Heather Barton

Did I not ever blog about the time(s) I went down to Pasadena to watch the Rose Bowl Parade?  I didn’t!?!  Suck a slacker I am….. lets fix that right now.

As a native to SoCal I grew up watching the Rose Bowl Parade on television and while I liked the floats and was so-so  on the bands, I adored the horses.  Cuz, I was a girl…in the 70’s! Hahahaha.  But in my first year at college (1981) at the University of Iowa it turned out the football team (the Hawkeyes) apparently won enough games to go to a bowl and that bowl was the Rose Bowl (Jan 1 1982).  So about 8 of my sorority sisters (I think…it was 8, it HAS been 35 years!) decided to come out to California for the game, since they had somewhere to stay now that they had a Cali-girl in the House. 🙂  I think most of them road-tripped it from Iowa to Burbank and that is their own story to tell, although I remember that Tamara flew in from Chicago.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun showing them MY home town of Burbank.  Joking about how on a non-smog day it felt like the studios had put up a scenery back lot. (BEFORE regulations the air in Los Angeles was downright dangerous) They looked up at our mountains asking if a person could breath up there.  I pointed at the houses replying, “you can live up there!”   And my mother got a call from a patient (a movie star patient) who popped over so Mom could see her child.  My sorority sisters were suitably impressed. giggle.

So one of the many connections my mother had was a patient who let us park our vehicles on their vacant lot just a few blocks from the Rose Bowl parade route.  Where we ended up spending our New Years Eve night….camped out for a prime spot on Colorado Blvd.  We knew the police closed off the streets around 10pm and we were ready with folding chairs and bodies for that moment to fight for our spot facing the parade route.  Of course, so were the people across the street so we ended up acquiring a double row of chairs.  And that’s where we took shifts for the rest of the evening, alternating between sitting guarding the folding chairs (in the pouring rain), and sleeping in the van of my best friend.  I remember one of my over 21 sorority sisters buying me a flask of apricot brandy which I proceeded to sip all night long.  The entire street area celebrated in the New Year.  Yet as it got colder and wetter I remember wanting to throw a curse at every car that drove past us as we huddled under umbrellas and jackets.

I got some sleep between 2 and 5 am and then as my best friend sorority sister traded out a shift with another, I made a suggestion.   I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we went home and got some dry clothing or towels for the rest of the group watching the chairs?  We did have a couple of hours before the parade, after all.   At that moment, in the van were my two besties, one from home and one from the sorority, so they immediately agreed and off we went.  I’m not even sure we did more than leave them a note on one of the other cars in the lot!  We dashed home and first hit my parents hot tub…. ahhhhh….the best defroster of frozen toes was a dip in 102 degree water!   Refreshed and warm we gathered what clothes/towels we could and went back followed by my parents with an industrial thermos of coffee and croissants made by another patient who was a french baker who won a national croissant contest.  Those just melted in your mouth…so good.  There was even enough to share a little with the group around us.

Seeing the floats up close was fun, when the sun wasn’t blinding us.  Seeing the horses crap right in front of us and then watching in horror as the bands would march right through that shit kicking it into the back of the legs of their fellows was unexpected.  And damn… that parade is loooooong.  But, worth it as an experience when you’re 18.

I saw it again in Jan 1999, almost 20 years later under very different circumstances.  A connection through my mother (again) got tickets in the seating for my mother, my husband, I and our two kids.  All the ticketholders had to meet at an offsite location so we could enter the stands together.  The offsite location had coffee and pastries which was good because they marched us to the seating and crammed us in there with very little ability to escape for a bathroom break or anything.  My children each sat on a parent’s lap and while the sun wasn’t in our eyes, it was also blisteringly cold, in the shade, sitting on an aluminum bench.  Even packed in as we were, I was shivering and uncomfortable.

Now in 2016 I’ve found the best way to view the parade.   On  my DVR… at a decent hour… with my coffee and whatever breakfast I’ve decided to make.  Usually alone, because my kids just don’t understand why I enjoy the floats and the horses.

While I still read a lot of made-with-paper books, I’ve recently delved into e-books.  More specifically iTunes books on my phone.  It started because one of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold published a new book but only in electronic format.  My desire to read Gentleman Jole and The Red Queen pushed me into reading books on my phone and it was a pretty good experience.

