My belly button and I celebrated another birthday today. I think the rest of my body got older also… Don’t worry, everything still works. In fact, things may even be improving somewhat… at least in some respects. Life is pretty darn good. However, since I’ve been an official member of the AARP for awhile now, I’d like to share a few observations I’ve made about this “getting older” business:

Some down sides:

1) The hair in my ears, nose, and eyebrows grows better than the hair on my head. I figure if I lose too much more of my mop, I’ll just let all the other stuff grow out and comb it over. Anyone for styled eyebrows??

Q) My body stores fat more readily than ever before. I’m beginning to believe that all I really have to do is LOOK at food and I will gain ten pounds. Unless, of course, I’m looking at celery or carrots; they don’t fatten me. But it seems to take 430 days of drinking 34 glasses of water a day and eating nothing but bunny food to effect the loss of 1/2 pound or so. Unless I exercise. If I run 27 miles before I have breakfast, I might be able to lose another 0.001 pound.

9) I am older than many of the people I know and love! This has never happened to me before. They don’t seem to mind, though. Folks just humor me when I reminisce about when the Beatles came over on the Mayflower and stuff like that. “Remember the race riots in ’67? Oh, you weren’t born yet? Ok, you, shut up and go away. Wait… you gonna eat that Twinkie??”

F) The “good old days” consisted of obsolete technology. I’m not talking IBM 8088 computers or “new” calculators that would actually do a square root and only cost $60; either. I’m talking Univac, a huge computer built with vacuum tubes, and watching my favorite TV programs in glorious Black and White, because that’s all there was. Radios and TV sets all had tubes in them, and you had to wait 30 seconds for them to warm up before getting anything. Oh, and not to forget record players. Man, I’m getting ancient here!

But believe it or don’t, there really are some positive things about this aging business:

A) I don’t have the emotional roller coaster I used to ride around on all the time. Man, growing up was the pits!! Well, OK, not all the time. There was quite a bit of fun along the way. However, don’t know about you folks, but this boy sure spent way too much time weeping and gnashing his teeth. These days, I try to be grateful and count my blessings instead of whining and numbering all my troubles. Works most of the time. And I have more patience than I’ve ever had…

Take driving, for example. Used to be a daily thing for me to get totally ticked off at idiot drivers. Someone would cut me off, right? So I’d get an adrenaline rush, and catch up to them to yell something like this: “Hey Chicken Lips! Examine my angry red face while I display one of my more memorable fingers to your eye things! You have no brain! I question your ancestral heritage! I believe you are a bark eater!” All the while, my skin would be crawling with adrenaline goose bumps, and that funny metallic taste would linger in the back of my mouth. I didn’t really like the feeling, but it took quite awhile for me to put it all into perspective. Nowadays, if a stinky-face driving person does me some dirt, I mutter something like, “oh thank you, Flavorhead. See you in the obituaries.” They never get to see me lose my temper, and with any luck, I never see them again, anyway. This is probably a good thing, because you just never know who might have a bazooka or something lying next to their driver’s seat.

12) I still chase my wife, and better yet, she still lets me catch her. And it’s better than ever! Except for that one time she wanted to invite that camel over for pizza and fake wine (maybe that was a dream).

C5) In spite of the fact that we’ve had some health challenges, we are grateful and content most of the time. It’s not difficult for us to understand how blessed we are… there is always some poor soul who is much worse off then we are.

Perhaps the biggest bonus I’ve acquired along the path of this journey we call life is peace of mind. I’ve learned (albeit sometimes the hard way) to use a few coping skills that have helped me mellow out quite a bit. Like my reaction to change, for example. I’m not really fond of Dennis Miller’s brand of humor, but he said a pretty neat thing awhile ago: “Life is like riding the bus. It requires change.” Lots of stuff changing at home. And in the news?? Forget about it awreddy!! Stuff that used to make my brain explode now simply seems like an annoying little fly to be swatted out of my face. What’s that expression…? Don’t sweat the petty things. Or is that don’t pet the sweaty things?? You know, those two rules for stress management: 1) don’t sweat the small stuff, and 2) everything is small stuff.

