“OH! What a Lie!!!” by Richard F. Yates

[All photos in this post are by me. This particular image is from a fortune cookie that I ate today, which obviously lied to me! I’m far too much of a weirdo-jerk for folks to speak of me in any terms, besides mystified annoyance!]

It's Saturday! And here is a recap of the last 24 hours or so! (For little or no reason! Wooo!)

Last night was one of my closing shifts at work, and that went fine (boring, tiring, and not-much in tips, but I finished my work earlier than usual, so that was neat-o.) Got home before 1:00 A.M. and took a shower, then spent a half-hour or so reading a digital comic on my e-reader before conking out and going to sleep. Slept WAAAAY in, until almost 7:00 A.M.!!! (That’s late for me.) For some reason, everyone in the whole house was up today by about seven! Weird. We all could have slept in, but for some reason, nobody did…

(Are you mystified and annoyed yet?)

Anyway, we all got up and ate some breakfast (I won’t tell you what we ate, in order to preserve some mystery), and my older daughter, Frankie, came by with the new kid, Felicity, just as we were finishing our food. (Yes. We fed Frankie, too.)

I’ve been spending lots of time with the new kid lately:

Frankie has recently started back to work two days a week, (she’s back to working at a vet clinic, although it’s a different clinic than the one she used to work at,) so I’ve been babysitting. Part of the fun of babysitting is introducing the kid to new music and cartoons, and (as I tend to think like a DJ) I put together a YouTube playlist to play on the T.V. while the kid's here, full of ‘80’s new wave music, ‘60’s and ‘70’s cartoon clips, my Minecraft videos, a few classic internet bits, and a ton of other junk. If you’re interested in seeing what’s on the playlist (it lasts for HOURS,) here’s a link to check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs63s4axWwN_O-ApPwd1I3qLQWK22RONp

It’s interesting to me to see how quickly time flies, and it seems like just yesterday that I was introducing these cartoons and songs to my two daughters for the first time. To ME, my kids are still kids… THIS is how I still think of them!

The kid on the left (on the bike) is Frankie---who now has a four-month-old of her own. The guy with the blue hair has TWO kids of his own now and is working on coding a very cool video game! The gentleman holding the skateboard is a musician, a boxer, and also does artwork of his own. And the girl on the right, Ellie, just bought a house!!! (But they’re all so little!!!) Old guys tend not to realize how much time has passed… (I’m very guilty of this “time blindness.”)

Back to today’s exciting adventure:

Once everyone had eaten, we loaded up two vehicles with humans (and a baby) and wheeled over to my grandma, Lucille, and uncle, Randy’s, house to visit. I’m glad we did that. It’s important to stay in touch with FAMILY!!! Once we’d worn out our welcome, we went to a local Chinese restaurant and ate lunch. That's where I got the fortune cookie that resulted in the photo at the top of this post! (It’s all connected man….)

Then we began a MASSIVE shopping marathon. Ellie (our younger daughter) needs stuff for the new house she just bought, Mariah was looking at Christmas stuff (plus some general supplies), and I broke our vacuum cleaner last weekend so we had to spend too-much-money on a new machine for sucking junk out of the carpet. Frankie had her hands full with Baby Felicity, as the little kid wasn’t feeling well---kept sneezing and had a runny nose and such---so she took the baby home after the first store so she could get the kid to rest and try to heal up! Mariah, Ellie, and I soldiered on, however, and helped keep the economy spinning. (Ellie found a little, replica Christmas tree based on the sad, little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas special. She was pretty excited to get that!) Mariah and I DID get a new vacuum---which SUCKS! (Hopefully.) We got a bunch of other junk, too, like groceries and toothpaste and a bottle of Saint Brendan’s Irish Crème… (I don’t drink very often, once every few months I’ll get a bottle of something, usually a whisky, and it will take me a few more months to drink it…) I also got me some new “fast-jumping, high-running shoes!” (When my brothers and I were young, we used to think that new shoes made you run faster and jump higher, but I’m an old grandpa, now, so I sometimes get things confused.) I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes for just walking around in for about three years, and my old shoes, which I chucked right into the trash when we got home, had more holes than hide left to them---so good riddance! Nice to finally be able to walk around outside without my socks getting wet!

It was a long day. Shopping can be exhausting, and I imagine, as I was finishing bagging our final purchases of the day, I probably looked a little bit like our cat Gitzy does in this photo:

She’s an OLD cat---about 14-years-old now. (This image is from a couple of days ago, and I caught her in a particularly grouchy mood in the photo---so that was cool.) Clearly evil.

TIME PASSES…And now it’s super-dark outside and I’m already tired (even though it’s barely 9:00 P.M.) Meanwhile, as I plink on the computer and make notes in my notebook, Mariah and Ellie are working on their craft projects! Together with Frankie, the three of them have started a company: GOOFY GALS CRAFTS. Check out there Faceboot page HERE!!! They’re currently working on Christmas wreaths for a couple of bazaars that they’re going to be vending at in the next few weeks. Here are a couple of the wreaths they finished tonight!

I think Ellie and Mariah have been making some super-cool things, and Frankie (who has a Cricut) has been making personalized hand-towels, coffee mugs, t-shirts and other fancy stuff. (Again, check out their Faceboot page to see some of what they have to offer.)

[By the way, I’m not being PAID to push the GOOFY GALS’ products, although you COULD say that they are my SPONSORS, in the sense that the group is made up of my wife and my two daughters---AND, since my wife is the BOSS OF ME, and the primary breadwinner in our relationship, she does fund just about everything I do! She wears the pants, and I draw the ghosts and monsters!]

And that’s about it for today! I have every intention of posting a new Read a Damn Book review tomorrow, so keep an eye out for that! If my brain is back to full function by Monday, I’m going to try to post some new CRYPTO-ART---finally! (Fingers and tentacles crossed!) Aaaaaand, basically, that was Saturday: an old guy went shopping! The thrills! The coupons! The new shoes!!! [Rated PG-13 for strong economic themes and some cursing…]

Later!

---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Holy Fool)

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