So when I saw a link on Facebook to BookBub.com I signed up and I’ve been getting these tantalizing daily book offers ever since.  I selected authors and genre types and it sends me things it thinks I’ll like.   I view them and if the blurb doesn’t sound interesting I’ll erase the email.  Needless the say, I have LOTS of emails that I didn’t erase waiting for me to decide to download or not.  (More clutter in my life….sigh.)

A few weeks ago I was without anything I wanted to read so I downloaded one the BookBub finds.  The Song of Dragons trilogy by Daniel Arenson.  The blurb sounded very good with an interesting concept of wereDragons.   I did manage to get about halfway (I think it was halfway, hard to tell with an e-book) before I realized that this book was boring the CRAP outa me.  If I had to speculate, I would say it was written by a male in his early twenties… it’s so adolescent in it’s plot line, with little life experience and no humor.  Ironically, it’s NOT written by an adolescent but definitely by a male raised on D&D and not his first novel….not even the first in the series, even!

So I took another chance and downloaded a different series.  The Imp series by Debra Dunbar.  And I’m thoroughly hooked!!  I don’t know how far I’m into Demon Bound but this book is HILARIOUS and WONDERFUL and SHOULD BE A MOVIE OR SERIES!  I adore this author.  And perhaps it’s not her first novel… (and it would be sad if Song of Dragons wasn’t Arenson’s first, cuz it reads as a first) …just her most popular series, cuz it’s well thought out, with clear and interesting characters and a wonderfully interesting world.   With Demons being risk-taking hedonists pared with their nemesis the tight-assed, sanctimonious Angels, oblivious humans and other races all  interacting in modern day east coast countryside…. it is a joy to read.   And surprise, surprise, Dunbar is a middle aged (in her prime!) single mom.

I’ve always favored female writers because they tend to flesh out their stories with really interesting and real characters.  But I do have several male authors that are just as captivating in their created worlds who I thoroughly enjoy.  But as I age and become more experienced when I read a book I need a character that I can relate a bit more with.  Dunbar’s Imp Series’ character is young for a demon (under 1,000 years) but old for a human (in her 40’s) and she’s lusting after her 20-something gardener like a good Cougar would and it is SOOOOOO much fun!

A bit ago my mother tried to visit her sister.  I say tried, because my mother’s younger sister is 70 and in a mental care facility.  And I was reminded of a statement my mother once made of how she wouldn’t be surprised if her sister had undiagnosed cancer.  After all her sister had the same tonsil treatment she did and it gave HER cancer!

See… back in the early 50’s when my mother was a kid instead of going under the knife to remove tonsils, which everyone was doing back then, HER parents had her and her sister do a new treatment which “radiated” the tonsils away.  Combine that with the bad thyroid history in my family and its not really surprising my mother got thyroid cancer when she was mid-thirty.  She beat it by having it removed and trusting her gut by NOT going on chemo.  She’s been cancer free now for 35 years or so.

The point being…  same trigger, different outcome.  Some could say its genetics.  After all my mother and her sister don’t look very much alike so there is an obvious difference in their genes….and they’re very different in personality.   So those who point to that could be right.  But me….. I think it was all the pot my aunt smoked from the age of 16 on.  I mean, hippie level pot smokage here!   And with all the studies now about how great marijuana is for medical purposes, well, may she cured her cancer before it started!

Then I was thinking about how the experts say learning music helps with math.  I wonder… if Luke had stuck with his free music lessons in violin at school, would he be better at his Algebra?   The Algebra he failed in 11th grade and 12th grade and in his first year in college?   And that made me laugh.  I played piano for 5 years as a child and I barely squeaked by with a D at the Algebra Luke is struggling through.  And I took it twice also, with the same grade both times!!   With those facts, I might surmise that bad math is genetics that my kids obviously got from me.

And on the note of genetics…..

