A Blogging GPS?

I never could read a road map.  People suggested that I orient the map by holding it in the direction I was headed, but that didn't help.  It was a series of little letters and indecipherable lines, and I once went halfway across the state of Pennsylvania before I realized that I had missed Philadelphia by a couple of hundred miles.

Then the GPS entered my life.  It told me it would give me a current map right on my dashboard.  It promised that it would always be with me and could get me through storms, darkness, traffic, and a generalized mistaken notion of where certain states like South Dakota might be. And it has done what it promised.  It has also taken me to empty lots and told me that a house stood there, and told me turn the wrong way on one-way roads.  Then, there was the cliff incident in Colorado where the GPS brought our vehicle to the edge of oblivion and directed us to proceed on foot.  It could have said just as easily, "Turn left and follow the road around the cliff."

So, now I sit in front of a different dashboard and I wonder where I should turn with this blog.  I need a GPS to say, "Explore this!"  or "Investigate that!" or offer any other advice as long as it ends with an exclamation mark!!!

When that inspiration strikes, I will revisit the idea of blogging... even if it leads me off the edge of a cliff.

What makes a husband sexy?

While they're very nice, flowers aren't necessary.
Nor are chocolates or even Tim Horton donuts!
Forget the gourmet meals, the diamonds, and the week-end getaways.

The most wonderful thing a man can do to zoom his sex appeal into the stratosphere?

Pick up a paintbrush.  Trust me on this.

But the Tim Horton donuts?  A very close second!

Dear Caution,

Someone asked me for advice last week.  Now, that might seem like small potatoes to some of you, but for me it's a large baked potato with butter AND sour cream.  Oh, I get asked for advice all the time, but it sounds like this:

My ride will be here in 30 seconds; I can't find my shoes!  Do you think we have to time to go to the mall and buy a pair?

So when my friend asked my advice, we both cried a little.  I cried because it felt so good to be needed for something other than my debit card.  She teared-up because she was withdrawing from some medication.

Her request got me thinking of all this knowledge I have been acquiring for the last half-century-ish.  It used to be nicely catalogued in my brain, but now it's kind of having a free-for-all up there. That must mean it's time to Spring clean a little.  Perhaps if I share some of that hard-earned knowledge with you, things will quiet-down a little in my brain.  And, no.  I will not use anymore hyphenated phrases for the rest of this post.

Today's advice ~

If you really want to appreciate the flowers in your yard, don't overdo it when it comes to planting.  An entire bed of blooms will simply detract from the true beauty you might otherwise experience.  Thus, you should plant judiciously and opt for a minimalist approach.  That is why I have planted TWO bulbs.  Imagine our joy when they blossomed into full beauty this week!!  The love those flowers have received from this family is tremendous.

Where dreaming moves closer to reality

She says she wants to be a teacher, and we encourage her by saying,

 "You'll never get a job."

To test her resolve, we suggested that that she help her brother through his homework last night: a task which typically exhausts us and makes him absolutely overwhelmed.

She never raised her voice.  He never cried.

And in just a few minutes, she convinced him that he did know how to do division - all by himself!

She's going to be a mighty fine teacher.

Keeping Watch

Sometimes a guy should be allowed to nap without his fan club hovering nearby.

Brave enough to ask the big questions

Do you ever think about your friends?  I do.  I think about how nice or pretty or funny they are.  I think about how they don't have gray hair and probably shave their legs more often than I do.  But I've begun to wonder if I really know them?  Sure, I can spell their names, find their houses, and call their pets by name ... kind of.  But what about the things I don't know?   What if they're famous and I'm missing out?  What if they have an evil clone - will I know my friend enough to pick her out?  These are the things that keep me awake at night and Facebook has been of no help to me whatsoever.

For example, there's Caution.  No.  Not me.  But a friend who shares my first name and last initial.  It caused a mix-up once or twice, but our husbands apparently know who we are and that helps.  Here's what I do know: she is a numbers wizard.  She speaks math as her second language and she doesn't even have an accent! I also know she is a great scout leader and her cooking/baking/entertaining would make Martha cry with jealousy.  She's probably a lot nicer than Martha, too.  So what else could I possibly need to know?  For starters, does she ever cheat and use her fingers to count?  Can she hula hoop?  Plain pretzels or with mustard?

