Catching Up With The Past

 

Tim drove up to Georgia this week to have our taxes done. I know, that's a pretty far drive just to file a tax return, but when the IRS has been following and hounding you for ten years, it's best to stick with an accountant who has been there from the jump. We still have to give the IRS our refund for two more years but then should be free and clear...after almost ten years of threats, notifications, emails and them taking our refund year after year after year.

Hindsight is 20/20. We learned that lesson the hard way. Never go into business with someone you don't really trust to begin with.  We ended up stuck with a $28,000 debt from  unpaid payroll taxes. It's water under the bridge now, but was a lesson in humility, determination, faith and love. We are all the wiser for it. We now have zero credit card debt (actually no credit cards at all) and finally beginning to save and invest towards our future...if you consider sixty years old the time to start saving in earnest.

Call us slow learners...you won't be wrong.

Better late than never; that's our motto!

It's been an adjustment for me, not working, after forty years of full time employment as a server.

Of course I miss the money, but I actually miss the "waitressing" even more.  I had gotten pretty good at it (once again, slow learner here) and got a kick out of people leaving my table thinking what a great bargain they had gotten by simply having me as a server.

Serving is totally a psychological gig; backed up with (and by) excellent skills and tremendous knowledge. You want people leaving your table feeling happy they dropped well over a hundred bucks on a meal for two.

So there's that adjustment. Also, the reason I'm out of work is frightening as well. I'm sixty years old and a former smoker who managed to quit three years ago. I listen to every doctor, scientist and medical professional on the news and heed their advice...to the letter.

Maybe I'm not that slow a learner!

People amaze me listening to the politicians more than the health officials.

My god, it's not political, it's scientific fact.

I think that is when I started to lose my mind recently, especially on social media.

Yes, I'm admitting it.

 People, their ignorance, hatred, and politics in general are driving me (even more) insane. I think I finally have it figured out though and take a tiny bit of comfort in it.

Number one:

We're all drinking the Kool-Aid if we back either presidential candidate, or any candidate for that matter. Pick your poison, choose your crook, elect the lesser of the two evils. They are all in cahoots with somebody, for something, on some level.

True fact.

I don't think there has been an honest politician in the Oval Office since Jimmy Carter, and dare you to prove me wrong.

I highly doubt anyone could.

He reminds me of my own Diddy. A good man, through and through.

Ask anyone who was lucky enough to know him.

We all sure miss him. September eighteenth made it eighteen years.

So I'm going to quit letting people, posts, memes and comments work me into a frenzy.

I wish it could help but it doesn't, so why let it?

It's not like we're going to change either of our minds or another person's.

It's wasted effort.

I'm not completely thrilled with either presidential candidate in this election, but truly (and firmly) believe one opponent is a pretty horrible person who has said and done some really horrible things. With that said (and proven time after time) I'm going with the one who doesn't make me cringe every single time he opens his mouth to speak.

That's just me, but what kind of person would I be, to support someone I had no faith in and didn't trust as far as I could throw him?

Instead I will focus on doing my part to contribute any way I can, for causes I believe in... and feel are vital for us to have a peaceful coexistence.

I will encourage every single person I know or have any interaction with (even from behind a mask) to vote not only on November third, but to vote in absolutely each and every election...every time...for every office.

No exceptions.

From your local HOA election to every city, county, district, state and national election. 

That's how you get real change...and for Pete's sake, it's not even hard to do! You can even do it without having to leave your home...and it's free!

We can't get rid of the big crooks until we get rid of the little crooks, and if we don't get rid of the little crooks, they'll turn into the next big crooks.

Has history taught us nothing?

I'm not going to let things bother me like I have been. It's not a healthy way to live. If what I believe to be true about the current administration is true, it will all come out in the wash...even if we have to wait four more years to be charged, prosecuted, or at the very least held accountable; the slow moving wheels of justice will hopefully prevail in the end.

I'm just worried about in the meantime. I've never seen more mudslinging and viciousness...from both sides of the aisle.

All I can hope for in November is that the lesser of the evils will win...and we can build from there.

Do us all a favor, and VOTE!!!

Till next time,

 COTTON

Blurred Lines

Number one, America knew about coronavirus late December of last year...

yet the government didn't take serious action until early March.

Hopefully Johnny Mathis wasn't right in the late seventies.

I wake up every day and think the same thing right off the bat.
Did I dream this?


I can remember a time when  I would have never thought or imagined (growing up in  the sixties) that I would ever have my own personal cellular phone which could also double as a computer...much less all three of my kids have one, and by the time they even hit high school.

And now this?
I'm simply a Flinstone, trying to get by in a Jetson world.
#truefact

I could go on with the gloom and doom, but as of late , we all hear enough of it.
 Every single day.



Instead I will switch gears and share a few of my own observations over the past forty odd days of sitting at home and not getting paid to do so.

You know you're bored when you shave your legs at the age of sixty, during a shelter in place order.
 With the amount of hair left on a woman's' body after menopause, I could've plucked my legs quicker.
So there's that.

I haven't put on a stitch of makeup since March 16, hence no need to look in the small magnifying mirror I use for just that purpose. A magnification mirror is no friend of a sixty year old woman's face.
True fact.

I got out the magnification mirror today (day forty five of not leaving the house except for the grocery store or bank) and discovered I was growing a goatee, comprised of three different, sporadically placed wild hairs, almost to the point of curling. It totally grossed me out, and as I shaved them off, silently thanked God for letting my husband's eyesight be as bad as my own.

