All My Little Words

When I was a kid, I think I was pretty well behaved until I was about 3. At that point, perhaps I became a little more…
self aware, perhaps? Because for some reason, at that point, I guess I started testing the waters to see what I could get away with.

As I had mentioned in the other post about spanking, when I was a kid, all kids knew that if you did something bad, you’d get a spanking.
It was definitely the norm back then, although I think the tide was just starting to turn, as I think I thought that I would NOT
get one, simply because I hadn’t ever before. I was really probably just too young for one, or too young to have done anything to
“deserve” one.
I “got away with” stuff for probably about a year before my parents must have realized that reasoning with me was not working.
They told me not to do stuff and why and it went right in one ear and out the other, I guess.

One day when my dad wasn’t home, I was hanging out in the kitchen while my mom had something going on the stove, maybe hard-boiled eggs or something because she left the room with the pot still on. The cookie jar (which I had been warned repeatedly to NOT get into for a number of reasons) was on a shelf above the stove, probably to make it inaccessible to me. I had also been warned to stay AWAY from the stove, ALWAYS, because it could be hot and I could get burned. I saw my opportunity though,
and dragged a chair over and reached OVER a hot stove with a pot of boiling water on it to get that cookie jar, and in the process,
the jar fell and broke.
Of course, I was caught. But I wasn’t worried, because I knew I would just get a talking to, which I did, from my mom.
Then my dad came home, and I didn’t think anything of it when they went to talk in the other room. Then my dad sat me down to give me a talking to, which again, went right in one ear and out the other. Until he flipped me around and started spanking me.
It didn’t hurt, but I was shocked. I did not know what to do at first, but then it occurred to me that I’d heard that kids cry
when they got spanked, so I started crying. I think I wanted it to stop because it made me realize that I was bad. And I didn’t want
to be bad anymore. No one wants to be bad at that age.
So I started to cry and my dad stopped, and then he hugged me and I could see that he felt bad. My mom felt bad. I felt bad for
making them feel bad. But that was the end of that, and I knew now that I could get a spanking if I did wrong. I still did a few things
that I shouldn’t have over the next year, and I got a couple more spankings, but after only one or two more, I stopped doing stuff I
had been told not to.

But I didn’t stop getting into trouble. I think things were fine until I was about 6. I was well behaved, now understanding the
consequences of my actions. I didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, and in fact I made really sure to not do anything
accidentally wrong either.
One night my parents had a party, and I guess they decided that I was well enough behaved that I could just stay in their room
and sit on their waterbed and watch the little tv in there. All fine with me, the waterbed was fun, and I had stuffed animals.
After a couple of hours, I must have gotten bored. My mom had a bunch of posters push-pinned into the walls which I was fascinated
by, so I stood on the bed to take a closer look. I don’t know if I was bouncing and screwing around, or if the bed was just sloshy,
but I must have knocked one of the pins out of the wall. I didn’t even realize it. AT ALL. The poster was over the bed, so the tack
probably landing right on it, and then as I squooshed around on there, it probably bounced and rolled to edge, where it fell
between the mattress and the frame, and poked a hole in the mattress. But it would have been a tiny hole, and I was a tiny kid,
so hours passed with no visible evidence. It probably wasn’t until my parent’s much heavier combined weight was on the bed hours later that it really started to gush.

And my dad got really pissed. And he yelled, and it scared the everloving shit out of me, even though I didn’t even know what had happened until he started yelling at me about how horrible I was for puncturing the bed, and on and on and on.
This was WAY WAY WAY worse than getting spanked, and I hadn’t even done anything. (not intentionally anyway, or that I was aware of.)

I must have been too old to be spanked at that point, so instead, I was grounded. For 6 months. No friends, no tv, no dessert.
That was a billion times worse than the spanking that only lasted a few seconds. Even worse was the fact that my dad didn’t believe
that I didn’t do it on purpose. Even worse than that was the fact that after that, I don’t think he trusted me at all.
Because I didn’t intentionally go against my parents for years, but there were a few more times when I accidentally broke things
(things I was allowed to touch or whatever) that I again got the yelling, and even worse, the long term grounding.
This continued until I was a teenager, and I was accused of increasingly more and worse deeds over the years, and I
probably spent half of every year for the next 8 years being grounded. No wonder I became socially stunted, overly shy,
self conscious and overweight.

