Poor baby to Jolana for sure!
Jim

Amen, bossjim -----

I hate,hate,hate cold. Why? I lose circulation in my hands and feet. (It's a wierd but only annoying disorder called Reynaulds Syndrome.) Living here it's no big deal. Living where it's cold I run a real risk of frostbite. I can barely drive in rain and I cannot drive in snow,tires or not! It makes my nose run and I'm too cold to tell so I've got icky face and don't know it(like a 3yr old). Winters are longer and you can't grow marginal plants like Lady Bank's Roses,Hardy Hibiscus,Mexican BOP,Cannas,Esperanza and quite a few other plants I love.
I'm a bit on the lighter side so I get cold easily. I hate wearing a lot of clothes(especially heavy winter coats!) and bulky shoes weigh me down. Hat hair sucks.
Vitamin D darn it! :^) PJ

Poor Jolana that is awful to feel bad.
PJ, Poor girl nothing worse then icky 3 year old nose on a 30 something lady, I hate being cold too it hurts my body, makes me real achy.
Well, I cost 182.00 bucks to fix the dryer I could have bought a new one for not much more but this ones only 4 years old and should not have broken down. Guess this was my 4th anniversary gift LOL (one repaired dryer) thanks honey LOL
HEY, I could have bought a WHOLE BUNCH of plants for that amount now I'm really going to WHINE POUT SCREAM AND SHOUT.

I forgot! I'm with Jolana. Sometimes the cure is almost as bad as the disease. (((Jolana)))).
I do feel sorry for the people that are baking too.
Barb, that's just wrong.
Laundrymats are a pain in the behind.PJ

The Astros! The team has qualified its name to be used as an obscenity, to be exclaimed in frustration by baseball fans in Texas and elsewhere.

They have at least two future Hall-of-Famers in their everyday lineup - three on some days, depending on who's pitching. And still they fail to win above .500. They'd be under .300 if just one of those great guys went missing.

It took them 44 years to (barely) make it to their first World Series. They were promptly swept four straight games. At this rate it'll be 440 years before they go again. Maybe they'll win at least one game then.

And while I'm whining about the Astros, playoffs. NO team that wins barely 50 percent or fewer of its games deserves to extend its season, fatten its payroll, and remain eligible for a late surge to any championship, ever. Period. Related whine: college bowl games.

Hugo Chavez! (Another obscenity.) But no: I won't go there. I refuse to allow anyone like "Heaven-Sent Hugo" to cause me to let myself dwell on anger and bitterness. I'll content myself to getting in line at a polling place and waiting to vote, to give vent to those.

Other than those, the usual - nutsedge, skeeters, and loud "music" that's predominantly percussion punctuated by angry obscenities and other utterances resembling a language, celebrating anarchy, vices, violence, lack of individual self-control, and general libertine laziness. "Big city cool." Noble and sensible as a farmer who tortures his plow-horse or a cat who drinks its own pee.

I know nothing about pro sports. It's on purpose. I came recently from LA,Ca so the only team I am really aware of is the Dodgers. My mom's husband is a baseball fiend so we even had a dog named Dodger at one point. This dog was a really stupid Cocker Spaniel. Who says coincidences don't happen? Anyway, the few times I went to see a game I remember a lot of grown men in tights spitting,scratching themselves (in ways that would get most people arrested),meandering around with a few seconds of actual play at with any enthusiasm at all. Heck, I saw more action when they were tossing the ball around warming up!Oh yeah, after the few moments of play they all whacked eachother on the butt.I've been told,"You just don't GET it" and I agree.I don't get it.
Obscene "music". I heard a lot of that in my old neighborhood. It sucked. I must say it didn't do much for the locals. They frequently looked 20yrs older than they were,spent their entire lives in violent,abusive relationships with the majority of their family members and had a rotating shift going between county hospital and jail/prison. If I had a nickle for every girl who thought they were "Big city cool" with a blackened eye and healing cuts/cracked ribs/ and that lovely "sucked up" look going I wouldn't worry about money anymore. PJ

Morning, PJ! You gave me a good chuckle to start my day. I hope you know I understand, baseball ain't for everyone. And "not getting it" be it about baseball or some form of "music" can be a blessing not a curse.

I think I woke up angry yesterday. Sorry if I got this thread off the track of whining. I was VENTING, not whining.

