We all have an inherent need to be special, to be recognized among at least a few of our fellow man, that is a normal state of being. Charlie Sheen seems to taken his recognition needs to epic proportions.

One of the lures of illicit, and even some legal drugs, is that it magnifies a sense of self and of self-importance. Anyone who lived through the psychedelic , flower-power days of the 1960-70′s and partook of the popular substances of that era remembers the heightened experiences that drugs can stimulate. Drugs today are much more potent and more rampant in our society and seem especially popular with the celeb set. Many a promising star-power career has been destroyed in an over-stimulated search for recognition and out-of-this-world experiences, drug utopias are always short-lived and have a way of crashing back down to earth.

Poor Charlie seems really caught up in his druggie drama and the press are playing it for all it is worth $$$! Neither he nor the press gives a wit about how some easily-impressed youngster might choose to emulate his rock-star behavior and how many young lives may consequently be destroyed by thinking this is all it takes!

I sincerely hope Charlie wakes up before he becomes a statistic but the odds don’t look good. At least Michael Jackson had the good graces to try to hide it from the public to some extent. It is said that money can’t but happiness but I guess it can buy a stint of unreality and short-live stupidity!

Everybody has too many books lying all over the house that they will probably never read! You can easily turn those books into some extra money by selling them on Half.com. Half.com is part of eBay but charges no fees for listing on their service until you sell your items. It is not only for books but for DVDs, CDs, audiotapes & electronic game modules etc. Check it out and then follow this plan:

l. Take every book you have in your house that you don’t want to keep for some special reason and all those you know you will never ever read again and list them on Half.com.

2. Beg, borrow or steal every book you can from relatives and friends, tell them you are starting a new charity (yourself).

3. Check out garage sales, you can usually buy books for 50-cents or $1 and sometimes can get a whole box of books for a couple of bucks! Almost any book on Elvis will bring big $$, I recently bought one at a garage sale for $1 and got $36 for it!

4. Estate sales usually have trouble getting rid of all the books. At the end of the sale — buy ‘em all for one low price and list them on Half.com.

5. Thrift stores sell books rather inexpensively, go on senior citizen discount day and get them for less. Large churches sometimes hold special book sales or even church rummage sales are a good target for really cheap books.

6. Call your local library they may have perodic sales of discarded titles, in my hometown they hold a sale 1st a month at a warehouse location but also have racks of discarded books at each library that are pretty cheap. Discarded books do get “marked” as such which makes them less valuable on Half-com but you can get some very interesting titles which will still sell.

You will soon figure out which books can make you some money and which can’t. Fiction & novels do not sell well (there are just too many copies of them), non-fiction sells the best…self-help, animal books, how-to-books, text-books, even children’s books sell well. One of the little-known secrets of Half.com that they won’t tell you about is that you can actually make some money on the postage even if you sell a book for 75 cents which is the minimum price. The postage is a set amount and is always Media Mail which you can print the labels for on your computer thru PayPay (in case you haven’t done that before). PayPal gives you a tiny break on the postage price (they cut a deal with the USPS due to large volume). Avoid selling really really heavy books as it will eat you up on postage, but on most you can make an extra 50 cents to $1 or so over and above the selling price of the book.

Half.com is for newer books, not antiques books, those will sell better on eBay. You don’t have to take pictures or write descriptions like you do when selling at eBay as they use the ISBN# and auto-generate all that information for you in the listing. Do pay attention to the “condition” part of the listings, they are pretty strict about that, if in doubt, just go one category below what you think it might be. They even give “suggested” selling prices but you do not have to follow their “suggestions”, check out what the others are selling for and just be reasonable, usually the lowest price book gets sold 1st, so keep that in mind if there are a lot of books like yours listed. There is a bit of work to Half.com but once you get going it is a lot easier than selling on eBay, you don’t have to concentrate very much while you are listing and can even watch TV at the same time.

