Rant #3,230: A Little Luck

My family and I really need a transfusion of just a little luck during the next two weeks leading up to our move on November 15.

First, let's begin with me.

i haveva torn quadriceps. The hospital.got it wrong, and even put the leg appatus on me incorrectly.

The orthopedist got it all right Yesterday when I visited him, and I have surgery scheduled for November 8 ... just a week before my family's move.

And we need just a little luck with this move.

We have done so much, yet so much has yet to be done.

And we need no more mishaps like what happened to me, a completely freak injury that could not have happened at a worse time.

Honestly, I just don't know what else to say about all of this. 

But in summing it all up, I can rightfully say that this is, by far and away, the most bizarre, the most surreal, and the most freakish time if my life.

Nothing has gone right, everything we touch turns to coal. 

And if anyone needed just a little luck right now. It is my family.

If one could set up a GoFundMe page where one didn't ask for dollars, but just a little luck, we would do it right away.

Our spirits are totally broken, but we will keep on going, because we do not have much of a choice.

Me ... I have to think positively.

This is not a nightmare, this is reality. 

And I have to get past all of this.

Maybe it will all make me a stronger person.

I just don't know ...

And we will never know what my family did to deserve all of this ... and maybe it is better off that we don't know.

And happy Halloween to everyone!

Maybe that's it ...

In the trick or treat department, my family has gotten nothing but tricks thus far.

So maybe, just maybe, it is time for some treats.

Surgery on Wednesday, November 8.

Exactly one week before our move ... I guess I won't be moving much, physically or literally. as we move to.our new place.

Rant #3,229: The Hero Takes a Fall

Yup, I done did it, and I done did it pretty good.

Yesterday afternoon, I was taking some garbage out to the curb.

I was walking done the stairs like I had done a million times in our old house, and then the next thing I knew, I was on the floor in a lot of pain.

To thus moment, I do not know what happened, but I took a flop, with my need going solidly into a box of photo albums that we had stored away for our move.

I thought right away that my kneecap was broken, but more on that later.

My son called emergency, and within minutes, the ambulance was here, and I was rushed to a local hospital--the same one my mother was in all those weeks ago.

To make a long story short--we were in the hospital for several hours--after all the xrays, they found I have a torn patella.

I need to speak to the hospital's orthopedics, and he will determine if I need surgery or not.

I think i do, as my knee is twice the size of my right knee, but let's see what he says, and if I do need surgery, let's get it done ASAP.

Likevl Chester Riley used to say, "What a revolting development this is!"

I was planning to pack away all my records this week, but that is absolutely not going to happen as soon as I would have like it.

There really isn't much else to say about it.

This could not have happened at a worse time, but happen it did.

Now I can't to a thing to gavilitste our move, other than staying out of everyone's way.

Let's see what happens when I get looked at, but I do believe I will be going under the knife.

This is the work of the devil, and we need to get out if the house and into our new residence to be rid of all of this negativity, once and for all.

I just cannot believe that all of this is happen8ng to my family ... and you don't even know the full extent of it!

Rant #3,228: Movin' On Up (To the Big Time)

Yesterday was a day of triumph for myself and my family.

No, I continue to be banned from posting on Facebook … as of right now, I still have seven hours to go on that, and another month or so to go until I can post in my groups again.

No, it has nothing to do with that—

We found out late yesterday afternoon that our house, the place where I spent a good 50 years of my life, has finally been sold.

Papers were signed by myself and my sister, and the final contract signing is on Saturday.

The new owner expects to be in the house by mid-December, so that is that is that.

The house sold for slightly above current market value, based on numbers  described in a story in Newsday yesterday, but of course, my sister and I will not realize much of anything from this deal, as the reverse mortgage people will get most of what the house is selling for.

And after all the other costs associated with the house are paid off—the lawyer gets his cut, the broker gets his, and Uncle Sam I am sure will get his, too—my sister and I will split hairs more than we will split much money from this sale—

But at least we will get some peace of mind—which you simply cannot put a price on—and we will all be able to move on with our lives.

This was a very, very tough time for my family.

I mean, it wasn’t great when my mother was alive. Her dementia really broke the back of all of us, including my sister’s family.

And her passing on September 5 set off a process of events that were so heinous that we really never had a chance to mourn her passing the right way.

The house became a cancer that was growing by the day and by the minute and by the second and millisecond, and the sooner we got rid of it the better—

And now, apparently, the time has come.

