to attend the class with wordpress tomorrow?????

Why Living in the Desert is Special

With skies like this who can complain about a little heat now and then!  Not me.  I love every minute of it. I have a stack of things I want to write about.  However, with these distracting views, well this is all you get.

Descartes asks “…which is the real reality? Awake or Asleep?  Admit, at least. the physical exist – even though it is may not be in the “reality” because without you could not have the body.”  As real as some of my dreams are, liking walking in another dimension along side this one, nothing is as vivid as reality. These clouds, this sky, this view.  That is my reality.  At least for the moment.

Of course the first Photo is from France in a little mountain village that I was driving through.  Never will that image leave my mind.  No it is not desert.  But the reality of the real is vivid to me.

Talented People

No matter who hard I tried, Renata would not send me home with the amazing painting she had just finished!  Really!  Really1

It belongs in my home.  Oh well,  what we want in life and what we get, always up in the air.

How Fun Was This!

Yes Loretta, my best friend of 40 years, and I decided that drinking a glass of wine might help me, she had orangina, a fond memory for her of Paris, loosen up so that we might paint like a master!  It helped.  This is what we accomplished in three hours at Art of Merlot in Scottsdale AZ on a balmy spring night.  Was this fun or what!  We had a great time.  Makes me want to open a business like this. Do you think her husband joined us?  Nope, to much fun better let the girls have it all.

I am not sure what was more fun the wine or the painting attempt!

Anticipating the result.

Retirement isn’t so bad after all.

Loretta inspecting her work.

Taking form. Good thing we had instructor and aids.

WHOA! What did the instructor say, 20 minutes to finish! All the laughing and singing and fun going on sort of stopped and you could hear a pin drop while eveyone finished their masterpieces. “Derby Girls” . Mine not perfect, but hanging in my house non the less.

Back home now in Tucson, what a glorious day,  One could not ask for more to be awaken to the sound of rain, in the desert it is a miracle from above.  For sure.  But for that visual you have to be here….

HELLLLOOOO out there…

I am just wondering if anyone that might be seeing this can see this photo?  Please let me know.  Technical issues, but no help from wordpress yet!