So, I guess, in short, spanking worked to straighten out my behavior, but I also got to experience the other side of the disciplinary
coin. I’m not saying that anyone would advocate verbal abuse in any case, as an alternative to spanking or not, but I think
even in the cases in which I was wrongfully accused, I would have taken the spanking over the verbal abuse and grounding.
When I was spanked, I felt like I had hurt my parent’s feelings and it made me feel remorseful.
When we moved on to the groundings and yelling, I didn’t feel like my parents had hurt feelings – I felt like they were angry and
wanted to hurt MY feelings. The pain on my butt would have faded long before the pain in my heart would have, as it obviously
still exists.
Again, I’m not trying to say that no one out there has a better disciplinary plan than verbal abuse or spanking – I’m sure many of you
do. My only point is that, in my case, the spanking wasn’t that bad.
And if I knew anyone today who was whaling on their kid on a daily basis, or for shit they didn’t deserve, or was actually
doing any sort of lasting damage (physical or mental) I would be sure to do something about it.

After successfully cleaning up my Xmas mess in the attic yesterday, I decided it was time to attack my “paperwork nightmare” that has ended up in the dining room. That would not have worked out well for Thanksgiving.

There are so many reasons why no one in their right mind would want to tackle sorting and filing and storing 5 years worth of old bills and receipts that I didn’t even realize what the real reasons were until I was in the middle of it.

Then I came across all the old leases and moving out documents for the last several rentals I/we lived in before buying our house. I came across the lists of things that were “wrong” upon moveout, my copies of letters I wrote stating why I shouldn’t have to pay for this or that. I was a good tenant. I was responsible, paid my rent on time EVERY time, I didn’t trach any of the places that I lived or otherwise violate any of my lease terms. yet somehow, I ended up getting screwed by people who had acted sweet as pie and like we were friends for the most part while I was still living there.
The lady who made me pay hundreds of dollars to replace a 15 year old carpet, and wasn’t buying it when I told her that Landlord/Tenant says I only have to pay for the life LEFT in the carpet, not an amount equal to the total value.
The people who charged me for painting the walls – just regular old in between tenant painting, NOT painting because I had painted weird colors and not painted back or because I had damaged the walls. The people who charged me something like $70 for a SHOWER CURTAIN. A shower curtain, people! Who spends $70 to replace a shower curtain when they are selling the house anyway? Especially when it didn’t need replacing? Someone who pockets the cash, that’s who. And all these people ran me through the wringer over the cleaning when the law says you only have to leave the place “broom clean”. Not “scrubbed with a toothbrush on your hands and knees clean”. Some of these places were cleaner when I left than when I moved in, YET I STILL DIDN’T GET MY FULL CLEANING DEPOSIT BACK. And they all got away with it because they all know it’s just too much work to go to small claims court over it.
So I was like, the world’s best tenant for nothing. #anotherreasontoownahouse

Then I came across all the paperwork for the only time I’ve left a job that they didn’t beg me not to go. Because I got fired.
It’s not like I never think about that whole fiasco, but you forget how bad it really was. I always tell people that I own my own business because it’s good to not have someone else just take half the money you make, but really, I did it because I was tire dof being treated like shit. I was at that job for a LONG FUCKING TIME. And again, I was a perfect employee, just like I was a perfect tenant. I always showed up, never late, called if I was, worked hard, did my job well, no one ever complained about me.
And as sometimes happens with growing businesses, the place went downhill over time, and when I expressed my concerns, I was treated like dogshit, rather than someone who cares about the place she works. I was somehow denied unemployment even though there were a lot of instances of sexual harassment.
So seeing all that stuff again was super hard. I found a few good memories in there too, but not many.

It took six long hours to go through a mountain of paper which I will probably never need unless I get rid of it. Thank bob for the attic so I won’t have to see it again until it is time to shred it all.

I awoke this morning at about 4 to a restless dog who would not settle down. As he continue to turn and turn and burrow and whatever, I woke up a little more and realized that I heard sirens in the distance. A LOT of sirens. But they weren’t close enough for me to bother getting up to investigate, and finally, I dozed back off a little.
After going through the daily “get Alex up” ritual, I dozed back off again, but reawakened, this time to a terrible smell. At first, I thought perhaps it was burning toast/er, or oven, but after a few minutes decided it was the heater, which had kicked on. After a couple more minutes, I got up to see what was up. I found Alex in the garage, investigating the disgusting smell, which smelled the burning hair mixed with melting plastic. He turned the furnace completely off, and I went back to bed, only to have dog get all barfy mere seconds later. I jumped back up, scooped him up and outside, where I discovered that the wretched stench was outside. The air was thick and smoky, and I realized that there must be a fire nearby. I could see an orange-ish glow in the air in the direction I’d heard sirens from.