So now, my family can fully target November 15—when we leave for our new residence—and really direct our full energies at moving, and not having everything we are doing tainted by the goings on at this house.

Oh, what a relief it is!

For me personally, I have nothing but good memories of this house, less the most recent period.

I lived here—with a few years living elsewhere—for a good 50 years, and it was generally a good 50 years.

I lived here from the age of 14 ;until the age of 66,with, as I said, a few breaks during my first marriage, so when you add it all up, I lived here a solid half century.

I have lots and lots of memories of this house, and most of the memories are not only good, they are great!

But life has its ups and downs, and yes, there are some bad memories that I have of the house and these environs, but they are far out-shadowed by the good stuff, the good memories, and the good times that this house brought me, and later, brought my family.

But those times are now fully coming to an end, and it is time to leave, and make new memories at our new dwelling.

I am not fully happy how things turned out, but others will have to atone for that negativity, something that my family and I had absolutely nothing to do with.

Let those people wallow in their own self-made debacle; my family is ready to start the next chapter of our lives.

So be it.

What comes around goes around, as they say … and others will get theirs when the time comes.

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #3,227: Sitting Here Baby

I am having a bout of insomnia again … too much on my mind to get a good sleep.

And if you winder why I am off Facebook, it is because I have literally been kicked off for a few days, because my posts have been deemed to go against “Community Standards.”

I have no idea why, other than the apparent fact that everything I try to put up now—no matter what I talk about—goes against their “Community Standards,” because I am being targeted for some unknown reason.

I could put up a post of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and they would deem that my post went against “Community Standards”—yet posts that are overly political, sexual, racist and anti-Semitic somehow pass those “Community Standards.”

I should be able to at least post items tomorrow, but I am still banned from posting in my groups for about three weeks or so.

If I was a lawyer, I would sue them, but I am just a lowly freelance editor/writer … if you know any lawyers who might take on my case, please let me know.

Anyway, yesterday was an interesting day for myself and my family.

My wife and I were able to get over to the new abode and get some measurements that we need to fit in furniture, get drapes, and simply figure out where everything is going to go in the new place.

The apartment is still not done—a lot remains to be completed—but we are slated to move in by mid-November, and everything should be ready to go in three weeks.

We did ask management if we could start getting things over a little earlier, and they will have to get back to us on that. It would make things a little easier if we could move the smaller boxes over by ourselves, but who knows if we can at this point.

My son and I bought a larger TV for our living room, splitting the cost on this item.

We have several TVs, but they are all pretty small, so we figured we would need a larger TV for the new place and how we hope to set up things—in the 40-inch range—so yesterday, after my son’s workday, he and I picked up a nice TV at a really nice price.

We are supposedly getting nearer to a sale, so the lawyer sent over some paperwork which sparked several questions on my end, and they will have to be fully answered by the lawyer for me to sign anything.

And then we come to an item that I wish we could take with us, but we simply can’t due to space limitations.

I have an original Yankee Stadium seat which was removed from the Stadium during the Stadium’s first renovation in 1973.

I got it from a Marlboro Cigarettes promo that was run back then, right out of the back of a truck at Sunrise Mall.

It is still "sittable," is mainly wood with the base being metal, and it has a printed number two on it--not a plate.

I am looking to sell this great piece of memorabilia to someone who is a Yankees fan or a baseball fan in general.

I have a price in mind, so if you are interested, please get in contact with me ASAP.

This is an item that I really hate to get rid of, but I have to … but this is not a charity case, and as far as price, I am going to be fair about it, but I am going by the standards set for similar items on eBay.

Funny, just as I am typing this out, I realized that my Yankee Stadium seat has spent as much time in the garage—50 years—as it might have spent as a seat in the original Yankee Stadium …

But sorry to say, it is time to go.

I also spoke to a dealer yesterday, who admitted he was interested, told me exactly what the item was worth—again, that eBay price range--yet offered me half that price to take it off my hands.

Nope, not happening … I would rather sell it to one of you, so please let me know if you are interested.

The item is in Facebook marketplace—somehow, I was able to sneak in this listing there yesterday, even though I am banned elsewhere on the site, fully demonstrating how ludicrous this entire imbroglio that I am having with Facebook really is—and I hope to sell this item as quickly as possible.

And in the midst of everything, we continue to pack, pack and pack some more … it seems to be never ending, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel right now.

