Readers, we have reached week 27 of this 52 week blog challenge–we are officially on the downhill slide. The prompt this week is to talk about gadgets I can’t live without.

If we are being very literal, then I can’t live without my air conditioning (and central air is even better) and my thyroid pill. But that’s being a bit drastic, so let’s look at gadgets that I think are pretty cool to have around.

There are times I have lived without many of the gadgets people take for granted these days. I grew up on a farm with one black & white television that got ONE channel. Most farm kids got at least 2 channels and sometimes PBS if the wind blew right if their parents didn’t pay for cable TV, but a storm knocked our outside antenna wonky and no one wanted to crawl up that rickety pole to figure it out. When I was newly married and then newly divorced, we were broke and also couldn’t pay for cable, so we settled for the free channels. My kids were raised on PBS (Lawrence Welk and Sesame Street) and a lot of VHS videos. Now we have a smart TV with a voice-activated remote, and I think that is just pretty nifty.

More often than not, I have not had a dishwasher. For awhile, the dishwasher I had needed to be hooked up to the kitchen faucet each time, so I would wheel it out of its corner in the kitchen and hook it up and let it do its thing. It smelled like burning soap every time, but it sure beat doing dishes by hand.

We have also had times without an electric washing machine and dryer and my mom had to pull out the wringer washer. These days she feels pretty confident that she won’t need to resort to such drastic measures, so the wringer washer is cleverly disguised as a flower bed.

But we still have it.

Just in case.

Side note while we are talking about dishwashers and washing machines–I really like the pods phenomenon. Premeasured dishwashing tabs and laundry pods are the bee’s knees, man. They are lightweight and I don’t have to deal with bulky bottles and boxes that spill and make a mess. As a person with rheumatoid arthritis, I give pods 2 thumbs up.

Running water is nice. I have lived without that, too. When the boys and I were post-divorce, the house we rented had the pipes freeze up one winter. All I had was a very small drip from the kitchen sink, so I would boil water on the stove and then add that to a round metal washtub from a pot that filled up one trickle at a time and bathe them. When I was growing up on the farm, we had a well with an electric pump. If there was no water in the cistern, we had to walk about 50-75 feet from the house to a pole by the butchering shack and flip a switch and then go back in the house and wait for the water to fill back up.

Gotta admit I am pretty partial to having a cell phone. First one I used was a bag phone that I borrowed from my parents when I was commuting 90 minutes one way for my first teaching job. I still remember plunking the big magnetic antenna onto the roof of the car and then dialing my parents’ home to tell them they were about to be grandparents for the first time. Cordless phones are also nice. My first son was born via c-section, and leaping up to answer the wall phone was agony, so I used the money from the baby shower to buy a cordless phone to put next to my recliner. Now I keep my smartphone with me at all times to stay connected to the outside world. It is a mini computer in my pocket.

Speaking of computers, I resisted the dark side for many years. My brother had a computer when he was in junior high, but I stuck to my paper books. He moved in with me during college and brought along his computer setup, but I stubbornly kept writing all of my reports on my electric typewriter (and sometimes my mom’s manual one). My senior year he finally convinced me to use his computer to write a research paper–I forgot to save (even though he reminded me religiously) and promptly lost 74 pages of work and had to start over. I was seething, but I persevered and eventually got the hang of using word processors. Had to take out a loan for my first computer for nearly $2,000.00 so I am glad prices have come down. I have owned exactly one laptop so far–bought it in 2011 so I could work on my several works-in-progress. My WIP are still very unfinished and that laptop takes a solid 30-60 minutes to get itself up and running every time I turn it on, so I use a desktop computer for now. I’ve saved my WIP to my Google drive in case I get a hankering to dust them off. One of these days I’ll actually finish a NaNoWriMo challenge.

Y’know what’s a slick gadget in the kitchen?

These suckers are slicker than snot when it comes to getting apples ready for fried apples or apple pies or apple cobbler. Yes, I can do it just fine with a paring knife, but these really speed up the process.

When my kids were babies, I swore by this high chair:

It strapped onto a regular kitchen chair so the kids could eat with the rest of the family at the table, and it also sat on the floor so the kids could crawl into it themselves and be independent. It folded up quite compactly and could be taken along when we visited friends and family so they didn’t have to worry about having a high chair handy. And the best part–it was dishwasher safe!

