It is 0347 and I can't sleep, and I went to bed just after midnight...

  Today is my forty-fifth wedding anniversary. And I have spent the last three hours plus reliving the time together, instead of sleeping.  My priorities are only a temporary bother, but if I can't sleep I can sit here and type.

   For my girlfriend/wife I am very thankful. For God's blessings on our bumbling relationship I am most humble and appreciative. For the long eventful and still to come education in love, forgiveness and what is important and true - I am still in wonder. May we always be.

   After some more time looking through my photographs on digital file, I pick this one, for it says so much about our life and love. When my grandmother Dungey passed away I had a dream about a younger her and her husband dancing, I guess in Heaven. Not that I knew if they ever did dance, and most of my memories of him were with a walker after his stroke. But this picture is from Paula and Dan's wedding and if you haven't ever seen us like this together, well I share because that is how my mind has always pictured us... God bless you as much or even more than He has us, but it would be a miracle only you could understand. Now to find that fleeting sleep.

Lovely government intrudes into my life, again...

  So Saturday, lots of rain and I decide to stay home and pound out the income tax filing... find Turbo Tax, download the software and immediately run into MicroSoft against the others everywhere, I am on Windows ten, new computer and time at the YMCA is happier than struggling to program me into an operator on this small platform of cyberspace. Frustrated by the software telling me it is my problem they can't fix and then do what I want, I finally just turn off the computer and go watch a mindless movie and talk to my wife. It is going to be a great day.

   I come back to the computer and push the start button and get another cup of coffee. Type in my super secret password and start again. And it runs! Yeah, I fill in the numbers, it calculates and I am done in about thirty minutes, having all the various statements.  The software says I get a refund, since we throw money at the government so well and they never lose it. I do an e-filing, free 1040A.  We are officially just puttering along in this economy and aren't gaining enough wealth to notice as we putter along.  I am feeling so retired, my official occupation for us on being questioned on the form.

   I clean up the desk a bit, want to print out my PDF form file, and the Word program of the current software is out of line with my life and the numbers don't fit the screen display. Ugh. So the next time I just do a control-p and it prints exactly as I want it. Constantly following my second grade son's advice on computers and games, keep pushing buttons until it does what you want.

KING5 says it is National Napping Day, thanks!

   In the evening begins the semiannual event of changing all the clocks that aren't on the system, the battery powered ones, the watches, the car radio. I am so useful complying with the fool Congress, and tomorrow someone will tell me that we get another hour in the evening to do whatever we didn't do in the dark unsaved Daylight, and I will tell them that we do what we need with LED lights everywhere whenever we want. Time is not organic, it is a human control modification trying to make the gods behave in patterns and then the peasants following - historic fact, look it up.

   Me, I am off to the YMCA, I do need to lose fifty pounds. The only way that could happen is never sitting down again while mindlessly watching entertainment. Cats do it so much better.

Lovely women, ladies, lovely girls and gals... seems I don't appreciate you enough... ha!

  The International Women's Day has arrived, and the godless communists want you to think that you are only a worker bee, and since worker bees are sterile females of that species... maybe they are correct. They want you to be productive, have no or fewer babies and work, work, work! By their program I should just provide sperm and die. I am sure Don Johnson did that movie long ago and far away.

  The folks that hate my life and society want you to think you are paid less, but you take the jobs as they are found for the life that you want to lead. I am sure that you are all smart enough to take the jobs that you like or love for the life you want, you even start and run your own businesses. But tomorrow the fools in charge of stupidity in public want you to not show up at work, which you said you wanted for pay and privilege.They want the men to realize how needed you are so they can get more power over the culture.

   You don't have to strike, I missed you everywhere I ever went without women... I still smile over the RTO that volunteered to take the MET message every evening, but we didn't know he was listening to the only female American voice broadcast from that MET station... no wonder why he smiled as he wrote the numbers down. I had lots of dreams about women, I was tongue tied when presented with real American women in sporty fashionable garb, protected by field grade officers that thought the world might get out of hand like it did in that famous movie about Vietnam....  But mostly men are either too shy or too macho and will get stompt by other men when they get out of line... beating up another fool was something I could really do well. Understanding fools by my close association with one, me.

