Fanny packs ~

I've used fanny packs for years, even before children. I carried a lot of stuff in my pockets. I was taught that there were pickpockets everywhere and so I carried my wallet in my front pocket.





One time I got locked out of my car and had to break in through the sunroof. It leaked after that so I carried around two sets of keys. A fanny pack relieved me of some of the load in my pockets so that I didn't look like I had rocks in my pants.





When my wife and I had children, we had our first two children within 18 months of each other. As they got to toddler years and older I felt a need to carry snacks and drinks with me.





There weren't very many easy ways to do that, but I found a fanny pack with two holster holes for bottles or drinks on either side. I loved it! It always drew comments. from people around us, and I had drinks and snacks and belongings and sometimes even toys in that thing.





It was very handy to just spin it around and walk around with it actually behind me and then spin it around to the front when I needed something then spin it back around. But I really looked like a doofus and I didn't care.





As the kids got older, I got away from using the double bottle fanny pack. I bought a leather fanny pack and used it, whick always drew comments when I traveled. It made me feel safer because the pickpockets that I had been warned about by my parents couldn't get my stuff without feeling around on the front of me.





But I never had anybody pick my pocket. At least not that I know of. Although, there was one time at Disney World when I looked down and a woman had her hand in my coat vest pocket, but there wasn't anything in there.





Once the kids got older I got away from using a fanny pack. I also stopped carrying around two sets of keys, and I made them start carrying some stuff. For a while I didn't use a fanny pack at all.





I still had a lot of stuff in my pockets and I still carried my wallet in my front right pocket, but I didn't use a fanny pack the way I did.



In the past year or two, I bought a new small fanny pack made of buffalo skin. It's nice, soft supple leather, and I really like it. I've started using it instead of carrying my stuff in my pockets the way I did for so long. One, because I'm not working anymore and so I don't have to worry about people laughing and making fun of me and having to explain to each type a personality that I worked with why I had a fanny pack on. And I find that it's just easier to pick up my keys, my pocket knife, and put on my fanny pack when it's time to go somewhere. I keep my mints and my notebook and my wallet and my other things that I may need along with money and drink packs. It doesn't have holsters for drinks but I use those singles drink packs to make a bottle of water into green tea.





I enjoy using a fanny pack. I do tend to wear it in the front instead of in the back where many other people do. I don't carry a gun in my fanny pack. It's got a pocket for that purpose, but that's where I keep my notebook and pen and my index cards.





I enjoy using a fanny pack.

Handled bullies ~

When I was growing up I remember going to a neighbor's trailer to try to take care of something.



I rode the bus to middle school and high school. I had to walk down our long driveway and then half a mile down the road to the corner to get the bus.



There were other kids that did similar things and we all met at that corner. Two of the kids were bullies and would regularly call me names and beat up on one of the little kids. One day I had had enough.



That afternoon they had the little kid over on the side of the road. One of them was holding his arms behind his back. The other one picked up rocks in his fists and then punched the little kid in the gut repeatedly.



The kid couldn't even defend himself. So I was outraged. I sat at home and thought about it for a little while and then I went out to the garage after are talking to my mother about it. I went out to the garage and got a walking stick. I walked down my driveway and then down a little ways and then into the trailer park to go back to these two bullies' parents' place.





The parents had the nicest trailer in the trailer park. I think they were the managers and oversaw things, making sure rent was paid and all that. They did not own the place though. I knocked on the door but before I got there the two boys were pestering me as I walked up the driveway wanting to know what I was doing and why I had that stick.



And what was I going to do? The reason I brought the stick was I was going to beat them up if they made a move on me, but they didn't. I knocked on the door of the trailer and the elderly man came to the door.



He was their father and I explained to him what had been happening and how concerned I was. I asked him if he could do anything about it. I was a teenager that couldn't drive yet. I can't imagine what the guy was thinking.



But I do know that if I were approached that way, I'd probably laugh it off and then tell my boys to cut it out. My boys weren't anything like that. So I didn't have that concern.



He said he'd talk to his boys and it got better for a little while. They called me more names, but they never got very close to me.



They never got close.



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Learned something new again ~

I learned something about tuberculosis this past weekend. I was told about a book that said tuberculosis had shaped a lot of things in our society and in the world. The person telling me about that book said that it was fascinating because when the United States was settling the west, western towns that were in the arid desert areas like Arizona and New Mexico actually advertised themselves as health getaways for people with tuberculosis because the dry air and heat was supposed to ease the symptoms of the disease.





It's funny because Doc Holliday, the guy that was part of Wyatt Earp's circle of law enforcement friends at the O.K. Corral, had tuberculosis, and part of his deal was coughing and spitting up and all that stuff.





The town where he's from has a Doc Holiday Festival and I was hoping to go to it this year but we didn't make it. But it would have been interesting to learn a where he came from and whether or not they know that he moved out west because those towns advertised relief for tuberculosis sufferers.





So many cool things to learn.



