. . . were rendered speechless

Totally created in Photoshop instead of Picasa, first try

or, for purposes of this blog, wordless. But not really. . .


The nation's financial situation has gone way past weird, all the way to surreal. The good news: taxpayers don't have to foot the $700 billion to bail out Wall Street. The bad news: taxpayers have no money, no credit, no retirement funds; soon they will have no jobs, no houses.


The Dems voted for the plan floated by the lameduck President who has no credibility left at all. The GOP reps get insulted by a speech and refuse to be swayed by their own presidential candidate's support of the bill; and all the representatives in the house who are in hotly contested races back home lose all sense of responsibility to the public in their zeal to get reelected. McCain takes credit for the bill until it doesn't pass, then says it is Obama's fault. The problem seems to be that no one is in charge and the inmates have taken over the asylum.


At our age, we are worried about our retirement funds. We didn't actually plan for retirement from age 20 onward. . . we were too busy being broke, supporting kids, working from paycheck to paycheck. Things eased up a bit, and we started to stash away extra funds on a regular basis. And we thought that the equity in our house would serve as the basis for even more retirement funds, when we sold it to move to the "home." But we would have to plan to die at about age 67 to not outlive our savings now.


There is a lovely new retirement home near where both my son and daughter live. I told them I wanted to live there when I was old. My daughter said, "Heck, I want to live there now." She had investigated the place for one of her clients and reported that with all the amenities, the cost was approximately $9,000 a month. And that's if you're healthy and in possession of all your senses.


My dad used to say that his kids were driving him to the poor farm. I understand that there really used to be poor farms. Maybe there will be again. Save a spot for me.