I remember my mother telling me not to shave my legs as a teen and to just bleach it away with lemon juice in the sun.  My leg hair was dark and hers was non-existant!  So as a teen, of course, I ignored that….  But these days as I’m showering and doing the usual places for a razor, legs & pits (other parts get a quick waxing by an expert lol), I’ve noticed that my body hair barely grows anymore.  I only need to shave now once a week!     And then  it clicks.  This must have happened to my mother and that’s why she thought it was fine to just bleach the few hairs she had!  It’s menopause!  My metabolism hasn’t slowed.  It’s down-right retired!   It has given the raspberry & the finger to “the boss”, tossed all its papers and responsibilities in the air and left the building!    And THAT is one of the biggest reasons I’ve been gaining weight over the last year!   My body is no longer using energy for menstrual cycles, hair growth, hair COLOR, good nail growth, skin moisturizing & elasticity and probably a lot of other functions I’m unaware of.  The Guildmen of my metabolism have gone on strike/vacation and all that’s left is me- the Lord ruler and the Surfs of my basic system.   Sadly, the greedy Tax Collector of my appetite is still levying taxes across the board and THAT is just packing on the pounds.

It doesn’t help that I work in a retail store which makes candy bars cheap and within easy grasp!

Well, two years of Coachella has come and gone.  It says something of my busy factor that I’m a year behind writing this blog entry!  But lets start at the beginning.  In 2014.

Shortly after a Coachella the presale for the NEXT Coachella goes on sale.  Sex God and I try to get all our friends to get tickets at this time so we can all go together, cuz its easier to pay for tickets that almost cost $400 each, on the monthly layaway program they’ve set up.  So while Sex God’s friend Cesar didn’t manage it, and Tongue God totally forgot (or was expecting me to remind him idk). I managed to get 2 tix to Weekend One and Sex God managed to get 2 Weekend Two (primarily in case Cesar didn’t get tix) and our friend Mike got 2 for Weekend One to go with us.  I managed to secure condo space for 6 and we were set for vacation!

      Then the lineup came out.  And I’ll admit I was sorely disappointed.    I didn’t really want to see any of the headliners and none of the new bands I was in love with were even on the billing.  No Kongos, no Bleachers, no Priory.    And I’d recently been going through this, “Is this who I want to be” phase of introspection.  So I really wasn’t feeling like I wanted to go that year.  The expense of all the food.  The fact I’m not a beer drinker & that’s the primary liquor.  The weight I’d gained over the year combined with the judgement of the status seekers of Weekend One REALLY made it unattractive.

And then cruising on my Facebook page floats an ad for a different festival.  BottleRock….  3 days, just like Coachella.  Fancy food & drink like Coachella (although I expect the wine is better because its  in Napa.)    But, Oh My that lineup!   Suddenly all the excitement I should have had for Coachella was completely there…. for BottleRock.  And the ticket price was $100 LESS than Coachella!

Sex God was right there with me in the decision.  Sell Coachella and do BottleRock for 2015.   So when my Weekend One tickets arrived, I promptly put them on Craigslist.  Alas, so did TONS of people.  And while I had nibbles, mine were priced higher than straight tix due to having purchased a shuttle pass along with them.  (This on the advice of Tongue God who shuttled last year and said it was much better than driving.)

Worse was the fact I couldn’t get anyone interested in renting the condo space from me.  Oh, I got nibbles.  I even got one woman to commit to it, only to back out.   The closer it got to the event the more despondent I got about being able to recoup my money.  But Sex God reminded me of the time we won tickets from radio stations and how we sold them to the scalpers which lined the roads to the event.  Which meant, off to Palm Springs we were going to have to go.

And since I couldn’t get anyone to rent the condo space, I decided to take the kids with us on a vacation.   I packed up a small amount of food, their PS3, bathing suits and a change of clothes and off we were on a road trip.

The kids were great.  They rarely fight and if they do its quickly diffused.  The drive up was mostly quiet while the radio lasted.  Then it was silly as their humor is quite random.  Once in the condo and the PS3 was set up, Luke and Conor wanted to go to the pool and Brant and I needed to head to the festival to try to sell the tickets.   So we all went our perspective way.

But when Brant and I get near the festival we see NO scalpers anywhere.  The city had completely cracked down.  Which I personally think is great, even if it did pose a problem to those changing their minds about the concert, because I hope it will discourage the scalpers from scooping up tickets they don’t plan on going to next year.   Even on Craigslist I couldn’t get any price close to what I paid, even ticket price without shuttle pass.   So we gave up and went back to the condo.

Looking at each other Sex God and I decided if we weren’t going to recoup costs, we might as well GO!   Of course by the time we realized this we’d missed most of Friday.  But we went Saturday and part of Sunday.

