Winding Down The Week

It has been a truly interesting week. I've been chatting with some folk online for the past several weeks in the evenings and have finally gotten to know a few of them. They are spread out all over the globe, Australia, Canada, and all across the US.

For such a small group they have been having such a wide array of issues just since Christmas: floods in Australia; snow and cold in the North East; death of a father; death of two friends; family members with cancer; a pregnancy and an attempted suicide. Such drama for such a short time.

I have found it amazing how much that they all pull together to support one another in all that they are going through and they are supporting one another in prayer as well.

In other news, we got a call at the house this week from the chimney people, the part that the FedEx guy broke has been delivered all in one piece and they are coming on Monday to repair the fireplace. Yippee!!! I won't be soon enough. It'll be great to get the fireplace back in action.

Got a couple of birthday party's to get to this weekend. They promise to be on totally opposite ends of the spectrum. One a late night Masquerade and the other an afternoon dinner. Both will be a blast.

Email & Newsletter Gleanings:

Thought for the Day:   Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.

If You're Over 35

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways. yadda, yadda, yadda
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of forty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

1. I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
2. There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!
3. Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!
4. There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!
5. Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?
6. We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
7. There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOSH !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.
8. And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
9. We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen... Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!
10. You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your behind and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!
11. There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rats!
12. And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
13. And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!
14. And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in the 1970's or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

Little Fire Fighter

A firefighter was working on the engine outside the Station, when he noticed a little girl nearby in a little red wagon with little ladders hung off the sides and a garden hose tightly coiled in the middle.

The girl was wearing a firefighter’s helmet.

The wagon was being pulled by her dog and her cat.

The firefighter walked over to take a closer look. 'That sure is a nice fire truck,' the firefighter said with admiration.

'Thanks,' the girl replied.

The firefighter looked a little closer. The girl had tied the wagon to her dog's collar and to the cat's testicles.

'Little partner,' the firefighter said, 'I don't want to tell you how to run your rig, but if you were to tie that rope around the cat's collar, I think you could go faster. '

The little girl replied thoughtfully, 'You're probably right, but then I wouldn't have a siren.'

Jasper and the Unbaked Yeast Rolls

We have a fox terrier by the name of Jasper. He came to us in the summer of 2001 from the fox terrier rescue program. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this type of adoption, imagine taking in a 10-year-old child you know nothing about and committing to doing your best to be a good parent.

Five weeks ago we began remodeling our house. Although the cost of the project was downright obnoxious, it was 20 years overdue AND it got me out of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for family, extended family, and a lot of friends that I like more than family most of the time.

I was assigned the task of preparing 124 of my famous yeast dinner rolls for the two Thanksgiving feasts we did attend.

I am still mad at the electrician for getting the new oven hooked up so quickly. It was the only appliance in the whole house that worked, thus the assignment.

I made the decision to cook the rolls on Wednesday evening and to reheat Thursday morning. Since the kitchen was freshly painted, you can imagine the odor. Not wanting the rolls to smell like Sherwin Williams latex paint #586, I put the rolls on baking sheets and set them in the living room to rise for five hours.

After three hours, Perry and I decided to go out to eat, returning about an hour later. An hour after that, the rolls were ready to go into the oven.

It was 8:30 p.m. When I went to the living room to retrieve the pans, much to my shock, one whole pan of 12 rolls was empty. I called out to Jasper, and my worst nightmare became a reality. He literally wobbled over to me. He looked like a combination of the Pillsbury dough boy and the Michelin Tire man wrapped up in fur. He groaned when he walked. Even his cheeks were bloated.

I ran to the phone and called our vet. After a few seconds of uproarious laughter, he told me the dog would probably be OK; however, I needed to give him Pepto Bismol every two hours for the rest of the night.

Who knows why I thought a dog would like Pepto Bismol any more than my kids did when they were sick. Suffice it to say that by the time we went to bed, the dog was black, white, and pink. He was so bloated we had to lift him onto the bed for the night.

Naively thinking the dog would be all better by morning was very stupid on my part.

