About Being Grumpy?

All the people that are important to me have told me that I am a grumpy guy.   Some of my grand kids have actually said that I am the grumpiest guy they have ever known! Considering they are eight and nine years old it appears a possibility that I have been grumpy for at least that long.

My wife has also told me once that I was a grumpy guy, actually what she said was 'grumpy ass' which indicates that I may have been particularly 'ass' like on at least that occasion.  Come to think of it she has indicated that I am 'ass' like on more then one occasion so I am either an ass or a grump, or both?  It gets confusing.

Grumpy and 'ass like' seem to go together at least as far as my mood swings are concerned.  I make no conscious effort to be an ass, or to be grumpy for that matter, but I find that on the majority of occasions those are the moods (if ass is a mood) that seem to make me feel the most comfortable.

That does not appear to make the people around me comfortable however. As a matter of fact it pisses most of the people around me off, especially when I respond to their, "Why the hell are you so grumpy all the time" question with comments like "I'm not grumpy, this is my personality" or "I know you are but what am I?" The later of which did not go over well and actually caused my grumpy ass(ness) to become contagious, which started a spiral effect that was, shall we say, undignified.

My kids also seem to think I'm grumpy all the time, they don't call me a grumpy ass though, at least not to my face.  Once I actually asked the kids if they thought I was grumpy all the time. That question was answered with what I would describe as hysterical laughter immediately followed by everyone vacating the immediate area.   I guess they were afraid that I would become grumpy and say something like, "I'm not grumpy, this is my personality so all of you piss off" which, I admit, sounds grumpy but can also be explained by other personality disorders, not all of which involve grumpiness, but which can probably be defined with the word ass.

My pets avoid me sometimes.   By 'avoid me' I mean they leave the room when I walk in and hide in nearby closets or under beds.   I feed these animals every day and this is how they repay me which I don't appreciate or understand.  It is feasible that THEY are the ones that are grumpy instead of me! Feasible but not likely.

I don't know why I am grumpy all the time.  I do know that when I am around the people I care about I enjoy their company and feel like I don't deserve them sometimes (I just realized that I wrote that last sentence while that movie about the dolphin getting a new tail was on so just forget it.  I bet that dolphin was grumpy as hell!) I get grumpy when I don't want to get all sappy.  So for the rest of you out there in (no one ever reads my) blog land, if you think I'm grumpy all the time you can just piss off and leave me the hell alone!

I'm going to write about being happy all the time some day. Right now though, the idea of being happy all the time pisses me off so I won't write about it any time soon, it's just my personality. Writing about being grumpy all the time actually made me feel good! This will be the last post I write about being grumpy...

About The Olympic Games?

The Olympic Games start in a few weeks!  I love watching the games on TV.  In case you haven't noticed by now, Olympic athletes are not like the rest of us.  Just look at them and you realize immediately that we mere mortals just don't compare!  That's one of the reasons I fight depression while the Olympics are on.   For two or three weeks I get to be depressed and have my self image shattered beyond recognition while watching all the athletes from all the different countries swim, run, perform gymnastics, high jump, long jump (I think there is another jump but, I can't remember what it's called, maybe it's the pole vault) dive from a high place, dive from a not so high place, dive together, dive alone and do things I have not been able to do since I was sixteen years old, and even then I didn't do them very well.  It's not only injurious to my self image, but dangerous to my well being as well.

I have to admit that I avoid looking in mirrors when the Olympic games are on, that way I can look at all these athletes and imagine that my body is in the same shape as theirs without having it reality bite me in the ass.  I feel like I am part of the team then, and I usually try to go workout or something.  Injury is common for me when the Olympics are on.  There is only so much a body that has not worked out all year can do before it gives up.  You can tell yourself that you are in just as good a shape as the Olympic athletes all day long, but when you can't lift 75 pounds it becomes pointless and depressing.  I don't even try to swim, I would cramp up and drown after the first half a lap.  At least my delusion has a survival component to it.


