Yet another snow day here in the Northeast.
What a great start to March!
It started snowing last night, and now at 8:30 am, it is still snowing.
Oh well, at least we went shopping yesterday, so we are all loaded up with food and drink. By drink I mean OJ and milk (although we probably have a fair amount of alcohol in the house if needed!). The Boy doesn’t have school and The Hubby will be working from home, at least for the morning.
Hope you enjoy your snow day!
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
It is frustrating to have a great idea, have people agree it’s a great idea, and then have no one show up for your great idea.
I am going to have to take a different tack on my idea… and if it goes better I will fill you all in.
PS – I really like Dorothy Parker’s riff on the “lead a horse to water” phrase. I was actually watching Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle today…
I’ve never been much of a sports person – either as a participant or a fan. I never did well in gym (it was an exercise in torture – physically and emotionally) and it was never a big part of my life.
As a parent, I encouraged my son to participate in sports so he would be well rounded, get some physical exercise, learn to be part of a team and to have fun.
These girls in Simi Valley know what it means to be a team. If I had encouragement like that when I was in high school, those years would have been much different. I dare you to think of every teenager as self absorbed after reading this.
I thought of a great post today as I was out and about in the car.
I remember the title for it started with a “P”.
And that’s it… I can’t remember what the title was or what the topic was.
Dang – I hate getting old!
Ok, I don’t know how or why it happened, but the family seems to be suffering from a new addiction. Yes folks, we have been sucked into Facebook.
Now, The Boy has had Facebook for a very long time now. It’s really just me and The Hubby that have recently gotten exposed and infected.
Within the past month, I have gained 17 friends. These are ACTUAL people that I know. It started with one of my cousins, then an aunt, then some old friends and has snowballed from there. The Hubby has a bigger addiction than me – he has uploaded the mobile feature and now can post from his Blackberry!
I’ve posted a few photo albums up there, old family pictures and stuff from trips; I posted a video of The Boy getting his brown belt. It’s like “blogging lite” – you get to tell people in your world about your day and there is feedback on it (sometimes instantly and sometimes not). It doesn’t require lengthy posts – it is actually a better format for quick, off the cuff comments.
The only drawback is the Friends feature. Generally, you need to be a friend to see someone’s profile, pictures and postings. There are plenty of people out there I’d like to catch up with, but not enough to say they are a FRIEND. Say, for instance, there are some people you went to grammar school with, but have lost touch with. You’d like to pop in, say hi, see some of their life, share a bit of yours… but do you really want to know everytime they change their status? Or post a new picture? I guess there used to be an Acquaintance feature, but according to The Boy, that feature is gone with the new updates they put in place a short while ago.
So I guess I will have to continue to struggle with who is my friend and who is not. Man, I thought that crap was over and done with!!
Wishing you all a Happy Valentine’s Day!
I’ve been busy with work and family for the past week or so… hopefully I will post more next week….
We had our Lay Leader at church give the sermon this past Sunday as our pastor was away.
There are times I don’t remember much of a sermon, just a feeling about it; there are times I can recite parts of it; and there are times when just one sentence or phrase catches in my mind and stays there.
Comparisons Invite Complaints.
In this time of where the world seems to be going downward, and the news keeps telling you how bad things are – if you look at someone and it seems like they still have it all (and you don’t) – comparisons invite complaints.
If you do your job, get paid your hourly rate, and then hear about the people on Wall Street who got part of the $18 Billion in bonus… comparisons invite complaints.
If you hear about people walking away from their homes, being covered by bankruptcy and walking away scot-free from all their bad decision-making debt, but you are eating mac & cheese for a week so you can pay your bills… comparisons invite complaints.
If you are lucky enough to get a bonus or a tax refund or a stimulus check, but find out the guy next door got more…comparisons invite complaints.
But the moral of the parable Jesus was preaching to the disciples needs to be remembered: if you made your commitment and it is honored (an hourly pay rate, the responsibility of paying your bills) – then you have nothing to complain about. You got what you expected and were “promised”. Comparing it to what others get serves no good purpose.
But it’s dang hard not to compare and complain.
I know many of us face the new year, telling ourselves this will be the year I slim down and tone up.
I have the perfect item for you… it’s from Japan so it must work!
Click HERE to see this awesome product and then come back… I’ll wait….
Waiting… waiting…
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I love it… everyone needs this face slimmer… just imagine how thin and beautiful we’d all be!
that’s for The Hubby … he knows the whys and wherefores of that.
Love you Hubby!
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned I grew up on a family farm. My parents were pretty much done with farming by the time I showed up, but the barns were still around. That, and one of the most important buildings for an old farmhouse (any house, I would guess)… the outhouse.
We were lucky enough to have a THREE SEATER. Yup, that’s right folks – the family that pees together stays together! And it wasn’t just for show – it was a practical outbuilding to have since we very often RAN OUT OF WATER in the summer. (Bet you didn’t know that could happen, huh?) The old family farmstead had a hand dug well, not very deep (if I’d been in charge of digging it, it would have been a lot shallower – I hate using shovels!). And, just about every summer, for a week or two at least, water was a precious commodity that sometimes we had and sometimes we didn’t.
Apparently, when my parents first moved into the family farmhouse, they had a bit of money and they could either fix the well (my dad, having grown up in the house, was well aware of the issue) or buy a car. My mom had two boys at this point and had to figure out what was important. She could either have water and be stuck at home all day, every day with two little boys OR she could get the car, drive to her mother’s house in town (or even go across the street to her mother in law’s) and fill up water jugs and also be able to go places with those little boys. She got the car.
That was actually not the story I wanted to tell you, but you had to know it to appreciate the story I wanted to tell you:
One of our foster kids, L., had serious trust issues. They manifested themselves in all sorts of ways, some amusing, most not so much. She stole. She stole any kind of thing. She especially liked to steal food. We actually had to get a lock for the stand up freezer to stop her from stealing stuff out of there. She came up to me once and offered me a frozen hot dog, like it was some kind of awesome treat.
Years later, my dad was repairing the outhouse. With kids out of the house, they didn’t seem to run out of water so frequently (amazing!) and in fact, had actually gotten a new well dug. So the outhouse really hadn’t been used as an outhouse for quite some time and had become a bit rundown. I am not sure of how or what exactly he was doing, but he came up to the house, his hands full. Layered in the dried up muck he was cleaning out were dishes, silverware and various other kitchen implements. The only thing we could think of was L – she must have stolen food and instead of eating it in the house where it where she could be discovered, she used the outhouse as a secret place and a convenient trash heap.
And the reason I thought of this … the Webbies. The Nineth Annual Weblog Award nominees are up and there is one under the Best Kept Secret Weblog called Chicken in the Road. In her full archive of the blog, she has a section for Outhouses. I particularly liked It’s Hard to Find a Good Outhouse, and Other Things I Never Thought I’d Say. (although, I was moved enough by this one to share it with my parents.)