  My appreciation of women has to do with the fact that women are life giving, not like the males, life taking. I break it down quickly, men fight and kill. Women have babies, raise children and nurture... that is the basic biology of the human species. So go ahead and strike for whatever you think you are denied... because I will smile and pray and ask for God's blessings on all the women helping our lives all around me. Because I do love them for all the life they represent, and never want them to suffer all the terrible trauma that the killers of our species seem to suffer for listening to the wrong things a man can do with his.... whatever it is. Where ever you are tomorrow, ladies, know that men and God love you for what you really are.  Today, my girl friend arrived in the United States and we always remember it. 1972, and they were looking for bombs on airliners.... nothing really changes, does it?

So how should I reward myself...

   February was a very good month, and I did ride rather well at the YMCA, getting a free team shirt that declared me as TEAM CAPTAIN, XL of course. I wasn't the best nor farthest rider, but I was in the lead a few times before things got serious and I fell into olde man mode. That is where I hide not doing my very best for many reasons, although the reason I am not my best is often because I am really getting old in all but my best features like love and wonder and smiles and laughter. Anyway, as I was interviewed for another wonder - the YMCA Member of the Month, I will get my picture posted and a brief statement of how the YMCA is an important part of my life - better than that bottle of rum I am mixing with my warm milk for the evening.

   I thought having a lovely young lady take my picture and ask me questions was reward enough, whatever they print my mother would love to see, to save and to share with all her friends. My mother loved when she thought I did something well. Especially when it was a bit tougher or different, or something she approved of... that was a challenge. I was always different, until I found others just like me, for various reasons. And often I did things she would never approve of, and I would always know without asking.

   Anyway, in my idle thoughts of I deserve something for being wonderful me (I don't really think that, just an excuse) I was toying with stopping for a mocha at a bikini barista place - there are two on my way between the YMCA and home, sometimes they do wear only Victoria Secret dainty things, lovely to see from afar, but I am adverse to exposure of more skin than I need for coffee or money or automobile sales - and since my whole sexual life is either in sin or my marriage I am adverse to sinning more than I can withstand. Although temptations are exciting, I would rather watch pole dancing for the physical effort and talent -- not for erotic arousal. So that was all out.

  Next choice is to get a couple pints of great ice cream, and we have some great ice creams - but being an olde fat man really wishing I was able to do more and better at what was once in my life so easy, I know that every added ounce of fat is holding me back from being my best. So I have to deny myself the temporary pleasure of a spoonful of ice cream, because one leads to two, leads to three, leads to a suddenly a brain freeze and an empty ice cream container -- the stomach is very elastic and will grow to what it holds plus juices.

   I get home, an empty home, without buying liquor, ice cream or fattening foods. Although there is a very full house with nourishment for Koreans and some American staples.  Peanut butter, butter on bread works.  I watch the movie StarShip Troopers, and love the naked showers and gratuitous sexual scenes - but then want to read the book again, cause Hollywood ruined an important story in my life of reading, and I need to wash it out of my mind, and am. I know it is a different medium, film to book and back, but if you don't understand what the book was about, you can't really make it into a movie.

Little old people, accepting the obvious reality...

   Haven't written much here, nothing is happening. Yesterday we had big fat snow flakes falling and if you came out between storm clouds you had to put sunglasses on to adjust to the glare. I have less hair, and seemingly the exact same amount of fat that I had in December, and this is two months later, whose fault is that?

   At the YMCA, the old guys (just three of us now) we carried wooden stocked M1's and M14's before finishing our career service with ARs and as Sergeants Major.  We go to be able to talk to good looking ladies and laugh with others over some such foolishness somewhere in our worlds. No, I don't talk to good looking ladies, I just quietly admire them and sometimes am very pleased they can't read my mind... for a science fiction lover like me, I have always been glad women can't read my mind. Yes, especially my wife.

