miriam's ideas

so here I am-again!

2024-03-18T18:54:00.004-04:00

Sickness

2023-03-06T00:14:00.001-05:00

I was in California for Christmas, came home on December 29, and was in the hospital for five days with Covid 19. I came home and subsequently fell ill with Covid 20[-36, which are gradually subsiding.I may feel human again some time soon.

So I went to the cardiologist for my annual check-up, which I passed with flying colors. I went to the front door and attempted to open it and leave, but all my strength deserted me and I got caught in the door and couldn't get out. Went home and found out I couldn't move so I called the ambulance corps. When they arrived they took one look at me and decided I was having a stroke. Got to the hospital and the personnel there decided I was having a stroke. They immediately administrated clot busters and averted a stroke. Saved my life!

A few days later I got a serious stomachache and returned to the hospital. Another three days, and finally got diagnosed and released.

A few days later I did a couple of errands and felt ill again. Managed a nightmare ride home but could not get out of the car when I arrived. I called my daughter who called the ambulance again and took another trip to the hospital. This time no-one could figure out what was going on. Home again.

I am getting very tired of the hospital and scared to get in the car again.

So this has been my 2023 and now it's March.

Maryland is out to get me.

2023-02-09T06:32:00.004-05:00

there are two languages in use in Maryland. One is English, as used by Thomas Jefferson. The other is pure bureaucratese, as used by Maryland officialdom. I got a letter from the latter regarding my property assessment. It says something. I can't figure out what. They either can reassess my property value, or maybe not. The language is so convoluted I can't figure out what they are trying to say.

I think I figured it out. They want more money. They always do.

I have in my drawer five(5)Kindles. None of them work. Neither does the last one I bought.

2023-01-01T23:42:00.003-05:00

In a triumph of hope over experience I ordered my sixth Kindle. None of them worked very well, but the new acquisition does not work at all. So now I have six Kindles, none of them good for anything. Would Amazon accept them in exchange for something useful? That's not how capitalism works, Virginia.

So now I must choose other sources to satisfy my need for something, anything, to read. The local library is too far uphill for me to use while breathing. Barnes & Noble sometimes has something I haven't read. My best source, however, is the local Good Will. I have found some good books there, along with lots of dreck.

A court case as complex as Jarndyce vs Jarndyce

2022-12-03T13:52:00.004-05:00

I started it all by moving to Maryland, but that is a tale for another day. Covid had taken over the entire economy and no-one could do anything. When the smoke of battle cleared temporarily some normal activities tentatively were resumed, but only on a conditional basis, I needed to change my drivers license from Delaware to Maryland. I looked at the website for the Maryland Motor vehicle Department and gathered together what I thought were the necessary documents to make this change. I was wrong. My Medicare card was not the proper substitute for my Social Security card. So back to square one.

After a bout or two of anemia and a couple of blood transfusions, I assembled the paperwork again, with the addition of a report from my eye doctor, and reported back to the DMV. All my paperwork was impeccable this time. But when my application was submitted, a couple of other states had problems with me, and a mystifying letter was handed to me. I had to clear myself with two states, New Jersey and Delaware.

We moved out of New Jersey in 2004, and I didn't remember murdering anyone in the state. So I turned to my State Senator. He and his staff made no progress with the various agencies either. I decided to let the matter rest for a while. Meanwhile Delaware sent me a letter with a form for my doctor to fill out. It was filled out and returned. This was in 2020.

Next the Delaware DMV sent another letter, but to my Delaware address and the post office returned it, though I had filed a change of address form. This letter stated that if I did not have my doctor fill out this form, my license would be suspended. I didn't, so they suspended my license. Without my knowledge.

Next in this series of unfortunate incidents, I had a fender bender. The police were called. and checked my drlvers lilcense, and discovered it had been suspended. They gave me a ticket which required a court appearance. Not over the fender bender, but for a suspended license. My insurance settled the claim about the accident so this was no longer an issue.

I started trying to call everyone in Delaware and New Jersey who could shed light on this matter. Finally, someone called George from Delaware called me one evening. He was able to track down what had happened. He sent me the medical form and I had it filled out by my current medical person, who happened to be a nurse practitioner. He faxed it to Delaware. I called to find out whether they had received the form. They had, but it did not meet their requirements, as they wanted it to be filled out by a real doctor.

So here I am, ready to be dragged to jail as a dangerous criminal. And I can't drive anywhere. They will have to come get me..

This is why I started a GoFundMe drive. I was fortunate in getting an attorney, but I doubt I will live long enough to see this affair settled.

