Ah, the world of e-commerce never ceases to amaze me and keeps me very busy.

I have been selling on ebay since 2008 (?) and have maintained a 100% feedback despite myself.  I sell mostly bird seed catchers which is a band that goes around the cage to deflect the seeds back into the bottom of the cage.  I sew these to order in the size and color that the customer wants.  If they are buying, they might as well buy something they like.

Occasionally I will exchange many emails to arrive at what I have on hand and what they want for thier home.  Usually it goes something like this:
"What color do you want?"
"What color do you have?"
"What color do you want?'"
"Grey."
"Great!"
This conversation takes 1 1/2 minutes.  But occasionally I get a person who is probably lonely and wants something special.  This was a very interesting discourse and I am still laughing about it so thought I would share it with you.  Names have been blocked to protect the sender.

Dear loumercer3,

my question is this simply: I bought one of the kind that does not have a bottom, but the seeds just fall out the bottom part so no good. It is like a see through mesh and white color. To me non mesh kind is dumb, as you cannot see the birds through them. The mesh does not get torn and is fine to me. Yes maybe not as tough, but I have had no problem and it was half the price - just no bottom part. SO, can you make me a see through mesh kind with a bottom? => I do not care if the boittom is solid material as you do not see it really. I just want the mesh kind, to be able to see the birds better. Others that are mesh are colored, BUT the sheer white looks the best (more neutral and see through) and sellls the most.. If I invented these I would make it as clear as possible, not even white. And have a bottom on them. I do not understand why I see none on the whole eBay like that. So le me know if you can make me this and is it extra cost? I need this size. Thank you, William

I replied:

Dear bazmart,

I do not sew net, mesh or chiffon which is what you are describing.  First it is very hard to sew, does not hold up well and I worry about tiny toenails getting hung up in the net.  Sorry.

Loumercer3.

He sent the same email

Dear loumercer3,

Once more:      my question is this simply: I bought one of the kind that does not have a bottom, but the seeds just fall out the bottom part so no good. It is like a see through mesh and white color. To me non mesh kind is dumb, as you cannot see the birds through them. The mesh does not get torn and is fine to me. Yes maybe not as tough, but I have had no problem and it was half the price - just no bottom part. SO, can you make me a see through mesh kind with a bottom? => I do not care if the boittom is solid material as you do not see it really. I just want the mesh kind, to be able to see the birds better. Others that are mesh are colored, BUT the sheer white looks the best (more neutral and see through) and sellls the most.. If I invented these I would make it as clear as possible, not even white. And have a bottom on them. I do not understand why I see none on the whole eBay like that. So le me know if you can make me this and is it extra cost? I need this size. Thank you, William

And I replied.

Dear bazrmart,

I am sorry, but this is the issue...I will not under any conditions for any price sew a mesh seed catcher either with or without a bottom.

Lou Mercer

And he replied:

Dear loumercer3,

ok thanx for reply. Here is the deal. Only you and 1 other seller make these in bigger size and they said (nicely I may add) that they could not also. My wife has an older singer sewing machine left to her by her mother. She got if fixed for $100 (it is the real good kind everyone wants that is like one of the best old kind). BUT, she won't do it as too lazy (poor me). SO, I will just sew a bottom on it by hand myself. And I think I may find a way to have them made myself (plenty of Guatamalen people in Florida who will work cheap. And be your competitor on eBay (no I am not kidding). Again, you can see the birds through them, so I will bet people will buy them way more than the others. Like I say, the white mesh looks the most see thru more than the color ones, and it sells the most by far. So if I make it even more see thru and add a bottom I will take a good market share. Have a nicer day!

And I replied:

Dear bazrmart,

I wish you much luck in your endeavor. I am 73 years old and would like nothing better than to retire and move up in the mountains away from wifi and all its's entanglements. Too bad your wife is lazy, but like you said, lots of cheap labor around. I think I will raise my prices and help you out.

Lou

 So there you have it.  I may have been a bit strong in my reply, but such is life!  As of yet, I have had no answer to the last email and if I am really lucky he is now out searching for a Guatamalen with a sewing machine who is interested in replacing his lazy wife!  LOL

So it is off to Los Pobres in my new car.