See what I mean?  You think you know someone, but what you DON'T know may be more interesting and valuable.

There's another friend around here.  Another scout leader and capable leader. I KNOW that she's smart and fun and that she thrives on organization and creative ideas.  She is also fond of pirates. So what is it that I don't know?  Does she floss as often as she probably tells the dentist?  Creamy or chunky peanut butter? Christmas music before Thanksgiving or not?  And though she might want to sing karaoke, do WE want her to?

So what is my point here you ask desperately hoping there is one. Rest assured, I am very point driven and today's is this:  Do we know each other beyond names, general continent of residence, and whether or not we have the ability to type withouttt typos?

If you've been curious about who I am, here are the answers:
yes,
sometimes,
strawberry,
over the top of the roll,
as little as I have to,
about $51.86.

Doesn't that feel better??? We are actually getting to really know each other and I couldn't be happier.
Anything else you need to know, just ask.  In the meantime, I'm going to log back into Facebook to find out if my friends have birthdays or not.

At what point will he understand?

Every time my daughter has a choir concert, the director decides that in addition to the choir uniforms, there will be one special number requiring a different set of clothing.  He assures us that he chooses clothing that all students will already have in their closets.   Of course, my daughter never has the clothing in her closet or dresser or under her bed or even on her floor.  So on Saturday we headed over to Target for the required Converse shoes for this week's concert. 

When we got there, we took a cart because everyone knows you can't walk out of Target with just one thing.

Seventeen hours later while waiting in the check-out line, I noticed the couple in front of us.  The husband seemed to speak civilly to his wife, but each of her responses was curt and then grew to snippy and finally to rude.  The husband, who had at first been gracious to the cashier, appeared to take his frustrations with his wife out on the cashier.  The more the wife snapped at the husband, the more the husband began to snap at the cashier.  That's when karma, justice, or whatever you want to call it happened. 

Each time the husband snapped, criticized, or complained, the cashier began to work slower.  Not only would she painstakingly slowly scan the product, but she then would struggle to get it into a bag, and then would have to decide if she wanted to tie the bag or not, and then would deliberate putting the bag on the counter or not.  That hesitation would cause the husband to snap at her again, and her speed would again slow down.

The decrease in speed happened incrementally, but after twenty or so items, the cashier was working at a rate of near paralysis. 

I enjoyed the cashier's solution and would have thought it was greatly humorous had I not been next in line.

Good things come to those who wait, however.  As we FINALLY prepared to leave the store, the Starbucks barista gave us the cutest little samples of a berries and creme frappe.  The couple in front of me?  Well, they paid $10 for frappes only slightly larger than our FREE samples. 

And my daughter and I lived happily ever after.

Necessity and Invention

This is what happens when one MUST play his video game, but his mother will not turn on the heat.

Yes, I do still consider myself a blogger

It's just a little discouraging to get to Friday and realize that the week-end will be just as busy as the week has been.  But ... it will be sunny and hot, so I'll be fine.

*This week, pettiness in my little social/volunteer circles has been abundant.  Why do people insist on being the center of attention or having things go their way??

*Transitioning away from pettiness now, my niece recently was talking about RON Paul.  I misunderstood and thought she was talking about RUE Paul.  You might imagine my confusion as the conversation continued to move forward and she talked about his children and grandchildren.

*For three years, this typically well-behaved Lab mix has consistently done two things she shouldn't.  She tries to get on our bed and she indulges in anything in the trashcan.  We shoo.  We lock the trashcan.  We holler.  We put the trashcan up on the counter, and still, when we look the other way, Miss Pepper is at it again.  She owns us and she knows it.

P.S. Pepper isn't really a ghost.  That's just the paper camera app on my phone ... AND that is our bed that she is posing on.

