my favorite quote of the day

At a news conference today one of the people in charge defended the Obamacare on line registration fiasco by answering when a reporter asked when it would be working "It's working, just not at the success rate we want."  Really?  I think I'll suggest that my grandson use a variation the next time his mom complains about his grades "I am doing my home work, Mom, just not at the success rate you want." Good luck with that!

not the image I expected

A company, which shall remain nameless, advertises frequently on TV that they can help students with focus or other issues to improve their grades and do better in school.  I envisioned, based on the ads, this company being run by bright professionals who really knew what they were doing.  Imagine my surprise then to find a letter from this company in my mailbox, in an envelope with no address and no stamp. The last I knew this is totally illegal.  Shouldn't a company who educates people know this?

visual feasts - quiet and LOUD

This weekend I enjoyed two visual feasts.  First, on Friday evening I went to the opening of the new exhibit at First Presbyterian Gallery.  I appreciated the paintings by Vassi Vasevski and Jordan Ivanov - two very talented artists, but I was especially entranced with the crystalline glazes on Al Martin's ceramic pieces.  At first glance they are pretty pots in pleasing shapes but on closer look you see fascinating patterns where crystals have burst in the firing process (at least that's my guess) leaving subtle flower-like or organic patterns covering the surface of each piece. Yummy!

Second, last night a friend and I attended a Rod Stewart concert (yes, that Rod Stewart) at the "Palace" in Auburn Hills, north of Detroit. I don't often listen to music on cds or the radio but I love to go to live performances - I like to see my music - and this performance was amazing. The music, of course, was excellent, his voice is still crazy good, and he has a bevy of excellent back-up talent.  But the visual feast for me was the back ground patterns, colors, pictures and special effects and the costuming which progressed through the show from dresses and suits reminiscent of performers in the sixties and seventies to much more current, edgy looks.  And of course watching RS perform was no hardship either.  It was a delicious fun time.

Enthusiastic shopping

Each year at church we sponsor a project where we fill shoe boxes with gifts for children in tough circumstances around the world.  Since two of my granddaughters didn't have school today and they were spending the day with me, I decided to let them help me shop for items to fill the two boxes I decided to fill.  I was delighted to discover that they are every bit as excited to shop for someone else as for themselves, and they were organized.  We put two shopping baskets in the cart, one for a boy's gifts and one for a girl's.  We had a delightful time selecting small toys, school supplies and other fun things. The only problem is I realized, as I started packing things into boxes, that I have enough here for four boxes.  Lucky for me there are more boxes at church.  What a good problem to have.  

marching band memories

I attended my grandson's first band concert of the season this evening.  It was inside, in a crowded gym, with lots and lots of proud parents and grandparents in attendance and it was fun to see and remember the early stages of the cycle.  The sixth, seventh, jazz and eight grade bands played and they actually did very well.  I'm always fascinated to hear the progression from 6th to 8th grade.  It's amazing how they develop.  My grandson is in 7th grade and in two years he'll be in marching band, and then the real fun begins for his parents.  Maybe they'll be pit parents like my husband and I were, enjoying long loud jouncy bus rides - I'm sure there's a correlation between riding school buses in your youth and developing back problems - but I digress. Then helping to unload, and later re-load, the incredible amount of instruments and other stuff that go into making a great band show, and making sure everything gets on the field with precision timing so your band doesn't loose points for your ineptitude.  Being a pit parent is not for wimps!  I'm so glad I'm a grandparent now and can just go along and enjoy the show.  I've paid my dues.  Bring on the band!

and yet another study, this time about dogs...

There has been a rather complex study done recently about dogs, testing whether they feel love for their human families.  Well really!!  Any dog owner with any feeling can tell you their dogs love them, and not only love them but in some instances go to amazing lengths to serve and protect.  There was a piece on the news last week about a dog who woke her family and saved them from a fire.  Our good dog Remington never had to rescue us from a fire but he was ready to protect!
When our first baby, Tommy, was a few weeks old I decided that I needed a hair cut and asked my mother-in-law to watch him for an hour during his nap time while I went out.  Helen was the most loving person and doting grandma you can imagine so I had no qualms about leaving her with the baby.  When I returned from my appointment, my mother-in-law was very relieved to see me and had an interesting story to tell.  Tommy slept the whole time so that wasn't the problem. But, it turns out, as soon as I left the house, Remington, our brave little mini dachshund, plopped himself down in the doorway to Tommy's bedroom and didn't move.  Every time grandma tried to walk into the bedroom to check on the baby the dog growled until she walked away.  Happily, Remington learned to accept Helen as part of the family but he always remained very protective of "his" kids.  Good dog!