Now, here is a REAL whine: rainy weekends! For too many of us, we can barely squeeze in time to water or do minor pruning at dawn or at dusk, Monday through Friday. So we gardening nuts literally jump out of bed at dawn on Saturday. If our clients saw us they would marvel at our energy and realize how we save-up by underperforming all week. But our Saturday a.m. excitement gets drowned within seconds of awakening, when we hear thunder or patter of rain - or see splashes blinding our view through a screen, or little rivers and puddles out in the street. Why, oh why, do our gardening schedules HAVE to be messed up SO often by precious RAIN?!

In my case, Plan B is watching football on TV.
PJ, like you with baseball, except for the general, vicarious social thrill of competing on a team, I don't get it - but I watch it anyway.

Well, my dryer quit, and I had to fix it. Because it was on account of a pair of drawers went down the lint thingy that caused it, and I didn't want to listen to DH gripe about it.

It is going to get cold soon. I would rather be hot as h*ll than cold! I cannot abide the cold. I lived all over the world, some of it cold, some of it hot. Hot is better.

I finally figured out that I can pay the high price for high speed ISP AND save $100.00 a month, and call to make arrangements to pay my Internet bill for ONE month, instead of SIX months-----and they tell me I have already paid the SIX months and they have a NO-RETURN POLICY! So, it is going to cost a little bit more to get the high speed stuff. I don't care.

I don't like that stinkin' Chavez either. Jerk!

And that other guy, the one who can't even be bothered to put on a tie when he addresses the UN Assembly. Also a Jerk!

I think the DD is doing some better, as she is perky one day, and then I don't hear from her for days and days, and when I do, she just scares me to death! I want her to be perky all the time.

DGD has turned into a 'regular' teenage girl. Groan.

I let the dogs out the other morning and when I let them back in, there was a huge dead possum on my back porch. I told DH he would have to do something about it, and he said something naughty, and how could the dogs have killed a possum, they live in a fenced yard, and the possum probably wasn't dead at all. Just playing possum.
Well, I just told him that the dogs didn't do it, because this possum didn't have a head, and I was sure it was dead.

And yes, it was definitely a possum.

Spooooooooooo.......he walked by that door on his way to shave his scratchy face, and opened it to look at the possum, and it was gone. He is still saying that I am senile.

What did that cat do with that possum? I bet it is under my house. Good Grief!

Janie

Janie, Ewwww... stinky dead animal under the house. I really hope you're wrong!I'll bet you do too!
stiches, I think there might be a secret chromosome forcing you to watch baseball. It's probably in the shape of a "Y". :^) PJ

DH is in the dog house for being tossed from aol, he uninstalled aol trying to fix the problem so now I've lost all the information I had on my plants. BIG WHINE

Ok.....I absolutely despise professional sports. They are a huge waste of time and money at every level of society. The only people who benefit, are the players and owners......and of course the advertisers who are provided with the opportunity to bombard us with more and more advertising, until we become brain dead.

Other sports are probably almost as bad. If more people gardened, rather than sitting around getting fat on beer and hot dogs, in ball stadiums, we would have both a greener, prettier world, and a much healthier and physically fit population.

Bless your sweet heart, Jolana. Stay strong!

Last Thursday, I stumbled into the bathroom around 4am to find it ankle deep in water. It was pouring from the bottom of the hot water heater! The bedroom carpets on either side of the bathroom were drenched and water was coming from under the wall of shelves in the library.
We finally got all the repairs finished this weekend. WooHoo...loved those icy showers!

The biggest gripe is my daughter, Elizabeth. She moves in and out every couple of weeks. I get this call, "Mom, so&so hit me/stole my whatever/threw me out. Can I come home?" She won't call the police, she won't use self-defense or common sense. Why should she? Momma-bear always comes to the rescue. Saturday morning she went back to the loser of the moment without the option of returning home. We can't do anything except hope she survives.

