I've Been Sort Of Busy :-D

 The other day I was watching TV, as I usually do, and I heard someone talking about her Etsy shop. She didn't go into much detail except to say that she was making a LOT of money from her shop. She very basically described what she did and I thought, "Hell, I can do that." So I've opened up an Etsy shop and I'm now designing and selling stationery and forms. All my stuff is downloadable, so there's no packing and shipping. That's ideal for me, someone with chronic fatigue and depression. 

It's not easy setting up the shop. I'm still getting the hang of it. I've already made one sale! Unfortunately, I think Etsy took most of that money. That's one of the things I need to learn more about. I'll be adding more stuff to my shop in the future, but I have to design it first. Most of it is still in my head. 

Please visit my shop and, if you see something you like, feel free to purchase it. Because all my stuff is downloadable, it's all pretty cheap. Also, if you want something personalized, I can work with you on that.

Click here to visit Suze Stationery. Thanks!

I Love My Dogs, But Sometimes I Want To Strangle Them

 I used to be a cat person. I had five cats when I finally decided to get a dog. Remember back around 1998, when Taco Bell had that cute chihuahua in all of its commercials? I think that might be what caused me to want a dog. I got a mini Dachshund, Rose, and fell in love. I not only fell in love with Rosie, I also fell in love with dogs, in genera. I mean, I've always loved dogs, but never wanted to own one.

Skip several dogs forward and I have found myself getting torn up on a regular basis. First, about two years ago I adopted Charlie, a black lab mix. I had forgotten how sharp puppies' teeth and toenails are. Being a large breed dog, I was always getting big scratches on my arms and legs from Charlie trying to jump on me to play. It wasn't so bad in the winter when I could wear sweatpants and avoid most of the scratches but, in the summer I looked like I was being frequently attacked by the scratch monster.

Charlie has grown out of that phase (the sharp teeth and claws) and doesn't want to jump up and scratch me most days. He still does jump sometimes, but never causing the injuries he used to cause.

Charlie has a lot of energy so I decided to find a playmate for him. I had forgotten about the teeth/claw issue until finally found a candidate. Enter Benny, a very mixed breed who looks like he will end up being just a little smaller than Charlie who, at last weigh-in weighed 106 pounds. Benny is a very playful puppy (born approx, Nov.1, 2021) and he loves to jump up on me, which results in the same painful scratches I got from Charlie. To show you exactly what I mean, here is one of most recent scratches. It's getting very warm in central Texas so I've been wearing shorts.

Remember I said that sometimes I want to strangle my dog(s)? This is why. Both pix are of my right leg. (I know you can figure that out on your own, but I wanted to save you some time.)

This is Benny.

In case you're wondering, here is Benny's DNA report.

So you can see that Benny, as I said, is a very mixed breed. 😁 I love him very much. 💜

Why Do They Want To Make Us Angry?! 😡

 Have you ever sat in front of your computer for an hour or more filling out forms and answering questions, going through the whole process in order to get an insurance quote only to be told at the end that, "whoops, sorry, we're having a technical issue, call us at 800-nnn-nnnn"?

What do you do? Do you call them? Do you tell them (in your mind) "fuck you, I'll go somewhere else where they, hopefully, won't waste my time"? After all, there are dozens of companies out there.

I called them. The first thing I did was yell at poor little Summer about how much I HATE having my time wasted and how they need new IT people if they're having technical issues. Poor Summer. She tried to help but I ended up hanging up on her. Well, I said goodbye and told her to have a nice day, then I hung up. I did tell her that I'm 68 years old and could "check out" at any moment. I told her to please report to her management and "up the ladder" how much people hate to have their valuable time wasted.

I suspect that they do this on purpose. Yes. They purposely have "technical issues" in order to get you on the phone to try to sell you more stuff. That's what Summer tried to do. I went through the whole online process and at no point before the "pay now" button did anyone ask me "are you sure you don't want [this stuff] on your policy?" But Summer asked me. She couldn't even clearly explain what [this stuff] does and why I would want it, but she wanted to add it to the policy. This is where I hung up. (See the meaning of "hung up" in the previous paragraph.)

As I said, I'm 68 years old. I've survived this long, done some good in the world, served my country for 22 years, worshiped my God, and I think I deserve to go through certain processes without ending up with "technical issues." Bogus technical issues.

I had plans to write a nicer post today. Maybe I will later, but first I need to calm down and maybe drink something (since it's illegal in Texas to "smoke something"). I hope you all are having a nicer day that I am. And it's only 9:00AM. Damn.

 

Just so you know, I turned off commenting on this blog because all I was getting was ad spam. If you comment and it's actually related to the blog, I'll approve it. So don't let the approval thing stop you.

UKRAINE

 Just so you know . . .

Perhaps I'll have more to say about this later, but I wanted to get this out there for now.