We arose at 7:30 and as we always do first thing, we put the dog out to take care of his business. Well, the dog was as drunk as a sailor on his first leave. He was running into walls, falling flat on his rear. Most of the time when he was walking, his front half was going one direction and the other half was either dragging the grass or headed 90 degrees in another direction. When he ran down the small incline in our back yard, he couldn't stop himself and nearly ended up running into the fence.

His pupils were dilated and he was as dizzy as a loon. I endured another few seconds of laughter from the vet (second call within 12 hours) before he explained that the yeast had fermented in his belly and that he was indeed drunk.

He assured me that, not unlike most binges we humans go through, it would wear off after about four or five hours. He then told me to keep giving the dog Pepto Bismol.

Afraid to leave Jasper by himself in the house, Perry and I loaded him up and took him with us to my sister's house for the first Thanksgiving meal of the day.

My sister lives outside of Muskogee on a ranch (a 10- to 15-minute drive). Rolls firmly secured in the trunk (124 less 12) and drunk dog leaning from the back seat onto the console of the car between Perry and me, we took off.

Now I know you probably don't believe that dogs burp, but believe me when I say that after eating a tray of risen unbaked yeast rolls, DOGS WILL BURP. These burps were pure Old Charter. They would have matched or beat any smell in a drunk tank at the police station. But that's not the worst of it.

Now he was beginning to pass gas and it smelled like baked rolls. We endured this for the entire trip to Karen's. We were thankful she didn't live any farther away than she did.

Once Jasper was firmly placed in my sister's garage with the door locked, we finally sat down to enjoy our first Thanksgiving meal of the day. The dog was the topic of conversation all morning long and everyone made trips to the garage to witness my drunken dog, each returning with a tale of Jasper's latest endeavor to walk without running into something. Of course, as the old adage goes, "What goes in must come out," and Jasper was no exception.

Granted if it had been me that had eaten 12 risen, unbaked yeast rolls, you might as well have put a concrete block up my behind, but alas a dog's digestive system is quite different from yours or mine. I discovered this was a mixed blessing when we prepared to leave Karen's house.

Having discovered his "packages" on the garage floor, we loaded him up in the car so we could hose down the floor.

This was another naive decision on our part. The blast of water from the hose hit the poop on the floor, and the poop on the floor withstood the blast from the hose. It was like Portland cement beginning to set up and cure.

We finally tried to remove it with a shovel. I (obviously no one else was going to offer their services) had to get on my hands and knees with a coarse brush to get the remnants off of the floor. And as if this wasn't degrading enough, the dog in his drunken state had walked through the poop and left paw prints all over the garage floor that had to be brushed too.

Well, by this time the dog was sobering up nicely, so we took him home and dropped him off before we left for our second Thanksgiving dinner at Perry's sister's house.

I am happy to report that as of today (Monday) the dog is back to normal, both in size and temperament. He has had a bath and is no longer tricolor. None the worse for wear, I presume. I am also happy to report that just this evening I found two risen unbaked yeast rolls hidden inside my closet door.

It appears he must have come to his senses after eating ten of them but decided hiding two of them for later would not be a bad idea. Now, I'm doing research on the computer: "How to clean unbaked dough from the carpet."

And how was your day?

Housecleaning Philosophy

I don't do windows because...
I love birds and don't want one to run into a clean window and get hurt.

I don't wax floors because...
I am terrified a guest will slip and get hurt then I'll feel terrible ( plus they may sue me.)

I don't mind the dust bunnies because...
They are very good company, I have named most of them, and they agree with everything I say.

I don't disturb cobwebs because...
I want every creature to have a home of their own.

I don't Spring Clean because...
I love all the seasons and don't want the others to get jealous.

I don't put things away because...
My husband will never be able to find them again.

I don't do gourmet meals when I entertain because...
I don't want my guests to stress out over what to make when they invite me over for dinner.

I don't iron because...
I choose to believe them when they say "Permanent Press."

I don't stress much on anything because...
"A Type" personalities die young and I want to stick around and become a wrinkled up crusty ol' woman!!!