Remember your first apartment? We all started out with nothing. We had no “stuff”. At 22yrs old, I was shocked apartments did not come equipped with sheets, blenders, pots and pans, etc. Rude awakening…… I was so naive. The acquisition of stuff comes slowly. As we move from home to home, we weed out items no longer needed. We have garage sales when the kids outgrow baby gear or leave for college. By the time we retire, we wonder, “Where did all this stuff come from?”
I remember my first apartment well, and I needed a lot of “stuff”. The budget could handle $100 at every pay period for shopping at Zayre…. for ironing boards, a pitcher for iced tea, knives, cutting boards, a coffee pot, plants for the balcony, shelves, books, shoe trees, a vacuum, and lots of pots and pans. Still, on a budget, I became a garage sale queen. Along the way, a little guy in Miami beach taught me the power of buying wholesale. By the time I cashed out and moved home to New Orleans, my dad mocked my quest to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear……. born from necessary thriftiness……… he swore he would bury me with a can of white spray paint…. Yet, I was comfortable with my little pile of stuff and had enough stuff to at least be comfortable.
When we moved into the big house, the need for “stuff” was overwhelming. It took decades to outfit the house. The scale is bigger. Everything a home would normally need …. put a zero behind it. There are 13 bathrooms here, 14 couches, 6 refrigerators, and on and on. Still, being the thrifty chic, a shopped many flea markets, auctions, garage sales………. until one day, I came home with 12 used wooden crutches, $.25/piece, $3.00 total sale. That was 1994.
Husband helping me unpack the car: “What the hell are you going to do with used, POS wooden crutches?”
Me: “Oh, not to worry, I’ll find something to do with them.”
Husband: “The attic is going to cave in! You have too much stuff up there.”
While I agreed with my first husband’s fiscal prudence, it was the stuff in the attic which paid our bills and afforded us a nice lifestyle, while we banked money for his construction company to grow. He scoffed, shook his head, and endlessly debated every small purchase, wondering how my mind worked.
Wouldn’t you know it? 25 years later, I gave away my last crutch this weekend, for a retirement party, the crawfish boil this weekend. I dressed up the crutch with a big bow and FEDEX logo. It was my girlfriend’s gift to her husband. Her speech was beautiful. He was her crutch, little bit of extra help, holding her up for the 46 years they have been married. They raised beautiful and successful children. He mentored hundreds if not thousands of executives in his career. He helped to make his community better through boy scouts and his church. He served his country through military service. Truth is, if he died tomorrow, his eulogy would take 2 pages in the local paper…… but he’s onto something else, another chapter, mentoring troubled kids. Yeah, the truth us, he didn’t need a crutch…….. HE WAS THE CRUTCH to so many, throughout his life.
She cried, he cried, we all cried. Perfect gift…. cost me $.25. Her speech made it priceless.
Now, I need more crutches. I’m out. I started thinking about all the things we did with those crutches over the past 25 years.
Because we live so close to the school, teachers would often grab me for help. Quite often I would look out the window to find a class of kids “taking a field trip” in our backyard. I didn’t mind and encouraged the idea…. with chocolate chip cookies, etc. We never had to worry about broken windows or vandalism because the kids viewed our house, in a way, as their house. One time, a frustrated history teacher and his class appeared in the field out back. It was a gorgeous spring day, and the kids were restless. The teacher decided to stop fighting and let them outside, but they needed something to do. I bounced down from the attic with wooden crutches and we ran relays…… fresh air and exercise…… for an hour…….. back to class…. with a cookie… Easy peasy.
As a thank you to the girls basketball team for acting as my brides for a bridal show, we hosted a small party for them. We blindfolded the girls and made them run relays with crutches as one event.
Had a girlfriend, dying of cancer, with young children. Girls got together to cheer her up. I spray-painted a wooden crutch, all white, put fake flowers and a bow on it. No reason she should not look special while she could still go out. She was loved.
A young veteran came home, injured, part of a huge family. I painted one crutch red, white, and blue stripes, with a big red bow. He’s gone now, of suicide, but I was in the home recently. His parents left his room undisturbed….. crutch in the corner as a memory from a happier day.
Son of a dear friend was at St. Jude’s for an extended stay. It was a sad time for us all. My first husband had one of his carpenters cut down a crutch and reconfigure the arm rest to child size. I decorated it. The child was endlessly optimistic, not understanding how ill he was. He showed his crutch to everyone, proudly. It made my heart break.