Thirty two years down the road of life together...now everything's blurred lines, for the both of us.

I also need to send a Thank You card to the older woman (yes older than me) at Great Clips, who last cut my hair over six weeks ago.

She scalped me. It was  even hard for me to look at myself in the mirror for well over two weeks.
I still can't believe not one person asked me how my brain surgery went.

Week three (above) it looked semi okay again, but still short.
 I made Massey do my highlights so at least it was blonde instead of gray at the roots.

Fast (didn't seem fast) forward three more weeks. My hair is perfect!
Of course every person with short hair will tell you. The minute your hair looks great and is complimented on, it's fixing to look like a bad wig in about three days.
That happened to me yesterday.
At least the Ole Gal gave the best bang for my buck!

I let Massey cut my hair let Massey day before yesterday...she couldn't make it look any worse, and she didn't!

Thank goodness I'm just hanging around the house. Massey and Tim probably have secret meetings while I'm in the shower (maybe twice a week...I've become very european) laughing about how I wear the same thing three or four days in a row, and bet each other about which one of my two outfits I'll put on next.

I've started calling it my costume.

In my defense, I'm tiny.  I haven't been lifting heavy weights in a sweat suit three times a day. Unless you call pulling weeds lifting.

Anway, back to "Costume.".
When Zachary was little, about the age he was in the above picture, my sister was taking him somewhere in her car. They passed a private school as the kids (in uniforms) were being released. Little Zach asked her if they all wore the same costume every day?

Zach has always been good for a chuckle, especially (pretty much only) when he was (as we say in the south) a Lit'lun. TJ was always such  a sweet but serious little guy, and Massey didn't say ten words before she turned four.

Wow, three decades can certainly fly by.

My favorite Zach story of all time was when he was around the age he was in the above photos.
We call them his happy years.

Although I was raised going to church at least three times a week, sometimes more, I dropped the religion ball with my own kids when they were very young. Oh I taught them about right and wrong and the Golden Rule, but organized religion was not part of their early life like it was my own.

My best attempt was to blast Jesus Christ Superstar over the stereo every Sunday morning while I cleaned house and cooked.


I know every word..seriously.

 It is still one of my top three albums.
Jesus was a Rock Star in our house, so there's that in my defense.


The week before Easter one year, we were headed over to my sister's for dinner. We passed the little country Methodist church near our house. They had the three crosses draped out front. I turned down the radio, intending to use it as my teaching moment.  I looked in the rear view mirror at him in his booster seat and remarked, they had nailed Jesus to the cross, by his hands and feet.

Zach's reply?

"I thought they hung him with a rope."
I then explained the term hung.

Then he asked why there were two other crosses? I explained that two robbers were on either side of him as well. I followed that little bit of info up with...

"You know what the last thing was Jesus said to all those people, who had done this to him, as he hung on that cross? He said, I forgive you."

Zach kinda stared out the window as we drove on by and thoughtfully replied, "I would have said I will get you."

My reply?
"Well that's why your name is Zachary and his name is Jesus."


Which brings up an even better "Church'in" story.

(when we started taking them to church on a semi regular basis when they started a pretty good non denominational one at a local high school, Zach would get in the car after his youth service and say "That was some good church'in."
 I tend to call it "Getting muh Jesus on."

One of our neighbors , way back in the late sixties or early seventies, was talking with my Diddy one day out in our front yard. He wasn't a church goer at all, but was a nice enough man. Our Diddy, on the other hand, was a devout member of  East Point Christian Church. He was a deacon, an elder, a Sunday School teacher and on various boards and committees.

That's him in the middle on the front row..

Anyhoo...
Something came up about race in their conversation...after all, it was the sixties and the south.
The man mentioned something about caucasians (old school term for whites) being the superior race, just like it said in the Bible.
My father didn't miss a beat or sound accusing in any way, but simply said "You know, I've read the Bible cover to cover more than a few times and don't remember that specific passage."
Our neighbor replied that it was in the book of Noah.
Once again my father calmly and casually said he didn't remember there being book of Noah in the Bible.
Our neighbor solemnly said (I kid you not):
"Well there was, before Roosevelt had it took it out."
(yes he said took)
...was this man totally and completely serious?!

He was.

Total rimshot moment.


As Leslie Jordan says, you can't make this shit up...and I didn't.

It's been a wild, almost sixty year long ride, and would do it all again in a heart beat...if it meant we'd still wind up here, in this place, in this house, with all the same loved ones in my life, who crazily enough love me as well.

That, my friends, is a win.




Coronavirus has upended the life and livelihood of basically every person on this planet. We've lost more Americans to this virus in the past three months, than we did all those years our troops fought in the Vietnam War.
Any conspiracy theory is a denial of true scientific data.

That's not a blue statement or a red statement. It's a red white and blue statement.
And therein lies the difference.

Yes the economy is crushed. You don't have to tell me that. I was big ballin along at the age of almost sixty, finally just working twenty hours a week but bringing home well over $500.

I've been  paying into the unemployment system since the year 1975, but after forty five days of being out of work, the system has given (returned to) me $195, and it took forty days to get here.

What about the people who don't have a spouse(like I do) who's still working...or wonderful family and friends like we are fortunate enough to  have?
Ask them about a conspiracy theory and they will most likely point the finger at unemployment.
And who can blame them? They are tax paying citizens.
My motto about Florida's unemployment system is "If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it probably is a duck...but with a 'F."

This too shall pass...but what will the final body count be?

It's not a hoax, trust me.

 Til next time,
a temporarily broke plate slinger...
COTTON