It didn’t take long to discover what was burning, a couple of little restaurants and a coffee shop a few blocks away. None of the news websites had much info, but the good ole neighborhood blogs did.
I wanted to comment on the situation, but refrained as I have for the past couple of months or so.

Even though the blogs themselves are a great source of information, most of the people who leave comments are entitled assholes who are better than everyone else and LOVE to argue on teh internets. And we all know what THAT is like.

The Phinneywood blog isn’t as bad as the MyBallard blog, but as they are associated and there is some crossover, I just don’t bother saying anything on either one anymore.

So after I received yet another comment notification for an old comment thread that should have died months ago, and the comment response was just stupid, I decided I was going to delete my profile for the system and all of the comments. I certainly was not going to try to explain to some troll that they should probably read the entire comment before they reply, and that they should check their dates, and not make assumptions about how long I have lived here.
The comment system is thwarting my efforts, though. Even though it acts as if I am logged in in a lot of ways, it won’t let me delete the comments, much less the profile. I contacted the blog owners, and hopefully, it will all be gone soon.

Like so many other online communities I have attempted to participate in over time, this one also is just like high school. Filled with ignorance and selfishness, and cliques. I had hoped that this would be different since we all live in pretty much the same neighborhood, and affected by the news posted on the blog, but NO. I would almost say it is worse, because these are people you could run into at the grocery store. If I have something to say, I can say it here, in the privacy of my own interweb.

I have been saying this for AT LEAST 5 years!!!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_condoms_climate_change

I used to comment on a local blog quite a bit a couple of years ago, until the tone of some of the other comments on there changed enough to sour me on it and I stopped. I recently saw fit to comment again, and as it turned out, ended up finding a few posts to comment on over a few days.

In the time while I was busy not commenting, the owners of said blog had to install a new comment system to deal with all the trolls. I had kind of forgotten about how it works, especially since I didn’t see any reason why it would pertain to me personally, as I usually try to be pretty reasonable. So I had forgotten, until yesterday, that comments can “just disappear” if enough people don’t like them, I guess, as you can “vote” on them.

Yesterday, I posted a really innocuous comment about something. Later, I came back to read some more comments, and noticed that mine was gone. I figured I had screwed up the comment process, so I re-posted it. This morning, gone again. So, I can only guess that enough people voted against it that it disappeared. And that’s fine. Except that it really was innocuous. So, that’s it, again. Done with that. If I can’t post a simple statement on there, why bother wasting the time?

It has come loudly and clearly to my attention this week that MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO DRIVE.

Conversation in online forums in just the last week has proven that hardly anyone knows the rules of the road, and pretty much everyone should probably re-read a driver’s manual.

I certainly don’t expect everyone to know each and every little obscure rule, but don’t you think you should know the ones that come up regularly? For instance: One of these conversations was regarding how to deal with a right turn arrow, especially if you come upon one that is currently red. Now, I didn’t KNOW the rule when I read the question, as in, I couldn’t have quoted it to you exactly. But I knew at least, that when you come to one of these, you stop, and then you can turn right on that red arrow, UNLESS there is a sign saying that you cannot (and assuming there is no oncoming traffic and it is otherwise safe, of course.) The arrow is there to keep traffic flowing smoothly. In some intersections, the right hand lane can, at times, flow freely to the right while the other lanes in that direction need to be stopped to allow traffic from other directions to move unimpeded. These arrows turn red to let you know to STOP! and check for oncoming traffic before making a right turn. I knew that this was correct because common sense dictates that it is. If you know the other rules dictating red lights and stop signs and right turns, then you SHOULD be able to figure this one out.

I am terrified by the fact that not only do people not know a simple, every day rule like this, but also that they do not have the intuition to figure it out. Being a good driver is not all about knowing every single rule of the road. A good portion of what makes a good driver is good intuition, and knowing what to do in a situation where you are unsure at first.

Another conversation involved traffic circles, those horrid “traffic calming” measures that are installed in many residential intersections because too many people are too stupid to slow the fuck down on their own.