Barb, I hope the injections work for you. The first one worked well for me but the rest were a waste. Regardless of what the doctors say, expect to gain weight. Constant pain is an incredible drain. I promise, yoga does help!

back to the heat gripe. I have my thermostat set at 82 all day 79 at night why is my light bill so outrageous. I was complaining to my neighbor and she said hers was 500 thats dollars! and her moms was 600. I won't tell you what mine was I feel like there is some crime being committed here don't know what kind but it feels wrong. And ALSO, I HATE!!! mosquitos. they bite right through my jeans, they get me in my scalp, in my ears, everywhere. And whats up with those little black ants that run all over the place they don't bite but they are everywhere. They are even living in my car. I am soooo tired of shredding junk mail for fear of having my identity stolen, I hate junk mail I hate junkmail, I hate junkmail!!!I get buckets full every week. next.

The heat - I hate hate this damn heat. I hate nutgrass with a passion and am sick of trying to get rid of it. I hate water restrictions and neighbors who have their sprinkler systems come on late a night to get around those restrictions. It's not fair. Son got shipped to Irag last month. Calls me and I hear gunfire in the background. DIL is being a witch and haven't seen the grandkids since the son deployed. They are too busy. Well, I'm pretty darn busy too. Fybromyaliga and lupus are taking their toll - some good days, some bad. Husband doesn't seem to get it. He's a jerk sometimes. Dog cam into heat early - before her spay appointment and she had to live in the garage for 2-1/2 weeks. What a pain in my a$$.

Jac, it's got to be so hard to watch your child learn in the most difficult way ever found on Earth. I'd be so frustrated!I hope she makes it through this hard headed time with a shot at recovery too.
pepa, my elderly neighbor on a limited income has 3 grown people and a grandaughter living with her.(50yr old son,his 40yr old wife, a grown daughter with a young child.)Her bill was 300 bucks! Good thing everyone is employed. Mine was 200.00. I must say in the Mojave Desert,Ca the 5th hottest,driest place on Earth my bill never exceeded 100.00. Not only was it hotter than the d*mn sun,it was also in Los Angeles County.LA county is famous for high utilities. I'm not so sure it's not just as expensive to live here as in Los Angeles frankly. Buying a house maybe but that's finding a big down payment. With the property tax the morgage isn't that different. Unfortunatly, the pay here doesn't come close to what you can make there.I'm a bit dissappointed about that.TX Utilities/ taxes are amazingly high.PJ

Okay, my turn - exercise!! I know exercise is good for you, you'll be healthier for it, you look better, feel better, blah, blah, blah. BUT I HATE, LOATHE and DESPISE EXERCISE!! I just HATE it!! I hate everything about it and I hate that it's necessary!! Why oh why can't couch potatoes be the healthiest of the healthy?? Then, I could quit this drudgery and fit right in!!

OH! let me let me!
The punks next door have a new group, even worse than the last, this group makes threats. Called police, officer rude, obnoxious and sided with THEM, called me a liar, then backed off when my neighbor backed me up. OUt in the alley until 10:30, 10:40 at night, yelling, cursing, throwing rocks at the dogs and cigarettes in the yard. Made threats against my 88 yo neighbor. Officer, oh, well, people can say whatever they want!!

THEN! WORK, I've posted on exchanges for a new job. One of our employees went and complained that this was a hostile work environment. Human resourses came down on us this month.
The TV is gone, gotta call the boss if there is a disaster so we can find out what the world knows.
The phone is gone, clock in and out in the front office only.
We can't use the door!! Yes, we can NOT use the door that goes into our office, gotta come through the front door, which is locked at night and in the evenings and weekends. I don't have a key. If we open the backdoor they will put an alarm on it! We can't buy calculators but we can afford an alarm.
We now have to come to work either a half hour early or a half hour late, for lunch. The cafeteria is 5 blocks away. You can't get there and back in 1/2 hour. Of course we can "walk around" on our "break". I work off of Harborside. So I get to walk around in the dead of night on a busy road with no lighting and no security. We don't have a break room so we have to eat at our desks, or I guess out there in the road.
We are now on 8 hour shifts. Maybe today you work 07-3:30 and tomorrow from 5:00 pm to 1:30 am!! You may even get to work 9 days in A ROW!! Be glad you don't work for pharmacy is what we were told, we DO work for pharmacy.
We've had 4 schedules in 3 days, still wrong and if the "holes" aren't filled, they will randomly assign one of us to work. We can't sign up for them and we are not allowed to have overtime. So they will assign us an extra day and we just get regular pay. In theory that could put you working 10 days in a row!! Or even more. They put M on 10 straight night shifts! Several days there is only 1 person working!! Supposed to be 4 per shift.
We were told at least 10 times that our shift would be 15 minutes early, and 15 minutes late. When the 3rd schedule came out that had changed, either 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after, noone told us or sent us an e-mail about that.