My Go Fund Me page

2022-11-11T17:50:00.005-05:00

is here.https://www.gofundme.com/f/need-to-raise-funds-for-legal-fees?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1

An urgent plea

2022-11-08T23:00:00.001-05:00

I want to appeal to my readers, who are in some ways the only friends I have.They have stood by me through thick and thin, so I feel closer to them in many ways than to those I see every day. I have been going through a bad patch recently. Unexpected expenses. Uneven health, with recurring episodes of illness. The loss of dear friends. Inability to find an artistic community to join, or even someone to have lunch with.

A comedian once said that he felt that the world was a tuxedo and he was a pair of brown shoes. I can understand that feeling.

So--things have not been going well. But something new has gotten to me, and I don't know what to do. I went to the doctor today. As I was leaving the parking lot, I backed into someone's car. To make a long story short, the woman whose car I hit insisted on calling the police.

But wait, there's more. I didn't have my insurance card in the car--which never happens, but it did. The policeman traced my Delaware license and the motor vehicle people there told him that my license had been suspended. I think this was a bureaucratic error, but I can't prove it. Now I don't know what to do. Should I get a lawyer? In Maryland, or Delaware? How can I fight this? I don't know. This is where I need advice. What should I do?

Please tell me your best thinking about this. I would appreciate it. I appreciate you.

Help! I need to get out of the 21st Century!

2022-10-28T13:14:00.000-04:00

The best case scenario for calling a business: call the phone number provided and press a number and a disembodied voice will instruct you to leave your phone number. Sometimes they call you back. Don't bet on it. Doctors in thia part of Maryland are like Indian tribes in colonial times. They are united in hatred of you. They also hate each other. They are required to maintain something called a patient portal. The only thing in the patient portal is the information related to that practice. So each of your doctors has a patient portal relating only to you. Useless, but impressive. I am in urgent need of youth serum. I look so old and spooky that old ladies try to help me cross the street. I let them. Two people born the same year I was born have died this week. Am I next? Should I be? Have I reached my sell-by date? The Maryland Motor Vehicle Department refuses to issue a driver's license for me. Why? They wont tell you. I am depressed. Also anxious.

my school days were unimaginative

2022-10-18T19:29:00.001-04:00

Teachers in those dreary days spent their time trying to inculcate math, history, and grammar into our minds. No time was spent worrying about our sexual identity. Student government had we none. And we didn't miss it!

We were trying to learn how to diagram sentences. And other boring stuff, like algebra. But when we were allowed to graduate we knew George Washington from Abraham Lincoln and could remember the dates of the Civil War. Furthermore, we loved our country and were proud to be Americans. Today, not so much.

When do students have time to do their homework nowadays?

Why am I not posting here?

2022-09-12T18:03:00.001-04:00

I am too fed up. Worried. Depressed. The world is not living up to my expectations.

The country is going to hell in a handbasket. The world is not doing much better.

Wake me up when Biden goes away. I would be content if he were to retire tomorrow. Harris is not much, but she would find new ways of screwing us up, and that would provide some novelty. Also, she is lazy and wouldn't exert herself to govern. Problems would be met by the assertion that there is no problem, we fixed it already. I can't imagine that she would participate in the current appeasement of Iran; no problem. nothing to fix. Time for her nap or perhaps a nice pedicure. Since she likes to wave her hands around,when speaking, a manicure would work wonders, While her nails were drying, she couldn't do anything, not that she would do anything anyway. I would find her a refreshing change.

I like to work up a good spell of righteous indignation from time to time...

2022-06-26T17:18:00.002-04:00

Doesn't everyone? Come on, admit it!

My ire of the day is an old perennial for me: credit bureaus.

Anticipating a long spell of dental expenses, I attempted to refinance my mortgage today. the mortgage company, which I have dealt with for years, quoted the three credit bureaus to me as gospel. First, the shnook I was speaking to told me I have two car loans. I don't. We took it from there. First he assured me that I had purchased my current home in 2017. I actually purchased it in 2019. Since they are the mortgage holders, they ought to know. But they don't. They also know that I have had mortgages with them for several years, starting in New Jersey, continuing to Delaware and now in Maryland. I have never missed a mortgage payment, nor even been late once.

Meanwhile, I have been battling the Nissan Corporation for giving me a false credit report. I was sending my car payments to the wrong address. They didn't mind cashing the checks, but I was to blame for sending them to the wrong address. I complained to the government agency which supervises them, or pretends to supervise them. The result of this waste of postage and effort was that Nissan stated they had not done anything to destroy my credit rating, hadn't heard of me, didn't know what I was talking about, yada yada.

The government agency took no action on my complaint. Ever. Not even a weaselly letter acknowledging receipt of my correspondence. I might as well have been Hunter Biden for all the notice they took of me.

Who monitors these agencies? Who do they report to? Nobody, it appears. They are able to destroy someone's reputation at will. And do.

Inflation is catching up with me. And I don't like it.

