Some Current Stuff

Recently I wrote a post here about my not-so-great neighbors.

I published it and then hours later started to feel bad.

Started to feel bad about writing about them being bad neighbors in a what-if-they-somehow-read-this kind of way.
So I unpublished it.
(Coward that I apparently am.)

It's like, "oh, sorry I wrote about your bad behavior, I wouldn't want to make you feel bad about being bad neighbors and being the reason your neighbors resent you for ruining their life experience at their own homes."

What the hell?
I feel bad?? Is this some kind of doormat, people-pleasing thing I have?  Is it irony?
When people do bad things are we only allowed to think to ourselves that they're jerks and not allowed to talk about it or write about it if we happen to be someone who writes about stuff??
I should re-publish it, right?

Moving on...

I've talked about how I lost my ability to smell 17 years ago.

Before then, I had a favorite candle.  I forgot about it for years after the smell loss but some months back I remembered it and was happy to see it still exists.

Since then I've been obsessing on buying one, which is ridiculous because I will not be able to smell it's glorious fragrance.  Also, they're not cheap!

At least once a week I'm on their website with my mouse hovering over the 'buy now' button.  I've even subscribed to receive their newsletter.

I cannot explain this behavior.  🙃

I belong to various online groups for people like me who are anosmic and I posted to them about this desire of mine to purchase a candle I can't smell and they all said I should buy it anyway and do things like remembering how much I loved it while burning it which seems kind of like an act of...self-cruelty?  Others said to buy it and burn it so family members or anyone who visits could enjoy it and that that would then make me happy.

Yeah, no.

Here is a link to the candle that will forever be my favorite.  You should buy one because you will adore it.
If you do buy one, please think of me and my long-gone sense of smell when you burn it.

Also, do not ever take your ability to smell for granted.

I'm at the apartment this week and was in need of some groceries for dinner so I headed out. The apartment complex is a bunch of separate buildings, each with their own parking lots.  I had pulled out of my parking lot and was approaching the one behind my building when I came upon a bunch of people standing in groups, all facing one direction as if they were watching something happening. Almost all of them were holding a cellphone in front of their face...

Kind of like this picture except many of the people were holding their phone in front of their face, as in filming something.

Right away I thought, what's happening? The scene was akin to people who maybe had to evacuate because the fire department or police told them to.
So since the building they were near is near to my own building I thought it best to ask someone what was going on because I am never not in fight or flight (C-PTSD) and would like to know if something if I should actually take flight.
I pulled up to a woman standing alone, rolled my passenger window down and asked her if everything was okay.
She looked at me like I was nuts, then said "yeah, we're waiting for the school bus."
OK, a couple of things here:
1. I have spent a good portion of my life waiting for my daughter's school bus with other parents back in the day. Never did it look like an emergency scene.

2. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Kids don't get home from school until 4:30 nowadays?

As I pulled away I immediately felt very embarrassed and thought well, I'll have to never leave the apartment in the light of day ever again.

But then I checked myself.
For one, it was an honest mistake.
For two, well....stupid cell phones. Again.  

I literally thought all those people were filming some kind of emergency or criminal activity because that's exactly what it looked like.
But no, it was just 20 or 30 people unable to go outside for some minutes and maybe talk to each other or watch the clouds without putting their stupid cell phones in their faces.

How has this happened to (most of) us?

Here's my truth:  I pretty much hate cell phones and I think they have ruined many, many things.
That said, I also have and use one regularly, although I don't seem to use mine the way many other people seem to use theirs.  I don't bank or watch videos/movies or play games on mine.  I never watch Tik Tok anything although I do have Facebook and Instagram installed. The McDonald's app is installed because I have a Filet O' Fish problem and when I order using the app I get points which gets me free Filet O' Fish sandwiches. I text a lot with my husband and daughter. Primarily, though, it's the camera. I take a lot of photos and videos.

My daughter recently got a new iPhone. In the past I - a cheap Android phone person who could not care less what version my phone is - wound up being wayyyy too impressed with the photos and videos she was posting from her new phone.  They were nothing short of cinematic - I was floored by the quality.

At about the same time as her posts I began experiencing symptoms I've never experienced before.
Symptoms like envy, jealousy, denial.
I was trying very, very hard not to admit it but...I wanted that phone.
I still want that phone. 
I want it so much I've even been to the T-Mobile website to see who has it and if they - wait for it - 

have it in the color I would want.  Because something happened to my brain (shocker, considering my brain injury history) that now makes me care not only about what kind of phone I have, but that it is the right color...even though I could buy a case in any conceivable color I could imagine.

But it gets worse.

I also want an iMac desktop computer, mostly because of the integration aspects.
Eliminating the uploading/downloading time-consuming and annoying steps when using phone for photos and videos would be a game changer for my work flow.
I've been a loyal HP/Windows computer owner for years but I'm bone tired of Windows and its issues, updates, forced things, etc.

All of that being said, I hate spending money  🙃
so considering anything Apple is way out of my comfort zone.

And there's the whole becoming a "phone person" thing.  I don't want to be a phone person (see above in which I reference "stupid cell phones").  I don't want my life to revolve around the soul-stealing electronic rectangle everyone is addicted to.

Yet here we are.

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