Now that USPS actually picks up packages at your mailbox, it is a breeze to do the shipping. I put small & medium size books in a large-size envelope that I buy in bulk at Sam’s Club, add a piece of cardboard for stiffening if the book is flimsy or wrap the books in a heavy brown paper, boxes are too expensive and not really necessary. You can usually get by with not spending more than 10 cents per book to mail.

The biggest problem in the beginning is that Half.com only pays twice a month (they will direct-deposit to your bank account) and you have to pay for the postage up front, so there is a little outlay of expense there. But, Half.com gives you 5 business days to ship so you won’t be out too much for too long.

I recently rounded up a bunch of books I had lying around my house & sold almost $300 in one month, so I know it is possible. You can also do almost the same thing with Amazon and several other used book sites on the Internet. I have not had any personal experience with those but feel free to check “em out. The book market is fairly saturated and competitive so I doubt if there is much difference in the selling fees they pay out.

If you are in need of some quick Granny Cash jump on over to Half.com and check it out!

admin@DateGranny.com

Often times you meet someone and have a fantastic sexual relationship, your bodies just seem to dance to the same tune, your touches are electric, you can’t keep your eyes or hands off your partner, every hormone is ignited.  But after the new wears off you find that you are not really on the same wave length mentally or emotionally.

Maybe there is a person that you enjoy going head to toe with on a mental level. You can spend hours discussing any subject, having a lively debate or solving a complex problem. You just seem to be able to get inside that other person’s head and share so much, surely you are soulmates.  But, then again, the sex isn’t all that great and after awhile it even starts to mess up the good mental times you had together.

The emotional level is the hardest part, closest to soul-mating.  More than in any other way, we all grow at different emotional levels.  It is a well known fact that women generally grow-up emotionally faster than men, maybe that is because we are the child-bearers and the primary caretakers.  Most men seem to do their emotional growing at mid-life, so there may be a wide difference in most relationships.

When we finally find a relationship that combines all of the elements of mind, body & soul we have come closest to what is “soulmates“.  Can we have more than one in a lifetime?  Only if you are very very lucky!

admin @DateGranny.com

We probably all remember when it seemed especially repulsive to think of our own parents actually “doing-it” and certainly we never suspected that our grandparents still could.  I wonder if kids today still think that way or has TV and the Internet made them more realistic and worldly?  We may not have model-like figures anymore, older bodies don’t bend the same way as before and the occasional cramp in the leg can get kinda embarrasing, but the feelings are still there and it is a healthy, natural thing to be sexually active in our senior years for as long as we are physically able.

Senior dating sites offer some possibilities but how forward should you be in your quest for a sex partner?  I have viewed a few of the online grannie porn sites and they are a bit too graphic for me.  Pornography has always been mostly for men who are far more visual than women.  I guess a few smart smut operators have finally learned to produce some porn that appeals more to women but I’m not much of a late-night, turn-on-the-tube type so haven’t really searched it out.  Actually, it might be a real turn-on to view it with a sex partner, even granny & grandpa might could learn some new tricks.

Come to think of it, although hopefully it will be a long way off, I wonder if they allow conjugal visits in nursing homes?

admin at DateGranny.com

We all want to be liked or at least respected and ignoring any connection on a dating site seems rude and disrespectful.  It only takes a moment to reply as most dating sites have an automated reply and only requires you to check the box.  These are the 5 reasons I have conjured up to soothe my own wounded ego and explain why most men never reply;

1.  They never check their email box
2.  They are just lookie-loos and never go to the next stage
3.  They figure it is better to not reply than to give a negative reply
4.  They are looking for a 35-year old with a 44″ bustline that just inherited a million bucks
5.  They really don’t give a damn!

What are men looking for?  Obviously not for “Down-to-earth practical senior gal who only occasionally indulges in hopelessly romantic fantasies and thinks maybe love can still happen”. Should I tweak my profile?  Should I post a younger-looking picture?  Are there tricks to this scene I am not aware of?  These are all the questions running through my head every time I try to play the online dating game and face rejection once again.  I know it is a numbers game of sorts, the more contacts you make the more chances you have of finding someone compatible, but it can be very discouraging and depressing.