another fascinating study

A few days ago I heard about another study done with young children and teens that showed that children who have a regular bedtime (the same time every day) do better in school.  While I have no doubt that that is true, I would like to see what the other variables were.  I suspect that the better performance is school is at least in part due to the fact that the children with the regular bedtimes have parents who are involved enough and care enough to make sure they go to bed on time, which says to me that the parents/caregivers also care enough and are involved enough to help with homework and feed their children nutritious food and generally engage in good parenting.  Let's hear it for good parenting!
I also suspect that most adults would do better with regular (earlier) bedtimes.  I try, really I do, and I'm usually in bed by 11:00pm.  My problem is reading in bed.  I like to read before I fall asleep but if I get involved with a really good book, sleep time tends to get later and later.  Maybe I need to practice parenting myself.  I think they call that self-discipline.

like a kid with a new toy

All day at work today I was excitedly looking forward to coming home this evening and playing with my new computer.  I know, I know, I shouldn't use the word 'play' since I really am trying to learn how to use Windows 8.1  and googlepad and who knows what else, but along the way, I discovered google store and figured out how to download a few free favorite games and I'm still amazed at how fast I can get on the internet, so I'm having fun and to me that's playing.  I'll do some serious stuff another day.

Which one was I?

In church this morning our minister preached a really excellent sermon based on the parable of the prodigal son.  At one point in the sermon she commented that any of us who have siblings or are the parents of more than one child can relate to the idea of "good child vs. bad child".  As she said this my son, a grown man with two children of his own, who happened to be sitting beside me, looked at me and whispered "Which one was I?" I used the excuse of listening to the sermon to avoid answering, but as I thought about it later in the day, I realized that they took turns.  I have two truly wonderful children who are two years apart in age and as they were growing up they seemed to almost deliberately switch roles.  Invariably, if one of them was going through a sweet lovable stage the other would be going through an ornery, contrary, sometimes moody stage and I came to anticipate the personality swaps about every 18 months.  It went on from infancy through high school, and so dear son, the answer to your question is "You were the good one, except when you weren't."

my new computer

I'm writing this blog on my new laptop. How exciting is that! I haven't written one for two or three days because my old computer just froze up.  It wasn't actually totally dead but it was moving soooo slowly that it took me 20-25 minutes to access my blog or e-mail or anything else. I tried all the usual fixes, defragging, deleteing, disparing, and finally decided, after 8+ years to bite the bullet and buy a new computer.  After a day long adventure, aided by my very patient son, systems have been backed up, windows 8.1 has been loaded and I am on my way.  I love the touch screen and everything else I've tried so far but I do have one concern.  So far I haven't found "free cell".  I'll keep looking. I do have my priorities, after all.

contemplating a face lift

I keep seeing commercials on TV for "life style" lifts and sure enough all of those people who look so much better now had all of the same problems I have - saggy jowls, wrinkles, a crinkly neck and on and on.  But I'm wondering where it would stop.  If I got a face lift what could I do about my hands or my legs or my many other saggy parts?  Maybe, if I always wear gloves and long sleeves and spanx and long pants I could get away with just a face lift???  I think I'll wait until they start advertising "full body" lifts.

sensitive toothpaste

Yesterday morning I heard an add on TV for sensitive toothpaste.  I listened closely and they repeated that phrase several times.  Now I have heard before of toothpaste for sensitive teeth, but this sounds really special.  How sensitive can toothpaste be?  Will it hold my hand and say "There, there" when I made a mistake?  Will it listen when I want to share my woes?  Will it hug me when I'm feeling blue?  Sensitive toothpaste sounds wonderful.  Cheaper than a cat or dog and a lot less hassle than a spouse.  I'm going to rush right out and buy some.  