2022-06-13T19:53:00.001-04:00

My IRA is especially hard hit. The graph of its trajectory causes great consternation--down is not where I want it to be.

Biden finds it exciting that the price of gas is going up. I do not share his jubilation. He reminds me of a kid playing with matches. 2024, please come soon!

Let's go to the polls and teach them a lesson--a lesson I am sure they are unable to benefit from.

Who is the most annoying new face in Washington. I vote for Jennifer Granholm, the smuggest woman on the planet after Jane Fonda. I am so glad that our suffering is causing her amusement. Good that someone is enjoying this.

Try Harold Adams

2022-06-02T22:10:00.000-04:00

I was shocked when I looked up Harold Adams on Amazon and they only had one book of his. "No badge, no gun." Adams was a good chronicler of the Depression in the Midwest. More important, he was a damn good writer whose books entertained me. Has he been forgotten? If so, it is a pity.

Other mystery writers who have been undeservedly neglected: John Maddox Roberts, who is entertaining about Ancient Rome, Elizabeth Daly, whose works take place in the thirties and forties in New York City. There are others and I plan to write about them and give them their due at another time.

Try these three and let me know if you enjoy them. I would also like suggestions from my readers about books I would enjoy.

National art show

2022-05-21T16:55:00.003-04:00

I wanted to have a show of my paintings. Then I realized they are all over the country. The paintings I gave away or sold are not where I can reach them. They are in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Maryland and Delaware. I have had paintings in various juried shows, and even won prizes on some of them.

When I visited my grandson I saw a painting of two red peppers and realized I had painted it. I am very fond of red peppers and like the way they look.

I am still at it but my house is full of paintings. I like to paint with Watercolor pens now. They are easier on the furniture.

I hate politics

2022-04-14T11:43:00.002-04:00

I managed to get through the entire Vietnam War without knowing anything about it, including where Vietnam was. I allowed the government to make the decisions about what to do about this, or anything else, thinking they had studied the situation and had it well in hand. After all, the government was full of Harvard graduates and Fulbright scholars, and I was a graduate of a State school, moreover, one without a football team. In short, I trusted them to know what they were doing. Those happy days are gone, apparently forever.

Now I have to keep an eye on the bastards and in order to do so, I have to keep up with the news. I have to know the difference between the Tutsi and the Houtu, so I can set them straight when they are doing it wrong. And I especially had to keep an eye on our government, something that gives me sleepless nights because they seem to be doing it wrong all the time.

And there is Hunter Biden--don't get me started on him. And Joe Biden, whose peregrinations reminds me of my Uncle Abe, after he got Alzheimers. Of course, Abe's conversations made more sense than Biden's, for he was smart and Biden isn't. But both had a tendency to wander off if not watched.

So now I follow the news, and it gives me high blood pressure. I long for the good old days when I kept up with English literature and the politicians ran the country without my input. Actually they still run the country without my input but I am forced to keep an eye on them. They turn out to be ganovim-(Yiddish for thieves). So they go on merrily running the country into the ground, and worrying about such vital issues who is using which bathrooms and who is using which pronouns for whom.

Meanwhile, my ltttle nest egg loses 40,000 dollars over a weekend. As all you Harvard grads know, this is Putin's fault.

I never thought of doing this, but...

2022-04-12T14:51:00.002-04:00

now I have termites, plus a car that only works intermittently. So I think I'll try gofundme. That or pitch a tent.

I need matzoh

2022-04-12T13:40:00.000-04:00

I put a request on Instacart for a box of matzoh. They recommended dried prunes instead. Not many Jews around here, I guess.

I used to order beet borscht, but it comes in a glass bottle, which I am likely to drop. A quart of beet borscht would be enough to paint a battleship. Cleaning beet borscht up from your floor is an endless task.The little shreds of beets have great staying power.

My long involvement with Amazon is getting abusive

2022-03-27T13:32:00.001-04:00

I ordered one bookshelf from Amazon, which arrived. Then, three more came. It was like the Sorcerer's Apprentice. I sort of dread opening the door in case the company thinks I need more shelves.

I can't even use the three currently residing on my front porch. There is no more room in my apartment unless I turn the place over to shelving and move into my car. The problem is that I can't lift the damn things, so I want Amazon to come and get them. I am straining every sinew to get them to come and take them, but the company is getting hard to get in touch with. They used to answer the phone but those days long since passed, and like the bustle and the buggy whip, are only remembered by the oldest customers.

My porch, being small, is almost full of the blasted things, with no room left for the grocery delivery I must order soon. I NEED food, and don't need more shelving. Help!

Is Ukraine the flavor of the month?