New chairs, promised for 2 years, they'll be here THIS week. Or maybe not. The chairs we have are 5 years old, they are torn, broken and man are they uncomfortable.

All this and I get to pay to park 3 blocks away.
Tally HO!

GRRRRR! Beachplant! Quit that d*mned job! Those people are nuts!

Poor baby. Poor baby, all.

Janie

Beachplant,I thought you were an RN?PJ

Yep, work in poison control. Still no takers on the exchange for the job. I've got some great plants, really!
I may just go back to ICU. Or the clinic. Nuts don't even begin to explain these people. At least I could make a pie with nuts!!!
So I'm actively job hunting. I HATE to job hunt. Not that it's a big deal in my profession, you just kind of show up & get hired but it's a pain anyway. So I'm just gonna hang out and keep my ears open. When I find a job I want I'll get the heck out of dodge. Too bad cause I kinda like this one. Lots of nuts with phones out there! And real stuff like snake bites too.
Tally Ho!

Tally, my Sister in law went thru a similar situation in Abilene at Hendricks. First they started taking time away (hurt their pay) then telling them they couldn't do their jobs properly (because less time) then started hacking away at benefits,(they are past middle agae and need them more now)
THEN on her 30th anniversary of working there, to the day, she was called in and laid off

UTMB has been laying off people but they say it's over. We are already short and are funded by the state so probably safe from that. I don't like 8 hour shifts and I'm waaaaay too old to work 9 days in a row!! And we don't get overtime! So if they "assign" you a day, it might make you work 10 in a row and for straight pay.
I'm not happy about this!
Tally HO!

Geeee....I wonder why there is a nursing shortage????.....(big eye,dumb blonde look) I had an RN trying to talk me into going into nursing. I looked her dead in her eye and said,"And find myself caught between a lying,shiftless no-account HMO and some clueless *ssh*les who think they're God? No WAY!!!!" She had nothing to argue with. It was sad. PJ

I ref'ed 7 soccer games today, why did today have to be the hottest day this month? My dogs are barking! I have four games to ref tomorrow. My wife is quick to remind me that I volunteered to do ref this weekend... I am off to hide her sewing machine now...

Joe

I am tired of feeling tired. At 9:00 am and pm I have to do the nebulizer to open broncul (?) tubes and then do the inhaled antibotic (20 minutes of foul tasting s--t). Then at 3:00 pm the nurse comes to hook up the IV infusion antibotic, which takes 1 1/2 hours.
I can't get out in the garden because the developer who cut the trees is now grinding up all the dirt and rocks. They do that from day break to sundown. I guess I could get some masks, hadn't thought of that until now.

Yup. That's why there are sooooo many people interested in the nursing field. Such a great place to work.

Can anyone say "dirty jobs"?

"I am off to hide her sewing machine now... "

uh.

Zitro Joe.

Earth Calling Zitro Joe.

Are you still alive?

He's dead! Should've know better...LOL!PJ

People fighting to get into nursing school!! We have the highest recidivisss however you spell it!, rate of any profession. AND MALE nurse quit even faster. Like 21% quit the first year they are a nurse! I don't think the dirty jobs dude would even do our job. I've been kicked, hit, pinched, had stuff thrown at me, been bitten, had feces literally dripping from my hair, had more urine on me then the mom of twin boys, washed blood out of my hair more times then I can count...
We also have the highest injury rate of ANY profession.
I can't imagine why PJ wouldn't want to join us. It's soooo much fun. And then on top of the lousy hours, awful pay, horrid working conditions... our bosses are fond of saying things like "if you don't like it you can leave" OR my personal favorite "We don't need you, you need us". That's why I worked agency for years, lots of $$ for "We don't need you". Yeah, well, you can pay the agency $75.00 per hour to not need me!
BAH!
Though I do have a few leads on new jobs! Maybe in the clinic. Monday to Friday, no nights, no weekends, no holidays....
Tally HO!
PS, is THAT whiny enough? Or do you want to hear about the times I've worked on Christmas? Or how many times I HAVE NOT seen fireworks on the fourth? Or fell asleep still wearing my scrubs with a stethoscope around my neck? Or had an entire pan of instruments thrown at me by a surgeon who was mad because HE made a mistake?