On Saturday, we walked to the shuttle (20 minute walk away) and caught a bus ride to the festival.  Which, wasn’t too bad actually.  If we go next year, we may invest in a shuttle pass but buy it AFTER we know we’re going! lol   It definitely lets you off closer to the event and lets you avoid a lot of street traffic.  But the walk back at night to our condo had a few scary, no-sidewalk, is-that-car-circling-back- around-to-kill us… moments.   Much better to drive to one next year.

We only had a few bands we wanted to see Saturday so we ended up parked at the main state to see Bad Religion, Milky Chance and Hozier.   But we got there early enough to wander around.  I got my usual coffee toffee ice cream from BlackBeanIceCream.com stand and oh, it is soooo yummy.  In one of the beer gardens, I left where we were standing to get Sex God a beer and got grabbed and danced around in a circle several times by a very happy drunk. lol   In that beer garden we were able to see/hear the house DJ music of Alison Wonderland.  She was very, very good!   Too bad my feet (and weight) don’t let me dance like all the other 20 year olds to this music. hahaha!  [Often I’ll insert vid clips but other people film better than I do and YouTube is a wonderful medium for that lol]

Bad Religion was ok.   I probably should have tried to see Andrew McMahon instead, but it did a little time crossover with Milky Chance and that was what Sex God really wanted to see.  Poor lead singer of Milky Chance had some cold or something because while his voice sounded the same, he claimed he was sick and apologized, although he put on a great show anyway.  And Hozier… well, that was almost as much fun as seeing Vampire Weekend in (2011 & 2013).  Knowing all the songs is way better than not knowing when you see a performance!

We perused the line up after Hozier and like the old people we have to admit we are, we decided we were good to go!  So we left by 7:30.    I entertained Sex God on the shuttle back with stories of bus sexploits I’d had.  He was so turned on he got hard… so I indulged him in a little oral just for the shock and awe of it!  There were barely 10 people on the bus that looked like it could hold 50!

I  had given the boys some money and instructions to keep together but walk to the mini mall on the corner filled with fast food and buy dinner.  And to have the salad I’d brought for them to eat.  They did and left the change on the counter for me.   Such good kids.  They were happy with their free Wifi, PS3 and Evan got some alone time and space by sleeping on the pull out couch in the living room.    But I made them go to bed early because since we were gong to go to Coachella Sunday and the kids had school Monday, I decided to drive them home early Sunday morning.   They were very ready, since they decided home’s Wifi was faster than the condo’s. lol.

Now this decision proved quite challenging.  But since the band I wanted to see Sunday was Saint Motel and they played at 1:20 I thought I’d  make it.  But, see, Sex God also had to go back to L.A. for a blood draw appointment Sunday am, but it wouldn’t have worked to have him take the boys since the blood draw was in the OC.  So we all hit the road at about 8 am and I managed to get the kids home by 10am and me back on the road by 10:20.  And while I made it back to the condo in 2 hours, I didn’t factor in how long it was going to take to get to the venue AND get through security.  I barely saw the last 3 songs from Saint Motel, particularly since by then I had a blister on my toe, due to flip flops!

But I did get to see them and boy I thoroughly enjoyed that.  Sex God finally arrived and we tried to have fun (after all its was my birthday) and did a pretty good job but by 4pm we were burnt out.  Ok… HE was burnt out.  It was a combination of no breakfast nor coffee before the 4 vials of blood drawn at 11 am, the long drives with traffic, drinking too much water in the morning and then trying to make it up with bear and vodka at the event, and the long walk from parking in pants because he didn’t bring shorts to change in, and the heat and sun… it all made him too drunk, then by the evening gave him a horrid migraine headache, complete with nausea.    Didn’t stop him from running to the market to buy a steak to cook for me for my birthday.  Crazy man.

We kinda wanted to stay for Vance Joy and Kaskade but he deferred to me and we left.  And on the way out this guy asks to buy our wristbands.  He offered us $40 each and since we were done with them, and to make the ENTIRE trip not a total loss we said sure.   THAT put Sex God in a much better mood about leaving early.   Didn’t offset his migraine, sadly, but with enough Motrin, food, water and a dip in the pool he finally was able to get it down enough to fall asleep.

