A terrible irony

There is a terrible irony going on right now in the USA and the South American and Central American countries.  While many from Central and South America seem to want to migrate north for the better life, mostly from Central America, Americans are being enticed to travel and to live in South America, enjoying better lifestyle for themselves in places like Panama, Belize, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. There are many places in the world today inviting retirees to settle, become expats, and to live a great lifestyle at a pace that they can afford.  Ironic, isn't it?

What does this mean?  It means simply that retirees on fixed incomes cannot afford the high costs that the young working are able to enjoy due to higher wages than the retirees had earned when that same age.  Life is perplexing, isn't it?

International Living is a business enterprise that specializes in retirement living worldwide, and makes quite a profit at helping American retirees to settle outside of the USA into homes and lifestyles that are within their budgets.

I have been studying this for some time myself, and am contemplating the possibility of the new adventure in retirement years, and that is of moving to another country where I can afford the very things that are much too costly for me here at home in the USA.  Health care being the most unaffordable for me in the USA.

At my age, it is difficult to consider such a move, but I am entertaining the thoughts of it.  Housing is too expensive for me now and I must decide soon.   It is an iffy situation at this point...but cost of living is so low in many of these places that I could possibly at least manage to live a reasonably modest lifestyle for lower costs than I can do here in the states...Still trying to work my way into resolving this issue.

Meanderings about years end 2014

So many dreadful things happened this year that one forgets easily from day to day.  But foremost at this writing is the problem that the law has been having in many parts of the USA.  The police are being accused of excessive force but two grand juries found that the police were only doing their jobs in defending the community against crime.

Because two of these antisocial victims happen to be black, and both were killed by a police officer or group of police officers, the entire country has been subjected to long tedious protests by organized civil rights leaders.

It has gone so far that a Smith College President was forced to apologize for saying all lives matter when the black community took umbrage at all as being too inclusive when the emphasis is supposed to be upon ONLY black lives.

As a result of all this hysteria and unfortunate misunderstanding of the purpose of the law, two NY city policemen were killed in execution style by an irrational vengeful miscreant who later shot himself when surrounded by the police who had him trapped.  In Florida, another police officer was also shot and according to headlines, run over, apparently in response to all this anti cop hatred.

So at the present time, people are aghast at the lawlessness which is being practiced across the land.

In addition to this looney tunes protestations which are ruining life for shoppers in malls where people line the hallways with protesters, for stopping traffic in major cities, and for promising future continuation of this organized protestation about whose lives matter, black people, or policemen, there is a furor over a movie that was to be released on Christmas Day, lampooning North Korean President Kim Jung Un and the CIA.

Hackers have interrupted Sony Studio which has caused Barack Obama and the FBI to conclude that North Korea is behind the plot to disrupt life in movieland.  It is only a movie is the theme of most protests about a film that shows how the President of North Korea is killed by a CIA plot.

North Korea is protesting its innocence but is also threatening not only the Pentagon, the mainland USA, the cesspool of terrorism, but has offered to help the USA to find who it is that has really hacked into Sony Studios.  North Korea claims that it has been framed.

All this is happening now...the end of the year but most of this has dragged out since summer.

The worst weather conditions in history have been long forgotten by this time since all that matters now is what will stop this senseless shooting of police officers who are only doing their job.  Nobody ever likes the policeman who catches anyone in committing a crime.  Except the person who was the victim of the crime!

My personal opinion on this is that the protestors made more enemies than friends for interrupting holiday shopping, traffic, and for physically assaulting people who defended the police, our guardians of peace.

A little tongue in cheek in that last statement!  The hackers are calling themselves the guardians of peace.  ( A little note to myself since I forget so quickly.)

Selfies

This was taken late today.  People wonder why I change my profile picture so often. Actually I did not change to this yet.  I was playing around.  I had just  put this photo without the barrette on to show how much gray I have in the front.  But I can never wear my hair hanging loose for long. I always have to pin it back.  Decided to show how much or little it had changed from when I first had it done.   The point of this is to do a self check before I leave the house to appear halfway presentable.  Ha Ha Ha!

2014 coming to a close

If any year has been truly difficult and unbearable, it has been this past year for me.  I consider this to have been one of the worst years in my life.  It is strange at what we learn about one another when adversity hits us.

I do not want to dwell on the negative at this point in time, but suffice it to say that most of 2014 has been a very dreary and sad experience.  I cannot help  but wonder what 2015 will be like.  Mostly, I had prided myself on never having been hospitalized, and unfortunately for me, I met up with incompetent doctors who were responsible for my having to  go into a hospital to repair a cat bite wound.  I am still paying for that experience and I am not happy with anything about it but for one thing that occurred at that time.

I have always had many unusual experiences around me which tell me that spirits are hanging around me.  When I first moved into this apartment and had Alexander then with me, we had had an experience with an entity that made its presence known which scared Alexander.  He could see the vision better than I did but I did catch an outline of it so I know how tall this entity had been so that I had an idea of its size.  I never did give it an identity.

