There’s almost nothing more annoying than people who are a little older than the median age complaining about using computers or social media. They sound a bit like Grandpa Simpson (“I’m coooold!”) and the joke has grown stale.

So of course, let me add to it, as I was born when Dwight David Eisenhower was still president. Don’t remember him much.

Facebook was a big climb up the ladder for me, and I’ve learned to enjoy it, and that was the extent of my Internets experience until Linda asked me to write something occasionally for “It All Started With Paint.” As her followers know, she works on it a lot, and well. I’d like to think she asked me to contribute because I’m a brilliant writer, but I know in my heart of hearts it’s because sometimes she’d sometimes rather just sit and watch the television machine. Understood.

Then last week many of us at work were assigned to use social media to communicate messages about an event we were hosting. I think it all worked well. I say “I think,” because I sent out stuff and I have no idea if anyone caught any of it. I used Twitter! Heady stuff!

But the funny part was that the organizers of this exercise made it seem like we would be locked away in a room all day, sequestered if you will, until we did our job. Bring all your stuff! It was as if we were going up into the mountains for months or were headed into the Biosphere, cut off from all other civilization. I was ten steps from my regular office and the men’s room. The room wasn’t even locked! We could come and go as we pleased and we did.

So I brought pictures of my kids into the room in case I never returned and in the future someone could see who I was and who I loved. I include a photo of my little work station, and no, those are not my long eyelashes. Really.

P.S. Don’t forget about the pillow link party tomorrow. We go live at 6 AM CST …

</p> <div align="center"><a href="http://www.itallstartedwithpaint.com" title="it all started with paint"><img decoding="async" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uMpL8QjO4bA/T94-kev7JoI/AAAAAAAAO7A/bdSN4Pz8RTw/s1600/pillow_link_party_june_25_even_smaller.jpg" alt="it all started with paint" style="border:none;" data-jpibfi-post-excerpt="" data-jpibfi-post-url="https://www.itallstartedwithpaint.com/and-now-word-from-our-sponsor-my/" data-jpibfi-post-title="and now a word from our sponsor (my husband mike)" data-jpibfi-src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uMpL8QjO4bA/T94-kev7JoI/AAAAAAAAO7A/bdSN4Pz8RTw/s1600/pillow_link_party_june_25_even_smaller.jpg" ></a></div> <p>

I took a day off of work recently because I woke up early with what I thought was something between a cold and the flu.  Stuffy, achy, lethargic.

 Linda let me sleep, so I got in an extra three hours, which helped immensely, so I think I had something closer to “I was just kind of tired.”  I didn’t relay this insight to the office.

I didn’t completely shake off my work obligations. I set up my laptop in the sunroom – Linda sometimes calls it the “Florida Room,” which makes me smile and it is indeed full of light, except at night, of course – and worked while the television-machine bleated in front of me.

Good Lord, daytime television is depressing. Beyond the grim programming, how many commercials aimed at people who have been injured or who are infirm can one watch?

Do women – it seems they must be the only ones at home between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., according to the advertisers – need that many options for cleaning the various toxic surfaces in their homes?

Can we really believe Grandma or Grandpa would laugh as they twirl in a Hoveround?

So I switched to a safe haven: The news reruns and the home improvement shows on HGTV. I don’t know if all the people who read this blog watch or learn from or even care about HGTV or TLC or other like shows, but they keep me entertained for a time when baseball isn’t on …

… or I’ve seen the “Simpsons” episode too many times or “The Dick Van Dyke Show” is several hours away.

Seriously, I really did work.

And did you know there’s a show about knuckleheads looking for help in renting an apartment?

~ Mike

Sharing at Finding The Funny at My Life With Kids and Kelley’s Break Room

I’ve recently discovered that there are two different kinds of people in the world: One are boys, and the other are girls.

I’m not sure if that sentence is grammatically correct, but I hope it’s eye-opening for those of you who haven’t found this truth through the Encyclopedia Britannica or another trusted source, such as the Internets or life.