I worked as a nurse's aide fresh out of high school. I was a good nurse's aide.The most useful thing I've ever used in nursing was Hapkido(Judo). I could tranfer or restrain a confused,fighting patient without harming either of us. It's all about body mechanics. I think they should offer Tai Chi,Hapkido,Judo or any other body mechanics based program to ALL medical personal. I saw every kind of nurse Aide to RN tweaking the hell outta their body trying to help keep a patient from taking them out or hurting themselves! In fact, I have had to order nurses and Dr's aside to control my Autistic son for medical procedures he didn't understand. Shots and the like. I allowed them to tell me I couldn't retrain him once or twice to show them that they couldn't restrain him with extra help from an aide. Before they foolishly called in "more help" or even considered restraints I'd stop them and explain (slowly) what I could do. Just me. They acted amazed every time and I ended up giving a "mini class" on restraining hard-to-control children right there. I think that the physical part of being an RN needs some serious attention and a reality check! PJ

Tally, I am a photog in a medical related college. I know all too well, how DR's treat others.

The amusing thing, is how really dumb they can be, about some things.

I tell people I've been a professional wrestler for 25 years.
Forget that body mechanics crap they tell you. A 120 lb woman can't move an 800 pound patient NO matter what you try. Dead weight is dead weight. They try and tell us that crap and send us to a stupid class to tell us to use our legs because they don't want the blame where it belongs. The fact that we are understaffed and overworked.
And the hospital doesn't want to spend money on help or on anything that would work like lifts and transfer equipment. Easier to say, "well, you should have used good body mechanics".
On the plus side, you always have a job.
I've worked and lived in Hawaii and on a cruise ship in Alaska.
You can move anywhere and be assured of having a job, maybe not the one you want but a job.
You get to tie people up and stick stuff in them and not get arrested! Yeah! AND you can call the medical photographer to take pictures! I had a good friend that was a medical photographer. He passed away this year.
Tally HO!

"Ok.....I absolutely despise professional sports. They are a huge waste of time and money at every level of society. The only people who benefit, are the players and owners......and of course the advertisers who are provided with the opportunity to bombard us with more and more advertising, until we become brain dead.

Other sports are probably almost as bad. If more people gardened, rather than sitting around getting fat on beer and hot dogs, in ball stadiums, we would have both a greener, prettier world, and a much healthier and physically fit population."
________________________________________

Ok...I absolutely despise the arrogance reflected in the above.

Rick I hope you wont take this as a "flaming." I didnÂt take what you said that way. Nor do I mean to respond to it as if I did take it that way, no matter what I say here or how it comes across. Besides, people can (and do) say things against me or my interests all the time, and they still canÂt ever hurt me, or my interests.

But what you said insulted a huge population that doesnÂt deserve insulting. I donÂt claim to speak for all of them. I just happen to see the world through lenses that admit a spectrum that includes some of the lights of their lives. I think I see those lights clearly enough.

Competitive athletics are, and have been, part of the fabric of cultures around the world for thousands of years. In large part, they are organized with intent of enabling more civil, and less environmentally damaging or otherwise regressive, war by other means. Organizing those athletics into profitable businesses represents and reflects elevation, not degradation, of the quality of the cultural fabric, despite what horrible behaviors ensue.

The fact that pro sports suffer from corruption, and possibly inflict suffering and multiply corruption as a result, is nevertheless an unreasonable basis for despising the sports.

The human race is already strewing its junk and environmental damage all over the moon and Mars, plus more junk orbiting in space around those bodies. ThatÂs not to mention the huge and perilous junkyard humans have created in orbit around their home planet. And thatÂs there, even if they take away all the weapons and, er, "non-weapons" like satellites for media broadcast, other communications, imaging, weather and "research."

Certainly there are large numbers of healthy and otherwise reasonable people who sit in ballparks drinking beer and eating hot dogs, who despise such "space exploration," and who view it as a waste of time and money at every level of society that benefits few and harms many. Perhaps those sentiments are shared by a significant number of gracious Amish, less gracious Taliban, and large cross-sections of many other societies.

My point is, arrogance and corruption are as opportunistic about their incest as most people are honorable in sports and exploration.

If not for a spirit of competition and honorable strivings grounded therein, we wouldnÂt be sharing here about plant swaps.