So I got a new (to me) car and what better way to break it in than to go by Nancy Martin's and pick up a load of stuff Ross Barnhart had ear marked for Los Pobres.  I had about decided that it would take 2 trips when Ross showed up and taught me how to cram it full!

This is the passenger seat.

This is the drivers seat and the only one not crammed full.  That is my purse taking up residence.

Here is me and my load buckling up for safety and since I could not see out I was pretty sure I would wind up in jail. 

This was the view from the rear of the vehicle. 

Side window. 

And away we go!

And now we are coming back.  This is a memorial alongside the road .  Been there several years.  Kind of hard to drive 60 mph and get very good pictures!

But look at that empty passenger seat.  Doesn't it look inviting?

So the new vehicle has now been properly introduced to it's future as a work horse for Los Pobres and wherever else the open road calls me.  And guess what?  The gas mileage appears to be about 42 MPG.  I can live with that!

Oh, damn it anyway!!

Today I decided to pick up the phone and call the credit card that I had charged when I got tires for the Ford before I sold it.  My intent was to pay the card off so I did not have to worry about it any more.  So I dialed the 1-800 number and waited.  Soon a voice came on the line  instructing me to "press 1 for English."

Wait a minute!  Press 1 for English?  Who are we kidding here?  Where am I?  Am I not in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?  The land where the Constitution is written in English.  The Bill of Rights is in English.  The Declaration of Independence is written in English.  My President speaks to me on the television in English.  Press 1 for English?  I think not.

I hung up the phone.  Of course I called back later and pressed 1 for English because I did want to pay the bill, and English is the only language I know.  So here I set tonight wondering if I am unreasonable?  I hear about minorities and I now think I must be the minority.  If I had not pressed English, what language would I have gotten?  The voice did not mention any other language,  just told me to  press 1 for English.

Now, as I think about it, a lot of things have changed and I just did not notice.  I was talking to my son this evening and learned he had lost his cell phone for some reason and he needed to make a call.  There are no pay phones, or so he says and I have no reason to doubt him.  I know there used to be pay phones every block or so, but now I try to think if I have seen one and I don't think so.  Not much need for them when everyone has a cell phone stuck in their ear.

I know vinyl records, 8 track tapes, and cassette players have all been replaced by MP3 players and Lord only knows what else.  Cars have camera's to see behind you when you reverse the car.  Wifi is every where.  Money has been replaced with a plastic card.  Theaters are about a thing of the past.

I long for the good old days when we hung our clothes on the line to dry.  A night on the town consisted of a trek up the long stair way to the second floor to dance at the "Crystal Ballroom"  where the big shiny ball hung above our heads and caught the light as it spun slowly around.  I always thought it was magic.  All the songs were in English.

I know our world is changing and apparently I did not get the memo when English was made a secondary language and I had to press 1 to hear it.  My food has been genetically modified so much that I can leave a tomato on the counter for a month and it looks the same as the day I put it there.  I can leave a loaf of bread on the counter and it just sets there until I either eat it or throw it out.  Can't even make penicillin out of it.  My 7 year old grandson has hair under his arms thanks to growth hormones in the meat products we eat. Technology is such that news from around the world is in my front room 3 minutes later.  I have come to accept this as normal, but press 1 for English just might be the straw that broke this old camels back!

Super Bowl Sunday....and that affects me how?