Logic dictates that one should only go around these things to the right, because when we drive, we stay to the right. Some say that you can go to the left if there is no oncoming traffic and it is otherwise safe to do so. I say that if that is the rule (and the way it is written is open to interpretation) you should only do it if you have to – in other words, if you are the garbage truck or school bus driver, and you don’t really have much choice. It is less safe to go to the left, and it makes no sense.

The other thing about driving is that it is one of the few things that everyone should try to in exactly the same way as everyone else. You can wear whatever clothes you want, or wear whatever hairstyle you wish, but everyone should drive the same way. In other words, we should all drive the speed limit, whether we agree with it or not, stay to the right unless passing or otherwise absolutely necessary, and go around the damn traffic circle in the same fucking direction. To do otherwise causes confusion. On the other hand, I am always prepared for people to drive way over the speed limit and ride my ass, and to drive all over the road, and whenever I come to one of those stupid circles, I fully expect there to be some idiot who doesn’t know how to get around it, or some entitled asshole who thinks it’s okay to go to the left because it is more efficient. It sure as hell isn’t going to be more efficient when you don’t see me, and you hit me and it is YOUR FAULT because you were Doing It Wrong.

Good lord, everyone is off their rocker today.

We’ve got:
People complaining about customer service in a hamburger joint!
(Yeah, the place is pricey, but I’ll bet you are not getting your ass kissed because it is a tiny little shop with a line out the door expecting to receive a gourmet burger);
People RIPPING APART another burger joint for NO reason!
(I have no idea what is going on with people’s palates these days – does no one have flavor receptors any more?!?);
People who do not understand that some places are not appropriate for children!
(Who WANTS to take their kids everywhere anyway? It is no fun to take your kids places that will bore them, and everyone should have some time for themselves.);
More people who think auto drivers are always at fault in car vs. bicycle accidents!
(Why can’t we all follow the rules? I can’t remember the last time I saw a cyclist stop for a stop sign. I personally would never dream of not stopping in my car, and I don’t jaywalk, either. I got a ticket it for it when I was 15. It made an impression!)

But no one wants to say a damn thing about the motorcycle accident that happened a month ago, or the recent article which states that the guys on the motorcycle had been drinking!
(Almost everyone wanted to blame the car in this one too, even though it should have been quite obvious from the information provided that the motorcycle HAD to be going way too fast. Of course no one wants to apologize for blaming the driver of the car now.)

Why do I care?
Honestly, sometimes, I do not know. I guess because I really would like to live in a world where people use some LOGIC. I don’t expect everyone to be nice to each other all the time, that is completely unreasonable.
Just realize, that maybe the person behind the burger counter isn’t kissing your ass because they are BUSY.
Maybe you can’t get a service done right now, because other people planned better than you did.
Not everyone is going to be able to accommodate you if you have children.
And maybe cyclists should stop for stop signs instead of rolling through even it is an inconvenience.

When we bought our house, we were staidly informed that it had “settled, due to known drainage issues”.
When we came to see it that fateful Sunday, the first thing I noticed was that it was noticeably crooked. I actually told the selling agent when she asked me for feedback about the house that it was probably the most noticeably crooked house we’d seen, (and there are a lot in this neighborhood) a fact which I do not believe she appreciated.
It was bad enough that I almost rejected the house for that reason only. But I loved everything else about it so much, I ultimately decided it didn’t matter.

Our house is crooked enough that every conversation we have about improvements we could do revolves around leveling the house.
We hadn’t lived here but a few months before I developed the theory that the “settling” is due to “known drainage issues” is bullshit. For one thing, even though we have since seen pictures of the front yard being so badly flooded that you practically needed a boat to get to the front door, when we had the inspection, it was dry under the house. Like, drydry, and if there really was that much of a drainage problem, it would probably be permadamp under there, especially after that wet, floody winter, and because last summer was a cool, rainy summer.
Also, we live right in the middle of a bog in which the giant peat layer that lies in the middle of the whole thing has been radically depleted of moisture due to development diverting ground water, which has caused that layer to compress like a dried up sponge. After I read the details of the issues with the bog, I began to believe that that was where the problem lies. Either the former owners and their inspector really didn’t know about the issues with the bog, or they covered up a permanent problem that no one can do anything about with a reparable problem that they supposedly had already fixed by pouring a new concrete with drains and a double sump pump.

