Don’t be. I wouldn’t live anywhere else besides WEst (by God) Virginia.

I have been watching the Rose Bowl parade from the East Coast for my entire life. It was always my favorite part of New Year’s Day, seeing the floats.

But if our local stations don’t have the Rose Bowl parade, why bother?! ;)

And can be picked up and started at any time, as long as one has a book (or now! An ereader!) on them (which I do)!

We actually only have 5-8 state parks (of the 55) left to visit. I love seeing how gorgeous the state is!
So, then the question is, does NBC actually play the Rose Bowl parade??

We canceled when I realized that literally the only thing I had watched in the previous year had been the Rose Bowl parade. (I’m tempted to get an HD antenna if it means I can get the Rose Bowl parade reliably instead of trying to find it online.)

Oh! Where?

Yes! Exactly! But it’s very hard to get into the habit of it. My brain (at least) wants to go on auto-pilot and ignore the good things to focus on the negative.

(side eye)

I highly recommend small things that make you happy. I wear flowered Doc Martens, because when I look down at them, or someone comments on them, they make me smile. The hard part is remembering to pay attention to the little things that make you happy, instead of just letting them become background (and thus useless).

Good luck to you all, and try to remember that carers need concern and pampering as well as the person who is ill. So treat yourself (or your parents) to something nice—ice cream, day at the spa—just something that is nice and makes you all happy.

Oh, the stupidity of my 20s! If only I could go back and shake some sense into my younger self...

Oh Dog yes!

I installed Dolphin on my phone solely to check Facebook. It reduces FB tracking, I can turn it off easily by stopping Dolphin, and it isn’t linked to other stuff.

My father is never on time for anything—and never has been. He’s the epitome of the absent-minded professor, and has the double whammy of losing track of time and always under-estimating how long it takes to get somewhere or do something.

Good luck, and I hope you are soon able to find the combination that works best for you.

Ask your doctor about different medication options. I’ve been on (seemingly) everything under the sun, and it took a long while to find what worked for me. (I also had issues with the numbing on different meds.)

When I say my driveway is on a hill, I really do mean it. I live in West (by God) Virginia, where you can have ground floor entrances on multiple floors. (I work in a building that has ground floor entrances on the Ground, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors.) :D

But see, the garage we use is within walking distance of both our work and home, so we drop the car off in the morning, and pick it up after work. No time wasted at all. If we wanted to do any work on our car ourselves, we’d have to drive to someplace flat, with space to work. Again, it’s personal situation, but for…

My brother and I have discussions of those sort quite often. He’s always telling me things like, “I just changed the air filters on my car and saved $X!”