It reminds me of a poem… maybe because I made it up:

Das Bizzyvink
by Me, the Person

The stress tried to kill me, but right now it’s gone.
I mowed all the garbage and dumped out the lawn.
I tried driving backwards, ’twas a new way to say,
“Hey all of you ninnies, get out of my way!”
When stress is a color, it’s probably red.
It burns up my innards and blushes my head.
It’s really much better to chill out, don’t you see,
So there’s not too much STRESS and too little of ME.
Ya shoor, in my head there arose such a clatter,
From stressing about things that really don’t matter.
But these days I’m much better, if you don’t mind my saying.
More fun I am having, more games I am playing.
Well, I’m hoping to take stuff less seriously now.
I’ve been here before, so I think I know how.
I’ll try to stay happy and whistle while working.
More “Happy Joy Joy,” and less “You are a Jerk”-ing.

Hey, even though I’m retired, there is still much work to be done. Well, this is me leaving now. Hope all of you had a nice time on my belly button’s birthday. And my friend Hyram C. Glimore has often said, “Please remember that it’s better to be you than for you to be me, and that although you can count to 8, “eight” is a word.”

One benefit to being older than dirt is I got to enjoy lots of funny, talented people from way back when. So hey, how about some funny stuff?? OK thank you.

Quite a journey, all this life stuff. My Beautiful Girlfriend and I are in the midst of a giant “learning experience” right now. Our “golden years” have been tarnished a bit with some pretty intimidating health stuff. When we first discovered our challenge, my Lovely Bride would occasionally lament, “This is not what I thought retirement would be all about!!” The end appears to be closer… and one can’t help but ponder about what comes next, ya know? And can’t help but wonder what tomorrow will bring. Makes the phrase, “One Day At A Time” much more meaningful.

Sheesh, we’re working on one moment at a time.

But you know what? In spite of all our travails, we have absolutely no problems in this world. Seirously!! After that brief spewing of sadness, one might say, “Ya right!! Doesn’t sound like it Kenny boy!!” Well, even though we were in the throes of despair, with a little help from our friends (oh, and especially those God People) (whoever they are) we’ve been able to come out the other side with much gratitude and peace. Took some work to get there, but we’ve acquired some coping tools along the way of this marvelous journey we call Life. Believe it or don’t, we are content most of the time.

For me in particular, this wasn’t always so. Not by a long shot. In the Before Times, I would run for intoxicants and poison my surroundings with angry utterances and breaking of things. I’m very VERY grateful that those times are long gone. Had to look inward and work on some serious behavior changes. Wasn’t easy, but it surely has been worth it. And the lessons are by no means complete. To quote a line from my favorite Scrooge movie, “I don’t know anything. I never did know anything. But now I know I don’t know anything!!” I’ve learned to be especially grateful that no matter what the universe plops in front of me, I’m always keenly aware that we are very fortunate people.

We have plenty to eat, a nice home, a car that works well. And I’m so doggoned lucky because I’m blessed with the love of The Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe. We’re blessed with the love of our children and grandchildren. We’re blessed with the love of friends, and yes, even the love of two kitty cats. And there are many more examples I could name.

So much awful stuff in this world when I watch the news. So many people suffering. So many have it much worse than we do. So many more that will suffer if we can’t find a way to end war. Not to mention global warming (I told you not to mention that!!). So much. So you see, I have no problems. I have absolutely no reason to complain. But because I’m human; I probably will from time to time. I hope you will forgive me when I whine.

As a dear friend of mine used to say, “You want a little cheese with that whine??”

No… Thank You.

Once Upon A Time, there was so much information floating around on the TV and Radio (remember Radio?) and the Newspapers (remember Newspapers?) and the interwebs that when I tried to absorb all of it, I began to turn very pale and then I began to exhale stinky puffs of sauerkraut flavored nasty air because the amount of reported nasty news far outgrew any reports of good news; so I began to shake wildly and flail my hands about as if I were being shocked by 123,874 electric eels and perhaps you can tell that maybe all this news had some effect on me so maybe I better put a period at the end of this ridiculously huge sentence and come up for air awreddy.

~* Whew!! *~ That was fluffy!! And not in a good way.

