1 Step Forward . . .

2 steps back. SIGH.

We had wind this weekend - lots of it. Power outages, trees and limbs down, gusts up to 75 mile per hour.

For those who are not familiar with my home, my yard is full of oak trees. Trees that love to drop limbs onto my property when there is a little wind. I got home from church yesterday afternoon to a yard and driveway full of huge limbs. I didn't see any sticking out of my roof, so I took it as a good sign. Then I looked beyond the limbs in my driveway and felt sick to my stomach. I had one of those heavy duty car shelters in my driveway where I was gathering stuff for a yard sale. Can you say upside down and scattered? SIGH!

After clearing the driveway (no easy feat) and my friend Ruth coming over, we were able to take it apart partially. Metal legs were bent and canvas torn but I think it will eventually be fixable. I took some things back in but the rest we placed the roof of the shelter over and left it for me to work on today.

So here it is almost 6 pm and I've not gotten nearly enough done. After working all day, you'd think I'd be finished, right? Just when you least expect it - I've had a bad case of vertigo since midnight last night. Hence the 1 step forward, 2 steps back statement.

Now I could look at this as an awful event and get all depressed or I could look at it another way.
- no damage to my house, Willow or me
- I didn't lose power and was warm all night
- there wasn't any ice, snow or sleet with the wind.

See? Isn't life peachy?

PS: to give you a clue as to the size of some of these limbs. As I was gathering the limbs from the yard something kept bothering me. I finally realized that I had an extra tree where there wasn't one before. At first I thought that I had been totally unobservant and a tree had sprouted up this year when I wasn't paying attention. Then I looked closer and realized that the "tree" was a limb that was standing straight up. It was very deep in the ground and I am VERY grateful I hadn't been standing in that spot when it decided to fall. I bet if there had been a rabbit or squirrel standing in that spot I would never know it cause even the bones would have been pulverized. SHUDDER!

Parking Place Prowl

I know everyone has been guilty of this. But think about it. You spend 10-15 minutes cruising the parking lot waiting for someone to leave so you can park close to the door of the store you are going to go into and spend an hour or more walking around. It would be quicker to park far away from the door, get in and do your thing and zip back to your car to leave - where no one is hovering waiting for your spot. Yes, I know if you have kids it can be a problem. But if there is a cart near one of these far away spots - go for it.

I guess what got me on this rampage was being stuck between two cars. Both of these folks were going into the health club . . . to exercise . . . and were doing the parking place prowl. Now THAT'S just dumb. I got trapped between these two idiots while waiting for another health club attendee to get their butt in gear and leave the prized spot. I wanted to get out and knock all their heads together. GRRRR

Any pet peeve you may have that you want to share with me?

Do you rember these?

First of all . . . most of these things are from my parents' time, however, that said, I do remember most of these from things in my childhood or from my parents. Enjoy.

http://oldfortyfives.com/DYRT.htm

Jericho

I don't watch TV much and what I do watch comes by way of DVD when I can get the whole series and watch it in a few weeks time instead of over a season. Some I like a lot - Bones, House, Medium, Ghost Whisperer and such. I am a die hard Stargate SGI fan and have watched every episode of Seasons 1-9 and am now working on Season 10. I actually own the last season of Friends and have watched EVERY episode.

I could not get into Lost and don't understand everyone's excitement about it but am thrilled for you if it is your thing. However - one that has surprised me - because I really like the show is Jericho. I am familiar with a lot of the actors on the show and like them for things I have seen them in. But that's not what I like the most. This feels like it could be a real scenerio and I've wondered what would happen "if". Most people have thought along these lines because of 9/11. Our church teaches being self-sufficient and having not only 72 hour kits (which most of the world hadn't heard of until after hurricanes and disasters have happened) but also having at least a year's supply of food storage as well as water, fuel, cloth, etc. We are encouraged to make sure we know basic skills that we may need someday. I can crochet, knit, sew and quilt and would be able to use these skills if necessary if something were to happen. In Jericho, you see people trying to figure out what to do to supply the basics of life. I would be able to do a lot of things to earn money in case of a disaster like that. One episode shows people learning how to hunt becasuse they need the food to survive. Our church has taught - have a garden, so we will have the skill. My property is lousy for a garden because of trees but I bet I could cut those trees down for firewood and have lots of sun for a garden. Each year I plant a garden which is normally a joke. It costs more for me to have that garden than it would just to buy the produce. One year I got two whole tomatoes and 1 cucumber as my big crop. Waste of time and money? No. 1- I obeyed my church leaders. 2- practice makes perfect. This year I had two tomato plants and a bunch of herbs and I got a lot of tomatoes as well as used the herbs in cooking. If I needed to produce my food, I think I could.