We have thrown out so much stuff—and allocated a ton of things to storage—that what still sits in front of us are items that have a definite direction, and are definitely going to the new residence.

Some of it will be difficult to pack away, but the time has just about come with just three weeks left for our time in the old house.

Lots of things still have to be done, but the last of the packing is before us, and we are nearly ready to go with that packing.

I am not looking forward to it, but it is inevitable, and will certainly be some of the most difficult packing that I, personally, have to do—

My record collection, which will be coming with us to the new residence.

Just think about packing in general for such a move, and then add in a 10,000-piece collection, and you have a mountain of mayhem ready to ensue.

Funny, several people looking to buy the house asked us, in a joking way, if the records came with the house, and I jokingly said, “No,” but I meant what I said.

I may not be able to take my Yankee Stadium chair with me to the new dwelling, but the records are following me there, no questions asked.

Rant #3,226: Yesterday

Yesterday was as rough a day as I have had since we decided to move from our residence of the past many decades.

Among many other things I had to do yesterday, I had to drive out to my brother in law and pick up more boxes to prepare for our move.

He works for a major supermarket chain, and can get us as many boxes as we need, so, coupled with what we received from the moving company that we are using, and other boxes we received from my brother in law a few weeks back, we have plenty of boxes already prepared and ready to go to either the new dwelling or to the storage facility we are going to use … with many more items to box away until the move in 22 days.

My son had an in-person meeting with his counselor at our house, and then, on his day off, he and his friend were getting together, so I drove him to his friend’s house.

Almost immediately after I came back home, I had to go out to my brother in law’s house. He lives about 40 miles east of where we are now, a trip that usually takes about 50 minutes or so—

But yesterday, it took much, much longer.

I use the Long Island Expressway to get to his house, and yesterday, it was simply the graveyard that it has come to be known as.

Two exits before his exit, there was not only construction that shut down two of the lanes of the three-lane highway, but there was also an accident right around that point, so the regular movement that I had experienced when I went onto the roadway—the speed limit is 55 mph, but people go as high as 90 on this highway--was stifled by the time I got about four exits away from the area I just described to you.

All told, with everything going on, it took me not 50 minutes to get to my brother in law’s home, but more than 90 minutes.

It was one of the most excruciating car trips I have ever been on, and it was just to pack up a few more boxes.

Incredible … but it was only the beginning.

On the way back after picking up the boxes, there was some traffic—it was well into rush hour—but nothing really that bad … until I switched roadways.

I looked at the time, and it was getting closer to the time I had to pick up my son from his friend, so I decided to go straight to his frond’s house, which meant I had to get off of the LIE and go to the SOB—no, for those who don’t know, it does not stand for what you think it does, although that phrase was definitely uttered by myself and other drivers yesterday—the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway.

The SOB is usually a pain-free way to get from one place to another, with little traffic and a nice, clear ride.

But yesterday, it was anything but.

There was plenty of traffic on the roadway, and when I came close to another highway I had to go on to get to the house, it became apparent that this incredible traffic that I had encountered earlier was also present on the SOB, but for different reasons.

Enmeshed in more traffic, I finally got onto the Southern State Parkway, another one of the great highways on Long Island that is also one of the more treacherous roadways in New York State and in the country, with numerous fatalities registered each and every year.

I encountered even more traffic, and needing to go about two exits became an excruciating exercise.

But I made it, hopped off and made it to my destination—about 10 minutes early.

So waiting tor my son, I figured I would look on my phone to see if there was any work for me to do—and there was plenty.

Again, I had not looked in about four hours during the afternoon after having done something for work in the morning in between everything else I was doing, so I figured there would be something, but not this much!

So I prepared what I had to do for later, finally picked up my son—and went on the Southern State on the east side, and encountered even more traffic.

We left the Southern State to go to the Wantagh Parkway, and finally, I was on a roadway without any traffic at all, and got off on Merrick Road and—

Hit plenty of more rush hour traffic.

I finally got home at 5:30 p.m. after being on the road since 1 p.m. or so, ate my dinner in a rush, and did what work I could until after 8 p.m., when I finally finished what I could do … and promptly conked out on the couch while watching TV with my son.

It was an excruciating day for me to say the least, but at least I got more boxes to pack things away in.

For the love of cardboard … !