Yes, Girls and Boys, there is simply not enough good news being flashed in front of our 3.4 millisecond attention spans any more. Now I know there’s good stuff happening out there, because I see it all the time. And thankfully I live in an area where the really bad news isn’t happening. By that I mean nobody is lobbing mortar shells in anyone’s homes; and by and large folks have enough to eat… stuff like that there.

My professional opinion is: 1) yes, we all should stay informed; but R) it’s probably good to at least occasionally unplug from all the news outlets for awhile. One could argue against such a flatulent (or would that be mucilaginous?) tactic, citing they’d miss stories like the Florida woman who married a 100 year old tree to try to save it from being removed to make way for development. Or maybe one wouldn’t hear about the time an18 year old who bought her very first lottery ticket on her birthday and won $1000 for life.

OK so maybe you might miss out on that stuff. But I’m thinking that what may be missing in our Technical Universe is contact with Nature. Nature is big you know. From microscopic critters all the way up to elephants… then our solar system, stars, planets, galaxies… well you know. Nature. Stuff you can see, hear, smell, and taste. And no, I’m not asking anyone to go around sniffing elephants or trying to hear what an earthworm is saying. I’m just imparting what I have found to be true: some of my most peaceful moments come when I have no devices anywhere near me.

I love to listen to the waves of Lake Michigan crashing into light poles as they whiz down the freeway. I love staring at the moon while lying on an ant hill… and when the ants come to visit, I often shake wildly with delight until they are gone. I love watching animals and birds while they have squirt gun fights during marshmallow eating contests. And of course I enjoy visiting with friends; and when they pull out their smellphones in the middle of a conversation, I casually blow my nose very loudly without the use of a tissue and then give them a nice pat on the back.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m also very aware that technology can bring joy to a person’s life. I’ve been a retired techno-nerd for a little over 3 years now; and I admit I do derive some funzies out of watching cat videos and bopping around on the BookFace to see what my friends are doing. I also have an ancient artifact in my living room called a Stereo (remember stereo?) that I use to kick out the jams (remember “Kick Out The Jams” ? ) from time to time. You know what they say: “Music makes the toenails pop!!” Or maybe I just say that.

Anyhoo, I’m working on not reading so much news on the radio and listening to fewer newspapers. Sometimes I can smell the news on the TV and I run backwards to get away; but then I clunk the wall and all the knick-knacks fall down and I burp German words before fainting. I do tune in occasionally to see what Donald Rump and King Jon Loon are doing, but then I barf and decide maybe I should give it a rest for a couple milliseconds. This manic media monstrosity mishmash can make my head bone crackle; then the brain fluids leak out, that that in turn causes my writing to disintegrate into magnetic lag bolt compost droppings.

No news can indeed be good news.

Please pass the marshmallows.

Of course, in the future, technology will take care of EVERYTHING. We’ll see it at the World’s Fair!

A fun time was had when we were kids by blocking a doorway, and only allowing a person to enter if they knew the password. Of course, the password often didn’t exist until someone actually wanted to go through the door; but that was half the fun of it. Passwords often arose on movies and TV, and there was even a TV game show called Password. As the game began, two contestants would face each other and one would try to get the other to guess the password. In preparation, the TV audience would get advance notice when a voice (unheard by the contestants) would softly say something like, “The password is hummingbird.”

Fast forward to the present, with things like online banking and social media, all of which require passwords. How many of us have been hacked on BookFace due to some sleazebag guessing our password? As much as I hate to admit it, I have fallen victim to a hacker on FacePage and had to come up with an “unhackable” password. I exclaimed to myself, “Holy Password!! My crap is weak!!” And of course nobody likes to pass weak crapwords.Well this past week I’ve been examining my other online passwords and found a couple websites that have free password strength testers. I’m a retired IT guy, so much to my dismay, several of my passwords were terrible in strength.

“The password is rutabaga.” (No not really, I was just having a silly memory of the Password game.)

