Only Child Syndrome Strikes Again

I think I've mentioned before that a blogging I wrote a long long time ago about Only Child Syndrome has generated more comments, I think, that anything other thing I've blogged about.

The comments can be pretty funny. I get ones totally agreeing with my take on Only Children. And others, from Only Children, who confirm the Syndrome at the same time they are angrily denying it.

Last week I saw from my Blog Stats that a lot of people were coming to the blogging about Only Child Syndrome from something called YELP. I went to YELP and found it was a forum type thing where someone named Brandy had posted the link to my blogging about Only Child Syndrome and said, "Interesting article. What are your thoughts? True? False?"

Well, Brandy's question got a lot of replies. Some of it reminds me of how bent out of shape some Scarborough Faire nutjobs got over my take on their Renaissance Festival.

This morning the Only Child Syndrome thing was back fresh in my mind due to a comment from Jan, who said...

"I've read the OCS blogs with alot of interest. Unfortunately, I have an only child, age 28 and when I read this she jumped off the page. You have nailed her perfectly. There is not one single description that does not fit my only child. Unfortunately, she has cut me and all of her aunts out of her life. very sad, but this was extremely interesting."

So, one more believer in OCS.

I'd not read the blog of one of my own personal worst cases of OCS in awhile. Recently she blogged about some new friends, saying one of them, let's call her Margie, "really gets me." That somehow struck me as funny and so stereotypically only childish. The Only Child is so special, so unique, so one of a kind, that it takes someone with special powers of observation to appreciate all that is so special about the Only Child. The particular Only Child in question has used this "really gets me" verbiage on a number of occasions. I have heard it with my own ears, in addition to reading it. In person the tone sounds sort of conspiratorial, as if I, the listener, am also privy to really getting what is so special about the Only Child.

Okay, that's enough about Only Child Syndrome for today.

I Am Wearing My Skinny Pants To School In Mesquite Texas This Morning

Yeah, that's me in my favorite skinny pants, giving you a good look at the tattoos on my arms.

I did not know til this morning that skinny pants were a current fad amongst us youngsters.

If I wore my skinny pants to Mesquite, here in Texas, today, to go to school, I would be told to go home and change in to non-skinny pants or wear a pair of school provided slacks.

When I was in grade school, in Washington, there was a skinny pants fad. They were not called skinny pants though. Back then Levi Strauss made a blue jean out of stretchy material. If we could, we would persuade our mom's into tapering the jeans til they were really tight and difficult to get on.

I can now understand why my mom took a lot of convincing to mutilate a pair of jeans. Tapered blue jeans looked really bad. The current skinny pants don't look all that ridiculous to me.

A Mesquite middle school student, Seth Chamlee, came to Kimbrough Middle School in skinny pants and was told to take them off and put on the school's slacks. Or go home. Seth went home, where his mom, Cindy Pope, said yesterday, “He can learn more without the distraction of what to wear.” As in the boy will now be home schooled in his skinny pants.

I can understand the need to have some dress codes. For instance it seems perfectly reasonable to insist that boys not wear their jeans down around their knees, exposing their underwear. I don't know when the droopy drawers fad migrated to the South, from it's origin on the coasts, where that fad has long faded, but it might behoove local educators to somehow educate the local droopy drawer boys that that fad is as badly outdated as wearing a Gar the Texan style mullet haircut.

When I made a visit to Fort Worth, in 1998, to see if moving here was at all feasible, I was staying with a friend who had moved from Mount Vernon, Washington to Fort Worth, about a month earlier than my visit. My first day in Fort Worth I was asked to take my friend's 15 year old boy to his first day of school. I dropped him off at the school and was surprised at how, well, sluttily, for want of a better word, a lot of the girls were dressed.

So, imagine my surprise, when 15 minutes later, I get a phone call from the 15 year old boy. He was told he was not dressed appropriately for school. He was wearing what he wore to school in Mount Vernon, granted, a much more liberal, with much better schools, location. He was wearing long shorts and his skateboard shoes and a t-shirt.

He was given a piece of paper with all the instructions as to what was proper attire. I read it and could not get past how so many of the girls I'd seen at his school looked like what I later learned might be characterized as working girls on Harry Hines Boulevard

There were several comments about Mesquite's anti-skinny pants policy in this morning's Dallas Morning News.....