*Did you know that early cathedrals were constructed, in part, to show the poor, illiterate peasants a brief glimpse of what Heaven will be like?  I find that fascinating and logical. There is much to be said for a beautiful sanctuary and liturgy.

*If you are not like my youngest boy who says that he is pretty much beyond the reading stage now, I recommend The Language of Flowers.  It's a haunting and beautiful-written story of a girl who turns 18 and emancipates from the foster care program.  A long time ago I had a student who had just emancipated.  She ended up in our state because someone she had just met was moving here.  "Where else would I go?" she asked me.

*Checkered and I have been talking about what careers we would choose if we were doing it all over.  He thinks he might like to work for the Department of Natural Resources.  If I were to choose teaching again, I might work in Special Education.  Then again, maybe I would just drive a train.  I'll have to keep thinking about this one. How about you?  In a do-over, what job would you choose?

Now that I'm thinking about it, I would like to be the car horn czar.  Use your horn a little too liberally?  Bam!  It would be silenced.

Have a wonderful week-end.

Seriously? Caution's blogging!

**Most every day I think about writing a blog post, and then decide that I don't have much to write about.  I'm trying to expand my little world so that I'm more interesting. For example, this morning I am attending a health team fair for our elementary school.  WHOA!!!  Now you can be sure that the excitement index on this blog will explode !!

**Have you heard  the song, "Teenage Daughters" ??  There are a couple of perfect lines in it :

"My baby's growin' up, she thinks she's fallin' all in love, and that I hate her."

and

"She rolls her eyes when I'm funny, but she's sweet when she wants money and her freedom."

**I sooo very much love these chairs.

  I want two for my front porch, but my porch is littered with the cast-offs of my other chair dreams.  Of course, when I buy these I will turn them right side up.  That's where Blogger and differ.

**The newish governor of Michigan has done some good things for our state, but he now wants to have our children's BMI numbers recorded at the state level.  No. No!  NO!!  Leave that between my family and our doctor!

**We will soon be leaving a truck as our main vehicle and the only sad family member is Checkered.  Perhaps that is because he doesn't have to travel like this:

**See this memo?  So did everyone else who walked by the mailboxes at work.

**I just finished the slightly enigmatic , somewhat trite, and fairly sweet novel, Lost and Found by Jacqueline Sheehan. Next on the list is The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  The Nook is charging even as I type. 

Speaking of electronic readers, children in my sons' classes are now bringing them to school to use during free reading time.  Since I would like to own mine a little longer than a minute, I think my boys will continue to take paperbacks.

My new parenting/teacher philosophy:

All the world's a fragmented thought...

After weeks of lackluster and intermittent blogging, I have returned to Friday Fragments - only to learn from Blogger's new interface that I have not earned one penny from this blog.  That is only slightly more than I earn at my jobs.

• Greatly related to the previous sentence: the school year has begun and all is temporarily well.  On the first day of Spanish class, a student was bragging to my daughter that she already knew one Spanish word.  The word was aloha.

• Have you tried this mint water?  I think I like it.  There is also a chocolate mint version, but it is ALWAYS sold out at my Kroger store. 

• I've been listening to all the news warnings that unoccupied cars will be towed in certain areas in an attempt to thwart a terrorist attack.  Being the driver who must tow those suspicious cars is a job I would not want.

• In another international warning, don't play Kelli Norgaard in Words with Friends.  She just played an 85 point word against me.  I am intimidated by all you smart people!!  Don't I have any dumb-ish friends who want to play?

• Aren't you delighted that it's Friday?  I am, but I do wish I had looked down before I left the house this morning.

• See you all on Monday!!

Happy Friday

I don't know where my blog went yesterday, but I do know I felt completely bereft when I saw that notice. Trying to find a missing blog isn't as easy as one may think.  There are four "simple" steps, but many times (as in my case) the link for step 2 is missing.  Ironically enough, I was cited for excessive posting!!  How my blog returned is a mystery, but I am SO HAPPY TO BE BACK!!