There are several password checking sites out there… for example:

Bitwarden – https://bitwarden.com/password-strength/

PasswordMonster – https://www.passwordmonster.com/

So let’s use what might seem like a strong password, and have bitwarden check it for us. How about Sniffme01! Hey, it’s longer than 7 characters, has numbers and a “special character,” the exclamation point. Bitwarden says the strength is good, but the time to crack it is only 2 days!! I checked the same with PasswordMonster and they said it could be cracked in 3 hours. So obviously, all password checkers are not created equal.

OK, let’s try something longer… how about: YouReallySmellBad!!

Yep, that one is considered strong, and Bitwarden says the time to crack is 64 years, but PasswordMonster says 2 days!! I think I’m trusting PasswordMonster a little better than Bitwarden at this point. So being the lazy person I am, meaning I don’t wanna change my stinkin’ password every two days, I wanted to come up with something that took a really long time to crack. So I got a bit more creative with something like this: Wh@t_K1nd0fJ3rkWants2B_a_H@ckrr?? Yes!! Bitwarden says that one won’t get hacked for centuries, and PasswordMonster says a computer would take 106 billion trillion years to crack that one. And they even give your password a review. For that one, they said, “Fantastic, using that password makes you as secure as Fort Knox “

So the moral of the story is: don’t use common dictionary words for passwords. Be creative and mix up some numbers and special characters. And of course, keep track of them somewhere safe. I keep my passwords in a spreadsheet on my computer, That way I can copy and paste them into various sites without having to memorize all of them. And of course I do not use the same password at lots of different websites. That’s “bad juju” as a friend of mine used to say.

OK kids… password strength class is over. And now for something completely different.

Well I suppose I’m overdue to express my sadness by crying in my dog food about the driving ninnies. I’m really loving summer though… the lack of snow means we don’t have to worry about sliding into the ditch as we leave our driveway. No more hitting the windshield with a sledgehammer to remove those pesky chunks of ice. Nope… these days we can crank the windows DOWN and crank the tunes UP. Coolness!

Unfortunately, with every silver cloud comes a grey lining. Warm weather kicks in a well known ailment in some people. Officially, I just named this disease auto-idiotica, and many of you know this age-old affliction as, “hey you with the Cracker Jacks driver’s license!!”

You know what I mean. Stupid, flameheaded wombats that believe they’re the only ones on the road. You’re in their way, so watch carefully. These people have dog breath and improper grooming habits, and are EVERYWHERE. Some symptoms are: weaving in and out of traffic, severe tailgate-itis, driving 130 mph over the limit, and passing on the right on a two lane road. At intersections. While honking. Although they are ignorant of the fact, idiot drivers have chicken lips, and are known to cavort with barnyard animals during Mardi Gras.

Used to be a time when moronic motorists were restricted to the male population. Unfortunately, however, women are learning from us dudes, and are beginning to do the “tailgate-till-you-move” dance when you’re going less than 85 mph in the right lane on the expressway. It never matters that you’re already going five over the limit and are sanely going past Grandma and Grampa Sightseer. But as far as numbers, dumdum boy drivers still far outnumber dodo girl drivers.

I’m still truly compressed by the number of mush-minded monkeys that try to pull the trim off my car as they fly past me on the expressway. Hey, the limit in Michigan is already 70. Nobody really needs to go more than 75, ok? It just ain’t safe! Sure, you can go, but try to safely miss that deer or broken car. Maybe I’m getting to be an old fart. At least some “kids” (30 and younger) would label me so. But because I’m over 60 I remember the high speed limits from the beforetimes. Before the Arab oil embargo (say wha??). A lot of people raced around back then, and ended up being “dead on time.”

Very sad, the road rage that is spreading these days. Too many people in a terrible hurry. And of course if you are “in their way” they will show the likes of you. Especially if you drive cautiously like I do; meaning I usually try to observe those crazy “Speed Limit” signs. I can almost hear them…

“Watch this, Mr. SlowPoke Minivan Cruise Control Person! Watch while I remove a few thousand miles worth of wear by vaporizing the surface of my tires! Watch how well I can ruin my transmission! Ha ha! I shall show the likes of you! I’ll accelerate wildly so I can tailgate the next jerkface who has the nerve to drive courteously!! Then I’ll pass on the right, and also on the left. But just to show you I mean business, I’ll wait for oncoming traffic and barely pull back in on time! Ha ha! I listen to the COOLEST music very loudly and am ruining my hearing with 92 inch woofers! Boy are you stupid!!  And if you dare to look my way, I’ll display to your face one of my more memorable fingers!!”