(On Wednesday, I have an early doctor’s appointment—nothing terrible—so I will skip tomorrow’s Rant and be back here on Thursday. Speak to you then.)

Rant #3,225: Colours

I remain in Facebook jail for the foreseeable future as I put together today’s Rant, and actually, the social networking platform has deemed my posts so shocking that I won’t be back to my normal posting until a few days after my family and I are in our new environs.

So several weeks into house selling, how is the process actually going?

I have told you about every other aspect of this journey—with its multiple potholes--so what about how the process is actually proceeding?

It is doing as well as it could be going, I guess.

We have had a handful if people show great interest in the house, and all told, we probably have had at least 60 to 70 groups of people come into the house with the hope of purchasing what we are offering.

A couple of those groups have gone the next step, which is to bring in an inspector to check over the house and look for any problems within the home’s structure, its wiring, its heating and ventilation systems.

Some have pulled out of the competition for one reason or another, and some are still in it.

That is about all I am going to say about it, and as you can imagine, things change almost on a daily basis with this house.

There are some interesting things beyond the numbers to talk about here.

Just who is going to actually be triumphant in the “house-stakes” is even more interesting than the pursuit.

I am going to preface the next part of today’s Rant by stating, and stating emphatically that I am just seeing the color “green” as we are selling this house.

I am looking for the biggest bang for the buck here, and what with the reverse mortgage still in place—and the interest rate growing each day while we try to unload this house—my sister and I aren’t going to be getting that much money from the eventual sale, but at least it will be something.

Something is better than nothing, but our something isn’t going to be too much.

So we are looking at the “green,” and nothing else here, as we sell the house.

Of all those who have seen the house, I would say about 50 percent are Caucasian.

The other 50 percent are a mix of Indian, Middle Eastern, Hispanic and Black, and it appears that the non-Whites are the ones with the deepest pockets, so I would bet that the eventual buyer will be non-White, which is just such an interesting development in this entire situation.

You have to understand that when my family and I moved into the house in 1971, our environs were as lily White as they could possibly be.

Buyers who were leaving New York City for Long Island were generally looking for that during this “Great White Flight” period, and realtors knew that, and steered us and thousands of other families to areas that satisfied our needs.

You can call that racist, you can call it unfair, you can call it contrary to what “The American Dream” signifies, but that is a fact that I think no one involved in the process back than would, or could, deny.

We were White, so we fit right into those environs, but we were also Jewish, and on our block, we were the first—and to my knowledge, still the only—Jewish homeowners.

And once certain people found that out, they made it very uncomfortable for us.

The first holiday season we spent there, our Hanukkah menorah went up as it always did, this time right in our front window, and I think that is when people realized that we were not what out last name might have signified to them, that we were Jewish.

We had a brick thrown through our window that first Hanukkah in our new home, shattering the window and knocking the menorah over—which we put right up in its spot among all of the broken glass.

There were other incidents during our first five or six years living in this house.

In fact, our very neighbors called us anti-Semitic names from the safety of their own homes … that is how bad it got here in those early days … and the police did nothing about it.

(And it wasn’t just on our street.

The very day we moved into our home, on July 28, 1971, on the other side of town, a home that was sold to a Black family was set on fire and burned to the ground. The family got the message, and moved elsewhere.

We also got the message, but we held our ground.)

Today, the incidents my family and I went through would be labeled as “anti-Semitic” and would be vehemently investigated by the police, but back then, the police listed such incidents as “childish pranks” and wouldn’t do much of anything to stop them and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Moving ahead to the present time, the likelihood that a non-White family will buy this house is not guaranteed, but is still great.

Times have changed, laws have changed, and even with all the change, I wonder if whoever buys this house will still have to go through similar incidents to what my family went through 50 years ago as we held our ground in an area that did not want us there once they found out that we were Jewish.

I have to wonder about that as I ponder about the “green,” which to me, is so much more important at this moment in time.

Rant #3,224: Missing You

If you are now reading this Rant on Facebook, you are reading this entry later than normal, and there is a reason for that.

Again, for reasons I do not know, the social networking site completely banned me from posting anything, replying to anything, and doing any activity on the platform for about 12 hours yesterday and into today.

It is clear that I am being targeted, and I have further complained to them about this latest purge of my content, my thoughts, and my freedom of speech.

I don’t see how my G-rated material is being put into the dumpster when there is much worse stuff that gets a pass, but there evidently is nothing I can do about it.