OK, I have probably rambled on long enough today. Technology and convenience items are amazing these days. 10/10 very much recommend.

This week’s blog challenge prompt is “Highlight your regular commenters and compile some of the best comments you got on your blog. Let the commenters know.” I’m going to modify this since we’re coming up on my brother’s birthday in a few days and post some of my favorite things he has commented on my posts or posted himself over the years.

The first quote was before the internet took hold. Jon was always head over heels in love with technology, but in this situation, we were just sitting around with friends celebrating New Year’s Eve in 1990 and getting drunk together for the first (and last, now that I think about it) time. We were all discussing the new clear beer that was out, Zima. Jon’s delivery was always deadpan and quiet, and this time was no different as he stated, “Zima zucks.” Now any time I see mention of a clear drink or Zima, “Zima zucks” is what goes through my head.

Jon was shorter than me until suddenly he was not. His junior year of high school, he shot up over a foot in height. Eventually Jon reached a height of 6’8″. He endured years of “Do you play basketball?” and usually responded “No, do you play miniature golf?”

You know that song “Signs”? “Long haired freaky people need not apply” and all that. I watched Jon get turned down for a lot of jobs he was overqualified for simply because older employers didn’t like his long hair. Eventually he realized that he could land the jobs easier if he looked the part on the outside, even if he was the same long-haired metal head on the inside. There was not a judgmental bone in Jon’s body when it came to a person’s appearance.

It would greatly surprise a few of Jon’s grade school and high school teachers to learn that he was actually quite gifted academically. He had the fasted words-per-minute typing count of anyone I knew–he would overload the keyboard buffer and have to sit and wait for it to catch up from 4 lines behind. He had equally strong math and writing skills, and he was constantly soaking up new information.

For context, this dialogue was in response to a picture of a typical Addams Family/Munsters Victorian mansion. Jon loved the Addams Family and named most of his computers after the characters.

Jon was a hardcore Star Wars fan and he wasn’t afraid to let the world know he still had his OG Star Wars bedding. He was pretty awesome like that.

Jon tried to sound-proof several rentals by sleeping on his couch and putting his mattress and box springs against the walls surrounding his drum kit. He later learned from neighbors that it did nothing to dampen the sound.

Our mom is very creative, and one year she got a bunch of fake brown fur and cut teeth out of a bleach bottle and made Jon a “bearskin rug” for his bedroom.

Jon very much lived life as someone who grabbed the bull by the horns. I don’t know if it was because he grew up with precarious health when he was younger, or because he was the youngest child, or because he’s a Leo. All I do know is that he was a (calculated) risk taker.

Jon could see math in anything. When we waited for meals at restaurants, he would doodle equations and problems on the napkins. He watched his nephew toddle around when he learned to walk and figured up the force my son’s knees experienced on impact every time he fell.

I think our family is just big fans of condiments and spreads.

Once again, Jon was the most nonjudgmental person I knew, because he had been there and he knew what discrimination felt like. We once waited 3 hours at a restaurant to be served, and the wait staff simply huddled in the near empty restaurant and stared at us because they didn’t like our long hair and black band tshirts and ripped jeans. By hour 2, it was the principle of the matter. They eventually gave us water. Probably would have stayed longer if we hadn’t needed to get to work.

“Jonsicle” is a term I always think of when standing around in cold weather now. I also remember Jon showing up to work on my computer and pulling diskettes out of his armpits under his coat. His car often didn’t heat properly, so he put the computer stuff where it would stay warm so he could get to work quicker and not risk shattering cold technology.

Every August, Jon and I would set up a green army pup tent and pour over Uncle Carl’s Boy Scout book and then watch all of the shooting stars. It was a great way to celebrate Jon’s birthday month. And with that I will end this post. Happy 54th Birthday, Jon. ❤

So this week’s blog challenge is to have a guest post. Her post may leave you with questions–feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer LOL…

Without further ado, here’s my friend and fellow blogger Kris–

Hello readers!
My name is Kris and my blog is at https://em.flinthillspagans.org
Today I am writing as a guest blogger because of a challenge that we are both in of writing a blog a week for 52 weeks.
I am soo behind but I’m writing this now so that no one else falls behind.

One of my best memories of Drayuh was watching Headbangers Ball in McMindes dorms. Headbanger’s Ball was on late at night and even if we went out partying, we were able to see at least part of it, so M, Drayuh and I would hang out. Maybe there would even be alcohol involved. Maybe not. Ya know. Dorm rules.

