Don’t cha just hate when people use these cartoons to express laughing?😅😂🤣it makes me feel uncomfortable… like they are teasing me, the f*cakes. Those emojis, or is it emoji, for plurality, remind me of the mean girls in elementary school.

Lol’s are over used and annoying but inclusive and friendly. So instead of being annoyed, I try to find and appreciate the kindness in such a sentiment.

Expression Emoji are really kind of campy…when did we become so collectively corny?

…but I am really impressed with Stephen 🤨 Colbert’s. If I was to design an emoji that best expresses me -a glassblower -would it just be😗or😰?🤔

Do others find text-posting, like Facebook- but not, maddening like I do? It’s the most narcissistic habit to arise from that practice. If having a text chat, a running commentary about daily events without an opening to converse as well-is a post. If you want the world to see your awesomeness but do not want to know about another’s awesomeness, why not just post it or blog it? After all, if your reading this, it is your choice, not the obligation of a direct hit on your phone. I digress, and thank you so much for reading!

Isn’t it funny when older generations yell at your phone while recording a message, like they expect you are of in the room with an answering machine and might hear them and actually pick up? I think so….but you have to be old enough to remember such a devise.

📼 Answering machines used a mini cassette 📼. My dad hated mine. It was like they were mocking him and his intended recipient was just lurking by their phone, laughing at him, which must have been very similar to how I feel about laughing emoji. But he really hated a long answering machine hello message, and waiting for that beep…so I recorded the “Hello My Honey” song from Looney Tunes. You know the one about the singing frog buried in a time capsule under a building being demolished, and came out singing that old tune..’Hello my honey, hello my baby, hello my ragtime gal! Send me a kiss by wire, baby my hearts on Fire! If you refuse me, honey you’ll lose me, and you’ll be left alone! Oh baby telephone and tell me I’m your ooooowwwwn!’ Well he prolly never got past Hello my honey cuz his messages always started out mid tantrum..”..hate these f*caking things, $#&¥§€!!” And similar nonsense. I loved these machines. Partly because he hated them but mostly because I didn’t have to listen to his tantrums first hand. I would just hit the magic erase button, and it never happened. Better.

When I finally pulled that phone jack out of the wall in the early 1990’s, I had to get a pager and an answering service for an 800 number I could give to customers as a business contact. But it was just that- an answering service. It acted like an answering machine, automatically recording messages in which I would then find a pay phone, and return calls. Well that transition was hilarious in that the older generation, still paranoid the recipient was lurking and listening to their messages in real time, yelled at my answering service. As if I was just in the other room and might just hear it if they were loud enough. And thus began my phone phobias…where once yelled at, I am practically paralyzed with fear, and returning those calls, with all the inconveniences of driving out to find a pay phone, became harder and harder.

In those days I lived at the New York Renaissance Festival site for half the year. During the winter months I would head south for Art Shows and Renaissance festivals. I traveled enough back then that I just lived in my truck -spending a few months at each destination, The Virginia Renaissance in the spring,the Arizona Renaissance in the winter to name a few. I know it’s hard to do so, but just imagine for a moment traveling constantly without a phone, before the present era of social networking, alone. It was great when I was at a fair, but in between when traveling from one to another, I felt I was flailing on a snipped lifeline, alone and lost metaphorically, and often physically, because I have the worst sense of direction as I have ever encountered. Really. Once I ended up in Western Alabama before I realized I wasn’t headed south to St Petersburg, Florida, many hours and another long night on the road and out of my way.

So I was alone without a phone and lost without a gps, to encounter whatever was on the road ahead. When you broke down, back then, miles from familiar roads, you just sat there hoping a traffic cop would come along and radio a tow. Ah…those were the days alright…..so I was hard to call directly, and hard for me to call back.

Now, not so much. All of that now caters to the mobile, and it is oh so easy.

I am leaving this week for Texas, and I am not just sparing you the details, but when I say I am leaving this week, it’s as in one-day-not-sure this week because that’s just how I roll.

But I’ll be there by the weekend ..ish.

Less than 18 days till opening day Texas Renaissance Festival 2019