As to the rest of our lovely vacation.  That, was as great as time together usually is.  We did a bit a swimming in the pool but more laying out in it getting a bit tan.  He is SO hot he gets looks from the guys and the girls.  We went to a restaurant or two.  One was so empty that we were able to play our music on our phones while we ate.  The bill was a bit pricey but it was the best burger Sex God ever had and the ice cream drinks were delicious.   Although, jeez Palm Springs, who’s liver are you trying to kill!!  I know you’re the city of James Dean, but holy shit these drinks are triple strength!

So that was Coachella 2015.  And all that happened didn’t stop me from buying presale 2016 tickets.  After all.. I had great hope next year would be different!  Sadly it wasn’t. lol  But this time I didn’t shell out an irretrievable amount for a place to stay and I didn’t have any difficulty selling the tickets.  Although I didn’t price them higher than my cost and I didn’t wait a single second to unload them, so that may have been the key.

And I’ll buy the presale in a few weeks for 2017 because maybe next year will be different.

ha

There are all kids of spillage in our lives…     And I’ve dealt with my fair share of it…..food, drink, lube, etc. But in all my experiences very little spillage had been worse than spilling my phone into a toilet.

It didn’t happen the way you think. I was NOT on my phone at the time, nor was I doing anything naughty. I was sitting there, doing my business with my phone in one hand (cuz I usually keep it in my back pocket so I take it out to NOT drop it into the toilet prepping to ‘sit’) And I noticed “something” on the toilet paper holder & thought I’d do a solid and clean it up.  And while doing that the phone slipped right out of my hands and into the water.

I leapt up instantly and fished it right out, battling the self flushing mechanism of the toilet. I dried it the best I could while pulling up my pants and watched in dismay as the screen when white & flickered.

What I didn’t know to do THEN (and I do now) was to power it completely off. I just helplessly dried it and rushed home. I knew to put it in rice, but didn’t know THEN (and I do now) that I should have NOT waited until I got home to do so. I didn’t know the rice trick was a time sensitive issue and I should have rushed down to the market section of Target and bought rice and ziplock bags. And when I got home I didn’t know I should put the phone into zip locked rice, not just IN rice.

So yes, my phone was a lost cause.

Which was an interesting experience being without a phone for two days.  I knew I relied upon it for a lot.  I just didn’t realize how much I do on it on a moment to moment basis.  For instance, I spent two days at work feeling confused about what day it was, what time it was, what my schedule was.  The phone makes my dyslexia so very easy to manage.  My own form of my family’s high anxiety, well conditioned since childhood by dyslexia is constantly questions my instincts, worried the dyslexia has me wrong.  So whenever that happens, I confirm it on my phone.  Example…

Me:   Today’s date is… the 10th… the 10th?  mmmm….yeah, I think it’s the 10th.  Are ya SURE!

With a phone I just check.  Without a phone, I question & question… & on that day, I laughed.  I’ve lived with this quirk of mine for so long I don’t let it stress me.  There have been so many challenges in my life that the minor ones just make me giggle.

So while many would freak losing their phone, I marveled at the new experience of appreciating just how much I used it for.  I checked 8 emails daily; half work, half personal, I was unable to check anything until I got home to my computer each day.  I had my calendar to remind me when I started and ended my work shifts and all my appointments ahead.  I had my contacts, and it was THOSE I realized I needed back!

See when I managed to take my phone to the Apple store, they were able to retrieve SOME of my data by linking to my iTunes account but not my contacts!  But I’d not gone in with my computer.  So after paying for a new phone ($300… ouch!) I rushed home to see if I could manage it at home.  And after a bit of searching found a backup dated a month before.  See, my phone hadn’t been able to sinc up to iTunes for months, so I had all these photos and contacts and videos that never uploaded.  The loss was sad but not nearly as sad as losing all my contacts.

But after another trip to the Apple store, computer in hand, we managed to get the backup uploaded and lo and behold my contacts were restored!!!

The true irony of the entire story was barely an HOUR before the Spillage I was bragging to a fellow employee (after seeing his banged up phone & him hearing how he’d dropped it so many times) about how my phone had been dropped at least 20 times, skidding under countless cars and “Look! Pristine!”

Gee, Fate…. did I really need a $300 lesson on being without a phone or was this a back of the head slap about being humble?

I’m primarily a Liberal.  But I’m also a writer.  And what that means is I don’t arbitrarily hate what is different from me.  Not saying that Liberals do… nor their Conservative counterparts…. what I’m saying is I can see the logic and benefits of many sides of any issue.  I guess some would call me a Centrist in attitude and a Liberal in practice.