I do feel more patriotic during the games.  Cheering for Team USA feels good and I am proud when one of our team athletes win a medal.  One year I actually had one of those silver medals, I bought it and wore it during the Games and I have to admit that it felt pretty cool, especially when I was standing on the winners platform I built!  When the games were over I took it off and put it in a box until the next games.  I suspect my wife has hidden it from me by now, she was embarrassed when I wore it to the grocery store, so I'll probably have to go out and buy a new one.  Maybe I'll get a gold medal this time.

The winter Olympics are different for me then the summer games. I  don't care much for the snow and cold, and I don't have to avoid mirrors etc.  Besides, the athletes at the winter games have more clothes on so you can't really tell that they are gods among men like you can the summer game's athletes, except for the downhill skiers.  You can tell they are in good shape because they wear tighter ski clothes to reduce wind drag as they fly down the slopes at a hundred miles an hour or so.  I don't watch the down hill skiing for that reason, it's not cold enough inside for me to walk around in ski clothes and my wife won't let me go out in purple ski outfits.  I don't want to go up on the mountain with one of those outfits on anyway, someone may think I can ski, then I'll have to show them by skiing down a steep slope at a hundred miles an hour or so at which time it will be back to the emergency room for me if history repeats itself as it often does.


So, I'm looking forward to the summer Olympic games.  I think I'll concentrate on the equestrian sports this year, that way I won't have to get depressed and wish I was in better shape, and I won't have to go workout and hurt myself again.  I just have to figure out how I am going to set up jumps in my back yard for the new horse I am going to buy.  The family will like that (maybe my wife will give me back my silver medal).  I wonder if Shetland ponies can jump?

About Old Stuff?

I've come to the conclusion that I really like old shit. Well, I don't mean old 'shit', I mean old stuff.

I started shaving with a brush and shaving soap a few years ago. I think I got the idea from and old episode of Gunsmoke or something like that. I liked the way it looked and have used that shaving method ever since. I don't use a straight razor though, I guess I've seen to many slasher movies and don't want to cut my own throat.

I like oldies music, and some old television shows. I used to really like the old science fiction show Star Trek, but I have stopped watching it all the time because I found it frustrating. If the old series is about the new future I decided it wasn't worth the grief.

I also used to belong to a history book club, but I stopped taking those books as well. I probably would have stayed with them if they had charged old prices for books about old stuff, but when I wrote them and suggested it they ignored me, so I stopped the subscription.

I don't like old food. Apparently everyone decided they don't like that because they started to put dates on stuff so you would know it was old. I suppose that's so you don't get food poisoning or something like that. I guess that's a good idea, putting dates on food that is. If they had done that a few hundred years ago or so maybe there would have been no bubonic plague outbreak. The plague was evidently caused by rats, or the fleas on them. I don't know if rat was on the menu in those days, but if it was it's probably one of the reasons we have warnings on our food. If people still eat rat today you have to wonder what the warning says on the package. It's probably something like 'WARNING, if you eat this rat after its expiration date you might get the plague'

The funny thing about old stuff is that everything is old the second after you have used it, eaten it, opened it, watched it or put it on. Cars are old the minute you drive them off the new car lot which is a bad thing. Houses are old after you've lived in them for a while. If you've lived in a house for a long, long time (a hundred years or so) however, old is good. In fact, they put your house on a register to tell everyone that your house is very old and they make sure no one can tear it down and put up something new.

I guess thats the reason I like old stuff, it's tried and true, unless it has an expiration date, then it's just old, and it might give you the plague.

About Typing On The Phone?

Now for something a little more, serious. Our damn computer died last week, in the scheme of things I know that the computer dying is not high on the OMG list, but to me it really, really sucks.

For one thing I have to write this blog on my phone. I don't know about the rest of you but I don't have, how shall I say this, dainty fingers. That means the key pad on this iPhone, which was designed for very small fingered people which most likely do not exist in this world (no I'm not going to go to the UFO place again..but, never mind), requires constant attention or else I end up writing and publishing words like 'phono minster' or beadtyballsuckie, in any case the dreaded "no replacement found" pops up when I try to fix the word.