Book "Everything Is Tuberculosis"

https://a.co/d/gi3clDl



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Different adventures ~

It's fun how my wife and I are going on adventures together now They tend to be more thrill -seeking than some Recently we went ziplining in Tennessee and that was a blast she ziplined upside down part of the time because she started out scared and they convinced her that it was perfectly safe and that she could even zip line upside down. So she did. I did not.



I went skydiving with my two youngest sons. That was a blast and it felt like my whole body was infused with adrenaline afterwards.



Before that we went parasailing at the beach on the Carolina coast. That was a lot of fun too and it was something that I had always wanted to do but it so cost prohibitive to it.



I finally realized why we're doing more of those things that are more expensive and it's because we are older but it is also because our kids are grown.





My wife and I have four children and whenever we would go on trips it was expensive. It cost a lot to move six people around the country to fun sites and do fun things. So when we would go somewhere and one of the adventure/thrill seeking things cost a hundred bucks each we wouldn't do it because of the cost. We drove and we took peanut butter and bread and had picnic lunches and enjoyed the scenery and sometimes just sat and watched people. It was a blast!



But now that it's just my wife and I more often than not we're tending to want to go and do things that you pay for and we budget accordingly. It's a lot of fun and it's funny listening to our adult children wonder why we're so adventurous. Part of the reason is because we can afford it now.





That sense of adventure was always there. In fact, they were our big adventure while they were growing up. And I'm so proud of how well they're all doing. What a blast!



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Changing light ~

It's always so interesting watching the play of light as the sun comes up. I remember when we went to the Monet thing and how they had made a full size model of his lily pond yard and they talked about how he drew the lily pad scene, he painted it over and over and over because of the changing light.



And I get that because as I watch the sun come up the light is so different and I have this urge to capture it in photography pictures. So I take more pictures even though I already have pictures of that I take more pictures because the light is different or it's brighter or it's highlighting something off in the distance instead of the stuff up front.



The added depth of things in shadow close and things in bright direct sunlight off in the distance is amazing and then the heavy wetness of a dewy morning combined with the call of the birds and the roar of the traffic.



It's an amazing experience.

Proud to be an American ~

What if I told about a place to go to think of would be available to you? Where there would be food to live and stay and air conditioning and roofs that don't leak.



What if I told you this place had methods of transporting you back and forth to wherever you wanted to go? You could go and see loved ones just because you wanted to. And then you could return back to where you live and no one would charge you any money or give you any hassle



If I told you that your children in that place could get an education that was better than anything you ever had in your life? Be taught by people who cared for them and made sure that they were good for them. Then after school colleges would line up and pay for them to go to their classes and then your children would have an opportunity to become rich and successful.



I would warn you that the police would require things from you. Requires some work to get some of the things that you want when you get there. A lot of things would just be laying around waiting for you to come up and use them and take them. Some of them would require you to work and do things for other people while you were there. What if I told you that this place allowed you to send you that you earned back to your family where you're at now so that you could help support them and improve their lives. And give them a chance at something better or at coming to be with you in the new world.



What if I told you that you live in that place right now? That there is a whole continent south of our country that has people doing whatever they can do to get to where you live right now. And to do the things you take for granted it even complain about.



What if you embraced that way of thinking and approached life here in the United States of America as if it was the greatest thing that ever happened to you and that you had something that so many other people wanted you should feel exceptional? You should feel blessed to be enabled to be and do whatever you want to be and do.



So often we turn things sideways and we look at them as if those people are just coming here to steal from us and take things that my children won't get to have. But instead of doing that we should embrace it and say this is the spirit of America. And while we should enforce the laws on the ones that do get through we need to embrace and put them to work and help them to make our country better. Show them the legal way to do things, teach them how to be responsible members of our communities. And how to be a good citizen of a country that has so much for them and is a beacon of light and hope to the world.?



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Negative references ~

It's always bothered me how people use words and references that were once horrifying as commonplace and even to be bragged about nowadays.



I remember when mental illness was something people just didn't joke about, then people started joking about it. Then people would refer to somebody as being "anal retentive" or having obsessive compulsive disorder because they wanted to check the stove before they left the house. It even became a put-down to be called OCD.



Autism terms started to catch on a little bit but because they became a protected class that kind of slid back into the background.



Anorexia is a mental illness that people suffer from but people will joke about somebody looking anorexic when a food dish is made that people just can't get enough.



And those foods are called "crack" like the drug that's based on cocaine or heroin or whatever but I don't hear a lot of people joking about how that food was like heroin.



Binging on things has become something that people joked about more and more over the past few years. It's become almost something people brag about, to binge watch something on a streaming platform because it's so good that you just can't resist it. But I remember when the Harry Potter books were coming out and kids that I knew would stay up all night the night that they got the book just so they could read it all in one night and brag about it the next day. They would also complain about how tired they were but how good the book was.





It's funny how nobody markets their stuff as being as addictive as meth, isn't it? And I wonder when it will become a joke to call something as deadly as fentanyl. Or maybe they do that already, I don't know.