Lots of folks aren't too thrilled with camping but if you think about it - what better way to make sure you could do without certain things than by doing without? I can use a grill, build a fire pit and a fire, make a shelter, keep warm and so forth. A few years back I had to go nearly a week without electricity (control for gas heater is electric.) when we had a big ice storm and cold snap. I survived. It wasn't fun and when everything got back to normal I was thrilled, but I did it.

I guess the point of this is to encourage you to make sure you are prepared.

chain emails should have warnings in the subject line.

Is there a sign on my back? You know, a sign that says, send me all the chain emails cause it drives me crazy and my blood pressure isn't high enough? I have about half a dozen friends who send on of these "pass it on" emails and most of the emails have strings attatched. You know, if you send this to 5 (8, 10, whatever) people within the next 10 (15, 30 . . . .) minutes you will have good luck (receive money, not have bad luck, yada, yada, yada). I think they should all read this way.

First of all, in the subject line, be clear it is a trap if they open it.

Fw: Chain email - don't open if you don't want to participate

Hi, I feel the need to torture you today so I'm forwarding this dumb email that was forwarded to me by someone who wanted to torture me, and if you want to torture five of your friends then send it on within the next 10 minutes so you don't forget. Rest assured that I don't really believe in the "power" it supposedly has but I love the friend who sent it to me and don't want to hurt their feelings by not sending it back to them and I'm afraid they will see that I only sent it to them - hence adding you in the torture chain.

Reckon this would catch on? Well, everyone, I'm here to tell you that just because I don't send it on - it doesn't mean that I don't love you (don't believe in God, am not grateful for my blessing, etc.) I just don't care for the emails and would prefer to not deal with it so when I open the email if it has that "look" about it, I delete it before it has a chance to attack me.

OK, this rant is over - you may go about your regularly scheduled life.

Willow

They say that having a pet lowers your blood pressure and is very good for stress, yada, yada, yada. I don't think they met Willow. She is making progress on using the puppy pad for pee, however she's still leaving little presents for me in some of the strangest places. I think she knows that isn't the proper place but hasn't quite figured out the puppy pad is for that also. Step on one of those presents in the middle of the night and let me tell you - blood pressure? UP. Stess level? UP. Also she is teething - can you say "Hide it if you don't want it chewed?"

That said, she is making the biggest difference to me. Even more than Coco did and I thought that what she did for me was awesome. (Still no sign or word of her whereabouts.) Willow wants to be with me every second and follows me around like, well, like a puppy. She does well by herself and I can leave her in her crate to go places and she does fine. She just loves me and if I'm around that's where she wants to be. As I sit at my desk to write this, she is in her cube, just chilling. If someone had told me 20 years ago that I would have a chihuahua, much less adore the stinker, I would have sent them to get their head examined. Hmmmmm, I'm getting MY head examined, I wonder if that means anything?

Even though I am obviously the one she adores, she plays well with others. She has play dates all the time. She hasn't been around children as much as dogs and cats but we are working on that too. She goes to other adults and isn't skittish like little dogs can be - of course, she doesn't KNOW she's a little dog. If you go by attitude, she weighs 150 instead of four pounds.

So . . . the long and short of it is . . . "THEY" must be right. Having a pet is good for you.

One more tribute . .

. . . I'm not promising it will be the last.

I guess you can figure where my mind is this week. This video sums it all up for me.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/200/5127/

If you are not of my faith and wonder how so many people could love a man they probably never met in person, maybe what Glenn Beck says will help.