Many things had happened in the apartment at the previous apartment that were amazing and I took them as being evidence of God's presence in my life.  I am also convinced that God again revealed his presence to me during the time that water appeared mysteriously on the floor of my kitchen area. I am convinced that there is some presence there even now.  Not too long ago an incident happened on top of the counter that caused me to think that some spiritual entity is hanging around me.

I even had heard my name called loudly one morning so that I had thought when I saw my neighbor out doors that it could have been her.  She denied it so I then thought it must have been a spiritual audio then.  I then thought it is my mother.

Then this past spring renovations began on the apartment building which truly sent me into a downspin for the entire summer.  It is not yet finished even at this date since men are still working on the fire pit which has been built near the swimming pool.  It is a god awful thing to see.  I do not know why on earth all this concrete is being poured into such a small area but apparently somebody thought it would be a selling point.  In fact, it is the reverse of that.

The final three buildings are beginning to be stripped of their roofing tile and the fences around the patio.  That is a sure sign that come January the buildings will undergo the same process that our buildings which are in the front have endured for so many months.  I was pushed to despair at times by all this ongoing activity which clearly clogged our parking lot next to my room.  That parking lot is still filled with materials that should be removed asap so that cars can once again park there. It is a mess and I mind it terribly.



Plus the fact that my body is undergoing real changes that reveal how aged I am becoming.  My body is falling apart rapidly now, and I wonder how long I will continue to be self reliant and independent. I hate to think of ever not being able to take care of myself as I do now.

So I am on a health binge and am going to drink smoothies every day if possible to keep my body in good health nutrition wise.  I am cutting out sugar but I still eat some sweets. I cannot give them up totally.  I found a salted caramel candy that I just love.  Oh God, it is so good that I wish I could find more of it.  I got it at T.J. Max but there is no label on it to know what company makes it.  I wonder if I will ever find it again.

Remembering that God is with me does help me most of all. I am happy to believe in God's personal care and interest in me. I trust my health to God's will more than anything else.

So on that score, I will close this now.

Short brief note

December 05 is the day that my mother passed away eleven years ago.  I thought about her all day. Since I had had an audio experience the other day with hearing someone calling my name, I finally decided after asking Barbara if it had been her, that it must have been a spiritual experience.  All I could think is that my mother may have been calling me.  She has done that to me in the past where I can hear her calling out to me.

I laughed at Dan Wheeler today when someone said that some relative of hers had gone to the Lord.  He said, Well you know where he is then.  That made me laugh at that.

I just hope that she is where there is Love all around her.  That is a Heavenly repose.

Worst year so far!

2014 is going to go down as one of the worst years I have spent on this earth so far.  It has been the most exasperating and downright unpleasant year that I have had since living in Arizona, and I have had some doozies already.  But this one has taken the cake for annoying me the most.

I think it is because I am getting older and therefore less amenable to changes, problems, and irritations that come my way.  I really believe that each person who ages thinks that old age should be a reward for having endured so much crap when young, but instead it seems that we just have to endure worse crap as we age.  What a sad and unwelcome problem to realize.

A lesson in blogging today

I received an email from a pair who are in the business of making money through blogs, so with an invitation to listen to this pair explain how to blog to make bundles of money, I listened to the webinair this noon.   It was much like old time letters of how to make money through mail order. The two are not very different in fact.  Probably, the end result is the same as well.  You pay out but get little in return except a headache and a disgust with the way the American system allows all these attempts to take money from dumb clucks who fall for all these schemes.

However, i did write down all the information that they are  willing to give away free (amounts to very little) in return for the chance that you might be foolish enough to dole out $197 to learn how to blog by a purchase of their book that gives you all the secrets of how to pitch your "niche" interest.

Google even likes to make money on blogs by selling ads but already we have long known that little fact.  I even encouraged a photo blogger to try selling ads on his great blog site.

I am not into photography blogs, information blogs, or any other kind of pay me now for all I have told you blogs unless I do finally win the lottery and think that a blog might help others to win it too if they pay me up front for all my years of work and effort to figure the dang thing out.

I said thank you for the lesson and goodbye after taking all the information that they were willing to share into my peabrain and digesting it.  Once I learned how much they want to make a killing on the internet, to get into those six figures, I said goodbye.  Too much money for me to ever pay when I can go get blogs for dummies free at the library.

The publishing game is one of the worst rackets that there is, but people do like to read, to dream, and to fantasize so it is a lucrative business.  Even non fiction books are big business for people who want information on all kinds of things regarding health, finance, romance, fitness, travel, hobbies, pets, and on and on forever.  So if one does want to blog about it, it can be done.  But when you ask for a dollar back for your information, you are a business person, not a friend.  That is the big differences between friends and business people: money!

So kiss me for a buck, I am in business; but kiss me free, I am either a sucker or a friend...and sometimes it is hard to know if there is a difference.

Think about it!