An encouraging word

Two mornings ago I heard a very, very exciting bit of research results on the morning news, exciting to me at least.  A study has shown that many people do their best, most creative work in their 70's and beyond, and that brain tissue keeps growing much later in life that was originally thought.  I'll be 70 in 15 months and I'll be waiting for the genius to kick in.  Will I write a great novel; paint better than I ever did in college or take up weaving again?  Who knows?  We'll all have to wait and see.

Happy Birthday to my favorite son...

Today my oldest child, my son, turned 42.  So many memories swirl through my mind, it's hard to know where to start.  We've been through a near death experience, a pinewood derby triumph, a name change, the agonies of shyness, the victory over shyness, many scholastic successes, a few not so successful endeavors, interesting jobs, an eternal interest in space, fantastic support for me through the toughest time, a wonderful wife, two beautiful daughters and on and on.  Is it any wonder I love him so much and am filled with pride whenever I think of him.  Happy Birthday Thomas!

What happened on birthday eve...

Tomorrow is my son's , my oldest child's, birthday.  He will be 42 and has grown into a wonderful man of whom I am very proud.  But more about him tomorrow.  Today I have been remembering the night before he was born.
My husband and I had gone our for a delicious Mexican dinner, and I was feeling fine until about midnight when I started to have stomach cramps.  I seemed to develop all of the classic symptoms of a mild case of food poisoning.  Sometimes I'm slow to figure things out but eventually I get there.  After about three hours of discomfort I began to wonder if I might be having labor pains.  You would think that the fact that it was 10 days beyond my due date might have given me a clue.  I finally decided to call my doctor who told me that, since I wasn't having regular contractions yet (note, I never did have regular contractions) there was probably no rush, but since it was my first I could come to the hospital any time.  I woke my husband, we got ready, grabbed our prepacked bags - mine with clothes, his with stuff to occupy our time - and headed off to the hospital.  We got there about 5am, were wisked into a little room where a nurse checked me over and then left us alone.
My husband, since we had both read lots of books about the subject, assumed that we would have several hours to wait, brought out the travel chess set and started to set up the game.  Just then the nurse came back, said we were heading for the delivery room -no long wait after all - and off we went. Our baby boy was born at about 6am.
The moral of this story is that if you want a fast easy birth experience, eat Mexican food the night before. More about my baby boy tomorrow.

An Amazing Performance

Picture if you will over 100 children, most of them under six years old, sitting on the floor with their families in a huge room, enjoying banjo and accordion music.  It was a sight to behold, and I misspoke a little when I said they were sitting.  Mostly they (and their parents) were swaying, doing jumping jacks, clapping, sneezing, twirling and generally moving to the music.  This is the magic of Jim Gill, a children's entertainer whom I had never heard of until our church invited him to come and perform as the opening program of our music series for this year.  I hadn't heard of him but lots and lots of young children certainly have.
What i most enjoyed about the evening, besides the really excellent lively music, was that nobody told the kids to be quiet or settle down.  They were there to move and move they did, and so, although we hoped not to be noticed, did a lot of us grandparent types standing around the edges of the room. It was pure fun.

Today's discovery

While sitting in a meeting this evening, I heard a woman who was giving a report refer to looking up a word on Thesaurus.net.  Who knew??  I don't know why I should be so surprised.  I do find all sorts of information by googling, but it never occurred to me to search for an on-line thesaurus.  I was so excited (did I ever mention that I am easily entertained?) that I came right home and looked up a word.
The word I chose was 'happy' and the huge long list of synonyms that popped up included cheerful, pleasant, agreeable, amiable, bright,buoyant, easy going, affable, cheerful, cheery, complaisant, congenial and friendly.  The whole experience left me smiling..

Thinking about Syria

I heard a very interesting lecture this evening on situations in the Middle East.  The information was presented by a young man who has just spent a year in Jordan studying political situations in that area and working on his doctoral thesis.
I'm still processing much of what he said but two things stand out right now.  First, I didn't know that over 3,000,000 Syrians are refugees living in camps in Jordan and other countries.  That's 10% of the Syrian population. He said that the US is contributing a great deal of money and materials to help these refugees and had some rather scathing comments about other countries who make big promises of help and then don't come through.
Secondly, in the Q&A session, he was asked about possible reprisals if we attack Syria in some way.  He said the most likely response would be to attack something of value to us in that part of the world.  I must admit my very selfish first reaction to that comment was "Well, that wouldn't be as bad as an attack in the US." How very shallow of me.
I just heard on the news this evening that Syria has offered to destroy its chemical weapons in exchange for???.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out, since also according to our speaker the aim of the US in Syria is regime change and has been for a long time.

An irritating word

From time to time a word, or more accurately a word usage comes along that drives me nuts.  For a long time it was the word utilize.  I didn't understand why people insisted on utilizing the word utilize when they could simply have used the word use.  I haven't noticed this much lately so maybe it has run its course.  However, recently I have notice another word fad.  It seems like so many people I hear interviewed on TV shows start every sentence with 'so'. Now 'so' is a perfectly acceptable and useful word (see the sentence above) but seldom necessary at the beginning of a sentence.  Listen for it and you'll hear what I mean.