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Persistent spammers…

Boy, are they barking up the wrong tree…

This morning, I found two pages of lesbian porn spam in my Google mail account. I’m kind of amused by this, because I’m definitely not into women. I kind of wonder what causes this phenomenon. Does this spammer have a glitch that causes him or her to send out dozens of lesbian porn spam emails? Or are they just really enthusiastic about getting people to sign up?

Something tells me that this method must be, to some extent, relatively effective. Why else would they do it? There must be lesbians out there in Internet land who want to view this shit. Or maybe there are horny and curious males who want to see it. I don’t want to see it because lesbians aren’t my thing. I mean, I have lesbian friends, but I am myself straight.

Ah well… this is a problem easily dealt with with a push of a button. I won’t be viewing any lesbian porn today.

What I do hope to do is cut the grass. We have nice sunny weather this morning and my new lawnmower and weedwhacker are here. The only issue is, it’s a robotic mower, and although it will save me a lot of tedious time cutting the grass, the set up is going to require some work. We have to lay down wires around the yard that will tell the mower where to go. We have to fill in potholes and remove obstacles. We have to wait for the grass to dry. What’s really funny is that my new mower is made by a British company, but they didn’t send us any manuals in English. We have them in Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. Fortunately, I found a very helpful video made by McCulloch, the manufacturer of our mower. We watched it last night and it gave us more of an idea of what needs to be done.

Bill is working this morning. Hopefully, he’ll be finished by noon so we can get this project going. Despite my hatred of housework and substandard skills, I do like a neat yard. I probably should have just bought a plain old lawnmower, since our yard is so small. At our first German house, we had a non-motorized push mower. It did the job. We could have opted for another one at this house, but I don’t really want to hassle with it. It wasn’t very easy to use, although it was quiet, clean, and needed no fuel other than my muscles.

At our last house, our landlady insisted on doing the yard work. She did a good job, but frequently let the grass grow too high for my liking– especially during our last year in her house. More than once, I wanted to cut the grass myself, but knew it would cause her to freak. We never did complain about it, but I have a sense that she knew she was shirking her duties, since she showed up to mow the day Bill asked to stop by to speak with her. I think she assumed we were going to complain about the lawn, but actually, Bill served her notice that we were leaving. I was oddly happy to hear that we’d be doing our own lawn work at this house. It means more privacy and less bad juju coming from a resentful person.

So far, I’ve spent the morning mopping the kitchen floor, doing laundry, and cleaning one of the bathrooms. For such a filthy person, I sure do a lot of chores. I probably should do more of them, so my house will be sparkling clean… only to get dirty again.

March has been a pretty crappy month. I spent most of it by myself, watching too much TV and not reading enough. I also got hooked on Sims 4 again. It’s kind of fun, although my favorite of the Sims franchise was Sims 2. It had more quirky humor and more interesting gameplay. The original Sims was fun, too. I didn’t like Sims 3 and never even bought any of the expansions.

Hopefully, April will be more fun. I’m ready to go see some more stuff and remember why we left Texas.

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Duggars

Things you shouldn’t do while barefoot…

I love going barefoot. I always have. Although I will sometimes wear socks when my feet get cold, I inevitably shed them because I don’t like the feel of anything on my feet. However, there are certain things I don’t do while barefoot.

This morning, in the Life is Not All Pickles and Hairspray group, someone shared a photo of Joy Anna Forsyth. She looks beautiful in a very flattering floral print dress. Her face is made up; she’s slimmed down; and she wears a beatific smile. But then, when you cast your eyes downward, you see she has bare feet. This would not be a big deal, except she’s also standing next to a horse.

I grew up riding horses. It’s been a long time since I was last in the saddle, although I took lessons for years and went to many horse shows. One lesson I did take from those years around horses is that you really should wear good shoes when you’re working with them. It’s not just because horses take enormous dumps, either. Horses are bigger than most people are, and their behavior can be unpredictable. The horse Joy is standing to looks pretty calm in the picture, but what if he or she spooked for some reason? Joy would have to jump out of the way, which is not so easy to do when you have tender feet.

If Joy walks around barefoot a lot, she may very well have hard, tough calluses on her feet. But I doubt even the toughest callus can stand up to a horse’s hoof, particularly if the horse is shod. She really could get hurt, which would not be a good thing. I remember when I was a teenager, coming home from a horse show. We had to stop on the side of the road and unload one of the horses for some reason. A small pony jumped off the trailer and landed on my big toe. It hurt like hell. Luckily, my toe was just smashed and bruised, not broken. I did lose the toenail, though. Thank God I was wearing shoes.

As I write this, I remember quite clearly on an old episode of 19 Kids and Counting another time when Joy went barefoot. It was right after Josie was born, and the whole family was temporarily living at a historic house in Little Rock. Joy and her brothers were in the yard and the lawn needed to be mowed. Joy did it barefoot in her skirt, claiming that she enjoys cutting the grass. I suppose if you keep your feet away from the mower, you might be safe enough. But it really isn’t a good idea. On the other hand, at least Joy isn’t a drinker. Plenty of people would drink beer and cut the grass, perhaps barefoot. It doesn’t seem like the smartest idea.

In Touch Weekly has an article about this Duggar phenomenon. Joy isn’t the only one who does this, although she appears to be the worst offender. There is a picture of her at age 12, starting up the lawnmower with shoeless feet, along with lots of other pictures of the Duggar women (I see none of the guys doing this) with no shoes on. I’m of a mixed mind about it myself, since I don’t like wearing shoes and have been known to step outside without them. But I do wear them if I’m in public or in a place where going barefoot would be dangerous. I would say hanging out with equines and cutting the grass definitely qualify.

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