Bfth's Boring Blog

Warning, WARNING!  This is not a happy Bfth or a typical look on the bright side Bfth blog post.  This is a Bfth can't take it anymore and is just going to vomit all over a blog post.  This is NOT end of the world, but it is the accumulation of BS that has made this Monday so draining that I feel like I am treading water and failing to keep my head above water.  I'm just trying to breath, but my chest is tight and my shoulders/neck ache with Mama stress and tension.  This is not just a whiny post...this is me throwing up everything and just letting it out because I feel like I have to let it out.  This is me...and as always it's NOT life threatening and it's NOT pretty.  (It may not even be readable...in which case just close this thing down and move onto something else.) It's Monday morning and I am worn out and worn down.  Not that I didn't have a good weekend.  It was okay.  It was just there.  It's is nothing to write about. And this morning sta

A favorite movie of mine is 1999's  Bowfinger .  (A terrible name for a wonderful comedy penned and starring Steve Martin and directed by Frank Oz.)  If you haven't seen it (and you should), Eddie Murphy plays mega-star Kit Ramsey (as well as his sweet, but slow brother Jiff).  Kit is pompous, but also extremely neurotic (with a fetish for the Laker Girls).  To stay focused, Kit, using his name as a mnemonic, reminds himself to Keep It Together.  Frequently through the film he rapidly utters to himself, "keep it together, keep it together." That line from the movie has stayed with me as I understand the mantra all too well.  As I rush from day to day projects, I hear in my head Eddie Murphy's voice frantically saying "keep it together, keep it together."  Or, my own voice, repeats over and over, "Get it together, GET it together."  (Unlike Kit Ramsey, my "voice" is in my head and silent to the rest of the world...at least mos

Contrary to common belief and despite the fact that I rise before the sun (at least during the non-summer months), I'm NOT a fan of getting out of bed in the mornings. This is particularly true during the winter.  (Even when it's not cold out.)  Right now we have the warm, fleece sheets (Not flannel...fleece is so much better:   https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/cold-winterwarm-bed.html ) on the bed.  I can't wait to get into bed at night and I abhor getting up in the morning.  It's all soft and snuggly in there.  Why would I want to leave? Some days I lie there and tell myself its ok not to get up right away.  I could go back to sleep for just a little while longer.  That it won't screw up the universe if I skip a day of morning exercise.  And yet I rarely listen to that voice. (I can't say never.)  I get out of bed.  I do the "morning things" and then go and do the morning exercise. Winter exercise is the worst in my book.  Feel fr

Today is the day:  119. So what does that mean?  What is the purpose behind #oneonenine? It's not my idea (I wish it was) and it's not all that serious (like so many campaigns are these days).  It was the brainchild of  Kenneth Phillips and Blake Morrow as way of "rallying the troops" as it were.  In this case, the troops were/are fans of the series "Twin Peaks," the "cult" phenomenon that reappeared last year with season 3, over 25 years AFTER it went off network tv.  In the third episode of the eighteen episode series, a woman (junkie) kept yelling out "1-1-9".  Was she so strung out that she was trying to call for help (911) and got it screwed up?  Did it mean something else?  Who knows? If you're not a fan of the surreal show, I suppose you can stop reading now.  (Although I hope that you won't.)  If you ARE a fan, I hope you were as captivated by the return on Showtime from May to September 2017 as I was.  AND I hope

I have food allergies.  I've ALWAYS had food allergies (at least as long as I can recall).  I am NOT one of the lucky people who has grown out of her allergies.  As I aged I grew into more.  For example, as a child I was allergic to eggs (I go into anaphylactic shock...it's NOT pretty and it can be a life or death situation).  However, until I was a teen, I COULD eat poultry.  That is until one Thanksgiving evening where I ended up in the ER.  (So, yes, we are the family that does NOT have turkey on Thanksgiving.)  As I entered my 20s and 30s, I noticed that my mouth/throat started to feel "funny" (the first signal for me) after eating lentils, peas/hard shell beans and kiwi!  (I know, it makes no sense, but most of the time I make no sense, so...) Back then, allergies were not as prevalent or at least it seemed that way.  Food allergies were not in the news and there weren't such great resources as   www.foodallergy.org .  Anaphylactic shock was not somet

Yesterday was MLK Day.  What does that mean (other than a cold Monday in January)?  It's a federal holiday and I am blessed to work for a company that give me this day off.  My son is also off from school.  And while I appreciate a three day weekend (who doesn't), I think the weekend should be more than  just sleeping in and getting a good deal from some retailer.  I mean when did President's Day become a day to get a good deal on a car?  Or Memorial Day the time to get a bargain on bathing suits?  I seriously fear for the time, and you KNOW it's coming when we have an MLK Linen Sale (AKA:  A WHITE sale!) Doing some quick internet research (ok, Google), here's an interesting tidbit that you MAY or may not know:  " In 1994, Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, designating the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday as a national day of service and charged the  Corporation for National and Community Service  with leading this effort. Taking place