If I was a lawyer, maybe I could do something about it, but being that I am just a lowly freelance writer/editor who happens to be 66 years old and counting, I just have to sit here and take my punishment like the man I am.

I just wish that Facebook would have a better explanation for why they have put me into purgatory, because their explanation is so ambiguous that it makes little or no sense to me.

Onto other matters …

We are still packing things away, and it is really incredible the things that are turning up.

It made me harken back to 1971, when my family moved to the wilds of Long island from the real wilds of South Jamaica, Queens, New York.

It was sort of the reverse of what we are doing now, as we were moving from a two-bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house.

We had plenty to move over back then, but way less than we have accumulated now, planning to move from a three-bedroom house—at least our part of it—to a much smaller two-bedroom apartment.

I remember packing away my comic books back then. My sister and I were given the chore of packing away our prized possessions ourselves, and mine were those comic books. I have no idea what my sister packed away herself, maybe her Barbie collection or her teen magazine collection, but mine were my comic books.

My father was still working 16-hour days then, so if there was packing to be done, my mother probably did it herself.

The incredible thing is that while we took over a lot of the furniture from that apartment to the new house, we did leave quite a bit back in the apartment for the next tenants to use.

I remember them very vividly.

They were an unmarried couple, both 19 years old.

They were Italian, if I remember correctly, and just starting out on their odyssey of being adults and living on their own.

When they found out that a lot of what was in the apartment was going to be left behind, they thanked us time and time and time again, because quite frankly, this couple had nothing … so at least they had something when they finally moved in, giving them a great start.

I remember that couple vividly, and while there is no way to make sure, I hope that they made a go there for at least a few years, setting the tone for them living as a couple happily ever after.

But as for us, my family and I moved almost seamlessly from that apartment to the house, and we certainly did not have as much to pack away as we have today—50 years of things for me, 30 years of things for my wife, and 28 years of things for my son.

And it isn’t easy doing so.

We have now thrown out about 200 bags of garbage and things we do not need anymore, and let me tell you, it seems each of those things we are getting rid of has a memory attached to it.

That is what makes getting rid of these things so difficult, but it is something that has to be done for us to get out of here in one piece.

And it is only things, so maybe they cannot be replaced, but we will still retain the memories these things brought us.

And what we are keeping … as they say--

OY VEY!!!!

Have a nice weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday—

Both here at the Blog and hopefully, on Facebook, too.

Rant #3,223: Talk Talk

Amidst all the muss and the fuss, I find myself in Facebook jail again—

And this time for a solid month.

I have no idea why I am in there, because Facebook is very cryptic in the way they explain your punishment.

Evidently, I am breaking their cybersecurity rules, but they do not explain exactly how I am breaking them, what I wrote that got them excited, nor any way to rectify the situation.

Sure, they state that you can fight the action, but they limit the tools that you can fight back with, and even though they state that they will get back to you in four days, they rarely do—

And when they do—as they did during about my fourth time in Facebook jail, whey they accused me of posting nudity on my sites—they still keep you in the hoosegow, even when they agree that what they found was, well, unfounded and unwarranted.

This social networking forum is not going to shut me up and prevent me from writing what is on my mind—

Much of which pales in comparison to what I see others post on the site, including ultra-political, sexual, racist and anti-Semitic material.

How my posts even are under such scrutiny is beyond me, especially when you see the other stuff that their censors let through.

As I have said before, it leads me to believe that an individual is targeting my posts for some unknown reason, pointing them out to Facebook, and action is being taken—

Even though my posts are pretty benign and are not controversial in the least.

Heck, past posts that I have put up could be interpreted as being more toxic that what I have put up lately and they passed muster—

Why not my recent posts?

Facebook is under wide scrutiny from a lot of quarters for how it handles its posts.

Sick people have put up everything from vile material to other things that have led to violence and death, and the government has been cracking down on its possible culpability in allowing certain posts to go through which have led to horrible things.

So the Facebook police have stepped up their efforts to police the site, which I can understand, but micromanaging benign posts like mine doesn’t really give anyone any confidence that when there is really something to clamp down on, they will be able to hone those posts out and do what needs to be done.

This very post might not make it to Facebook since it knocks the social networking site and its practices, but it really doesn’t matter, because I also use another forum for my thoughts, and that is Google and its blogs.