"If it wasn't for the name "skinny" jeans, I doubt that the MISD would have made such a fuss about these pants. I saw the kid wearing them on TV last night, and they really weren't even skin tight. Maybe if schools in Texas concentrated more on teaching our kids, instead of policing what they wear, the state wouldn't have one of the lowest academic ratings in the country."

Good point.

"I am SO GLAD that Mesquite is spending time legislating pants and their dimensions. Students are obviously perfectly proficient in all classroom subjects, so this is definitely how teachers and administrators should spend their time. Good job, folks.

Another good point.

"Rules are made for a reason......so why all the fuss about following them?"

Bad point. The above type thinking is basically fascist. Rules are not made for a reason. They are made as a guideline. And they are made to be broken. To blindly follow rules is not a lesson I would want to teach any kid. To question rules and authority, that is a lesson I would teach a kid.

To the kids in Mesquite I would suggest you all get together and all decide to wear skinny pants to school. Get sent home. Then show up the next day, again, in your skinny pants. Trust me, you will quickly be allowed to wear your skinny pants to school, and you will have taught your school administrators a valuable lesson.

Finding Alternator Alternatives In Fort Worth With Pizza

A couple weeks ago when I switched my websites to Host Gator I would not have been able to imagine what scenario would cause me to spend time, a couple Wednesdays later, standing underneath a Host Gator billboard, with a Free Month Coupon using the word "COWBOY."

But, that is what happened today.

My one reader may remember that yesterday did not start off well, due to me skipping my morning swim, followed by a multi-mile walking trek over the mean streets of Dirty ol' Town, Fort Worth, after a serious vehicle malfunction.

Noon today was Part II of fix the vehicle malfunction. To start Part II off well, I made certain I went swimming this morning, even though the water felt as if it had recently been a glacier. At noon I took the ailing vehicle to meet Jonathon the Battery Mechanic, so he could put in a new alternator.

Jonathon arrived 15 minutes late. I left the alternator and vehicle in his care and went to Sam's Club for pizza. Jonathon said it'd take about an hour to make the fix. An hour later I show up. Ooops. Big problem. Don't have a needed tool.

Then another guy shows up, friend of Jonathon. He is another Mobile Mechanic. Is there an epidemic of Mobile Mechanics? The Mobile Mechanic's name was M.R. Block. M.R. directed me to associates of his at Auto Docs, located right by my neighborhood QT and Post Office. M.R. Block said he'd call ahead and tell them an incoming alternator was arriving.

I get to the Auto Docs. They'd not heard from M.R. Block. Then M.R. Block shows up and tells me that KC, at next door Joe's Emergency Auto Repair, would quickly replace the alternator. So, I followed M.R. to Joe's where KC quickly went to work.

I took a walk and called my mom. This was an unusual call because I had not gotten gas. As I was talking to my mom I looked up to see the Host Gator billboard.

A short time later the new alternator was in place, with the old alternator in its box, to be returned to O'Reilly's for the alternator core refund.

It is almost 70 out there. I was overdressed today in long pants and a sweatshirt. I am no longer overdressed.

Tumbleweeds & Cactus Roll Into Fort Worth From Phoenix

On Monday I blogged about some odd alterations done to benches at the Tandy Hills Natural Area playground.

I also mentioned an odd construction I called the Fence to Nowhere. That fence sat there, making no sense, for about a year.

And then this morning I get email from Don Young with the subject line being "Welcome to Phoenix."

The email had several photos of what has been to done to the Fence to Nowhere since I took photos of it on Monday. The same, uh, symbols, as what's been stuck on the benches, have now been stuck on the fence.

Seeing the bigger fence version of what's been stuck on the benches, it appears to be blue cactus and green tumbleweeds. This is Fort Worth, not the Mojave Desert. Cowboy hats and longhorns would have been more appropriate.

This morning I read in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, that local newspaper I know longer pay for, but read for free online, that the City of Fort Worth is mothballing the city pools due to cost cutting.

How much did the beautiful tumbleweed cactus artworks cost? How much did that fence cost, before the beautiful artwork was added? Why have Phoenix type symbols been added to the Texas prairie?

It's very perplexing.

Walking The Mean Streets Of Fort Worth Texas With Bad Luck & Good Luck

I have had me a day. I skipped the morning swim due to the temperature being in the 30s. So, that started the day off bad.

