Thursday Thirteen--13 buttons, pushed, sewn, pressed and unused

1. Buttons on my jeans and slacks don't seem to stay where they should. The thread weakens and they fall off. Do you suppose it's the 10 lbs?

2. Other buttons don't want to meet up with the assigned button hole.

3. I just discovered that if I press the "unlock button" twice on my car key, that the lights stay on instead of just blinking to say "hello, here I am."

4. We have a new garage door and opener. It's super quiet and a perfect match for the paint, although it is metal. The opener is about the size of a fat ballpoint pen and I have difficulty finding and pressing the button.

5. After my mother died 10 years ago, I brought home her button tin. That's a carry over from 19th century and Depression day thrift. They rarely match anything, but I can identify some buttons from items of family clothing 60 years ago. Some could be from my great-grandfather's work shirts.

6. We have a lot of TV sets. Most have buttons for functions I don't understand.

7. The remotes for each TV are different--even more buttons I don't use. Like Zoom and Angle. Input and Sleep.

8. Rosie O'Donnel, that brilliant, wealthy, political strategist, has pushed my buttons with her ignorance. She is demanding that Obama seize the assets of BP and Great Britain. She says she doesn't care if it's communism. Well, no Rosie, that's called National Socialism. Remember Hitler? That was his system. The state steals private wealth. You're next in that system. It's not just for corporations.

9. AP has a story today that the BP reports read like fiction, with deceased experts and environmental plans for animals and plants that aren't in the Gulf of Mexico. Welcome to the research/report world, AP! That's another button for me. I constantly write to government agencies, non-profits, academic and media websites reporting mistakes, bad citations, bad links, non-existent experts and plans designed to only bring in more grant money, never to solve a problem. I rarely get a response. But if I do, I'm usually told it's not their responsibility or that I'm the one who is mistaken.

10. I wore a really bright printed jacket to coffee today. It must have pushed a button for another customer because she complimented me and said my husband should take me out for brunch. She wears more colorful clothes than I do--I don't much care for this garment.

11. I don't know when Mother Nature pushes the button for Mother Duck under the bush at our front door, but she must really be getting tired of sitting on those 9 eggs.

12. My new dryer, bought to replace the Maytag piece of junk that died after 4 years, doesn't have an alarm buttom to tell me "time to walk downstairs and unload."

13. We're having our furnace maintenance done today. We always use this company. There's a $25 off coupon on the web where you'd never see it which expired June 6. That's another button, constantly being pushed. Coupons. I hate them--on-line, in the newspaper, in the door-hanger bag, attached to the product, or in conjunction with another product like breakfast at Denny's combined with an oil change. Makes no difference. Coupons add costs to everyone's purchase just like all marketing and advertising, but they are grossly unfair and expensive to those of us who don't use them.

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