I have been a blog writer for many years on Google, and I only started to put up my thoughts on Facebook due to a request from a long-time friend, who felt it was easier for him to read my thoughts there than on the actual blog site.

I gave in, and it was a good move, because it did expand the audience for what I write and what my thoughts are.

But at the same time, it opened me up to much more scrutiny, which is fine with me if it is positive scrutiny and opens up my mind to other thoughts and viewpoints.

Facebook’s scrutiny is not that—it simply brands you as a perpetrator without explanation, or at least without explanation that makes the least bit of sense, and there really is no comeback—once you are in jail, you are a real jailbird.

The funny thing is that while I cannot post directly in my groups—daily posts sustain these groups—I can generally post my thoughts outside of the group, so my thoughts are getting out there on Facebook, but not within the group structure—

Once again demonstrating how insipid Facebook’s policies are, because if they are trying to squelch me for whatever reason, they are failing to do that because my thoughts can be put on the site, just not within the group structure.

And even if they restrict a post like this one, just click onto my actual blog site at http://rantingraving2.blogspot.com/ and you will be able to see what I write, and agree or disagree with it, which is your right.

And ultimately, freedom of expression is my right, and my ideas and thoughts will get out there with or without Facebook upholding that right.

Rant #3,222: My Brave Face

We just have so many things to pack away that it is truly amazing what one can accumulate over a period of time.

And when you have three people accumulating al of this stuff, it is even more amazing.

We have thrown out bags and bags and bags of things we truly don’t need anymore, but we still have a lot of stuff that while we don’t really need these things, we would like to keep anyway.

So, in addition to boxes and boxes of things that will be going directly to our new residence—and we have so much more to do to get all of that stuff packed away—we have boxes and boxes of stuff that we are not going ot throw out, but won’t be making the direct move with us to our new place.

What do we do with all of these things that won’t be following us directly to our new environs?

We are going to have to invest in a storage area in one of those storage buildings that are dotting the landscape all over the country, and yesterday, we sought out exactly what to do with all of this scuff, and secured such an area.

And as usual, it ain’t cheap.

We looked at a trio of such areas, finally settling on one that is not that close to the place where we are going to live, but provided us—we think—with the best bang for the buck, so to speak.

There are several of these places literally within walking distance of where we are going to live, but we chose this particular one not because of proximity, but because of what it provided to us … and the price, of course.

The stuff that we are going to be putting in this storage area will not be anything that we will necessarily be checking on every day or every week, or even every month, but we simply do not want to get rid of these things.

Things like photo albums, CDs, DVDs, cassette tapes, that sort of thing … if we need it, we will have it,, but it just won’t be in our new residence.

I have been saying that we are moving to a place half the size for twice the price, but in actuality, we relocating to a place maybe a third of the size at twice the price, so we simply don’t have room for all of these things like we once had.

It is a shame, but it is true. We just don’t have the room for this stuff anymore, but these are things we simply do not want to throw away.

And that includes my comic books.

Even after selling the most valuable copies of my collection several years ago in two separate episodes, I still have probably 1,000 or maybe even more issues that remain.

If you want a glimpse at my childhood, all you have to do is look through this collection, and even as it stands now, you can get a peak into what I was into when I was a kid and really what I was into as I moved through my early to late teenage years, too.

I am trying to sell what I have remaining in this collection as a lot, which means you get the great with the garbage, but since there are still so many somewhat valuable issues in the collection—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—it is all worth it.

I have somebody who said he would take a look at the collection, but as of yet, he hasn’t done so, and I will wait him out to see if he is serious or not.

But if he isn’t, then this stuff is going to have to go into the storage bin, because this is my chilidhood, and it isn’t going into the dumpster like so much of what we threw out.

This collection has some value, but like most things, the value is in the eye of the beholder, and with the more valuable issues of my collection long gone, what I have left is what it is.

Yesterday, I took the entire collection out of its temporary storage site—out of plastic bins that I put them in a few weeks ago—and put them in standard cardboard boxes—I need those plastic bins for other stuff that right now, things that are more important to me than the comics are.

As I picked up one handful after another of comic books, my younger life really ran past my eyes as one cover after another went by me.

I even saw one of my comic books from the late 1940s, and I tried to figure out just where I got this issue from—it obviously is much older than I am, so it had to come from somewhere else other than me originally owning it—but I simply do not remember.

The entire exercise of moving the comics from the plastic bins to the cardboard ones really took my heart away, and made me very sad.

