Last Thursday was Earth Day. I know this because everyone was talking about offsetting their carbon footprint. I learned that my blog gives off 8lbs of CO2 each year and that my hair dryer emits 57 lbs of the stuff.  I won’t ruin your day by telling you what your car, air conditioner, lawn mower or dishwasher puts out.

I don’t worry about offsetting my carbon footprint and I certainly am not going to buy carbon offsets, though I wish I had come up with a scam like that. Selling carbon offsets is much like the church’s practice of selling indulgences for sins. At least when you buy a carbon offset, a tree gets planted.  I am in complete agreement with George Carlin regarding saving the earth. I am not going to stop driving my truck, using my hair dryer (no one wants that) or writing my blog.

Luckily for me they were giving away carbon offsets at my daughter’s school last week. She came home with three saplings in a, get this, plastic bag!

Daughter came home with three saplings. Two evergreens and an oak tree. Stapled on the bag were directions for planting the trees. Basically dig a hole big enough so the roots aren’t all balled together, cover with dirt, water and wait for 20 years or so to have a little shade.

What it doesn’t say on the bag is that in order to plant the oak tree I need to call my utility company to find out where my gas and water lines are so I don’t hit one of their rusty pipes and break it, causing a problem. The directions also don’t say anything about where to plant the trees. I know how big an oak tree can get if I don’t run over it with the lawn mower but I don’t know how fast the evergreen trees are going to grow or how much space they might need. I don’t know what kind of damage the acidic needles are going to do to my grass or other plants that were there first. I don’t feel like doing a whole lot of research for these things either.

My front yard is the size of a postage stamp and I already have a maple tree in it. I also have two lindens on the boulevard in front of my house. One of them might be falling sometime soon but that still leaves very little room for a big ass oak tree. My back yard is only slightly larger than my front yard and I already have a maple tree there that creates more raking than I would like. I have lilacs and peonies and other shrubbery. The only place to put a big ass oak tree is right in the middle of the yard, at the bottom of the slide. I just don’t think it will work.

I could probably bring them up to the lake where we have more room for these carbon offsets. The problem is I have to keep them alive until I go up to the lake, I have to remember to bring them to the lake, and then I have to actually plant them.

None of these things were part of my plan for spring.

Now I have all kinds of anxiety about keeping these damn trees alive. I’ve kept them moist since Thursday by placing a wet paper towel (I know, I should have used cloth) in the bag. I think they are alive but I really can’t be sure. These trees are just like the stupid hermit crabs. I can’t tell if they are alive either and I keep forgetting to water them.

How long can they stay alive in their plastic bag? They aren’t getting much sun in their plastic bag, that can’t be good for them. I don’t know when I am going to the cabin next, it could be this week or it could be the next week. Do I have to make a special trip just so I can plant these damn trees?

I considered putting them in the compost container but that just didn’t seem right. I’m not a hater of trees, I like trees. Trees are fun to climb, they provide shade, they provide homes for all kinds of animals that I am trying to kill with my slingshot, and in about 100 years the oak tree will provide someone with some great firewood. I’m all for trees.

Yay, trees!

But I didn’t ask for these trees. I have enough people, animals, plants and crustaceans to be responsible for, I don’t need more. I don’t need anymore guilt, I have a mother who makes sure I am getting my daily requirement, the trees are just overkill.

Why didn’t they just give her a puppy?

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I was all set to talk about Canadians today but I got stuck in traffic so my Canadian post will have to wait until Monday.

I love Def Leppard. There is no better band to rock out to in a car or anywhere you can play the music really loud. With arm or without these guys can rock. I went to several of their concerts back when they first started touring, before Behind the Music, the drugs and break ups. I saw them open for Queen, one of the most awesome shows I have ever seen. I can’t remember who I went to these concerts with but I know I have never stopped loving their music.

I went to visit my mother this morning.  Normally a 40 minute drive one way. It’s a 40 minute drive one way because I take the path least traveled and go all around the metro area.  I probably add 10 miles to my trip this way but I can drive 70-80 mph the whole way.