We are about to embark on our last "normal" week-end of summer break.  I suppose that means I will take a break from nagging the boys to go outside or call a friend.  All summer, I've determined that if they don't want to be outside, then they will be kept busy inside.  They've learned to cut the grass, to clean the house, and to fix some things.  If you need some screens repaired, give them a call!

Anyone know what these are?

 I do know I saw them in a catalog. I do know that I ordered them.  I do know I planted them.  But I can't remember what they are!

My middle boy took his sister to "Take a friend to karate night."  He deemed her chosen outfit unsuitable and made her wear bigger clothing!  There's a lot to be said for the wisdom of younger brothers.

Last week-end I decided to surprise my husband by painting the biggest wall in our kitchen.  The first color looked only faintly yellow.  Not good.  The second color looked fantastic at Lowes and then perfectly glaring once I painted (the picture fails to show the harshness.)  I will not repaint until I finish redoing the cabinets and counter tops.  I guess that means we will have to live with that color for a few years!

Now I'm off to laugh as my youngest son makes fun of Stevie Nicks, to listen to my middle boy as he attempts to teach himself some Russian phrases, to help my oldest boy pack for his first Order of the Arrow Ordeal, and to let my daughter practice her driving.  May the Lord be with us all.

After fighting to get my blog back, I won't complain too much that I can't get Mrs. 4444's widget to work.

I probably should learn from this

His dad and older brother returned home from a couple of days of hiking.  They hobbled about comically and talked of aches and pains and counted their mosquito bites.  We listened and shared our own adventures.

Then the teen-aged daughter left to spend time with a friend she hasn't seen in a ....week!

The middle boy headed off to try to sneak in a video game even though they are banned on Sundays.

I began to think about dinner and the start of the semester.

But what about the youngest boy?

What did he do?

He rubbed his daddy's feet.

Who has time for spell check?

Many of us have benefited from  enjoyed  been embarrassed by the auto correct programs on our smart communication devices.  These programs were designed to save us from ourselves.  While sending a text or posting to a social networking site, and our smart phones/tablets will automatically substitute a word they "know" for a word we've typed that they don't recognize.  Sometimes it saves us; sometimes it hangs us out to dry.  My most recent auto spell gaffe was a simple text wherein I tried to convey that someone's maiden name was Booker.  If you've been a victim of auto correct, you know the message the phone actually sent, so I shouldn't even bother to type it.

But I will. This is the message my phone sent and that I did NOT catch until it was too late. "She used to be a hooker."

Laugh but you know you've been there, too. How do I know that?  I've seen your texts and posts on Facebook.  So we're even.

But I am pretty sure that my students don't compose their essays on their phones and most don't use tablets. So it was on an old fashioned PC or Mac that they composed these gems which they then submitted for a grade in my composition classes.  And grade them, I did.  I used to circle the mistakes and draw a smiley face, but then I realized that many of the authors didn't see the mistake even then.

So I will now save them for you.  Enjoy the summer session submissions! [I'll even translate them for you.]


"I was sad when I lost my part urinal grandfather. Then I lost several more part urinal uncles." [paternal]


"Me and my dad didn't always have a good relationship.  Now we have agreed to a cretin relationship." [certain]


"When my mom broke her arm, she had to have a big sergey on them. That was really painful." [surgery]


"We should stop blaming teachers when kids don't do good in school. I believe one of the biggest problems for kids is having elaterid parents." [illiterate]


And for an alarming statistic :

"Breastfeeding is illegal in 57 U.S. states." [Who knew?]

The new term begins on Monday, and I can't wait.

FF: July

Yesterday was the last day for the summer class I've been teaching.  It's been many, many years since I have worked with such a delightful, responsive, bright class.  I feel a little cheated that the term lasted only six weeks. Now, while I grade their final projects, here's a glimpse of July with the rest of the family.

The month began as we said, "See you later,"  to one of our favorite families.  What a gift friendship is! But instead of getting all teary again over their relocation, I will focus on how wonderful technology really is now in allowing us to keep track of our far-flung friends.

