Four weeks "in" and it's finally happened...

Well, I'm four weeks in on the blog thing and it's finally happened. I've been getting up early like I usually do, drinking my water and eating my "super toast"as my wife calls it, wheat toast with peanut butter and raisins on it with a big 32 oz. glass of ice cold water to wash it down, and typing my entire blog on my I-Phone 4s. I state the model number so you'll know this one undeniable truth: I am not trendy. I don't need to blaze any trails as far as technology is concerned. I call it my new car theory. A car is only new until you drive it off the lot, then it is used. Not AS used as most cars, but used just the same. I write this blog today on a used computer, a good ole Windows XP model, and it still somehow makes letters and I'm able to upload or download it to the same internet I-Phone 5 and whatever latest greatest operating system Microsoft offers these days on your Desktop, laptop, tablet, Android or I-Phone, automobile, and now glasses (from what I hear). Here's my point, I had (with great emphasis on HAD) written the greatest atom-splitting blog post in the history of this blog (work with me here), my right booger picker a-blazing away at just under the speed of light, way under to be exact, and then it happened. A call came in and interrupted my stream of consciousness, and I took the call. It, of course, amounted to nothing, but cost me (and you) much. When I returned to my little screen everything was in a blue box. I had no idea what that meant so I scrolled down to the bottom of my entry to put "THE END" ( I was done) and touched the screen to plant the blinking cursor at its rightful spot. When I did, the entire screen went blank. All of it, gone, no breeze blowing, no tornadoes, no thief in the night, nothing.

It was all gone.

So I'm starting over. On my trusty old laptop, bought used, with an Windows XP operating system that has a good old draft saving feature in case a call comes in or lightning strikes or the power goes out or I touch the wrong button, or fart crooked and erase the whole dang thing. The only downside is I attempt to type faster and tend to have a lot more screw ups, plus the added fact that our grandsons stayed with us over the weekend and played kiddy games on this old box. There are now some keys sticking or not functioning properly due to the fact that cookie crumbs were rained down upon the keyboard, lodging themselves under the keys and rendering them non-operative. I'm typing away here and when I look at the screen there are continuous red underlines and run on sentences. When I go back and correct my mistakes, the offending buttons "crunch", then resist my petition. There are apparently lots of partially chewed cookie crumbs or nuts under the space bar and the "e" buttons. Eating, as far as those two boys are concerned, is more like a competition with decorum and basic table manners be damned. Who, between the two of them, can eat the most the fastest is all that matters, and God help you if one thinks the other has "more". I'm having to go back and correct most every sentence I write, something I haven't had to do with my trusty I-Phone 4S. The same I-Phone 4S that betrayed me this very morning. The same one with auto-correct and a working space bar. The very same one that doesn't have a food particle stuck under the key of "e" making every word requiring the second vowel wear red underwear, causing me to manually correct each entry after I'm done (or think I am). This I know; in four short weeks I've gotten better at typing with one finger than I have with two. Not eight fingers, just two. Technology has it's finger around my throat.

Oh, the wisdom I had espoused on my original posting. I talked about big government and what you should and shouldn't say (or type) when blogging, as I read it on some other blog about writing blogs.Yep, that's right, a blog about writing blogs. I spent about ten minutes reading it and realized this; I'm not those people. I'm not a dude who needs to be told very much about how to think, how to write, how to do or don't do something some certain way. I write like I speak. I used apostrophes (apparently the death knell of writing) and use words like aren't, won't and ain't. Mark Twain did it with great success and if it's good enough for him (and it obviously was), it's good enough for me.Writing, to me, is like fashion. Rules are made to be broken. I operate under the "Hang onto your clothes long enough and they become "Vintage" and you can sell them for twice what you paid for them...to morons" theory. Meaning I'm purdy simplistic when it comes to clothes wearing. And using computers, and cars and other technology, as long as it doesn't have cookie crumbs underneath it's space bar and the "e" key. I dig the auto-save feature and will damn sure insist that the next computer I buy (used of course) will include that particular feature. It better or I'm screwed.

I've decided I'll not do any correcting on this last paragraph so you'll know whatI'm up against here. I have shaken the laptop upside down and enough crumbs havefallenout to bread a veal cutlet on both sides. I also blew out the keys till I got light headed, and that has helped some. I yanked off the "e" and "space bar" keys and found an old cell phone I lost, a paper clip, a TV remote, and a few other things I've been missing and since replaced. I'm remindedof one undenyabletruth (see what I mean) and for me it is this: Life is too short and too precious to be pissed all the time. After I realized my previous post was lost forever, I flipped open the laptop and produced what you see here.Not as good and as pure as what I originally intended, but here it is. And it happened on a Monday. If you've read any of my posts you'll know howIfeel about the day. Monday is as good a day as Friday. Being pissed off on Mondays means that if you live to be seventy, you've spent seven years of it pissed off about a day you can't avoid just short of death. If you spend Sunday's pissed about Monday inevitably coming, the you've spent fourteen years pissed about a day you cannot avoid. It's math at it's simplest and most basic form. I heard one smart fellow say, "The math don't lie"...gramatically disastrous but truth just the same. And right here that truth applies in spades. If you factor in raising kids (who most times do the exact opposite of what you want them to past twelve years old), dealing with ass-hats, the IRS, standing in line, your health, family stuff and all the other crap you are marketed into thinking will make you a better person if you own it, and then finding out it's all BS, then that alone doesn't leave a lot of time to be happy. Or what you've been led to believe happy looks like, feels like, tastes like, smells like or sounds like. Technology hasn't made me one bit happier than when I was listening to Led Zepplin 4 on the eight-track tape player in my 65 GTO. And I'm liking life as much now as I ever was then.

No one can determine what happy is for you...but you.

Have a great Monday.