2022-03-07T18:03:00.000-05:00

I totally disapprove of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But is Ukraine so wonderful? I hear their government is corrupt and it's not such an amazing place. Do we want to throw the full weight of the United States unreservedly behind this country, the name of which seems to shift from Ukraine to the Ukraine? Their main characteristic seems to be their determination to fight off the Russian invasion. I admire them for their courage in standing up to the bully Putin but I can't understand the enthusiasm of every political faction in the US, most of whom loathe each other. Everyone is up to their eyeballs in Ukrainian flags and sunflowers.

When Israel was attacked by forces larger than they, I don't recall everyone cheering them on. I think Israel is much more worthy of admiration than Ukraine. But that's just me.

I never particularly liked Trump

2022-01-31T12:35:00.000-05:00

I thought he had an offputting personality; he was a loudmouth lout, to my thinking. He lacked gravitas. Dignitas too. I planned to vote for Hillary in 2016, without much enthusiasm. But after the Bengazi incident, I just couldn't. Her callous disregard for the lives of the men who were killed at Bengazi, including our ambassador, was a bridge too far.

So I was very pleased and surprised when the Trump agenda unfolded. Everything was going swimmingly, particularly in relation to Israel. It did not hurt that we were energy independent. Also, the border wall was becoming a reality. So far, so good.

Still Trump was rather bumptious--and those tweets--so unpresidential and undignified. On the other hand, I approved the way the country was going. After the initial shock wore off. But Trump the man was objected to vigorously by all the right (right-thinking, meaning leftist) people.

The people that went to Harvard unanimously hated him. He was guilty of something unspeakable that everyone knew about, so much so that there was no point in revealing what it was, you just knew if you were a right-thinking person.

I must have stayed home on the day this frightful thing happened, but I didn't know what it was. I missed the memo

One President in my lifetime had been venerated by all. My family members were in tears at his death. And who was this paragon? FDR, who later turned out not to be too fond of Jews. Some of his best friends were Jews, but the Jews of Europe were not allowed to emigrate to this country, and were sent back where they had come from, to certain death.

He was a man of enormous charm, so his attitude toward Jews was never spoken of by anyone and went down the memory hole to remain forever.

Catching Covid from a ballpoint pen

2022-01-18T19:32:00.000-05:00

If I come down with Covid I'll know who to blame. It's those damned ballpoint pens. They must be highly contagious because every doctor's office in Frederick has two kinds of pens: new pens and dirty pens.

I confess: I've been stealing those dirty pens. They are just sitting there like they spread contagion, when I have been informed that pens cannot transmit disease. So now I always have a functional pen in my purse.

Just avoid toilet seats and you will be fine.

the scales have fallen from my eyes

2022-01-12T15:05:00.001-05:00

Joe Biden's presidency has disillusioned me. I used to think presidents were very special people gifted with extraordinary wisdom and knowledge who put the welfare of the American people ahead of all other considerations, and who deserved the utmost respect. I no longer think that. Not only don't I believe that about Biden, but I no longer trust anything the government says or does. I consider all government agencies corrupt and useless including the CDC. And don't forget the FBI , who love to raid taxpayer's homes in the middle of the night and have private discussion on politics during working hours.

We are all pretending that Biden is a normal man, carrying out his presidential duties for good or ill, like Roosevelt or Bush. We know that this cannot be the case. We all know that masks are as useful as tits on a boar. But we all go along with the deception. In today's paper there is a portrait of a man, a politician, wearing a black mask. He might be any one. He might be public enemy Number One or a famous criminal. Who can tell?

I don't believe the statistics about Covid put out by the government. If Andrew Cuomo could fudge statistics, why should we give credence to any one's statistics? I certainly don't.

This is creepy

2022-01-12T14:17:00.002-05:00

I'm just throwing this out there;

Big ad in Walmart Optical Department, selling Elton John eyeglasses,

Elton John is blind. He does not need glasses, does he? Is it just me, or do other people find this a little offputting?

My best friends are dead

2022-01-07T13:22:00.000-05:00

I have been reading comments on various blogs about how the authors are free of prejudice, loving and living among friends of other races and political views, so I decided to review my friendships to see where I stand in the racial and political sweepstakes. I have to conclude that I am a miserable failure in this context.

In reviewing the current state of my friendships, I discovered that I don't really have any active friends any more. Most of my friends can be found buried in cemeteries or in urns. I have sadly outlived most of my dearest friends. They are either dead or have moved to Arizona.

I miss all the people who filled my life with love and meaning, starting with my parents, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins , a group who are dwindling rapidly. Then college friends. I used to have a long Christmas card list, but it's getting shorter as these people join the great majority.

What's the answer? I don't know. I find consolation in my grandchildren and nieces and nephews. I cherish my blog friends too. So please respond with comments. I miss you, and you don't have the excuse of being dead, so no excuses.