So, eschewing interest in (and embracing disdain for) a particular enterprise is not necessarily synonymous with conquest of some moral high ground. Nor is it necessarily a progressive step, on an individual or group basis, toward a "better world."

All that goes for nursing too, by the way. I wonder how many nurses maintain their sanity and physical fitness through sports. Several examples seem to have been given in this thread.

I beg forgiveness (thatÂs sarcasm) for reacting with outrage to a sign akin to some Taliban-like obsession with a fantasy about "purity" in pursuing "only what matters." ItÂs not like IÂm going to say "amen" anytime soon to some notion that every person "should" have one hand, one foot, and tongue amputated at birth - and the same immediately for persons already born - just as a kind of insurance policy or guilt offering, so that the limit of human endeavor is a desperate (but holy) struggle for mere self-feeding.

Disrespect for the honorable place of competitive team athletics in todayÂs society, and for persons who participate honorably in those athletics by playing or watching, smacks of that odious, misguided and  well, "purely" detestable - Puritanism.

Rick's post didn't sound to me like a challenge, just a whine.

This thread is for whines.

& I don't think there's anything competitive about plant swaps:
many things are given away free,
other gardeners are encouraged, &
information, knowledge, & wisdom are shared without thought of profit.

Hasn't the full moon passed?

Then why are all the drivers in the universe trying to run over me???

Today, one person stopped at the stop sign across from the one at which I was *already stopped*, looked me in the eye, & turned in front of me.

Another person laid on his/her horn as I was backing out of a driveway (yes, I had looked behind me, but this driver evidently came around a corner very fast), scaring the bejeebers outta me...
but zoomed right on by at about 45 miles an hour.

If you were scared I was gonna back into you, wouldn't you slow down, stop, or take evasive action?

I see and observe so many people that have the "the rules apply to you, but not me" attitude.
I think the one to irritates me is the person changing lanes and whipping in and out. Then at the red light I am right behind them. And just what did they gain?

Thanks Sylvia, what you said puts me back on topic. I truly did not take what Rick said as a challenge. I nevertheless responded with a challenge, no dodging that. But I did not take it as a whine either - my mistake, my apology. Contrite make-up hugs to all.

I was not trying to say that plant swaps are competitive, just that we would not be talking about them here if not for some competitiveness, somewhere.

Back to whining, elaborating on what natvtxn said: Impatient, safety-be-hanged tailgaters/passers!

You're going the speed limit in the fast lane, overtaking and passing someone. Meanwhile the tailgater zooms up to your rear bumper.

You've barely passed the front of the car on your right to a safe distance to move over into some clear space in the lane to the right. You turn on the right blinker signal, begin to drift deliberately to the right to allow the tailgater to pass you on your left, and...YIKES! (or in honor of Steve Irwin, CRIKEY!)

Helplessly, you watch in your mirrors and instinctively jerk your wheels back to the left as the tailgater, without any signal, squeezes to the right, into that one precious car-length of separation and empty lane on the right. He practically clips the front bumper of the car you just passed (and your own rear bumper), zooms past you on the right, and then jerks back to the faster lane to the left immediately in front of you, again almost clipping your front bumper.

Once in awhile, such a driver will roll down his window after passing, and flick a cigarette butt out into the slipstream that flies back and hits your windshield or lodges in your radiator grill, in the split second before he zooms away to repeat his tailgating/passing drill on more cars up ahead.

I'm lucky (and so are the tailgaters!) that so far, no such tailgater/passer has dumped a beverage can or bottle out into that slipstream to hit my car. That would be a temptation for me to go into a road rage that I hope I never act out.

I wish more aircraft/helicopters with video cameras would patrol the high-speed roads for dangerous drivers like those tailgater/passers, and bring more safety, if not justice, to the roads by apprehending and "impounding" such drivers along with their vehicles.

I aint saying ONE word about TX drivers. Aint been here long enough to complain yet without being tacky.PJ

I don't like to be a whiner, but gee whiz why did my washer & dryer both die within a week of each other?
I went out and bought new ones today. Way too expensive!
I knew I'd end up with $400-600 in reapair on old appliances so decided to just go new.
Its not fun spending all that money on appliances.

oh, bev, Poor Baby!

Why do appliances, teeth, & cars gang up on you?