This made me laugh

I don't think the current government partial shutdown is a laughing matter especially since 3 of my 4 adult children are currently furloughed from their jobs.  However a comment made by John McCain on the news this evening did make me laugh.  When asked about how continued inaction would impact congress's approval rating he said "We're down to blood relatives and paid staffers now."  How much worse can it get?  I don't want to find out.

Wasp Wars

I have a lovely old apple tree in my yard which has had an abundance of apples this year.  I have gathered many many apples to use, but every day I find more bird pecked, bug eaten ones on the ground and since several branches hang over my driveway I need to rake them up and throw them away so they don't get squashed beneath tires.  Today I went out to do that job only to discover that the wonderful smushy apples had been discovered by wasps who didn't think much of my clean up plan. So, being adverse to wasp stings, I came back in the house, with plans to mount my attack on a chillier day, when the wasps, I hope, will be snoozing.  Wise wasp war warriors know when to retire.

my short-lived singing career

I saw a wonderful concert this evening, the all male singing group Chanticleer.  No instruments, just beautiful voices with an amazing range harmonizing, truly awesome.  Whenever I hear truly great singers I think how grand it must be to be able to make such music with your voice.  I've always thought that I'll know I've died and gone to heaven when I can carry a tune.
Don't get me wrong, I love to sing - in the shower, alone in my car, in church (if no one else can hear me) - but I know my limitations.  My daughter made sure of that years ago.  I was rocking her to sleep one evening (she was one year old) and singing what I thought was a sweet lullaby, when she opened her eyes, looked up at me and said "Don't sing, Mommy."

Tech Wars

Earlier today I was able to download a photo from a cd, copy it to the church bulletin I was working on, size it and print 350 copies of the complete document.  Doesn't sound like much but I felt great.  Over the last three years I've come a long way with my computer skills at work.  I'm actually pretty competent with publisher.  Then I got home and sat down with my laptop to write this blog and waited 20 minutes while it thought about connecting to google chrome.  I'm writing in a rush now in case it just shuts down.  I had it in for some minor repairs earlier this week and was informed that my computer's battery is "just about fried", among other problems.  This leads me to think I might want to start shopping for a new computer - this one is eight years old - but first I would like to know that the government is done being shut down or at least that my social security payment has been deposited.  I know, I know, I want so much.

Litter's revenge

I don't really understand the urge to litter.  Why can't people take their trash home and throw it away?  I live on a fairly busy street and two or three times a week I find something discarded in my yard, usually right along the road, but sometimes tossed with some force, deep into the yard. Cigarette packs, beer cans, soda bottles, fast food wrappers, paper cups, even this week a pencil, have all graced my yard at one time or another.  I pick them up and throw them away and don't get angry but I do wish sometimes that I could teach a litterer a lesson.
A friend of mine learned a hard lesson about littering several years ago.  She and her husband and young baby were travelling by car and driving through a fairly remote area when the baby needed a diaper change. According to her story there wasn't a good place to pull over and stop so she changed the diaper (her husband was driving) as they drove along.  She was using a wonderful new invention of the time, disposable diapers!  After the change she realized that, while the baby was clean and happy,they now had a car full of really baaaad smell, so, seeing that no one was around, she decided to toss the diaper out the window.  Bad idea.  As she rolled down the window and tossed the diaper it was caught by a gust of wind and wrapped itself around the antenna, where it boldly waved, after spewing its contents along the side of the car, until they finely (she said it seemed like hours) found a pull off where the could deposit the offending diaper in a trash barrel and do some cleam up. Of course the previously deserted stretch of road was now full of cars full of cheerfully honking witnesses to their folly. After telling this story my friend assured me that she has never again thrown anything out of a car window.