Mother-in-law broke her ankle and was prescribed a “specialized” crutch for $350+. She passed. Called me when she got home, requested a crutch “in her size” (like I was a local distributor), and added…… “But I want a pretty one, dress it up a bit.” and finally, “I wear a lot of purple, blue, and reds”…… so…. her crutch was supposed to match her wardrobe. Got it.
We had retirement parties at the house where we hung crutches from picture molding with bright streamers…… in the formal dining room. People wondered, “How did you get that idea?”……”Oh that’s a clever idea”. Me, “Oh, just something we had in the attic.” Necessity really is the mother of invention.
Every 40th, 50th, 60th birthday party or retirement party (Fire chief, police, Mayors, teachers, and a nurse) beget a special crutch and a warm tribute. Sometimes we hung a wreath in the middle of a crutch and placed it on a front door… grand entrance, for a retirement party. One by one, all the crutches found new homes.
But all the crutches are gone now, and gee whiz, I might need one in a few years. Ha! 25 years worth of good memories….sad times…. shared together……. all for $3.00. The attic bares a slightly lighter load, a little bit less “stuff”.
We’re going to have to find a way to give away refrigerators…..
Day: June 11, 2019
Dear MAGA: 20190611 Open Topic
This TO STOP THEM FROM STOPPING OUR MOVEMENT TUESDAY open thread is VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA world.
You can say what you want, comment on what other people said, and so on.
Free Speech is practiced here. ENJOY IT. Use it or lose it.
Keep it SOMEWHAT civil. They tried to FORCE fake Orwellian civility on us. In response, we CHOOSE true civility to defend our precious FREEDOM from THEM.
Our rules began with the civility of the Old Treehouse, later to become the Wolverinian Empire, and one might say that we have RESTORED THE OLD REPUBLIC – the early high-interaction model of the Treehouse – except of course that Q discussion is not only allowed but encouraged, and speech is considerably freer in other ways. Please feel free to argue and disagree with the board owner, as nicely as possible.
Please also consider the Important Guidelines, outlined here in the January 1st open thread. Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven.
And while the most important thing you can do is to be able to tell our President THIS:
I AM PRAYING FOR YOU!
It would also be PRETTY COOL to sign his birthday card!
It’s almost President Trump’s BIRTHDAY!
— GOP (@GOP) June 9, 2019
Wish our GREAT President a happy birthday HEREhttps://t.co/8AGq1aYNzV
AND WHAT TIME IS IT?
TIME TO….
DRAIN THE SWAMP
Our movement
Is about replacing
A failed
And CORRUPT
Political establishment
With a new government controlled
By you, the American People.
Candidate Donald J. Trump
Also remember Wheatie’s Rules:
- No food fights.
- No running with scissors.
- If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
MAGA Mom had a most excellent summary of something that has happened.
Don’t BLAMECAST about it – please – that just feeds into it. But I want people here to understand what has happened. MAGA Mom did the NUMBERS and they explain something.
MAGA Mom
Let me recap and see if I have a grasp on the situation:
1) Thread on actual censorship, deplatforming and silencing conservative voices, groups & opinions: 61 comments
2) Open Thread: huge debate on being nice and self censoring, name calling, humor v. growing a thicker skin, etc.: 80+ (as I stopped counting) & 27 comments on this topic on this page so far
Hmmm…priorities??? distractions???
Think about where we are spending our time, our energy and our focus, our combined brain power!
I am not saying I am upset with BakoCarl for starting the debate (or anyone else, for that matter!) or that the topic is unimportant. I happen to agree to an extent in huge part because I think certain name calling is distracting and ineffective. Whether it is nice or not I will leave up to others as my mission is not to be “nice” but to MAGA as I said in my comment on the previous page and name calling or disparaging people on physical characteristics or on being gay/lesbian is a turn off to many and therefore decreases our effectiveness as we loose audience to truth and facts re political candidates and issues.
(https://wqth.wordpress.com/2019/06/10/dear-maga-20190610-open-topic/comment-page-1/#comment-170240)
My point is, So much discussion on this topic and not the same on the political enemy and their methods, our choices to counteract and ideas on what we can do. Why!?! What should be our actual focus right now?! We need to spend as much time analyzing, sharing facts, links, researching, synergysing on possible political action as we do sharing our feelings and opinions.