Why does nothing ever break *all by itself* but with at least one other thing?

If the dryer goes out, the washer will go along with it.

If the car needs repair, one of your teeth will suddenly develop a crater-sized hole.

I think the worst type of ganging up is when they connive to make you take a trip, the cost of trips being impossible to calculate in advance.

If the oven needs a new $400 something, somebody will call & say you're needed urgently in a place too far away to dash back & forth every day.

You have to drive 4 hours & spend money on motels & eating out, or you have to fly & spend even more money on rental cars
(Keep rental cars away from your appliances: they teach a class on ganging up, & falling apart is their hobby).

and there are always costs that you cannot anticipate, like your uncle is in the hospital, & he does not own pajamas, & he won't wear the hospital "sleepwear", so you have to find him some pjs & a robe & slippers.

Do I even need to say that there's never anything like KMart in the area?
so you have to go to a department store, which takes more $$$.

A couple of weeks ago we had an underground water pipe leaking near the barn. My DH had to bust up a thick concrete slab to get down to the leak. Then we discovered the **** that built the place had southern engineered the pipe so the entire section had to be replaced.
We drive to Bryan for the parts only to find that Lowes didn't have them all. We popped over to the Home Depot in College Station to get a .38 cent piece of PVC. Fifteen dollars in fuel for a less than $5.00 in parts!
Got it fixed late that night.
The next morning, the farrier drove over a nearby section of buried pipe. Yep, we did it all over again!
The water lines were laid at about 10" under ground instead of 3'.
It's all fixed now. If we ever get our hands on the jackass that laid that line...

Today my vacuum cleaner bit the dust......
but then this afternoon I got a 1/2 off offer from Oreck in the mail, so I can get a new vacuum for only $200.I like the Oreck. My old one would still be going if the puppies did't bring little pieces of wood & rocks in the house that I accidently vacuum up!

Enough is enough...we can't afford to replace anything else.

First it was our boat, it reached the point where we didn't want to put anymore money into it, so we got a new one (& still have the old one).

Next my washer died and my dryer's not what it used to be, so I got a new set...I like doing laundry now! I got the commercial type front loaders, they use less water, elec, & soap and clothes come out really clean and hardly wrinkled. It's quiet with lots of pretty lights!

Then there are all the hospital & Dr bills for my last 3 surgeries that my ins didn't pay. I need a MONEY tree.

If you get that tree, I'll trade you some dollar weed for some cuttings.

I spent $670 on truck repairs yesterday. The COIL ASY - IGN.....what ever that is, was $125 and the labor was $134. I had to have the brakes done too.
I really can't complain, It is an 03 and has appx. 52,600 miles and has never given me one problem.

Ok Stiches, just where was the arrogance? I simply stated an obvious observation, that anyone could make, who was not biased.

Considering the wastefulness associated with both professional and amateur organized sports, and the obviously better uses of the monies involved, please fell free to show me the REAL benefits of sports, in today's world, and why sports are not totally wasteful.....and in fact.....given the degree of bad sportsmanship and violence, now associated with sports, at every level from elementary school, to Little League, to Pro sports, it seems to me that sports is simply making an already violent animal MORE violent. That is something that the world can certainly do without.

By the way.....just how did you relate competition to a plant swap? Have to admit....I see absolutely no relationship. To me, a plant swap is about sharing, not competition.

Come to think of it.....just why is competition good, anyway? Competition seems to foster violence, anger, and jealousy, in most people. In other words....it makes us worse creatures.

It was once said, that there are no truly normal people.....because normal people are not compelled to do anything, but rather, simply are.

Something to think about.

Rick:
You said nothing reflecting arrogance.
You observed and stated the obvious.
You're not biased.
Professional and amateur organized sports are wasteful - unworthy endeavors for humans.
Monies are always used better as long as they're not used for sports.
Sports have no benefit in today's world.
Sports simply foster violence and bring out the worst in humans.
There is absolutely no relation between competition of any kind and being able to discuss plant swaps on the Internet.
Competition is only evil.
There are no truly normal people.
Normal people are not compelled to do anything, but rather, simply are.
There is something to think about in something above.

Y'all are taking the fun outta my "whine" thread.

Nah. The fun is still there, you just gotta look under the blanket.

Obvious (fun) whine: threadjacking. (No bias there.)