Couple months ago I went to a financial planning institution to straighten out my investments.  See, a few years back I did SUCH a good job at cutting costs (streamlining) and sales at my mother’s business that I got a SEP contribution.   My (then) husband was a trained financial planner so he opened a TD Waterhouse (now Ameritrade) account with it.  What he neglected to impress upon me tell me was I had to take charge of where I dispersed it.  And since I was raising 3 kids (4 if you counted him), working and going through peri- menopause, I completely ignored that account for 4 years.  Where it sat there, not even collecting interest!

In calling the company that handled my Roth IRA investments to see about name changes, etc last year I found out it wasn’t set up the way I wanted it originally.  See 17 years ago when I left a job to marry and move to Texas I had somehow accumulated a pension.  So I rolled it over into a Roth IRA through my new brother-in-law who worked for AmEx Financial Planning (now Ameriprise – don’t you love the erie similarity in names).  I told him I wanted it put into socially responsible mutual funds.   He frowned but I was firm and so I thought he’d done that.   I contributed to it a bit in the early years of our marriage but after the third kid, pretty much left it alone.  It grew.

After the recent phone call though I found out it wasn’t in socially responsible funds.  And after talking to him I didn’t feel he was willing to help me move it to where I wanted.   And then after talking to the Ameritrade woman, personally, I realized this attitude was a permanent structure in the entire investment community.   Those who lived and breathed Capitalism would never understand or connect with the likes of me.   They were ruled by the “More money at any costs” greed aspect that extreme Capitalism generates.

Her explanation that an investor had the right to expect “as much return as he could get” from a company just because he had chosen THAT company in which to invest his money.  Yes, it had a level of logic.  And I saw that logic.  What I noticed was SHE didn’t see was the greed in the statement “as much as he could get.”   And that is the true core problem in Capitalism.  Yes, investing in companies with great ideas moves forward progress and is a wonderful way to use excess money to benefit society.  BUT (and this is a HUGE but, a Baby Got Back butt) it should NEVER become more important than the people in the company working for the company or the customers supporting/benefiting from the company.  And THAT is a part of Capitalism that Greed has blinded most people from realizing.

She sited GM and Unions as an example.  I kept my mouth shut.  Yes, the Auto Union in GM seemed to have wound its way into wounding the company.  Yes, many of the positive need for Unions had disappeared as we grew a social conscience as a society.  But did she see that cutting salaries from the top down makes more of a social impression than gutting pensions?  No.  And I knew at that moment she never would.   So I didn’t bring up Costco vs Walmart as a better business plan.  I didn’t bring up how big business has finagled into their pockets all the gov. subsides meant to help the smaller business [farms].  I didn’t mention the business owner who took a giant pay cut so his employees could all make $70,000 a year.

I didn’t say any of that, because she was old school.  I could tell this from her over tanned, bleach blond, fake nail manicure, over 50 at least appearance… and her conversation of tickets to the Derby opening as Santa Anita and how she had 2 horses running.   Times are changing, albeit slowly, and she and I will be dead before we see the complete change, but social media is allowing people to put their money where their beliefs are and more and more people are standing up against greed.   Not as many as their needs to be in my opinion, but I also think (or perhaps I’m being idealistic)  the NEW entrepreneurs are going to go more in the way of the Costco, Starbucks business model than the GM or Walmart.

Either way, I realized then that, again, I was on my own in making sure this investment went where I wanted it to go.    So I’ve got some research to do on socially responsible mutual funds.  And maybe a quick tutorial on “balancing” a portfolio lol.  But I was firm about TWO stocks I wanted to buy.  Costco and Tesla.   She babbled about how no one purchases stocks unless its in 50 share bundles because that’s how you sell it.  But when I went online to handle my account, the computer had NO problem using half the funds to buy what Costco stocks I could afford and the other half to buy what Tesla stocks I could get with the balance.  See… what she doesn’t understand is I don’t plan on selling these.  This is my way of letting my money support business’s I believe in.  If it makes a profit, yay… if it doesn’t, well, it’s money that was more of a gift than earned.

I would rather live a poor but happy life than get sucked into the level of SOULLESS GREED is see at the top.

Go Bernie Sanders!!!  heeheehee