Yesterday I had to start a post over again that my computer wiped out completely just as I was finishing it. I had intended to rewrite the post today, but found key parts of it that I really liked were gone from my diabetic old memory. Life is like that. We get old and we get all futzed up, and no… the computer did not malfunction and save me from using a bad word there. I meant to say “futzed”.

It is a Yiddish sort of word… so I guess you could argue it is not a real word. Yiddish, after all is a language intended by God to provide Jewish comedians with words that sound like insults but really aren’t… and words that don’t sound like insults that really are. (Have you ever looked up what “putz” actually means?)
But that is what the Mickian computer has been up to. It mashes, mangles, impedes, and implodes my writing. If it wasn’t so handy for coming up with a funny post about fighting with a computer, I might actually become aggravated enough to throw this old computer out the upstairs window and into the sickly, green, unused swimming pool below.
I have used my computer daily and put it through all sorts of contortions and convolutions in the past three years of ill health and bed-ridden retirement. It is probably no wonder it is wearing out. I not only write and turn drawings into jpegs on it, I use it to mess with photography, play Facebook games, and keep up with the international clown show that other people generally refer to as politics. I shed beard hair on my keyboard. I drop popcorn on it when I am trying to jam too much in my mouth at once. And I occasionally baptize it with a juicy sneeze or projectile cough. I confess that I probably deserve the revenge it wreaks upon me.
Besides randomly deleting my posts and instantly saving the changes, it will also shrink the view of the entire page so that I can’t even read what I type with a magnifying glass. The only way to correct the problem is shift to a different browser for a while until Firefox or Chrome stops hating me long enough to reset. I have also had problems with the computer blowing things up. One time I was trying to write on WordPress when only three huge letters at a time would fit on the screen. That can make it quite hard to pull the old train of thought out of the darker parts of the tunnel of stupid ideas. (I also just now had to re-type the part in italics when the computer deleted it. I am making a back-up copy on Microsoft Word, but sometimes I can’t copy and paste fast enough.)
Truthfully, something is seriously wrong with this laptop. The mouse pad malfunctions and the control key sticks. I may have to buy a new computer soon. But this one has given me numerous goofy smiles, and I will miss it when it joins the pile of old dead computers in the garage.
If you haven’t quite figured it out, these are some of the numerous goofy smiles.

























Trudging Towards Tomorrow
My three kids used to be cute, even with goblin grins.
I spent a lot of time yesterday looking at old photos. The journey seems a lot longer looking back than looking at the trail ahead. But there are good things beside every signpost on the road behind us. I am proud of where we’ve been.
The Three Faces of the Princess at the Kingdom Hall;
We are basically right with God. Oh, I know I haven’t been a very good Jehovah’s Witness the last three or four years. Being an atheist might have something to do with it. But I actually believe in God. It is just that my God is a bit bigger than theirs. My God is not some old man with a white beard on a golden chair in some invisible dimension. He is everything there is. And he doesn’t have to promise me eternal life and goodies for a lifetime of doing what I believe is good and right and benefits the lives of others. I don’t do it for theological dog treats. I do it because I know in my heart it is right. And I live for the here and now. Because that is the only part of existence that is relevant to me here and now. “I am a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, I have a right to be here.” (from Desiderata by Max Ehrmann)
We used to do a lot of camping and traveling. We have seen some amazing things in amazing places.
The Grand Canyon is improved by having my middle son posed in front of it.
At the Grand Canyon Railway Station;
In a land where dinosaurs once roamed;
You can find dinosaurs for tourists without spending big bucks to visit Jurassic World.
Don’t worry. The Princess is the scariest dino running with this pack. That goofasaurus rex is going to regret that nose-bump to the back of the head.
In the end, she ate every last one.
But my kiddos hatched a replacement, so they are not personally responsible for the re-extinction of the dinosaurs.
Appreciating nature;
Posing with dead nature.
Posing with living nature, including wild and feral cousins, is also fun.
Filipino nature and wild and feral Filipino cousins.
And we have allowed ourselves to have fun along the way.
But children grow up and begin to have their own lives. They get jobs. They learn to drive. And we have to fearfully accept the consequences of the monsters we have probably created.
As I continue trudging down the road of life, I am somewhat weary because I am old. My bones have a lot of walking-around mileage on them. My heart has a limited number of beats remaining. But my biggest regret is… you can only go back and walk the path again through memory and old pictures. Time and I march onward.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, compassion, daughters, family, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, humor, kids, photos
Tagged as adventure, boring old family photos, Doofy takes on old photos, humor, kids, nature