I find that very frustrating, which usually means I write words like 'stoopaville' when I really meant to write 'sanity' (actually wrote samity there but a replacement word came up), or looser luscious when I meant to write 'losing Leena'. I don't know anyone named Leena, but it sounded like a good name and it worked here.

Besides the afore mentioned word problems my writings also looks like someone was murdered on the page. All kinds of things are underlined with little red squiggley lines. The only good thing about that is after so many red dots on a page you start to ignoreate them. I realize you won't see the little red murder dots so I thought I'd let you know that I know that you'll notice misspelled words.

Before any one suggests anything about rotating the phone to get a bigger keyboard, I tried it and yes, the key board was bigger, but the screen was smaller so I got confused and wrote a bunch of stuff that made no sense, kind of like this paragraph!

My daughter can type on her phone like it has a full sized keyboard! It's probably because she texts constantly and seldom uses the phone as an actual phone. I asked her if I could dictate some things to her while she typed but she just laughed and walked away typing something on her phone as she left.

Ian going to end thus now because I have nothing else to slay, play, nay, say! There, finally got it and it only took thirty inutes, oh forget it..

About UFO's etc?

Well, now I'm writing about UFO's! Some of you out there are going to think my writing has taken a distinct turn for the worse, not just in form but in subject matter, and some of you are going to think finally, someone is going to write the truth about extra terrestrial beings visiting our planet. And if the truth be told, most of you are going to think 'who gives a shit if this guy thinks there are little green beings (notice I did not say little green men, your welcome ladies for not leaving your gender out of the discussion as so many others have) and what the hell does he know about it any way?'

Therein lies the conundrum. Either you believe UFO's and all their trappings exist, you don't believe in any of it, and you probably don't believe in Bigfoot either, yeah right. Or you simply don't give a shit. And if you fall into the last category, I would be willing to bet that you don't believe in the Loch Ness monster either.

I for one, have decided that I am going to start believing in all of it. Let's face it ,it's much easier and kind of fun! I don't have to argue with people like former astronauts that say they saw flying saucers when they were in space, what they were doing looking for flying saucers when they should have been working I don't know, and I don't need to argue with any Scottish people who say they've seen the Loch Ness monster while they were out sun bathing on the beach next to the Loch (like Scotland ever sees the sun, who has ever seen a tan Scottish person?)

Now arguing with someone who claims to have seen Bigfoot (and who didn't have their cell phone with them so they could take a picture) is a little harder. After all, everyone knows that Bigfoot has been roaming the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest for centuries. Native Americans have drawn pictures of it and passed down a verbal history of contact with it. There are foot prints, hair, sound recordings of it screaming (always recorded in the middle of the night, I'm am not going to suggest the obvious about screaming in the middle of the night, my wife told me not to go there). The only thing we don't have, besides an actual, living (or dead) creature, is a picture. After all, evidently Sasquatch (that's the native American name for Bigfoot, they have much cooler names for stuff) investigators don't go into the woods with a cell phone or a camera so there is no reason to believe that when their investigation has brought them face to face with the big hairy guy, or girl, or when they're recording them screaming in the middle of the night (hmmmmmm) they are evidently in such shock it's unthinkable that they would have a camera with them so they could take a picture that didn't look like a blurry photo of something strange hiding behind a tree.

I mean it could be Sasquatch I guess, or it could be a little green being from another world (standing behind their little green UFO that's shaped like a tree), or a big kid, or even the Loch Ness monster (on vacation in the Pacific Northwest visiting family) or it could be well, just about any thing, or absolutely nothing.

I suppose that's the point. People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe. Some hide from the light and some embrace it. What does this have to do with UFO's? Absolutely nothing, I'm just trying to throw all you women out there off the track after suggesting you may be from another planet.

With that being said, there is no reason to believe that I am going to suffer somehow for making any real or imagined suggestion that women, aliens, the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot should all be lumped into the same category. I am going to stop writing now for obvious reasons.