As most of you know I live in St. Paul. People from St. Paul don’t usually go to Minneapolis unless the have to. There aren’t that many good reasons I can think of that would warrant my need to go to Minneapolis except to visit my mother. My mom lives in a suburb clear on the other side of Minneapolis, which means that Minneapolis is smack dab between where I live and where my mother lives. I can’t avoid it, I have to go through it. Which is why I visit my mother after rush hour.

On the way back I decided that I was wasting a lot of gas trying to avoid Minneapolis so instead of going around it I decided to take the crosstown, highway 62, which goes right through the city I have been trying to avoid all my life. The crosstown was built to get people from one side of town to the other quickly.  It has never been my experience to get from point A (St. Paul) to point B (Minneapolis) quickly using the crosstown because as long as I can remember the crosstown has been under construction. However, because I don’t actually drive on the crosstown I really have no way of knowing if it is under construction. It might have been years ago, the last time I drove it, but there is really no way for me to know. So I decided to take the crosstown which should have reduced my trip from 40 minutes to maybe 15.

I don’t even know why I am typing all of this out for you. Just watch the video.

I’m sure the Canadians don’t have this kind of traffic.

Apparently Kate Gosselin has another book coming out, it’s called I Just Want You To Know. Know what? What don’t we know about this woman? It seems to me she puts out a book a year. Where the hell does she find the time to write? She has eight kids for crying out loud and a deadbeat ex husband. I have two kids and two ex husbands and I can’t put a book out in three years. I know a handful of people working on books right now and none of them have been working on them for less than a year.

I suspect she doesn’t write them herself. It’s just a sneaking suspicion but unless Kate Gosselin has more than 24 hours in a day or has a coke habit, it’s not likely that she has time to churn out a new book each year. I’m not sure she can type or spell either. The clicking of freshly manicured nails on the keyboard would be too distracting to me to be able to write for very long.

I have nothing against Kate milking her 15 minutes, though they should have been over a long time ago, she has eight kids, she has to support them somehow. If I had her opportunities I would be riding that gravy train as well. My issues are not with Kate, though I have had enough of her whining. What is so special about her? So what if she has eight kids? It’s not as if she spends much time with them, she’s too busy dancing, and dancing poorly as I understand it.

No, my issues are with the publishing companies who put these kinds of books out all the time. The publishing world has changed a lot in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble, Borders and Amazon have changed the rules and nobody raised an eyebrow. That isn’t entirely true, some independent booksellers did but no one listens to them.

Every time a publishing company puts out a book like I Just Want You To Know, or Kitty Kelly’s Oprah, the public snatches them up. There are only so many book dollars out there and by publishing this crud the public won’t buy more worthy books by talented authors. They won’t because they won’t know about the more talented authors. Publishing houses don’t want to take a chance on real literature. They want to make money. I can’t blame them, really, but they are complicit in the dumbing down of the population.

By stacking the best seller lists with this kind of fluff, talented writers don’t stand a chance. The publishing industry won’t take a chance on an unknown author anymore. Luckily the publishing industry is putting itself right out of business. Luckily for the talented writers that is.

Self publishing used to be the last resort for authors who wanted to get a book in print. Authors who self published their work were scorned by the main stream publishing houses and didn’t stand a chance of getting any promotion unless they generated the buzz on their own. Today you can launch a website, and promote your book for relatively little expense. If you have a large Twitter following or lots of Facebook friends you can get the word out quickly.  The Kindle, iPad and other book readers have evened out the playing field even more.

Kate and Kitty can keep churning out books, and people will buy them. So what if they are the people who watch Jerry Springer and have interior furnishings on their lawn? I’m not buying them. I want to read intelligent books. I want to read books that use words with more than two syllables. I don’t want to read about celebrities, if I need to know what stupid ass things they are doing I can watch the news.

That’s right I said the news. Not the entertainment shows but the nightly news, the place we used to go to catch up on the days happenings. They have sold out too. It’s all about ratings which translate to dollars. No on is interested in the death of the Polish first family, that got about 15 seconds of airtime right before a commercial break. Kate Gosselin got 8 minutes to talk about her “book”.

Something is wrong when we are more interested in Kate than we are in the death of president.

*If you haven’t joined Tribal Blogs yet what are you waiting for? You can meet real writers there. Talented people who can dance and writer their own material, just not at the same time.