Those comic books are among the last vestiges of my childhood years, and they served me well when I was a kid, but right now, they are almost collateral damage … no, they are collateral pleasures … but whatever they are, under the circumstances we are under now, they have to be either sold or moved.

If you are interested in buying them, please let me know. I will give you a good price for what you are getting, again, the good with the bad.

And again, if I can’t sell them,, they are going to go into our storage area, with the photo albums, the CDs, the DVDs and the cassettes.

We simply do not have the room for everything that we would like, and this will probably be my comic collection’s final resting place.

It is the best I can do.

Rant #3,221: Frustrated

Frustrated.

Yes, that is the only word to describe what went on yesterday—all day yesterday—and how my family and I feel today.

Let me count the ways:

1) Medicaid: My son receives Medicaid due to his developmental disability. It allows him to get services he might not be able to receive if he didn’t have this program backing him up.

Since we are moving to a new residence in a few weeks, I was told by his counselor that he needs to change his address as soon as he can so that his benefits will continue without any problems.

No problem … I will either do it online or call Medicaid and get this done 1, 2, 3—

Problem is that you cannot do it online, and you must call Medicaid directly when you have an address change.

Well, I did just that, and that led to a three-and-a half-hour nightmare that seemed to never end due to the total and complete incompetence of the people I spoke with after long, long waits on the phone—except the very last person I got, who did help me accomplish my task.

About the other supposed “professionals” …

Honestly, I had almost forgotten how difficult it is to actually call up governmental agencies and get anything done, but I should have remembered that I used to sit on the phone interminably when I did this in the past, and yesterday, it happened again.

And when I did get someone on the phone, I have to say that these people are so full of themselves and so completely incompetent that you have to wonder how our government gets anything done.

I had an array of pencil pushers yesterday. I had one woman, who although somewhat pleasant, kept me on the line for at least an hour trying to process the address change request, only to tell me that her computer wasn’t cooperating and that I would have to call back or be transferred within the system to another so-called “professional” ,,,

And she passed me onto someone else, not directly, mind you, but I had to go through the same rigmarole that I went through to get to this fool in the first place, so I was at square one again, as if I had not made the initial call.

And when I hooked up with another so-called “professional,” I got probably the nastiest person I have ever spoken with on the phone, ordering me to do things that the first woman did not do and when I asked why I had to do these things, she lashed out at me with a verve mixed with a lot of venom that I can’t ever recall receiving as part of a simple phone call.

I told both women what I needed to do right at the get do—the address change—so they knew why I had called in the first place. The first one kept me on the line for an interminable time before telling me her computer was not responding, but the second woman was way worse, keeping me on the line and putting me through the ringer for another hour before she told me that she could not accomplish what I wanted at this particular phone number.

Why neither of these fools could not tell me from the get-go that they couldn’t do what I requested is beyond me—I guess that is how they get their jollies in such completely mundane jobs that they have.

The second woman gave me another number to call before hanging up on me, and yes, I was on the phone for more than an hour at this line but not on one call, as I was disconnected at least a half-dozen times after waiting many minutes on each call.

On one of the calls I actually got through, but the phone rang and rang and rang for about 10 minutes without anyone picking up the phone. I guess they were on their bathroom break.

I had to keep the phone on at this line through a dental appointment my son had yesterday afternoon, and it was embarrassing to have all this going on in a public place.

But after that episode, I figured I would call one more time, because a it was nearly 3 p.m., and the recording said this office stopped taking calls at 3:45 p.m., so I still had 45 minutes at my disposal.

Heck, I had already wasted three solid hours, I might as well waste some more time on this, right?

I called again, and at about 3:30 p.m., the phone rang and rang and rang some more, but I refused to hang up and try again. Finally a woman named Hannah picked up the phone, and very professionally handled my request in about two minutes.

I thanked her, but she did chuckle when I told her how unprofessional some of her coworkers were.

Yes,, it was a laugh and a wrap to a wonderful three-and-a-half hour excursion that is time I can never get back.

Facebook: Talk about frustration … I am in Facebook jail for about the sixth or seventh time during the past six weeks or so, and I really and truly have ho idea why.

I put up a post like this five days a week, and all of a sudden the Facebook police are jumping down my throat for reasons evidently only known to them, because certainly I cannot figure out why I am breaking their “cybersecurity” rules—only they know why, as their cryptic messages to me about the bans do not tell me anything.