Maybe its harder when you are in your senior dating years, there are certainly fewer prospects than before.  Most senior men seem to be seeking much younger women, perhaps they think it will keep them young or perhaps they have a Hugh Hefner complex.  Where are the mature responsible men who are sincerely seeking love, companionship and a relationship, not still chasing their middle-age illusions?  Are there any good ones left or am I just chasing  my own illusion?

admin at DateGranny.com

Classmates.com does not really represent themselves as an online dating site, but there are plenty of opportunities to match up and connect with people from your past.  After all, these are all people you already have a common bond with shared memories (good & bad) and immediate subjects of conversation.  It can be much easier to strike up a friendship or even a romance this way than with a perfect stranger.  Classmates.com does charge for a membership, but then so do most of the dating services, just think of it as a new weapon in your online dating arsenal.

Most high school & college alumni now have reunions at least every 5 years, some are more often.  Classmates.com is the perfect place to find out if and when your class might be holding a reunion.  Reunions are a MUST DO on your senior dating list, lots of old romances have been rekindled at a high school reunion many years later.  I recently met a couple who married after meeting at their 50th high school reunion.  They hadn’t even really known each other in HS.  She was widowed and lived in Iowa, he was divorced and lived in Las Vegas, they remarried after about a year and now spend winters in Vegas & summers in much cooler Iowa, what a way to go!

My own HS holds a reunion every 5 years and I would not miss it!  We were a rather large class and still have almost 200 in attendance.  I have been to every one since my 15th reunion and it is great fun to keep up with old friends, many are now on my email list.  At the last reunion I did spy one of my old beaus and we shared a dance after dinner, unfortunately (for me anyway) he seems very happily married….DARN IT!

admin @DateGranny.com

I, MAXINE , being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it, or lawyers and doctors interested in simply running up the bills. If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to ask for at least one of the following:
Glass of wine
chocolate
Margarita
chocolate
Martini
Cold Beer
chocolate
Chicken fried steak
cream gravy
chocolate
Mexican food
chocolate
French fries
chocolate
Pizza
chocolate
ice cream
cup of tea
chocolate cupcakes
Chocolate
Sex
Chocolate
It should be presumed that I won’t ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.

Defectors are said to be joining the American Seniors Association, which “calls itself the conservative alternative,” says CBS. (The ASA’s web site features the Capitol Building — which we didn’t consider heretofore a big draw for the elderly; a feller could get heat stroke waiting for security to let him in — and invites patriotic oldsters to “mail your TORN AARP card” to them for… a new ASA membership. What, no assault rifle?)

Rightbloggers do their bit and try and speak senior:

Obama’s treason has “reminded Americans why they dumped the Democrats during the Clinton escapades,” says AJ Strata, invoking the last Presidency during which the protesters could drive a car. Don Surber shakes a liver-spotted fist at the AARP for saying* the 60,000 defectors are “just a drop in the bucket” compared to their membership of 40 million: “I’ll tell you,” Surber warbles, “I didn’t make it 55 years just to be somebody’s drop in the bucket,” and removes the five-dollar bill he was going to put in AARP’s birthday card. (*Actually CBS says AARP said this, but despite the old folks’ hatred of the liberal media, there’s something about CBS that makes them credulous. Morley Safer, maybe.)

Maybe there’s more to this than the rightwing talking points indicate. It may have something to do with an influx of hippies and punks into the senior community.

Being quite wrinkly ourselves, we perceive that we are part of the neo-geezer target AARP is trying to reach with its recent “Over Aged Earth Loving Hippies” stories and Buzzcocks songs in their commercials. Since Dennis Hopper started telling new retirees, “Your generation is definitely not headed for Bingo Night,” the geezer pitch seems to have taken a turn for the modish and hippie-ish — even (to put it in terms you whippersnappers may understand) the hipster-ish .