    One of the Y staff is way ahead of me on the bicycle for this month, riders get a dime a mile paid to the YMCA, so I got a free TEAM CAPTAIN shirt for my service, but the young woman told me that the often first place rider or second place one ahead of me - is actually a composite of riders just logging in under a long number - all the other riders that don't get serious about personal records just knock out a dime or a dollar for charity.  The staffer was building miles by laps on mostly flats, then she decided to do some of the really long rides.  I was on my personal 2017 goal of doing all rides at least once, finished that yesterday. So, the ride of the week, and all rides have fallen to my vigorous pursuit of World Acclaim, or is it just wanting to be part of something somewhere for the NSA to get just a little more digital trail of how a once dangerous man is barely moving?

   Not excited about income taxes this year, haven't even filed and the paperwork on my desk is just waiting for my attention, about two full weeks so far. I have broken my addiction to Facebook and FOXnews.  I like Tucker Carlson, The Factor, and The Five. One of those three doesn't have a repeat later in the evening.  But I would rather read about the Norman Conquest than watch commercials on Fox, I go to Fox Business for a change of commercials. Otherwise I look for cowboy stories... but I have seen most of them, or I watch old LAW & ORDER shows.

   The church continues to change, the part that makes me sad is when good folks decide they need to find another because of personal affront or church politics. But then, it could be how the LORD is using those good folks to make another church stronger or that family find a deeper relationship with their future.

   My wife is getting out and around a little more, but her foot is still a bit stiff.  We will be busting out of the rut come March,  I figure.  For anyone that read that bit about reading my mind, if you are a man you know we don't think much at all about women, just like we don't really pay attention to what they are talking about above a certain speed of transfer. And that data transfer acceptance speed is really slowing down.

Endangered species

     In 1973, a very politically active era, the Endangered Species Act showed up as the war in Vietnam wore out. It didn't protect the most vulnerable top predator, Man, from his follies.

     Go looking for Americans, American families, and American values.  They only appear by accident and are suddenly attacked by rude comments, snide remarks and deploying faces of disgust. Oh, black and white movies have many of them for review, and the Hallmark programming would like you to believe they have them, but don't look too close.

    I do wish you all the fun of rebuilding a great lifetime, remembering everything changes, including yourself, find some of those things that George Washington and Robert E. Lee thought worth fighting and perhaps dying for... they are also the only things worth living for, but then you should already know what you are living for. Don't you?

Ah, it is all over now....

   Tuesday morning there was an early wake up, make the coffee, prepare breakfast and wait for the youngsters to wake and pack out. Most of their packing was done the night before, so a light breakfast and moving stuff to the Caravan, I have been allowing my son to do all the driving on his cellphone with Wave for the entire time, he only asked if I recommended something or knew a better way around. 

    All too short, lots of new to me places in Tacoma and Seattle visited with the family, my wife didn't always tag along, she is still recovering from her last foot surgery. But she had them to prepare meals for and talk to and hug. We said good-bye to them twice before they got into the TSA inspection area, and then they were gone. 

   We rode back home, parked the car and then went inside to collapse in the empty. House so large suddenly and we are just rattling around in it. I am taking the children's channel off to get back to cowboy western movies or FOXNews... seems there is about to be a sudden collapse of the foolish, a quiet resistance of the smarter ones and a victory speech by the incoming President's supporters. I like to see work and results, thank you.

  Friday the pseudo-coronation, Saturday the Woman's Walk without the ladies and nurturing mother types (seems killing the unborn is supposed to be a right of women - just Huns with sabres - hoisting the dying almost infants in the air). I do keep noticing not enough love in the air, lots of sex and noise, but not enough love.

   Our youth group  is providing twelve competitors for Bible quiz, I am now supposed to help them study, all stuff I should know, but we will see - have have portions of the Preamble to the Constitution still memorized, I could do Bible verses.

   There are guns and ammunition back in the home, and we won a dollar on my wife's last purchase for five from the lottery.  About right for a government program.  Fifty percent of a dollar goes to winners, the other fifty percent is for the folks running everything.  Netflix.com is a better value.