I was thinking about Sh*tholes this morning and how I might weave that current hot topic into a post/column, when I came across a social media post from a dear friend.  (Aren't all our friends dear though?  Isn't that part of the whole friend thing?)  Today SHOULD have been her son's birthday.  Tragically he is no longer with us.  But out of that tragedy, out of HER pain, she reminded her friends to remember him by doing a variety of things.  What immediately struck a chord with me were her words:  " Embrace someone who is different from you." Those words are so powerful to me.  They leapt off the virtual page at me and struck me in the heart.  " Embrace someone who is different from you." What makes us so wonderfully unique as human beings is that we are all different and yet we are all the same.  We all come from the same building blocks of life.  At the core, we are all made up of the same atomic material.  Yet each and every one of us is differ

I just finished my first book of 2018 (which I started on December 30th of 2017),  Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After by Heather Harpham.  I don't know if this counts as my last book of 2017 or my first of 2018, but I'm going to go with 2018.  I'm also going out on a limb and saying it will probably be one of the best of 2018 for me.  So, yes I am recommending it if you are looking for something to read, as I felt it was a realistic and touching mother's story.  (You should have a box of tissues close at hand though...if you don't cry or at least tear up at some point while reading you have no heart.) Finishing up Happiness , lead me to the question of what to read next.  I have a whole slew of books on my Nook that I want to tackle, but as I said in a previous post ( https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-abbreviated-alphabet.html ) I had intended to re-read all of Sue Grafton's "alphabet" books once she

It's what everyone's been talking about.  It seems it is all we CAN talk about here on the eastern seaboard. The weather.  The brutal cold.  (Where temps in Anchorage, Alaska were higher than here in NJ.  I know some people will use that to refute global warming, but I think it's an excellent example.  Places that we think of as cold being warm while places that are cold during the winter months are bitter...talk about climate change.  And since it's called GLOBAL warming, I suppose the fact that it was over 115 in parts of Australia would point in that direction too.)  There was a blizzard/nor'easter/bomb cyclone (whatever the hell that is) that was non-stop on the news.  So I'm NOT going to talk about the weather. I won't talk about school being called off at 4:57 when there was not a flake in sight.  (NYC schools had been cancelled the evening before so no early morning calls for them.)  Not that it was the wrong call; it was the RIGHT call as once

There is no Z.  There SHOULD be a Z.  The alphabet is not meant to end on Y.  But it does now.  Or at least it does for me and all of the fans of Kinsey Millhone. Author Sue Grafton died at the end of 2017.  Just another reason to add to the long list of things that were wrong with the year.  Shame on me for not even knowing that she was sick. I first "discovered" Sue one summer.  Summer means the NJ shore to me.  And that also means that books must be on hand to read on the beach.  ("Back in the day" there was not that much to do other than read.  The house we rented didn't have cable tv.  I was happy to spend my days on the beach and my evenings on the deck with a good book...and a glass or two of wine!) I'm not sure of the year, but it was probably in the early 1990s when I picked up  A is For Alibi , the first in the "alphabet" series.  I read it quickly.  I wasn't that impressed.  It was ok and that was that. Fast forward seve

The year end is often filled with lists of the "best of".  I was asked to put together a list of the 10 best books I read in 2017 (not necessarily books that were published that year).  It wasn't too hard to do.  (And appears here:   http://www.myveronanj.com/2017/12/30/best-books-read-2017/ ).  I read plenty of good books last year. But then I got thinking about what books I read that weren't so hot.  Thankfully in 2017 there weren't too many. (When I was doing my Pulitzer Project the story was different.  In my opinion there are quite a few clunkers that won the prize for fiction.  But when again, one man's trash is another's treasure!)   I'm a pretty devoted reader.  Once I start, no matter how bad I think it is, I usually finish.  (The only book I DIDN'T finish that I was assigned in high school English was Lord Jim  by Joseph Conrad, which I abhorred.  Please don't anyone tell Mr. Luks!)  To be honest, I "finish" the book b

2017 has gone and 2018 is here and fresh.  (And for many of us brutally cold.) The New Year tradition is to start fresh.  To make resolutions that hopefully will hold out through the year (or at least through the first month of the year.)  Though I have nothing against resolutions, I didn't make any formal ones this year.  I plan to continue on working towards a "goal weight" by eating "better" (healthier?) and continuing to exercise regularly.  (I will freely admit that I gave up all semblance of weight watching during the week of Christmas.  To be honest I pretty much gave it up the Friday before when I match batches and batches of my traditional chocolate cinnamon sugar cookies.  If there is one thing I have learned it is that if I make the cookies I WILL eat the cookies without stopping until the jar is at last empty.  Which means I shouldn't make them at all.  But since I did...well, reality returns tomorrow with the advent of a school and work w