But the more we talk about things that we could/should do and the more I look around the house, and at the way some thing are, I think part of the problem may be that janky “remodeling” I’ve been talking about. Some of the crookedness may be due to settling, as the floor is definitely sloped, but supposedly the foundation of the house is fine. We have decided to remove our fireplace, as it it seems like a lot of heavy brick dragging down that side of the house. It’s also right where we like the tv (which is parked in front of it right now, in fact) and is made of really ugly brick. And since we started talking about, the more I look at it, the more I notice things which make me think that either someone added the fireplace after the house was built, or at some point in time it was made larger. I also do not think the front door or the giant picture window that takes up most of the front wall of the house are original. The front door is in a really awkward spot, and appears to be crooked in the opposite direction of the rest of the crookedness, which makes me think someone put it in after some of crooked happened, and tried to compensate somehow. I noticed the other day that the edges of the giant window look odd, as if someone who didn’t know what they were really doing cut a raggedy hole in the wall and patched it badly after adding that stupid window.
To top it all off, I do not think the large doorway leading from the living room to the kitchen is original either. I think there used to be a regular, old single-sized door  or doorway, and someone had what really is the most brilliant of all these half-baked ideas, to open up this whole side of the house.

It really is lovely that the house is pretty open from front to back because of this, but I have to wonder if cutting that giant hole in that wall is also a contributing factor. Because three out of four walls of our fairly large living room may have been signifigantly weakened, I wonder of the weight of the upstairs could be bearing down enough the cause the floor to drop as well.

Add on to alllll this the fact that I think the heavy, heavy chunk of concrete that is our front steps was added at some point (and may actually be pulling the wall away from the foundation, which could allow the floor to drop?) and there is heavy brick on the front of the house as well, I really kind of think that the “settling” is due to stupid people slowly but surely ruining what is now my house.

The good news is that, if I am correct, jacking up and re-stabilizing the house will fix all of our issues just as nicely, if not more so, than having piers installed. That’s got to mean we will save tons of money to fix it.

Let the work begin.

There is a grocery store a few blocks from our house which is convenient mostly because of its proximity. I walk past it on the way home from work, so I often stop in and grab things we need for dinner. Or if we are out of milk, it only takes a few minutes to get more. Sage likes to walk there and get little somethings for himself, or he walk and get things for me. They have great wine and cheese sections, and its about the only grocery store around where I will just stop in to buy a filet mignon. And that, my friends is where its usefulness ends. It’s a full size grocery, but nowhere near a new one, so it is full-sized by 1986 standards. Which is fine, but there’s no deli, no bakery, and it is small enough that they just can’t stock in enough bulk to be inexpensive. So unfortunately, I don’t do my major, full on shopping there.

Instead, I drive over to Safeway once a week, or once a month and load up on lots of cheap stuff. Tons of yogurt on sale, cases of soda, bags of canned goods and pasta and rice, enough frozen goods to fill a full size freezer so that I don’t have to go out and shop all the time and we always have something to eat. If I were a single person, I’m sure I’d only shop at the market on the corner. On my own, I rarely cook, and can barely be bothered to eat at all. Even if I were to stop to get something for just myself every day, it would only take a few minutes, and it wouldn’t take any time to prep at home.

When you are feeding other people, you come home from work and you cook. It is the sane, responsible thing to do. I don’t want to take the extra time to stop at the store for all the things needed for a full meal, I want it to just be there, so I can just get started and get it over with. Hence the monthly shopping, which even at a lower priced grocery, can be $200. That’s why I won’t do that monthly shop at the store on the corner, I’m sure the exact same things would be more like $300.

There is a plan in place right now to redevelop the site, and rebuild the neighboring Fred Meyer to include groceries. The smaller grocery is losing its lease and would no longer be present. I would welcome this change, as I used to close to a full sized Fred meyer with groceries, and it was great. I won’t drive over there just to go grocery shopping now, but would it be awesome to have one a few blocks from my house, rather than the crappy, run down FM that has been there for 20+ years? HELLS YES IT WOULD.

So I have been pretty excited about this, even though it won’t be done for 4 years. IF, that is, my neighbors don’t whine and cry so much that it never gets done, that is. For whatever reason, a bunch of people are so attached to the corner market (and I like it too, for certain things, but practically will always win with me) that their lives will be RUINED if that store is no longer there.

They are super pissed at FM for “driving them out”, and have been battling the developers plans left and right. I am not a big proponent of development, as it often involves tearing down perfectly good houses and buildings for no other reason than to cram more shit into one space to make more money. In this case though, you’ve got one little grocery store that badly needs upgrading, and one crappy old department store parked on about 5 acres of unecessary parking lot that never gets used. All of it is ugly.

