Momma Bear gets REAL protective you know...

I have to laugh at myself. I've learned that I really am a "Momma Bear" and as they say, you just don't mess with her cub. Seriously.

My cub, my Angel Girl, has been put through the ringer and I'm proud to say she's held her head up the whole way. As a mom, I know I can't protect her from the roller coaster of life, but I can sure give it my best shot.

All the while, I'm still recovering from my LAST (ahem) Carpal Tunnel surgeries. I say surgeries because not only was my wrist operated on, but also my elbow AT THE SAME TIME!! Ugh. The pain is way more intense than I ever imagined, which is why I'm not typing much. Mind you, I still can't hold a pen or a pencil. In fact, I really can't hold a cup of coffee yet. Ouchie :(

My silver linings are that my girl is in a safe place for the moment, and my emergency sales are really going fantastic. I have a great reputation, which helps no doubt, and GREAT customers. THANK YOU ALL!

The sale is going well! Thank you everyone, so very much.

I thought I might let everyone know that if you have never been to AlsoShop.com, it's a great auction house. Of all the sites I have sold on since I began selling online, this place has the greatest management staff by far.

My store (Buzzard Flats) can be found via one of my links (on Facebook, Twitter, or AlsoShop's forum) or if you are at AlsoShop's home page, there is a search bar you can use to find any specific store you need. Cool, eh?

If you find something you would like to purchase (preferably from my store, duh, like NOW would be good) but you are not yet a member, no worries. Click on registration button and you will be presented with a choice to sign up as a buyer only, or as a seller. There is no verification to become a "buyer", but you do need to provide your email address. That's it. And you can always change from a "buyer only" to a seller at any time. You can also go in to the AlsoShop Forum and read about currant listings, but if you wish to post, you will need to register.

Now, as for my recovery from all these surgeries, this emergency sale really IS kicking my proverbial butt. If someone would just remove the burning in my spine, or heal my carpal tunnel sites, well hey! I'd be good to go. Family emergencies really take it out of ya, don't they.

My Emergency Sale is going well, thank you God, and thank you to my customers. A few more items have been listed, but I must admit my surgery sites are burning hard tonight.

My store, on AlsoShop, is now called BUZZARD FLATS (yay!) instead of Buzz Auctions. Most of my customers have been with me for years and have known me as Buzzard Flats (Buzz) ~ and the owner of Also Shop was kind enough to change my store name for me. Special thanks going out to her.

Copy and paste this link into your browser, and it should take you to my store. Again, this IS an emergency sale
http://www.alsoshop.com/21,owner_id,other_items

Emergency Sale from Buzzard Flats

I've got an Emergency Sale going on right now over at AlsoShop Auctions. My store is Buzz Auctions, although I'm hoping to get that changed to simply Buzzard Flats.

My AlsoShop Auction Store (Buzz Auctions): http://www.alsoshop.com/stores/Buzzard_Flats

All my Jams, Jelly, Preserves, and fruit butters are listed (all I had) and must be sold ASAP. You do not need to be a member of AlsoShop to make a purchase -- and it's for a damn good cause.

I hope to find more stuff to list. Right now I need to get the photos of these gourmet foods uploaded to a new photo hosting website, as the ones I used in the past seem to have been disabled.

Speaking of disabled, since I last posted I have had 5 (count 'em) carpal tunnel surgeries. THAT explains why I haven't been here. Sorry peeps.

Carpal Tunnel, who knew?

I've recently learned that many women have been victim of this "my generation" (my call, nothing official) thing called Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, but no one in my "parents' generation" had it that I can recall. What, the doctors didn't know about it? Makes ya go "hmm" doesn't it?

I had the CTS surgery last Thursday (one week ago). Post-op instructions were minimal: Take Ibuprofen 600 3x a day if needed and elevate your hand above your heart; keep dry. That's it! Seemed simple enough, surly I could do that, right? Humpft, silly woman I am.

Murphy's Law #712: When you need it the most, it will break
Now remember, all the while, our air conditioner has been on the blitz for a least a week, maybe a tad more. Murphy's Law in full effect here, who knew the temperature here in Oregon would break record HIGH levels? Let me stress, we had a heat wave hit us with 108 and 109degree days! Oh my gawd! It was 96degrees inside the house, and here I am wrapped like a mummy up to my elbow. Did I mention that a sweaty wrist, when bandaged up, itches like hell? You know there's nothing more frustrating than an itch you can't get to; ask anyone who's worn a cast; or ask a dog who skootches his behind across the living room carpet. Aarrgghh!! Oh, but I digress.