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For the last six or so months my truck has not moved. It would only start if I gave it a jump. This was not a huge problem, I have a car that works just fine but the boy uses the truck.

I bought the truck, a ’96 Tahoe, in ’98. It had 90,000 miles on it when I bought it but it’s big ass Chevy and those engines can go for a long, long time. I crashed it twice, major accidents, causing the whole body to be replaced except for the roof. There is one little spot of rust on the back cargo door, other than that it looks pristine. And, more importantly, it is paid for and the tabs cost next to nothing to renew.

However, because it is a big ass Chevy, it sucks gas like a cheap hooker. I think it gets 7 miles to the gallon on city streets and maybe up to 11 on the freeway. Ten years ago this wasn’t as painful as it is now.

I drove the truck as my main vehicle until 2007 when my dad passed away and I started taking care of my mom full time. I couldn’t get her into the truck, it was too high off the ground. So, I bought a car that I could get her into easily. I would have traded the truck in on the car but they wouldn’t take it. Even then it was too old, had too many miles on it (over 200,000 at that point) and it was a gas guzzler. The blue book value of it is under $1200.

By 2007 the A/C had stopped working. Fixing it was a major investment, and it needed a lot of other work. Shocks, cams (I don’t know what those are but they keep telling me I need them) and parts of the interior are slowly going missing. Someone stole the ashtray filled with change in it and the dog jumped on the cup holder pulling it out. I can’t put it back in without taking the whole dashboard off so it sits in the back seat unable to hold cups.

I kept the truck because, no on wanted it, but also because it is great to haul stuff with. I have a trailer hitch on it and can tow the boat with it and we can fill it will leaves in the fall to take to the compost site. It has a practical purpose.

And then it just stopped working. Unless I jumped it or charged it with a charger it wouldn’t go. I replaced the battery last year but that didn’t last for more than a couple of days. I was back to jump starting it. Something was wrong. I talked to my brother and some guy friends who all thought it was the alternator. I had replaced that last spring so I didn’t think that was the problem.

I brought it to a shop several months ago. They said it was the cables to the battery. They charged me $20 and said it was good to go. The next day it wouldn’t start.

I gave up on it. I knew whatever the problem was it was a big one and it just wasn’t something I could afford at the time. I took it off my insurance because I knew I wouldn’t get to it until the spring or summer.

For the last six months I have been sharing a car with my son. This means only one of us can go anywhere at one time. It also means my car smells like a sweat sock.

Yesterday I gave up or gave in and jumped the car. I took it to my mechanic. Not the battery cable one but the mechanic who had cared for my baby since I got it. They are more expensive and not as close since I moved but they knew the vehicle and the owner had rescued me on a couple of occasions. I felt guilty having taken it somewhere else just to save a few bucks.

I told him what was happening and then I told him I had a budget. He had to figure out the problem and fix it for under $200. Not much to work with. I was pretty sure that with that budget we probably were not going to get it fixed. But we might be able to rule out a lot of possible causes.

He called me yesterday afternoon and told me to come pick it up. He also said I owed him $120. I declared my love for my mechanic over the phone and told me son we had to go pick up the truck.

Can you guess what the problem was?

I bet some of you can.

Apparently, the vanity mirror on the visor was not closing all the way. The little doo hicky switch was not being depressed when the mirror was closed because the hinge had snapped off. With the visor closed you couldn’t see that the light on the mirror was still on.

I feel like a complete doofus for not being able to figure this out.  It reminds me of when I called the electrician because the light he had just installed wasn’t working. I paid $85 for someone to come out and change a light bulb.

In my defense of doofusness, they had to remove the wires to the vanity mirror to turn it off. Even if I had located the trouble I wouldn’t have known how to do that. I would have tried Super Glue or something to keep the button depressed but I wouldn’t have been able to remove the wires.

Have you ever called in a professional to fix something that was obvious?

I was asked to write a guest post about the top ten things men do that drive women crazy. I came up with the standard ones, leaving the toilet seat up, farting, hands down their pants, that kind of thing, but I couldn’t come up with ten and my post went horribly in the wrong direction. The post was rejected and I was given a different topic to write about.

