Friday, December 24, 2010

THTSL Manual - "Christmas Family Newsletters"


I would LOVE to send out one of those “Christmas Letters” to my friends, but honestly, I  don’t want to bring anybody down! This one couple we know has sent us a Christmas letter every year for the past 12 years and frankly, they are so depressing that for a while there I was considering changing my religion, or worse, moving and not leaving a forwarding address!

Each year, it was the same thing: their home-schooled (of course!!), piano-playing, karate practicing, Green Space champion award- winning, and smarter-than-any-kids-who-have-ever-lived children are nothing but divinely phenomenal. The whole family managed once again to travel all over the world, sometimes even two or three times in one year; either the husband or wife (or both) won an award for something, and it was nothing but blue skies and sunny days for their family, by gosh! It’s enough to give me serious gas, crossed eyes, and to make me consider turning in my membership card to the Human Race.

In my family, in any given year at least three of my four grown children are not speaking to one another. I consider it miraculous some of them have managed to learn speak the English language at all (REAL English, not that texting shorthand stuff – u no?) and that at least two of them actually know more words than merely, “I’m broke – please send cash”.  As for travel, with my husband’s and my physical challenges, I seriously applaud him for his continually getting up in the morning and going in to work every day, day in and day out. He’s a chain-smoking executive with some ugly breathing issues, and has high blood pressure, a foul temper, and more arthritis in his body than he has bones! And, as for me, it’s a red letter day when I can crutch-walk to my car and actually drive for a few miles before my legs go totally numb from the pain (Yeah…I know. Only those of us with AVN know what I mean!) . “Oh, wow! I made it to Shop Rite and back!” Now, that’s newsworthy in our house!

As for winning contests or awards, my family is right up there jockeying for the top spot. I can just see it in my family newsletter:

“I beat not one, but two traffic tickets this year! My prize hosta plant would have won a local gardening contest, but it got turned into a tossed salad by a furious groundhog being chased by my over-zealous dog.  My husband did not slap our well-meaning but foot–in-mouth young neighbor silly, the young guy who goofed and referred to him as ‘an older man’  Life was good to us in 2010!”

And, as for my kids and grandkids, well…what can I say? My kids have to answer for their own sins, mistakes, and what-not, but my grandkids are perfect! Now, I ask you: how can I put that in a newsletter? Who would believe me?? Hey…these people know my family!  I don’t stand a chance in the bragging department, even if it is really and truly true that my grandkids are perfect! There just isn’t enough else to hold people’s interest or to make it digestible. So, once again, it was simple snowmen or Christmas scenery Christmas cards that got sent out by me this year. They are safe – they say it all and simply that all is right with my family’s world.

I suppose it’s true that family Christmas newsletters do serve a purpose, however. They might be the motivators that keep us striving for that elusive quality called “hope.”  Each year I build up hope that someone in our family will do something simply amazing, something I can force down others’ gullets with a smug, self satisfied, “There! I told you so!” grin at Christmas-time: “Put that in your pipe, Santa, and smoke it!”

All I can do is simply wish others a wonderful holiday and just go on loving my family for who they are and for what they mean to me. If others can’t see the greatness in them without my having to say so, then that’s their loss. I know how great they are -- and just as importantly, they know how great they are -- and really, that’s what counts.

So, if this is your lot in life – getting those Christmas family newsletters which only missing feature is a diamond-studded, dripping, oozing 24 carat gold plating -- don’t let it worry you. If it makes others feel better seeing in print what they believe in their minds, then more power to them. If that’s what they need to do to convince themselves and make themselves feel good in their hearts, then in all seriousness, God bless them. As for me and mine, we admit we are human, and we are proud to be human. We will continue to take life as it comes and to muddle through somehow. We will take the bad with the good, toss out what we don’t need and keep the rest, learn from our mistakes, and then hope for the best. So far, it’s a system that has worked fairly well. It’s the only one we know and I can’t see writing that in a newsletter year after year. Besides, it’s not really ‘news’ – it’s just the way life is, and that’s good enough for me and mine. Honestly, if you don’t ‘get it’ or understand it by the age of 20, then you never will.

Please…put down the pen, and have a very Merry Christmas! 

Maybe I'll just send out a photo of my horse.....


Friday, December 17, 2010

Retired this message...


I changed my mind and 'retired' this entry.

Just didn't like it that much, ya know?

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

THTSL Manual - "The Great FV Adventure"


Once again, the world is marching along, doing its thing, and there I am, somewhere in the very back row. I’m so far back that by the time the sound of the beating drum reaches me, it is tomorrow already!  I’m used to this because I am convinced that when God built me he installed a defective timer switch. It is nothing new for me to be out of step, in the wrong time -frame of things. I’m usually either far ahead of the crowd or so far behind in the race that I thought I was in the lead! Well, Life did it to me again, only this time it has now found a very clever way to steal my so-called ‘free time’ and it is making me work like crazy at having what I am loosely going to call  “fun”.  It’s about as much ‘fun’ as a recurring yeast infection! But, I digress…..