Hubby and I filled my prescription on the way home from my surgery. Now, you must picture this: groggy old woman with one half her arm wrapped like a mummy standing at the pharmacy counter, sweating profusely to boot. Key words here would be HAND SURGERY + PRESCRIPTION BOTTLE. Did the pharmacist miss my bandages? Surely not? Did that idiot give me an easy-to-open bottle?? Don't be silly. But I was still groggy from the anesthesia, so I wasn't thinking clearly. You know what this means? I blaime my hubby and that stupid pharmacist at Walmart. Stick with me here and you'll understand.

The rest of Thursday there was new, strong tingling in my fingers. It finally went away after 24hrs of my freaking out about it, whew. "Well that was a fun trip! ... Not!" Did the doc mention that might happen? Ha, silly woman, don't be ridiculous.

This was followed on Friday by a stabbing electrical pain in the pad of my thumb. "Ouch, ouch, dang, IS THIS NORMAL??" Well who knew, since neither the doctor's office nor anyone at the surgical center say a word about "stabbing pain". Good grief, do I have to teach the freaking world how to communicate? Ahh, but I digress. Sigh, why me? (lol).

Murphy's Law #12: A helping hand is never around when you need one
Now here's another Murphy's Law experience... I couldn't open the damn bottle of Ibuprofen! Not with only one hand for Pete's sake! As I said, it was NOT in an Easy-To-Open bottle, oh noooooooo. And my hubby was a work. I thought of my neighbor across the street, ahh, he could open this for me. NOPE, he wasn't home. Crap, crap! My next door neighbor is elderly and doesn't answer the door if she doesn't know you're coming, and didn't answer the phone. Crap, crap, C R A P!! Needless to say, I was getting rather bitchy at this point. Who knew, huh?

The Calvery Arrives
My out-of-state girlfriend called, so that gave me the opportunity to whine, bless her. She had a great idea; she suggested I take that drug bottle out to the garage and use the vice! Well, I did it and managed to get that stupid bottle open using only one hand. The manager at Walmart is going to hear about this the next time I go there. Seriously, of all the idiotic things, one would expect the pharmacist to notice, wouldn't he? Yeah, who knew.

Conclusion
Don't expect the doctor's office to tell you everything you NEED to know, and don't expect your local Pharmacist to actually use the common sense God gave him. Who freaking knew?


PS: Murphy's Law, and the whole concept is not my idea, and I have no clue how many there are nor what numbers any might be, but the damn thing haunts and taunts me daily, lol

It's hotter inside the house than outside!

I took a vacation (of sorts) recently. I had not gone on any type of vacation of any kind for almost 3 years (yeah, so?) but this was an extended away-time for me. 4 weeks or so, this time, and I loved being away from home like nobody's business. I got to see my daughter, finally, and was able to spend some wonderful time with friends I grew up with in Mill Valley, California.

BUT? Well, the ramifications of taking my vacation have been mammoth though.

• I came back to find all of my outdoor potted plants either dead or gone to seed. Grrr.
• I came back to find an extremely pregnant kitty, who chose to begin her birthing process within 24hrs of my return, on my living room carpet!
• I came back to find that our forced-air unit (heats and cools) is broken and no longer cools the house.
• I missed the harvest of blueberries this year - one of my top selling jams. Dang.
• AND, our freezer is freaking out and not freezing my fruits for canning. THIS is NOT GOOD!

ALL of this has caused major problems for my canning (well, okay, except for those 5 little angel kitties who now reside in my bathroom). I started my plum jam, only to find out yesterday that my processed fruit didn't freeze, so I'm scrambling to get it canned before it's too late. I've also got pear butter to can, apple butter to cook, strawberry jam to make, and both blackberry and pumpkin season are coming up fast. BUT OUR AIR CONDITIONER DOESN'T WORK?? Ohh no no no. I cannot stand at a hot stove with a steaming water canner in this kind of weather!

Oh what I'd give for volunteers! lol

Have I become my parents?

If you are 40 or older you will think this is hilarious! I got this in an email and it reminded me of my teen, so I thought I'd share.

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning, uphill... barefoot... BOTH ways. Yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way that I was going to lay a bunch of bull like that on MY kids about how hard I had it and how easy they have it now. No, no, I was going to rise above all that emotional blackmail.

But now that I'm well over the ripe old age of forty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

So to my teen, and yours, I'll hop on my soap box and preach: You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a blasted Utopia! ‘Course you know I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

Oh, there was no email for us either. No, no, we had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then we had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! That took forever!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, even the parents of all my friends had permission to kick our asses if we were up to no good! No where was safe!

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and actually shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the end of the song and mess it all up!

There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone.

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting at home either! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! Too bad, so sad.

Oh, we didn't have Caller ID, no sirree! When that phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

Did I mention we didn't have any type of Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics? We had to wait until our 20's just for the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! And your thumbs were sore.

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! (I actually worked for them for a while--I could tell you stories, but another time perhaps). There was no channel surfing! You had to get off your hind end and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in the 60’s, much less before!

Regards,
The over 40 Crowd ~

and Buzzard Flats! :D