My neighborhood is also an environmentally sensitive area. I live on a bog. Development in the area in the past has diverted groundwater, as have large amounts of pavement, causing the peat layer in our bog to dry up and shrink, and in some cases, our houses to “settle”, mostly unevenly. We have too much pavement at our house, and plan to remove close to half of our extra large driveway, as we do not need it and pavement in our area is bad news. Our neighbors plan to do the same. Another recent development close to the Fred Meyer site was required to use pervious surfaces and take measures to not divert groundwater and further fuck up the bog. The current FM site was built long before anyone realized that there could be problems of this nature, and I’m sure the acres of pavement that have been there for however long are not helping the area. I can’t imagine that the developers will be allowed to not follow the same kind of rules that were put in place for the other new development, so I can only see redeveloping this spot as being good for our local environment.

But no one is thinking about that. Everyone just wants to whine about big corporations, and how they won’t give their grocery money to Kroger. I’ll bet they already do though, every time their kids need school clothes or they need something for the garden. They just don’t want to give them their grocery dollars.

No one will answer the question of what will happen to this site if the redevelopment is blocked. I don’t think anyone cares. They just want to whine about it. I’d just ignore it, but I am interested in how the project is going. Every time I read about it, there is accompanying whining.

On Saturday, I found out that a friend of mine recently lost her husband in a freak accident. They are young, it wasn’t an illness, I think she probably just got a random “Hey, so sorry, but your husband is dead” call one day. Can you imagine?
THAT is the kind of shit that ruins your life, not whether or not you will get to shop at your local corner grocery anymore.

People really need to get a grip.

This week started off fairly normally, and then BAM. Swine flu breaks out.

I will be the first to admit that I am somewhat paranoid about it. Who wants to get the fucking flu, whether it kills you or not? Don’t get me wrong, it would probably be better to get it now and get it over with, and I would certainly welcome a week off of work. HOWEVER. That faint possibility of DEATH BY FLU keeps me cautious.

On Monday, there were very few confirmed cases in the U.S. – I still decided that I was going to stock up on non-perishable food, and on Tuesday I did just that. Having no idea how quickly things would accelerate, I only filled one bin with food and drinks.

By the following evening, WHO had raised their pandemic threat level to 5 – the second highest. It still stands at that level two days later, but yesterday, I made sure we had enough pet supplies (dog and cat food, kitty litter) for a bit anyway, and then I stocked up on Theraflu and cough syrup, ibuprofin, Powerade, Emergen-C and Echincae, and something I have never purchased before. Hand Sanitizer. I got a little one for each of us, and one big one. Two bags of flu prevention and treatment = $90. Totally worth it, even if it was totally unnecessary. And I’m thinking another trip to the grocery store is in order, due to the fact that on Tuesday, there were no cases of flu here, but as of today 6 schools are closed, due to probable cases.

I got the flu supplies in case people panic, and stores run out, and also if we get sick, who wants to go to the store? I want to have more food for pretty much the same reasons.

I think we are still keeping a date to hang out with friends tonight, but that might be the end of socializing for a bit. Do we really need to go pub crawling Saturday?

This morning, someone who was supposed to come in called because they were sick. I’m glad he called rather than just showing up, especially since he seemed to want to come anyway, but knew deep down he shouldn’t. I tried to get him to make the choice to re-schedule on his own, but ended up having to tell him that I couldn’t let him come in and end up being responsible for more people getting sick.

So here I sit, wondering if my throat is a tiny bit scratchy, or if I’m imagining it. Is my nose a little runny because of the flu, or just allergies? There was a person in here the other day who had a sick child at home. Not necessarily with the flu, but he threw up. In kids, that is usually a sign. So did she come in here crawling with germs and get me sick?

It sounds weird, but I have been wiping everything down with Clorox wipes before I will touch anything in here.That may seem OCD, but I honestly think too many people are taking this way too lightly. It is way too inconvenient for people to stay home, and many of them scoff at “OCD” hand washing. I have always washed my hands a lot anyway – they always have sticky hair products and hair on them, and I like the feel of neither.

While I am taking all of these precautions to not get the flu, part of me almost wishes that I would, just so I can tell all the naysayers that they were wrong, wrong, wrong. This is one case where I do not wish to be right, but I am really tired of people not only being ignorant, but choosing to be so, by ignoring even the possibility, by making a big deal of not even peeking at the internet, or looking at the news on television. Knowledge is power, people.