Such intelligent beings are often mystified when they receive a ticket. After all, it was not their fault they were going 84 that day, because that cop is NEVER there before! Or… they run the same stop sign all the time, BECAUSE THEY LIVE THERE and there’s NEVER ANY TRAFFIC. Oh, and not to forget the folks who weave and poke along like they’re drunk. Some really ARE drunk, but the others are texting.

I don’t want the reader to get any funny ideas about the possibility that reckless driving scares me or anything. It PETRIFIES me. Wanna know why? Because I used to be a Mr. Moron Motorist! Been there, done that! Thank God I never hurt anyone. I did, however, manage to rack up many tickets in younger days. Too many. But boy, the insurance company was happy with me!! I wanted to continue driving, and they were only too happy to take lots of my money in exchange for minimal coverage.

Lucky for me, I finally learned; albeit the hard way. Haven’t had so much as a parking ticket since 1982. This is a good thing. I can breathe much more easily, and so can my wallet. It’s always empty anyway, but at least it’s not red when I put a nice, crisp dollar bill in there.

So, I can spot ’em a mile away now, and know pretty much what they’re gonna do when they get up near me. I just let them go by. Safer that way. I paid my dues, and I’m sure they’ll pay theirs in one form or another.

Anybody seen the keys to my Slow Poke Minivan Cruise Control Zooming Machine?

Folks just need to chill out and slow down… something strange happens to the weirdo drivers once they get behind the wheel… they become Motor Maniacs like in the first video.  The whole zooming mania reminds me of an old Queen song.,”Dead On Time;”  the lyrics for which appear in the second video.  Take care folks… and please, BE SAFE.

I love to grow vegetables. And my favorite way to grow vegetables is the “natural” way, which means I don’t put any artificial additives in the soil. There was a time when I relied on manure for fertilizer, but I’ve switched to pure compost.

Well, mostly pure.

We have a compost pile, and that receives all of our kitchen waste: vegetable snippings, coffee grounds, egg shells. Absolutely no meat… meat in the compost is bad juju from the nasty microbes that eat animal flesh. Fish stuff is OK if you put it straight in the ground before planting, but no bird or mammal meat. In addition to all the kitchen waste, a healthy helping of leaves and all the weeds I yank from the garden go into the compost pile. Some folks take a pitch fork and turn the pile occasionally to speed up the composting action; but I usually end up just letting the creepy crawlies chow down and make the compost for me.

This practice has turned me into an avid leaf collector. My “prize leaf ” is a 1971 maple that really makes me proud. A nice bowl of leaves are really great with milk and sugar too! High fiber.

OK, I may be fooling… But seriously folks, I used to traipse around the neighborhood and pick up bagged leaves in the fall. Many, many trailer loads. People tell me, “Oh God!! Don’t use oak leaves!!! They have too much acid!!” And I reply, “No!! This is bull mahookey old fairy tale nonsensical rumor badness!! There’s no such thing as bad leaves in the garden!!” And they cry and roll on the ground.

Or not.

Oak leaves have a high calcium content, and are pretty substantial compared to leaves like maple that break down more quickly. Earthworms LOVE oak leaves, and earthworm manure is alkaline, so a balancing effect occurs when oak leaves are added to the soil. Back to running around the neighborhood to collect leaves, these days I’m blessed with friends who bring me leaves from their yard and dump them out behind the garden for me. And if I go through all those (which I often do) I make “emergency runs” to the local transfer station, which we affectionately call “the dump.” People bring their leaves there, and the pile even gets turned regularly so there’s lots of compost available, free for the taking.