We were particularly excited to hear songs from Axle Rose and Guns and Roses. KISS was also very popular. Maybe we’d even scream when good song were played. Maybe not… We also had a lot of fun with the occasional ancient Iron Man by Black Sabbath.

Security would always have to come check us out. We weren’t too quiet but fortunately we were far away from the actual dorm rooms. We would move the couch and tables away so we could properly head bang. No one could headbang better than Drayuh with her long hair. It was epic.

Good times, good memories.
ROCK N ROLL!!!!

The next blog challenge prompt is to tell about your favorite travel destination.

As I said in the last post, I don’t travel much. I can count the number of vacations I have taken on both hands and probably have fingers left over. And as I thought back in regards to this prompt, I realized I remember the journeys more than the destinations.

I remember our family driving from Kansas to Arkansas to visit my grandad when I was a little tot. Jon was alive and well enough to travel, so I was older than 2. Grandad and Grandma Lila still lived in Arkansas, so it was before I turned 8, because when I was 8, we drove to Oregon to visit them. I think we traveled to Arkansas in my dad’s pickup, because we were all in one bench seat. If Jon or I got tired, we curled up on the passenger floorboard on a blanket next to the heater and took a nap. Right before we got to Arkansas, I caused a minor crisis when I wrapped my mom’s hair scarf around my finger so tight it turned purple and the knots were so tight my mom didn’t think she was going to get it off in time to get circulation back in my finger–she did and all was well. By the time we finally found the mountain that my grandad lived on, it was pitch black and raining heavily. We didn’t know which cabin was his, so we would drive a little ways up the old dirt path through the trees and stop at a cabin and Mom would hop out and run to the door. She’d hop back in and say “Well, that was Uncle James–we have to keep going.” Hopped in at the next one with “Found Uncle Roy–he says to go up 2 more.” We kept chugging up the mountain until we reached the summit where grandad’s cabin was located. We ran through the pooling water to get to the porch. The cabin was gorgeous–it was all beautiful, carved wood inside with a large stone fireplace.

Our next big trip was to Oregon. We drove up through Nebraska and the Dakotas and stopped at Mt. Rushmore and Reptile Gardens. We pulled a little camper trailer behind the truck that time and stayed at campgrounds. Jon and I shared the top bunkbed. One morning I woke up to a sound that was exactly like the scraping of a huge tortoise shell on the ground that I had heard at Reptile Gardens. I was terrified as I leaned over the edge of the bed and looked down. It was Jon dragging a suitcase across the floor. We drove through Yellowstone Park and Idaho. I don’t remember much about Oregon except that I fell in love with the rainy drizzle and overcast skies. We got in trouble for throwing a ball over the hedge into a neighbor’s yard and our uncle had to take us around the block to ask for our ball back. Went to the Pacific Ocean and saw that people had drawn a naked lady in the wet sand. Met a new cousin that was so brand new that she still had her umbilical cord stump. We drove back home through Utah and Colorado–it was pretty uneventful, since I have never been too impressed by the Rockies.

When I was a couple years older, my granny and new grandpa Jim loaded the grandkids up in their RV and took us to Missouri for a couple days. We drove through the drive-through zoo near Springfield, and Granny tried to feed Doritos chips to a llama from the door of the RV as we all crowded around and watched. At one picnic spot, I found a couple shark teeth in the dirt and learned that the midwest was once ocean.

In 2000 or 2001, we piled into Grandpa Jim’s conversion van and road through the drive-through zoo again on our way to Arkansas to visit family. My sons got to experience a herd of bison surrounding the van and pressing up against it and rocking it back and forth as they passed by. When we got to Arkansas, Uncle Roy let them ride with him on the 4-wheeler.

In 2002, my sons and I had our first experience with flying when we went to Oregon to visit Grandad (I don’t really count the emergency plane trip to Wichita to try to keep one of them from being born too early). My stepson got lost in the Denver terminal when he wandered off to the bathroom alone and my dad found him and hauled him back. Our youngest son was the only one to get physically searched when he touched the metal detector as he walked through, and his suitcase was searched because the nebulizer machine looked like an ominous black rectangle in the suitcase. We took them to the Pacific Ocean and my husband had to swoop in and grab the youngest son before he stepped on a jellyfish on the beach. The trip home was much less eventful.