What prompted this was the contrast between Linda’s remodeling of our son’s room…and my suggestion that our daughter straighten up her room.

Our son was very calm about the transformation, living through weeks of paint and glue and ladders and clutter and chaos. As long as he had a space to get horizontal for 12 to 16 hours a day, he was comfortable. I think he’d shrug off a typhoon.

Our daughter has the smallest room in the house but – Imagine! – has the messiest. Gently I told her we would spend some time going through her stuff, organizing, tossing, donating. I would be happy to help her, in fact.

“No, Dad, I’ll do it myself,” she said. “I don’t want other people going through my stuff.”

I pulled out that shopworn, “Don’t forget, this is actually my room, and my stuff, ‘cause it’s my house,” and I got a little smile in return.

My heart sank a little as I realized once again that she is no longer eight, but I respected her independence as her bedroom door closed in my face.

It won’t be the last time.

Okay, I will admit, I have become somewhat addicted to the home improvement shows on the television machine.

I remember when our son was an infant, I’d get up early (note my emphasis; do I get a reward?) and give him his bottle while watching first-generation shows such as “Fix It Up!” and “The House Doctor” as the sun came up.

So quiet, so calm, so pleasant, our time together. He smiled at me and he smelled good, then.

I moved up to “Trading Spaces” as the kids grew, and admitted to Linda that I had a crush on carpenter Amy Wynn Pastor and host Paige Davis. I think you can see the connection to sexy women who work on homes.

Since then, I’ve found shows about crashing and inspecting and flipping. Who knew? But here are my dumb thoughts about the shows:

Mike Holmes is probably great, but he scares me. I worry he will use his crewcut to rub the features right off my face. That said, he actually is great.  In case he’s reading this.

Kirsten from “Property Ladder” is probably not a “real estate expert” as advertised. She seems uptight and superior and prone to pulling faces for the camera. Lighten up, Frosty.

The “Backyard Crashers” and “Room Crashers” and “Bathroom Crashers” guys need to tone it down a bit. Obviously they have been told to amp up the ‘personality’ to match the zooming and shaking cameras. Not everything you do and say is funny.

And how about “Are you going to love it? Or are you going to list it?” How many times did you have to preen and film that “spontaneous moment”?

Now I wish I was back in the living room watching Pat Simpson and Jodi Marks with my boy in my lap. Times in the late ‘90s seemed so simple.

~ Mike

I am happy that Linda is part of – and may have begun, it really is hard for me to decipher how this stuff works – a link party or two on her blog site. She is dedicating a lot of effort into it, and seems to be enjoying the experience. 

It makes her happy, which matters a whole lot.

I’d be happier if I understood what a link party is.

Now no one enjoys a party more than I do, if you don’t count people who actually like going to parties. I have a hard time wading into a crowd where I don’t know many people. If you cared to, you could find me near the chips or the beer or the television. Is “The Dick Van Dyke Show” on here? What, it’s not 1961 anymore?

So when Linda started to explain what a link party is, I tried, I really tried, to follow her, but my eyes glossed over in the exact same way Linda’s eyes fade out when I talk about baseball or Jennifer Aniston. How does that happen?

A “link party”? As a Chicagoan, I immediately thought of the Tru-Link Fence company, which famously sponsored the Cubs games on WGN-TV in the ‘60s and ‘70s (“It’s over the fence! A Tru-Link fence!”), but even without asking Linda, I knew it was a bad guess.

And I can’t put my mind around how an Internets party works anyway. The good news is, it seems clean-up would a breeze.

What is a link party? Is it a sausage link party? She doesn’t eat that stuff, and I hope she wouldn’t find a use for it on our walls or floors. A Lancelot Link party? That show was depressing at best, and an obscure reference at least.

Perhaps the link party is homage to Linc, the hip African-American character on TV’s “Mod Squad” from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. That must be it. He is way into board and batten.