Maybe this is what’s really turning off the AARP defectors. We are getting reports that the Republicans have been circulating the AARP Magazine issue with Springsteen on the cover (“The Boss Turns 60… He’s our blue-collar conscience, our rock ‘n’ roll sage”) to old-school geezers, and telling the old folks that Obama and this treasonous Chicago-style “Boss” want to play loud music in seniors centers to make them bleed to death from the ears so there’ll be more room for hippie orgies. When you reach a certain stage in life, this may be a compelling argument.

Even within the geriatric community, it seems, the young frighten the old. Where other analysts see a political war, we see seniors of a certain tenure withdrawing in horror as the barbarians with long, thinning hair arrive to fill their convalescent homes with the smell of reefer and patchouli.”

As published in the Village Voice, NY

Joke #1: Memory Loss

When I went to lunch today, I noticed an old lady sitting on a park bench sobbing her eyes out. I stopped and asked her what was wrong. She said, ‘I have a 22 year old husband at home. He makes love to me every morning and then gets up and makes me pancakes, sausage, fresh fruit and freshly ground coffee.’
I said, ‘Well, then why are you crying?’ She said, ‘He makes me homemade soup for lunch and my favorite brownies and then makes love to me for half the afternoon.

I said, ‘Well, why are you crying?’ She said, ‘For dinner he makes me a gourmet meal with wine and my favorite dessert and then makes love to me until 2:00 a.m.’ I said, ‘Well, why in the world would you be crying?’ She said, ‘I can’t remember where I live!’

Joke #2 More Memory Loss

Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades. Over the years they had shared all kinds of activities and adventures. Lately, their activities had been limited to meeting a few times a week to play cards.

One day they were playing cards when one looked at the other and said, ‘Now don’t get mad at me….I know we’ve been friends for a long time…..but I just can’t think of your name! I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t remember it. Please tell me what your name is.’ Her friend glared at her. For at least three minutes she just stared and glared at her. Finally she said, ‘How soon do you need to know?’

Joke #3: Still More Memory Loss

Two elderly women were eating breakfast in a restaurant one morning. Ethel noticed something funny about Mabel’s ear and she said, ”Mabel, do you know you’ve got a suppository in your left ear?’ Mabel answered, ‘I have a suppository in my ear?’ She pulled it out and stared at it. Then she said, ‘Ethel, I’m glad you saw this thing. Now I think I know where to find my hearing aid.

And a great use of Memory Loss…….

THE SENILITY PRAYER
Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
The good fortune to run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight to tell the difference .

Just the name “Hotel Sex” conjures up great fantasies and memories! My late husband always teased that I got horny just by turning the key in the lock (back before they had little plastic cards). Somehow being away from the familiarity of home can lead to expectations of a more exciting sexual experience. Vacations are how we renew ourselves, relieve the stresses of everyday life and indulge in elicit pleasures, and that is a good thing!

Maybe it’s the honeymoon thing! Expectations of blissful sex on your wedding night has been a dominate theme throughout the history of mankind and is celebrated in many different ways in almost all cultures. Even as a young girl I swooned at the thought of my future husband carrying me over the threshold in my white wedding gown and making mad passionate love to me just like in the movies of the 1950′s! (And then we would live happily ever after….NOT!)

But sometimes the opposite may occur. I once had a long-time lover who dreaded traveling and it was always a bone of contention between us. The few times I did manage to drag him on a trip, the sex was mediocre or non-existent. His experiences had been different, his prior associations with hotel sex were not pleasant and he was never able to overcome that. I always felt sad that we were not able to connect in that way, he would tease me about it and promise the moon but it never really happened for us.

Hotel advertisements allude to the fact of romance and sexual adventure and I bet a hotel chamber maid could tell a lot of stories about the secrets of hotel sex. I am sure we all have some of our own memories to explore. One of my favorite memories is staying in a historic old hotel in a mining town in Northern Nevada. It actually is not open to the public except on rare occasions, but we were able to make special arrangements for one night. There are only 6 actual hotel rooms and we were the only guests. We ran around the halls naked and frolicked in the music room, oh what a night to recall!

If you have a similiar hotel sex experience you would like to share, please feel free to do so in the comments, you are welcome to do so anonymously.

admin @ dategranny