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, Super Bowl Sunday meant something to me. Oh, and so did fishing, skating, and the sock hop in Convention Hall back home in Kansas.  That was probably the best year of my entire life.  I had a boyfriend at the time named Corky.  Now back in the day "boyfriend" meant something different than it does today.  It meant he was a boy and he was also my friend.  I have to be upfront about Corky.  He was a dancing fool and the two of us won every dance contest we entered.  Remember years ago when Dick Clark had American Bandstand and it was in black and white?  That was us.  Corky would flip me over his back and I could land on my feet and never miss a beat.  I can replay those days in my head and feel young again.
But alas, the days of sand and shovels are far and away gone. Corky is but a distant memory and the sock hops of those bygone years are not related to this old arthritic body because if anyone threw me in the air now I would break every bone in my body when I crashed to earth.  However, the best part of growing older is the  memories, because they get better every year.  I think we won all the dance contests, but I have no little trophy's to prove it.  I can still hear Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins.  My feet still tap to Blueberry Hill, The Stroll, Heartbreak Hotel, and Blue Suede Shoes, Rock Around the Clock and Chantilly Lace.
It is the same moon up in the sky and the same sun shining in the heavens, but it is different.  I was amazed when we put a man on the moon and my heart still aches as I see the Challenger explode with the astronauts on board.  The kids today can read about history, but they can not feel it.  They can celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., but they can not know the shame and disgrace of "seperate but equal."  We knew when they called it that what it was...discrimination pure and simple.  White dating black back in those days was a death sentence for sure.  My mother lived the dust bowl years.  My father lost 2 kids to dust pneumonia.  I know it, but I don't feel it.  When I was born we were at war.  Today we are engaged over seas, but is it war?
I grew up with an outhouse and now I do not think they exist.  I grew up in the time of polio, chickenpox, measels and whooping cough.  I had a friend in an iron lung.  She died.
I never went to a dentist and had my tonsils out when I was 10 years old.  I was sickly and bled out my ears when my tonsils were infected.  And I wanted to be a missionary.  I wanted to go to Africa and take care of the poor starving people.  That never happened.  Do I have regrets in my life?  Many.  Can I change an iota of the past?  No.
So some times I get melancholy and sad.  Does it stop me?  No.  As I look back down the long road behind me and the short road ahead of me I often wonder if God gave me the chance to change any one thing along that long road what it would be.  I have my answer.  Nothing.

Dental hygiene and a trip back in time!

So Monday I went to get my teeth cleaned.  It is a torture I endure with amazing regularity.  I have a new teeth cleaning lady so we visited a minute.  Now you should know she is a sweet young thing and has no idea what the good old days were really like.  I told her how I had been wearing tri-focal glasses for most of my adult life, but since I quit smoking I no longer need glasses for anything except to read fine print.  She was amazed as most people are.  She asked when I started smoking and I told her that I had started at the tender age of 16, so it was a habit I had for most of my life and I had been devoted to the art of blowing smoke rings and all kinds of stuff.   I told her that I had probably been smoking in the delivery room when I had my first baby.  She of course laughed because everybody knows you can not smoke in the hospital.

Ah!  but there had been a time when you  could.   I recall that in the hospital in the top drawer of the little dresser by your bed was an ashtray and a book of matches.  We had to furnish our own smokes and after delivering a baby one really wanted a cigarette.  The nurse would bring the tiny little baby in all wrapped up and she would hand the baby to me, the new mother who lay there with a cigarette in my fingers and the head of the bed raised for comfort.  Nurses were very concerned about the newborn and always cautioned the mother to "Try not to drop hot ashes on the baby."

I know there are you people out there who are aghast at this and think it is something I made up, but as God is my witness, this is true.  We smoked every where back in the day.  Doctors endorsed cigarettes and said "Throat hot?  Smoke Kools".  If we were in a room all fogged up with cigarette smoke and someone complained, it was there job to relocate, not ours.  We were smokers and we ruled the world.  Cars came with a cigarette lighter and an ashtray.  I noticed that is not happening any more either.  When I started smoking a pack cost 14 cents.  When I quit a pack cost $3.00 if you bought them by the carton.  Today they are $5.00.

I also told her that diapers have not always been disposable.  Everyone of my kids had thier tender little fanny diapered with a cloth diaper that was washed in Ivory Snow because it was " 99.44% pure.  It Floats!"  Course many years later I discovered that this was all a myth.  It floated because the man in charge of stirring it until it "traced" had left the mixer on and left the soap and gone to lunch and the soap had started the "trace" and air was incorporated into the soap and that was why it floated.!"

Diapers came in two styles.  The first was about 30" long and 12" wide.  These were folded in half and then in half again so you ended up with a diaper 7 1/2" wide and 12" long.  The other style was square and you folded it so it ended up triangular.   Men always liked cloth diapers because when the last baby was through with the diapers he had a barrel full of the "best damn grease rags" in the world.  Men never ever under any conditions ever touched a diaper before it became a grease rag.  Men just did not do that sort of thing.  That was women's work.