Since I do not live with a man anymore, at least not at present( and the 17 year old boy doesn’t count because I am raising him not to do those things, though he does anyway), I wasn’t able to come up with any more than those three or four. And they all seemed really petty to me now, though they did drive me crazy then.

But I wonder what things men and women do that drive each other bonkers.

Here is the original post:

There have been a million articles written about the things men do that irritate their women. We all  know that leaving the toilet seat up, clipping their nails anywhere but the bathroom, spending the weekend on the couch with their hands down their pants and performing  Dutch Ovens are things that drive women mad. Which is probably why men do these things.

Let’s face it, men, specifically married men, have gotten a bad rap in the last decade or so. They are usually portrayed as big dumb oafs on sitcoms and television commercials.  They stumble through life not knowing what to do. Thankfully they have their smart wife to steer them through life’s challenges.

I’m not going to perpetuate that myth. I love men. I do. And my track record of two marriages and two subsequent divorces proves it. At present I have been single just long enough to appreciate all the great things about men.

Now that I am single I have to kill all the icky things myself. If a toilet gets backed up I have to plunge it out. My last ex husband was a phenomenal cook, I ate well when I was married. So what that he couldn’t put a dish in the dishwasher to save his life, I had a three course meal prepared for me every day we were together.

If something needed repairing my guy could do it. Sure I had to nag all the time but isn’t that what he wanted me to do?

Even though I am divorced I haven’t lost the ability to look and act pathetic when something goes wrong. I can convey that ineptness over the phone and my ex husband will come over and fix just about anything. As long as I have cold beer in the fridge.

Not too long ago I was given a glimpse of what a great guy my ex husband really is. I was having surgery and he offered to hang out at the hospital and wait to see that I was okay. He took the day off of work, drove me to the hospital, waited for hours while they prepped and performed the surgery and then waited in recovery with me while I came off all the drugs they used to put me under. He didn’t even bring a video camera to capture all the bizarre things I was saying.

It gave me great comfort to know that someone was out there waiting for me, that someone cared enough about me to take a day off of work and watch game shows while I had surgery on my girlie parts.  He wasn’t obligated to do any of that. When he stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up the necessary feminine protection products and purchased them himself, I was reminded of what a great guy he really is.

We women forget that about our men. We complain to our girlfriends that all they do is hang out in the garage, go fishing with their friends, never spend enough time with us, never stroke our egos enough and all those other top ten things they do to irritate the hell out of us. When they do the little things like buying tampons or plunging out that backed up toilet we often take it for granted.

I’d take nail clippings and Dutch Ovens any day.

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This is a picture of me minutes after I lost my eyeglasses. I was taking taking two of my nieces on a jet ski ride and they wanted to do some tricks. So I did a few tricks. Tight turns basically and we all went flying.

These were not just any old pair of eyeglasses. These were prescription glasses. Expensive sunglasses. I wish I had a picture to show you because they were awesome. They were multi colored with shades of gray and lavender all swirled together. Not the greatest description but they rocked. Mostly because they held my hair up perfectly when I wore them as a head band, which was more frequently than I wore them as glasses.

I was berated for wearing my eyeglass frames as a hairband by my optometrist but they just did such a wonderful job, and it was a habit, I couldn’t stop. To this day I only choose glasses that don’t have the little nose thingies on them because they get tangled in my hair.

Anyway, We flew off the jet ski and surprisingly the shades stayed on my head. It wasn’t until I went underwater to get my hair out of my face that I lost them. When I came up I noticed my niece waving her arms and pointing to the water. Since I had water in my ears I couldn’t hear her but I looked to see my glasses floating down to the bottom of the lake.

Ever try diving underwater with a life jacket on? It doesn’t work. Those suckers keep you floating no matter how hard you try to go under.

The lake is 70 feet deep right there.

My glasses remain at the bottom of the lake. I think about them often because they looked so great. I doubt mine are the only ones at the bottom but I also doubt the DNR, or whoever drains lakes, would do such a thing just so I could get the pair back.

I did get another pair to replace the ones sitting at the bottom of the lake but they don’t stay on top of my head so well when used as a hairband. The look great on my face but what good are they if I can’t hold my hair back with them?