To brighten our sad selves, we began to play more board games.  Our friends have convinced us that  Yahtzee rules,  but we're pretty fond of Headbanz.  Of course, if a certain middle boy memorizes all the cards in the deck, he will always win.

In the middle of the month my two older boys and their dad left for a week of Boy Scout camp.

They endured record-setting temperatures and biting insects, but they survived.

With half the family gone, the other half moved into my room and my bed.  No, sweet husband, the dog is NOT on our bed!

The day after the boys returned from camp, my oldest boy (on the right) left for Southeast Kentucky on a service trip with his youth group from church.  He spent the week drywalling, and his tender heart was very touched by the poverty he saw.

And finally, on the last day of Boy Scout camp, Checkered watched a teen boy do several pull-ups and he decided to show off his own pull-up skills.  This is how his detached bicep tendon now looks from the outside.  Next week the surgeon will see what it looks like from the inside.

Only a few weeks until the next trip :(

Finally!  Something good about camping:

Spread the word: I'm sexy!

Someone to whom I am apparently married is a non-reader.  I mean, he knows how to read, but would never choose to spend his free time doing so.  Accordingly, he thinks this is the funniest bumper sticker ever.

Ha! Ha!!  Do you hear him laughing? Oh, that is a FANTASTICALLY humorous little joke !!!  Pass me a tissue so I can wipe my eyes because I am laughing so hard!

And if, per chance, I don't laugh until I cry from the "humor" of this bumper sticker, I may use this tissue to freshen up a bit.  You see,  reading IS sexy, and that idea just might make me the sexiest person in this marriage.

Wait!! I apologize, sweet husband.  What we need is a bumper sticker that reflects the truth.  How about:

"Husbands who get their wives a mocha frappe before church and happen to see a little bumper sticker on the way to McDonalds are incredibly sexy, too. "

Mysterious Activities

Any guesses what my guy did last night?

What the world fears!

I recently was asked by no one to conduct a survey of the entire world, but I did it anyway.  The goal was to determine what people fear. Unfortunately, I was the only respondent.

Please now, be patient as I walk you through the data. The mathematical computations for such a large survey were challenging and the only break I took was when a cashier corrected my math as I tried to add the tip to the final bill at a local restaurant last week.  He even rolled his eyes a little.

I fully expected my respondents to give the typical answers:  disease, financial ruin, finding only whole milk in the fridge at breakfast time.  However, that's not where the results went.  Interestingly enough, they correlated quite closely to a camping trip I took last week.  How strange is that ?!

Now, without further digression, here are the top three things people REALLY fear most.

Number 3: mice.  Tiny.  Furry.  Fast.  Buck-toothed rodents who try to steal anything they can unless they live in Pinconning, Michigan.  One may live for several decades without sampling Pinconning cheese or even hearing about it, but one would be missing a grand experience.  Fortunately for me, my children are not afraid of cheese.  (They are, however, suspectible to gagging that may ensue when one smells a cheese store or when one thinks one is sampling Tiger cheese only to discover that it is not. )

Number 2:  canoes.    If before the trip one must first empty her bladder, but finds only an outhouse, the canoe will not seem a friendly place.  If, during and after the trip, one finds that ALL her companions have peed in the river, the canoe oddly enough becomes a bit friendlier.

Number 1: pop-up campers.  Say what you will about jacks and stabilizer bars.  Laugh if you will but that will not alleviate the fear of the world's entire population.  The math stands to reason.   Two children constantly bickering, two teens constantly sleeping, one male parent flopping back and forth from stomach to back all night, one mother wishing she had a bathroom of her own = a pop-up that may well roll away or tip over.  It will only be the sheer will power of the mother who refuses to move a single muscle all night that will stabilize the little vacation home and keep it steady.

Number 0: Yahtzee.  Of course it's just a little, friendly game, but when this dice/numbers contest is played against friends who have played it since they were in the womb (and who may have tried their best to drown me with water guns during a canoe trip), it is only slightly less enjoyable than having one's math corrected by a teenaged cashier.

Thus ends my first world-wide survey.