In 2010, we took a whirlwind 3 day weekend trip to Missouri. The family asked that I never cram that much into that few days again, but I didn’t want to deal with 4 kids having too much down time between activities. So we did the drive-through zoo by Springfield and the youngest son will forever hate Clyde the Camel for assaulting him through a bus window. We stopped at the Laura Ingalls Wilder home and gravesite. We went to Branson and got some great photos at the wax museum. We took a very relaxing 3 hour cruise on a train. We waited for an hour in the heat until AAA got there to retrieve the keys in the locked van. We saw the dancing water fountain show. And on the way home, we went to Worlds of Fun and got caricatures drawn of the kids that I will forever love.

So yeah, not much traveling has been done by me. But I love the journeys I have taken, because the company has always been the best part of every trip. I have gotten to spend days with my favorite people, and that has made every trip my favorite. I hope we can take a couple more trips before I can’t travel anymore.

The blog challenge prompt is to talk about a recent travel experience.

Guys, I don’t travel much.

My body is not very cooperative when it comes to the usual vacation activities of walking around places and exploring the sites.

I haven’t flown since 2002 when we took the whole family to Oregon to visit my grandad.

I’m from the midwest–we drive. Whether it is 10 minutes away or 10 hours away, we are driving.

So where have I driven recently? March was full of driving, and it was an experience, so let’s go with that.

My daughter buys 2 tickets to concerts she wants to attend, and I am the designated driver to said concerts and then get to enjoy some really great shows. In March, we had almost back-to-back shows.

First up was a short 5 hour jaunt to St. Louis to see Waterparks and their openers (Poptropicaslutz! and Loveless). We tried something a little different this time and booked a hotel right next to the concert venue. And when I say right next to, I mean we didn’t even have to cross a street. 10/10 will always recommend doing this from now on to avoid the hassle of finding parking at the venue.

We pulled up to the Moon Rise Hotel roughly 3 hours before the venue doors were going to open, and we could already see that the fans were wrapping around the venue. This is pretty typical, and we were glad we had a hotel right next door. Got checked in, dropped our bags in the room, and headed over to the venue. The wait in line wasn’t too bad–it wasn’t terribly cold for early March. Finally got in the doors and my daughter headed for barricade and I hunted down a venue employee and made my way to the ADA seating upstairs.

After the show, we were hungry–found a White Castle nearby, collected the car from the parking lot behind the hotel, and brought sustenance back to the room.

Check out in the morning would have been uneventful except for the fact that the parking lot had a gate, and that gate was not opening and the lot guard was not in their little hut. Finally called the front desk and they came out and stood in the hotel entryway and pushed a remote and the gate slid open. Headed back to Kansas and got my daughter there for her afternoon classes.

A week later, we drove 11 hours to Minneapolis, MN for the next concert. I am glad the weather gods smiled upon us and we had great weather that was in the 50s. Got a hotel next to the venue again, albeit across the street, and the parking garage was a skyway away from the hotel. Still a better setup than finding parking at a venue. We went up the day before the concert so we could explore the city a little this time. I have not experienced a city where street entrances are not easily accessible and you have to go into a building to access bagel shops, etc., but we eventually figured it out.

When it came time for the concert, we discovered that some fans really struggle with deciphering where a concert is held when the venue has 2 separate areas. We knew we were standing at the correct entrance, but it took awhile for other fans to realize they were in fact not first in line at the other door. Got in, daughter went to barricade, and I went to my ADA seating–it was cool, cuz the venue had a sign taped to the barstool with the seat reserved with my name on it. Powfu and his openers Jomie and Cody Lawless put on a great show. I used DoorDash for the first time for our after concert meal. I live in a town of 550 people, so this doesn’t happen regularly. We wrapped up the trip the next day with early breakfast with a friend and headed back to Kansas. Didn’t have to get back for classes, but we did have to get back quickly so my daughter could head to her next concert with her brother in Omaha. March was very concert heavy.

So yeah, that’s my latest travel experience. As long as I can navigate lodging, parking, and meals, it all tends to go well. Looking forward to the next trip!

The next blog challenge prompt is “Write a series post on something you are passionate about.”

Google tells me a series post is a group of posts about the same topic.