Let’s harness our brainpower and put at least as much time and thought into the censorship being implemented by others as we do on self censorship & appropriate names and criticism for our political opponents.
And Please don’t tell me that I am just being sensitive as I have fibromyalgia and would feel that you are being mean as well as ridiculing and belittling all of those in my condition if you associate negative connotations with sensitivity.
MAGA Mom, June 10, 2019 at 18:56
Now – if I even talk about any of this stuff, to some extent that action falls, MOST IRONICALLY, into what MAGA Mom is talking about. And when I was posting about this stuff earlier – YES – it was exactly what she is talking about.
And LET ME TELL YOU THIS – which REALLY PROVES what she is talking about.
I have been intending for SEVERAL DAYS to talk about the NEXT PHASE OF CENSORSHIP.
I have critical information about this. I tried to do a BIG POST to explain it earlier, and got all kinds of bandwidth problems that made me lose EVERYTHING. I think I ended up calling it “Placeholder Friday” in frustration, publishing a near-empty daily thread.
So I was going to fix it on Monday. But no. I spent all day on a sideshow, much of which was (ironically) MY OWN DOING. Yes. I was – you might say, “Sideshow Wolf”! 
HOWEVER, TheseTruths responded by stating something very important which captures why I have wasted my time on stuff I didn’t really want to do:
TheseTruths
“So much discussion on this topic and not the same on the political enemy and their methods, our choices to counteract and ideas on what we can do.”
This topic IS about the political enemy and their methods and what we need to do. A number of the posts, including mine, have pointed out that they are trying to suppress our free speech with demands of political correctness and censorship. It doesn’t hurt to be reminded of that and have a heightened awareness so we don’t get inadvertently sucked in to their schemes. That kind of psychological preparedness is part of the battle.
TheseTruths, June 10, 2019 at 20:17
This is exactly correct. We ARE in the censorship fight, and BY GOD, IT’S ON OUR SOIL.
Bluntly, we are taking one on the chin – but we are taking it well. Look at it that way. We have an actual demonstration of how they cannot effectively undermine us, but they CAN get us to undermine ourselves.
This is why I was forced to warn people about how the other side will DESPERATELY try to shut us down, shut us up, and make us ineffective, by influence – EXPERT influence – on individual members. Stuff you will likely not recognize, and may NEVER recognize.
And I will NOT let it happen. So I had to inform you about CRUEL REALITIES OF THIS WORLD.
I had to WARN PEOPLE. Because I know what’s coming, and it’s UGLY.
The other side is spending MILLIONS OF DOLLARS – ON THE GROUND – IN REAL LIFE – to shut our side up. RIGHT NOW. I am literally WATCHING THEM do it. LITERALLY. The White Hats know *exactly* what I’m talking about.
Remember what they did to JIM JORDAN in Ohio? That cost them millions of dollars and ultimately FAILED, but you can bet that a shitload (pardon my French) of money was spent to INFLUENCE PEOPLE to make that happen. Individuals. Influenced, positioned, and manipulated. Using LAWYERS. Expensive LAWYERS.
And lawyers, psychologists, and even rat-bastard communists in beater junkie stake-out cars cost money.
They are doing it now. EVERYWHERE. And some of that money is designated to influence YOU. So think very carefully about what the social media puts in front of you, because THEY THINK ABOUT IT VERY CAREFULLY.
Twitter is so much more than you think it is. The DEVIL is in details of CODE that HIDE from oversight or legal discovery.
Most of it is programmed – automated – but not all of it. When they see a point where the economics of influencing specific people needs a human touch, it gets a human touch.
Here is a TIP. They love to use OLD PEOPLE, SICK PEOPLE, and PEOPLE WHO NEED HELP. Those people are very real, and very deserving of our sympathy and help.
BUT….
Your response makes you PREDICTABLE. And that is all they need.
“Wounded hostage ambush.” I use this analogy all the time, because they use this method all the time.
We are at WAR. So when you go to the hospital, wear an invisible AR-15 on your back. Wear your SPIRIT GUN and watch the fuck out. Because they are watching you.
Now – I close with a VICTORY. We had a big win today.
Not here – but where it COUNTS BIG.
Oh, yeah. This lady was RIGHT.
SO – here is what I’m going to do.
I am going to start working on my censorship post, which CONTINUES the discussion of Daughn’s censorship post. That post should be ready by morning.
We are FIGHTING BACK. And we are fighting back NOW.
W