My Corvair

A couple of days ago, on my favorite morning news show, they demonstrated a car that can drive itself. Very helpful and pretty amazing, and it reminded of my first car which sometimes seemed to have a mind of its own.  You remember Corvairs?  There was even a book written about them, Unsafe at Any Speed.  I bought my 1961 Corvair, used, in 1965 for $800.  It was my first car and I bought it, practiced driving it, and then got my drivers license, in time to finish my last college courses and start my first year of teaching.
Such a nice car, until it turned on me.  I was driving back to Ball State one Monday morning after a weekend at home, when I took a curve a little too fast, and before I knew it, my car had spun around, rolled over and up on its wheels again, and I was sitting in the car in a field, looking through an open space and watching my windshield rocking gently on the ground in front of the car.
Two weeks before, my mother had sent me money to have seat belts installed in that car (they weren't standard back then) and I walked away from that accident with only a tiny scratch on one knee.  I walked to a nearby farmhouse and use their phone to call my father and tell him what had happened.  His first words were "Are you ok?" When I assured him I was he said "That's all that matters."  I always loved my daddy but never more than at that moment.
He came and picked me up, drove me the rest of the way to college and then proceeded to fight my battle with the insurance company.  They wanted to total it and give me $400.  That got my daddy's German up, since he had never in his life had a claim on his insurance policy, which also covered me, and he thought that 50% depreciation in less than a month was pretty steep. So he asked what other options we ahd and they said they would pay to have it repaired so he said "Fix it."  It cost the insurance company $2,000 but I ended up with a rebuilt car which I drove for the next six years, until my husband and I traded it in on our VW camper.  By then it had well over 100,000 miles on it and I could see the road through the rusted out spot in the floor board on the driver's side. But I never had another accident in taht car and, with the engine in back, it turned out to be a wonderful car to drive on snowy roads when I lived in upstate New York.

I received a random act of kindness

As I was standing at the back of my car this afternoon, raining drizzling down and starting to fall more heavily, unloading the groceries I had just purchased, a sudden gust of wind caught my shopping cart and propelled it away across the parking lot.  I caught it before it had rolled too far and was back at my car when a lovely young lady came up and started helping me unload my groceries into my car.  She said "I saw your cart get away from you, and since I have an umbrella, I thought I'd come and help."  How nice was that?  I feel like I was really blessed by this kind gesture today and am excited about the prospect of paying it forward.

remembering Peter, Paul and Mary

This evening I attended a concert/talk by Peter Yarrow, formerly of Peter, Paul and Mary.  It was the annual fund-raiser for the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, and I found Mr. Yarrow's comments on bullying and protesting for good causes very interesting.  He is very involved with an organization called Operation Respect.  You can learn more about that at www.operationrespect.org. While I appreciated his wide ranging comments and his new song "Don't Laugh at Me" I must admit that the real pleasure of the evening for me was listening to the strumming of an acoustic guitar (no loud amps, thank you very much) and being encouraged to "sing along" to classics like "leaving on a jet plane", "Blowing in the Wind", and of course, "Puff, the Magic Dragon".  If you read these titles and instantly started humming the melodies you are of my generation.

a curious contradiction

I had my furnace serviced today (its annual check-up) by a serviceman who has been here before and who represents a good reliable company.  After he finished his work he informed me that everything looked good, in fact the filter was unusually clean.  Everything was good, good, good.  But then came the zinger "You know" he said, "your furnace is 15 years old.  It's approaching the end of its life."
"Really?" I said, "our old furnace lasted for 30 years."
"Well, you know" he replied (wait for it...) "They don't make them like they used to."
Why not?!!!

I love people with an upbeat attitude!

In our Bible Study group this morning one of the ladies announced that she and her husband are celebrating  a total of 100 years of marriage.  He was married before for 47 years, she was married for 48 years, and now they have been married to each other for five years. All of their extended families got together this summer to celebrate.  How great is that?
Another lady (she and her husband are both in their nineties, and both still driving, in good health, and very sharp people) mentioned that they are starting to think about moving into assisted living.  She said, and I quote, "Statistically, we kind of have to face reality."
i want to grow up to be just like these ladies.

a lesson to live by

I heard a report this morning on the news about a lady who survived cancer at 82 and is an inspiration to her children.  She's now 99, doing just fine, thank you, and asked the secret of a long life said "Take life one day at a time, enjoy it, and be sure to laugh."  I so agree.

Gingerbread and Applebutter

I'm baking gingerbread this evening and it's a lovely experience on so many levels.  It fills the house with a spicy good essence of autumn aroma and it tastes wonderful.  Even better, in a way it;s the culmination of the applebutter experience for this year. I love a warm piece of gingerbread split in half and slathered with applebutter.  Yummmm.  Try it.  I'll be serving it to a group of women coming to my house for a meeting tomorrow and I hope they enjoy it.