So now we are living in a world, where children must never ever under any conditions ever be exposed to smoke and the days of smoking any where near any place a hospital might be located is banned.  It is banned almost every where except in your home and then it is forbidden if you have a child.  Oh, and no smoking in your car if there is a baby in it and if no baby and you smoke you have to keep your windows rolled up so the only one you are choking to death is you.

Men change diapers now.  They cook and clean and do all kinds of womany things.  Hell, I think they even use deodorant!  I could be wrong, but I think so.

So, kiddies, our world is changing and we better go with the flow.  I am thinking that if it keeps changing as fast as it did the last 50 years, I may just let loose of my tentitive grip on reality and spin off into space.
But for now, I am off to bed to dream of another time and place where there were unicorns and sugar plum fairies!

January is about behind me, thank God.

Well, it has been a very rough start for this year.  We lost Pastor Jeannine Lamb right before Christmas.  Her sudden passing threw me into a new low both at church and home.  I spent a lot of time over the holiday with her life partner, Kathy.  That helped me work through it some what.  Of course now comes the work of finding a new pastor.  Kevin Olsen is doing pulpit supply for us until we can find an interim ministry so that takes a load off our shoulders.  Does not make life easier though as there are meetings and more meetings.

Also passing was Rae Flanagan, whom I had gone to church with for years.  Very nice and very classy lady.    Lee Dorsey was the last of the people I had gone to church with and my heart breaks for his beautiful daughter, Bernadette and her husband, Jesse.   I also lost a client, Irene.  On the upside, I got a new great grandson.

Ended the year having a new furnace installed.  House insurance and car insurance both jumped up 25%.  Never had a wreck in my life, but my insurance keeps going up.  Not the social security check though,  That just keeps getting stretched further to pay utilities and buy groceries.  We all know how long this cheap gas is going to last, don't we?

As I look forward to the new year left ahead of me, I can hear the limb rubbing on the back of the house roof and know that is going to need to come down and that means more money.  Car has 105000 miles on it so needs to have all kinds of little things done to it.  I think about just selling and moving into town and that scares me.  When I do that there is no going back to the big house in the country with 2 dogs, a cat and 9 geese.  It is easy to downsize at my age, but up sizing is out of the question.

So I am going to set here in my big house surrounded by all my stuff I have accumulated and think about what is going to happen this coming year.  I have lots of big plans and lots of things I want to do, but time will tell as to what happens.  Who knows, maybe next year I will be the one not here and someone else will be missing me!  That is the fun part of life; not knowing.

So for now, I am going to keep loving all my friends and acquaintances and if one of them falls by the wayside I will know I did my best and if the "fallee" happens to be me, they can shed a tear and know that we parted on the best of terms.

We are not promised tomorrow.  We have only today.

Please lock me away in a nice warm place and feed me hot food!

Welcome to the Hospice House of Sangre de Cristo on Abriendo Avenue here in beautiful Pueblo, Colorado.  

This is where I will be spending the next 2 days in volunteer training.  I had 2 friends that were going with me, but that may be changing since this is what happened here yesterday and last night.

I am not a fan of winter and I am sure not a fan of driving in this stuff, but I shall.  That is the only way I know to get from point A ( my house) to point B (Abriendo Inn).  Of course before I can do any leaving of point A I need to shovel a trail out to point C (goose house) and feed the critters.  Oh yeah, and take the sledge hammer to break the ice on point D (stock tank).  And shovel to point E (car port). All this makes me think I should be seeking a point F (nice warm 2 room apartment in an assisted living facility complete with some one to shovel outside, a  lady to clean, a dining room down the hall , and clean sheets once a week.)

But since it is too late for that I guess I will jump in the shower, go out into the cold 14 degree weather with my wet hair and every pore of my body open from a hot shower and hope for the best, which means I will walk spraddle legged so I don't fall and break something.  So wish me well and with a little luck I may get on here tonight and write something really worth reading!