Sibling loss and grief are passionate topics of mine since losing my brother, and I can see by looking back on my blog posts that I have already done this. And I’ll do it again–the 10 year anniversary of my brother’s murder is 5 months away, so it will be about time to check in.

So without further ado, here are the posts I have made thus far:

LOST: One sister

Six-Year Check-In

Grief is a bitch

We’ll revisit this topic in January 2025.

This week’s blog challenge prompt is to share 10 jokes from your niche. My niche is probably GenX meets 80s hairbands meets cats. I tried to find some relevant jokes:

1. What do you get when you cross an 80s hair band with a fish?
   • BonChovy
2. What’s a cat’s favorite color?
   • Purr-ple
3. What’s a cat’s favorite subject in school?
   • Hiss-tory
4. How do Gen X apologize?
   • They send a mixtape of their favorite 80s songs
5. How many letters are there in the alphabet?
   • 22, because E.T. went home and someone shot J.R.

But honestly, I think I get more of a chuckle out of memes:

This week’s blog challenge prompt is to review a movie I watched recently. Well, the most recent movie I have watched was the 1967 movie “In the Heat of the Night”.

This movie stars Sidney Poitier, who is fantastic as always. He was a delight to watch, as his timing and delivery were wonderful. His portrayal of Detective Virgil Tibbs in this movie was spot-on, and I can’t imagine a better person to play the role. Rod Steiger also does a great job of playing Police Chief Bill Gillespie, but I can see why Carroll O’Connor was cast to play the role in the television version. All of the actors played their parts well.

That being said, it was a hard movie to watch for me. I cringed constantly at the blatant racism that blanketed the entire movie. I am appalled when I see racism in real life, and watching it on screen was no easier. I had to keep reminding myself that it was a very different time back then and what was being shown was quite accurate; in fact, there were places where I am pretty sure they toned it down. There is no way in real life that Mr. Tibbs would have made it out of that garage fight scene unscathed in the slightest. I also was not raised in the Deep South, so I have never witnessed firsthand the depth of mistreatment that occurred. I also was born in 1968, on the cusp of most of the Civil Rights protections being written and ever so slightly being enforced, so by the time I was truly aware of my surroundings, in Kansas I didn’t see much bigotry out in the open. But I had to remind myself constantly throughout the movie that these were actors playing roles, and they played them very well. I was grateful for the comedic moments Poitier brought to the movie, and I appreciated his slight smile as he looked at the scenes unfolding from the perspective of a free man from the North.

Great movie–I definitely recommend that people watch it. Just be prepared for what you are about to witness, because it was a very different time back then.

This week’s blog challenge prompt is to write a review. Haven’t really bought anything recently that I want to write home about, but I can tell you about 4 apps I have on my phone that I really like.

MERLIN is a very cool app if you have a yard full of yammering birds and you don’t know a starling from a woodpecker. I can sit out on the porch swing and turn on “Sound ID” and let the app collect data and then it spits out the most likely matches. Because of Merlin, I discovered that what Jon and I always thought was owls hooting away down by the river is actually barn swallows. I still love the sound, and I still love owls, but I find the barn swallow’s cooing quite peaceful.

FLIGHT AWARE is a great way to keep track of where my loved ones are in their journeys. I can look up flights and see when planes arrive and depart airports, and I can see if planes are delayed or ahead of schedule. I can use the generic view or a satellite view to watch as the plane icon circles, lands, and taxis. When my daughter was having a near-death experience trying to get back home from Paris last year, I can’t tell you the relief I felt when she got back to American soil in Boston and then returned to Kansas the next day so we could get her the medical treatment she needed.

PL@NTNET is very handy for those of us who are green thumb challenged. I know probably 5 plants that I can confidently name, and maybe 5 more (that’s pushing it) that I can take a guess at. So when a person is really into creating entire messages with carefully chosen bouquets, I can zoom in on each flower and put it in this app and find out what the heck it is so I can then go see what the meaning is behind it. If one of my kids is walking around outside and asks “Is this poisonous?”, I can snap a picture and look it up and tell them if it is safe to proceed or if we need to pack it up and go to the ER. If you have a child who is deathly allergic to poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac but can’t reliably identify them, this is a must-have.

SKYMAP is a fun little app that lets you aim your phone at the sky and tells you what constellations and planets are visible in that direction. It can be a little wonky and not always give reliable information, but it is still cool to kinda get in the ballpark of what you are seeing light up the night sky.