I am fighting the current ban as I have all the rest, but even though they claim they will get back to you in four days, they never do—the only time that they did was when they banned me for supposedly having nudity on one of my sites, which even they found to be untrue.

I think I have figured the whole thing out.

I believe someone, for some reason, is targeting me, and just about anything I put up is fair game for them and the Facebook police.

So even though they let through things that are highly political, sexual, filled with vulgarities and untruths and are anti-Semitic, they are going after me because someone has a vendetta against me.

I have no idea who it can be, and the weird thing is that even though I can’t post directly in my groups, I can post on Facebook in general as long as it is not in one of my groups, which, of course, makes absolutely no sense at all—

But neither does my ban for the next month(!) in the first place.

Moving: I don’t have to tell you how frustrating this is.

We finally got some boxes, we are at the packing-away stage as we move away from the throwing-out stage.

We know what is coming with us, what will go in a storage facility, and what we simply cannot take with us.

But when you sit on the phone for three-and-a-half hours like I did yesterday, it kind of holds up production, if you know what I mean.

Onward and upward!

It is the only way we can go at this point in time.

Rant #3,220: Devil Inside

When my mother accepted a reverse mortgage on her house, she made a deal with the devil that has reverberations that have outlasted her 92 years of life.

And the devil is not yet satisfied.

Now that he has taken his pound of flesh from my mother, he wants to take his next pound of flesh from my family, and he made sure that he would get just what he wanted on the most appropriate day, this past Friday, Friday the 13th.

My wife won her workman’s compensation case, and she had been waiting to take physical therapy for months, but the case had to be resolved before she could be approved for the therapy.

She had her first session on Friday, Friday the 13th, and it could not have gone more wrong than it did.

Whatever they were doing on my wife for physical therapy was the wrong path for them to take with her.

She told them she felt sick and not right, yet they continued to perform the procedures on her.

After a few minutes, she passed out, and had to be rushed to the hospital.

She was in the hospital for several hours, and while she was released that day on Friday, my wife really hasn’t felt well since.

Why the physical therapist continued with the treatment even after my wife told the person that she was not feeling well from it is beyond my comprehension.

Even though she is not yet herself, she is home and doing the best she can after this ordeal.

I guess it could have been worse … much worse, so we are thankful that she is OK, even if only on a minimal level.

I have had my own travails with physical therapy—you might remember that a few years ago, I had a run in with the McDonald’s of physical therapy, and before I sued their pants off, they settled with me for overcharging and some other infractions.

Back to my wife’s case--I simply do not understand how these places work, in particular when they have your charts right there and should know what you can stand and what you can’t.

And the general feeling is that when you say “No” or some variance of “No” like “please stop because I am not feeling well”—whatever the situation is, the person you are saying “No” to should stop doing what they are doing immediately, but I guess in this world we live in, the word “No” has … well … no meaning anymore.

Back to the house …

As we are still throwing away stuff and trying to pack other stuff away, we had another open house this weekend, and while we were not at the house when it was happening, we have heard that it did draw some interest.

We were here for later shows of the house, and while there is interest, there does not appear to be enough right at the moment, if you know what I mean.

More groups are coming to look at the house and hopefully, someone will finally bite, but this is not the housing market it was two years ago, when you had many more possible buyers that available product, and interest rates were much less.

Today, you have product, but people are holding back because of interest rates, waiting and hoping that these rates go down, probably next year.

And with the reverse mortgage company itching to get their money back ASAP, we really don’t have an infinite amount of time to sell this house—if we can’t do it on our own, it will go into foreclosure, and then no one—my sister and I—will get anything from that type of sale, as the bank will take anything reasonable to get back at least a percentage of what they paid out ot my mother via the reverse mortgage.

And there are other problems we are dealing with, none of which I will be speaking about here, but problems that we have to deal with on a daily basis that were foisted on us without our knowledge or approval.

What else is new in my bizarro world right now?

Nothing is right, everything is wrong and there isn’t much we can do about it.

The one bright spot this weekend was that in my son’s bowling league, he bowled a game of 224, including if I remember correctly six strikes and marks—strikes or spares--in every one of the game’s 10 frames.

Seeing that game unfold took at least a little of the negative stuff off my head for a few moments, and demonstrated to me that sometimes, even the devil can’t get exactly what he wants all of the time.