Big Ed had an appointment in west Forth Worth, a bit west of University Drive. I wanted to go to Panther City Bicycles and finally get my wobbly wheel fixed. So, I set out on a car pooling adventure.

I dropped Big Ed off at his destination, then continued on to mine, about 2 miles away. I got to Panther City Bicycles to see a "Back in 5 Minutes" note on the door. Not a good sign. I was going to Panther City Bicycles because Fort Worth Weekly every year has it being the best bike shop in the area.

Well, FW Weekly greatly oversold this little hole in the wall. FW Weekly said the place had a test track out back. There was no such thing. So, I sat there for 5 minutes or so and then decided I didn't think I wanted to trust this place. So, I decided to head back to University Drive.

And that's when the fun started. My bike van would not start. I opened the hood, looked at the battery cables, tried again. Totally dead.

I decided to walk back to where I'd dropped Big Ed off, which seemed to make sense at the time. I take off walking, going from Magnolia to Rosedale. But then at the point where Rosedale heads over the Trinity River it did not look like safe walking.

So, I took a left and headed south into the Mistletoe Heights neighborhood. Beautiful homes, the road sort of meandered. About a mile or so later I realized that I had to get back across the Trinity River and that the first crossing was the University Drive bridge. Finally I came to Forest Park Boulevard and then to Colonial Parkway. I knew I was nearing the Fort Worth Zoo, so I was no longer disoriented.

About a mile later I was where I'd dropped Big Ed off. I went into a Barnes & Noble and waited for a phone call. It was now about 3:30. Phone rang. Found Big Ed, explained the problem. I figured we could take the bus back to Magnolia, but then we realized we had no clue how to do that. So, we started walking. This time I knew to go up Rosedale and not worry about it looking unsafe.

Got back to the bike van about a half hour later. Opened the hood. Tightened the battery connections. Tried to start it again. Still dead. Then a guy walks up, says he's a Mobile Mechanic, asks if we need a jump. Yes, please. He says he'll be right back. A few minutes go by, no mobile mechanic. So, I call AAA. They are on the line sending someone to help when the Mobile Mechanic shows up.

The Mobile Mechanic sticks on the cable, the bike van starts right up. Headed east towards home, needing a new battery. Or so I thought. After a few miles it became clear that something else was wrong. By about mile 10 it was decided that maybe the alternator was malfunctioning.

I decided to go to Super Wal-Mart. That's where I'd bought my last battery. Drive up, left the bike van running, saw a mechanic, asked if he installed batteries, explained the problem, he had me park the van in his garage and go buy a battery.

Then the battery mechanic, named Jonathon, very nice guy, discovered the alternator was, indeed, malfunctioning. Jonathon said the alternator was easy to replace, that he'd be willing to do so, tomorrow. So, we headed to O'Reilly's Auto Parts, bought a new alternator and Jonathon is coming here to install it tomorrow.

I tell you, I have the best luck with vehicle problems. It goes back to my first car, a 1965 Mustang Fastback. That car caused me so many fun breakdown adventures. I remember the best was the clutch going out after watching a taping of Laverne & Shirley at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Spent the night in a Chevron parking lot.

You Are Invited To Wimberley Texas For The Winter's Eve Festival

Wimberley is a little tourist town in Texas Hill Country, a bit northwest of San Marcos, a bit southwest of Austin. Wimberley is known for its artist community, with many small shops and a lot of bed and breakfasts.

Cypress Creek flows out of Jacob's Well with crystal clear water that flows through the Wimberley Valley and makes for some good, popular swimming holes.

Market Days is held the first Saturday of every month, drawing tourists from all over America.

Yesterday I got an invitation from Sarah Barlow to Wimberley's Winter's Eve Festival. Ms. Barlow is with the Wimberley Merchants Association.

I'll copy the invitation below....

The Wimberley Merchants Association would like to invite you to join us on for the Winter’s Eve Festival on the Wimberley Square on December 5, 2009 starting at 5:00 pm. Enjoy two stages of live entertainment, gourmet food booths, including wine and beer. Santa will be arriving around 7:00 pm and over 90 shops around the Wimberley Square will be open for holiday shopping. This is a free event for the family. The Wimberley Square will be adorned with holiday lighting as well. Come to the Texas Hill Country for an enchanting holiday event! Click for more information.

So, who wants to drive down to Wimberley with me on the first Saturday of December?