I have only one complaint about all these free composting items. Trash. There is always at least some trash in the leaves, whether they come from the dump or are given to me by my friends. Sometimes I find “interesting” items, like soda cans, candy wrappers, hunks of Styrofoam, even found the remains of a cell phone once. My very “favorite” type of trash are the fake leaves that get mixed in with the real ones. I’ll bet plastic leaves take a few thousand years to break down. Oh and on a side note: you know those little sticky labels on green peppers, avocados and the like from the grocery store? I’ve been guilty of forgetting to remove them before the remains go in the compost. Then of course I find them later, either while scooping compost during planting time or yanking weeds. I’m pretty sure those stupid labels will be here when the archaeologists come.

I’ll continue to use the dump as my primary source of compost material. So to my dear friends, and to all who bring their leaves to the dump, thank you. But please, keep the trash at home.

It doesn’t just doesn’t make good fertilizer.

And now, a video that’s not a video, but a song. Our grandson would express frustration on cartoon night when I’d slip in a music video; and his annoyed voice would ring out, “Papa, you like songs!!” Anyway, this is from a band from yesteryear called Spirit. The name of the song is “Fresh Garbage.” And the lyrics are…

Fresh garbage
Fresh garbage

Look beneath your lid some morning,
See those things you didn’t quite consume.
The world’s a can for your fresh garbage.

If bean plants could talk, they’d ask the onions to leave the premises immediately. This is for real, people! They’d pinch their noses and shout thusly: “Hey! You wid da face! You’re pudding a big hurt od by doze! Gid oudda here awreddy! Can’t lib here wid dis stinking.”

The onions cry. After all, they can’t help the fact that they were born with a natural fragrance that bean plants find offensive. Not to worry, the cabbage family is happy to have onions in the neighborhood. Must like that Italian cooking, maybe?

Forgive me while I indulge in this good stink / bad stink talk. In these parts, It’s time to start the garden up, and I get to thinking out loud about who goes where in the dirt. Companion planting, the practice of growing plants that benefit from each other, is a cool thing for us organic-type gardeners. That’s because if plants can be happy together, they are much healthier. Having healthy plants means more yield and fewer problems with bugs and diseases.

Onions exude chemicals that prevent beans, peas, and other legumes from making nitrogen in the soil with their toes. If you’ve ever yanked a bean plant out of the dirt, you might have noticed the rhizomes (little round bumps) on the roots. Well, the beans do NOT have tumors.  The rhizomes are where the action is:  bean-friendly bacteria live there and make nitrogen for the bean plants and anyone else who happens to be nearby.  That is, unless the onions are in town. Then they just sit there, remaining all tiny and twiddling their toes.

Cabbage and its relatives (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc.) love those onions, because they help keep the cabbage butterflies away, and also keep the aphid population down. Both of those bugs love their cabbage, but, like beans, many bugs also hate onion breath.

Another example of companion planting is when corn says thank you to the beans and peas for being there and doing the cool nitrogen toe jam thing. The beans and peas give the corn a high five for wind protection and some shade. Corn plants also make nice poles for peas and runner beans to grab. Between the corn rows, squash or pumpkins get the shade they like, and they in turn shade the corn’s roots and keep them cool. Everybody happy.

On the other hand, you have marigolds. OK, maybe you don’t; but those can go near anything. All the vegetable clans love marigolds, and they even stimulate growth. Not to mention the pretty flowers attract pollinators, so there’s a nice bonus for you.  My kinda plants!

Grandmas and Grandpas used to know lots of this stuff, and Native Peoples were very much in tune to companion planting. Farm and garden chemical companies would love for you to forget all about that stuff though. Those fancy commercials showing folks winning cool prizes for big veggies do tend to get one’s attention. Unfortunately, chemical companies are conveniently quiet about the nasty stuff flowing into our lakes and streams when herbicides and pesticides are washed out of our dirt during a good rain.

But fear not, organic produce are finally becoming more mainstream. People are “discovering” that when the pilgrims found the Indians were growing pumpkins in their corn, it was no accident.

Back to the beans a second (uh-oh, he’s gonna get weird again). I know some people who agree with beans about the onions. Some folks just can’t stand onions or the smell of them. If you like raw onions, your sweetie might say something like, “No kissy face for you until you brush them chompers!” Onions and beans are great food things. I love them together, and regard the combo as almost cosmic. Of course, there is a by-product of eating too much of either: methane. In its natural state, methane is colorless and odorless. When generated by human food eating machines, it is often released with a “PHOOT!!” noise and can have a rather diSTINKtive odor.