I’m talking about this fad/craze, gray hair- producing and time-consuming game called “Farmville.” Oh, don’t let the cutesy name fool you! There is nothing “Ville”- like about this game! “Ville” denotes to most of us a cozy little burg, somewhere out in the blue sky, green grass country where  people square-dance, bake each other pies, cheerfully call out “Howdy!” to each other, and raise one another’s barns – all very comfy-cozy, right? Don’t you believe it! This game is designed to make you worry, fret, lose sleep, and to permanently attach your computer to your hip (or lap, depending on the model) and never, EVER be without it because, God forbid, one of your crops might be ready to harvest!! And, if you’re not there to harvest them, look out!!!! They will wither! So what, you say? So, you’ve just blown a whole bunch of your Farmville bucks (fake) money on wasted crops.

And…if you are truly serious about this game, you will take that plunge and start trading in your fake play money for the REAL THING.  You will ‘feed’ your Farmville venture with real money because you want to get ahead! Yup, you heard me. This sneaky game really does expect its players to BUY what they call “farm dollars” so that the players can build bigger, better, more productive and more lavish farms! What a devious plan!! I want the guy who wrote Farmville to come manage my non profit organization! All this time, I’ve been doing it the hard way, asking people to please donate to our cause. Little did I know that all I had to do was to offer them a game, for Pete’s sakes, where they would actually spend real money, so that they could get ahead and prosper – all online, of course, and in a fictitious endeavor at that! How deliciously, deliriously, and decadently devious! And here I thought giving my members an online library of more than 3 gigabytes of information on our rare disease, as well as a fully interactive web site, was a ‘bargain’. Nope. What most people want these days, I am finding out, is to create the GWTW version of Tara without the hassle of fighting a civil war!  And....here is the best if not sneakiest part:  the game players actually DO help each other!

How ingenious! I ask you: who wants to be a bad neighbor? Not most of us, so we will help fertilize or pick crops, brush farm animals, and harvest trees of their fruit for each other. So, it is not just a singular person playing a singular game. It is an entire community that is being built, person by person, farm by farm, day by day, and literally hour by hour. I know, because like an idiot I got caught up in this and feel as if I am being swallowed up alive!

I wanted to see what all the hoopla was about. A couple of our volunteers were unexpectedly MIA over the past year or so and I found out from some of their “neighbors” (people on our mutual contact lists who also play Farmville – it’s like a HUGE spider web of people, but if you’ve been on a computer recently, I don’t have to explain what this is like) that they were busy playing games such as Farmville, or FV for short. I remember thinking, “What?”  How could a game take up so much time and energy?? Well, let me tell you: I found out! I’ve only been playing about 1 month and what happened today told me that I need to STOP. Stop right now, before it is too late --and before I lose myself in a make-believe community or, worse yet, that I give in to the urge to actually buy some of those Farmville dollars! I got news for you – this is never going to happen! I’ve worked too long and too hard for my money and there is no way I am going to spend it on an online game when there are games for free, all over the web. Besides, I have real work to do, and people to take care of. FV, step off!

It all came to a screeching halt for me today when in my early morning haze (that is, before my second cup of coffee for the day), I accidentally planted about 40 plots’ worth of cranberries, poinsettias, and some other gunk, without stopping to realize when I’d have to harvest them all.

“Oh crap!” I chided myself when I realized what I had done. At least two of the crops would mature in about 4 hours and I had planned to go out this morning. So, what did I do? I went out, anyway. And was a nervous wreck the whole time!! I could not wait to get back home in time to harvest my crops—or I’d suffer the loss of about $2,000 of my fake FV ‘money’.  And, I’d look like a poor farmer to all of my FV neighbors, to boot! And, for all I know, I’d take them all down with me, too!

HOLY COW! That did it for me! I harvested my stupid cranberries and what-not, and on purpose, did not replant anything else. My little Christmas village house thing still doesn’t have its lights, and that’s OK. It’s only Dec. 7, after all. HEY…wait a minute!! There I go again! See what I mean??

Still, I do have about $104K in fake FV bucks, and found myself wishing for that one more additional neighbor so that I could enlarge my farm’s area (Yep…they get you there, too! Fake money isn’t enough – you need to have a certain number of neighbors, too!)

I need to get back out in the real world, I think. Back to the old drawing board; back to trying to figure out what my membership in my own non profit organization needs or wants, or would like to have. And all I can do now is pray that the answer isn’t “Give us a game like Farmville!” Oh, God! Anything but that!!

Anyone up for a nice game of checkers?