It Appears The City Of Fort Worth Has Added Graffiti To Tandy Hills Park Benches

In the blogging previous to this one, from earlier this afternoon, I mentioned seeing some ornamentation being added to benches at the playground field by Tandy Hills Natural Area.

I erroneously thought this was some sort of Christmas decoration when I got my short glance, earlier today, while the "art" was being installed.

As you can see, the seat of the bench spells out "FORT WORTH." So did the bench back. Now the bench back looks as if it has had some graffiti sprayed on it.

My best guess as to what the added artwork is supposed to be is green bushes alternating with blue prickly pear cactus.

All 5 of the benches in the park had this treatment done to them. I think it would be interesting to know how the decision was made, and by whom, to spend money on this. And how much money was spent.

About a year ago another mysterious thing was added to the Tandy Hills Playground. Over the course of several weeks I wondered what was being constructed. First, I saw a form built. Then cement poured into the form, with posts added. Eventually rails were added to the posts, making sort of an aluminum fence. But it fences nothing. And is only about 50 feet long.

You can see 2 of the 5 tarted up benches in the distance in the above picture of the fence to nowhere.

The fence to nowhere sits to the northeast of playground equipment, like swings. Long ago I gave up trying to figure out what the fence was built for.

And now these bench enhancements.

It's all very perplexing.

The Big Chill In Today In Texas

Two days ago I went hiking the Tandy Hills shirtless in shorts. It was almost 80. Two days later I went hiking the Tandy Hills Natural Area wearing sweatpants, a long sleeved shirt, a windbreaker and the knit stalking cap I wear to keep me warm when I go swimming.

That's today chilled Tandy Hills view in the picture. You can not tell it due to my weak photographer skills, but you are looking west up a very steep part of the Tandy Trails in the picture.

Wind chill of around 40, today, when I was shivering over the Tandy Hills. It is 51 out in the cold, right now, here in frigid Fort Worth, with a windchill of 46. Yes. It is windy today.

I saw some Fort Worth city workers putting some Christmas type decoration on one of the benches near the main trail that leads to the Tandy Hills trails. This bench is quite a distance from the road. Few will see this decoration.

Two guys were working on the bench. They'd driven a City of Fort Worth pickup on to the lawn to park by the bench.

Now, Fort Worth is cutting back on library hours, cutting back on all sorts of things. Yet money is somehow found to put a decoration on an isolated bench? I've got to go the Post Office. Maybe I'll swing by and get a picture of what Fort Worth spent some money on today.

See you later, maybe with a picture of a bench.

Winter Arrives In Fort Worth, Cold & Windy

That is the foggy view looking through my patio door this morning in Fort Worth. We have had a reversal of temperature fortunes, careening down into the low 40s from days nearing 80. Brrrrr.

And it is being very windy, with the windchill factor making it feel like it is the 30s out there.

Again. Brrrrrr.

But, even though it is a bit chilly out there, I managed to go swimming this morning. The water was actually quite a bit warmer than the air, so it was very easy to get in the pool.

I discovered something new this morning. I wanted to make ham and eggs and hashbrowns, but could find not any spuds hiding in here. But, I did find a sweet potato. So, I shredded it and made sweet potato hash browns. Turned out quite tasty. And way more nutritious than a hash browned spud.

It rained a bit yesterday, but I don't think enough of the wet stuff fell to muddy up the Tandy Hills. So, I see a cold hilly hike in my future for the day.

Middle Of November Sunday Storming In Texas

That's my stormy 4 in the afternoon view this mid-November Sunday in Texas. There has been some dripping, no hard rain. And, so far, none of the predicted thunderstorming.

I was in the pool this morning when the sky was relatively blue. And again about an hour ago when the sky was relatively not blue.

After the afternoon swimming I lounged on a lounge chair. Tootsie Tonasket called. I talked to Tootsie til little pinpricks of concentrated cold started hitting me.

I have convinced Tootsie Tonasket to start blogging. She has many tales to tell about the town she lives in in Eastern Washington and the characters who reside there. We'll see how that goes.

Earlier today, in anticipation of the expected incoming deluge, I went over to Miss Puerto Rico's to help her put a new cover on her jeep. That quickly turned into a boondoggle. Today I realized every time I've tried to help Miss Puerto Rico do something with her jeep it turns into a boondoggle. Today I really could not even tell what problem we were trying to solve.

So, that's been my Sunday in Texas. Possibly a tornado to top off the day.