HOLY COW!! I JUST HAD A BRAIN-FART!! We may be able to achieve world peace with this combination! Get regiments of bean eaters, right? March them into enemy territory two or three hours after the whole bunch of them cram a few truckloads of bean burritos laced with onions in their faces. No troops in their right minds would try to fight against anyone during such a gas attack. We’re talking victory with no chemical weapons here! Peace could be had without firing a shot, except for the occasional audible report from those burrito eaters. The only hitch would be to strictly enforce an important rule, which would need to be posted with very large placards:

ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING ALLOWED.

So the moral of the story is: if you must plant beans and onions together, plant them in your tummy, not in the dirt.

And please, always remember to visualize whirled peas.

So if you find any of these beans, please save a couple for me!

Those of you who read “Happy Friday!!!” regularly probably read it on Saturday or maybe even later. Well, according to my calendar, tomorrow is Earth Day. I say tomorrow because as my fingers are touching this keyboard thing, it’s still Friday. So there. I must say I am not now nor never have been a fan of Earth Day. Those who know me might exclaim, “Kenny!! Are you tell me that with your tree huggyness and organic vegetable grow munching, that you are not of enjoyment from Earth Day??” And yes, I’m knowing that you probably wouldn’t say it that way at all.

No, I am NOT a fan of Earth Day. That’s because I firmly believe that EVERY DAY is EARTH DAY. So rather than “celebrate” Earth Day, howzabout we celebrate our Mother Earth every day, every month, every year.

Please?

So much climate but not enough change. Yes, good progress is being made. But every time I see a “Hello Fresh” commercial on the TV I want to barf toxic substances. So much packaging! So much delivery!! So much carbon footprinting!! Oy yoy yoy. I’d really rather see a public service announcement from Woodsy the Owl asking people to “Give a hoot, don’t pollute!!” followed by some tips on how small lifestyle changes can make huge differences toward reducing the warming of our dear planet. Rather than lament about all the bad stuff, I believe I’ll devote the rest of this week’s blog thing to some suggestions on how to reduce our human footprint on this delicate orb we call Earth.

1 – Buy as much fresh food as possible; especially foods that don’t come in a container. Not always easy, I have to admit. I of course am guilty of buying packaged foods. But I do try to get stuff in recyclable or reusable containers.

R – Eat less meat. WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY??? Why that’s UNAMERICAN!! Well yes, actually, it is. No I don’t mean it’s bad to eat less meat, I’m merely pointing out that lots of cultures in the world eat less meat than we do. Raising animals for food is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gases in existence. I don’t even want to think about how much of our livestock is raised; because I too am guilty of eating dead animals. We do eat meatless meals, but not nearly often enough. So now that I’ve opened my mouth about it, I guess I better work on eating even less meat!!

7 – Do not ever spray for bugs, never ever, no, don’t do it, bad juju. I saw a BookFace friend post about spraying for mosquitoes recently; and I pointed out that sprays designed to kill mosquitoes are indiscriminate. They also kill bees, spiders, and may other beneficial critters. We do use insect repellent on our bodies when the bitey bugs are hungry; but we normally try to do outside things when they are less likely to smell us. Ever notice that skeeters are really hungry just before sundown? Oh and they like to stab me in the mornings too. So during the day, not so much. I try to avoid the repellent at all cost… I’d rather swat than put poison on my skin. But when I read about bee populations (along with other beneficial creepy crawlies) declining I am very aware that I’m doing the right thing by keeping sprays out of my tiny 5 acre piece of this world.

B – Mow less lawn. Mow less often. Or don’t mow at all. That is all.

Yeah I could go on and on and on, but I’m already preached to the point of “enough awreddy”. We still have a magnificent home here on Mother Earth. So my wish is to put a stamp that says EARTH DAY on every single day / month / year of every calendar. Then we can start our day thinking about what we can do to help Mother Nature survive all this human activity.

OK by youse??

Well I would be remiss at this point if I didn’t include some hippie freak tree hugger videos that honor our Mother, so here goes.