Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded…

THOUGHTS from an email message

If walking is good for your health, the postman would be immortal.

A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water, but is still fat.
A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years.
A tortoise doesn’t run and does mostly nothing, yet it  lives for 150 years.
And you tell me to exercise?? I don’t think so.

Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked, the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Now that I’m older here’s what I’ve discovered:

1.    I started out with nothing, and I still have most of  it.
2.    My wild oats are mostly enjoyed with prunes and all-bran.
3.    I  finally got my head together, and now my body is falling apart.
4.    Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.
5.    Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.
6.    If all is not lost, then where the heck is it ?
7.    It was a whole lot easier to get older, than to get wiser.
8.    Some days, you’re the top dog, some days you’re the hydrant; the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
9.    I wish the buck really did stop here, I sure could use a few of them.
10. Kids in the back seat cause accidents.
11. Accidents in the back seat cause kids.
12. It’s hard to make a comeback when you haven’t been anywhere.
13. The world only beats a path to your door when you’re in the bathroom.
14. If God wanted me to touch my toes, he’d have put them on my knees.
15. When I’m finally holding all the right cards, everyone wants to play chess.
16. It’s not hard to meet expenses…. they’re everywhere.
17. These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the hereafter, I go somewhere to get something and then wonder what I’m “here after”.
18. Funny, I don’t remember being absent-minded.

At least SOMEONE went to the beach this summer!

SnakeMaster is on a 10-day vacation at the beach with another family, the lucky boy!  (Pics seen here are courtesy of the accompanying mom.) When he returns, he will have one remaining week of summer before school begins and just enough time to complete those pesky summer assignments.

Wildfires and World Con

Looking up at the sun through smoky skies, August 2015

• This week we are continuing to be all about wildfires and smoky skies because the Pacific Northwest continues to burn.
• I need some good book recommendations — nothing graphic, no horror. I am particularly fond of historical fiction and memoirs but I do not limit myself to those genres. What suggestions do you have?
• The lovebirds and a couple of the mother hen’s friends have been visiting for World Con. Our breakfast table is filled with 6 young adults getting their geek on in the best way possible.  I can’t say I understand their language but I do enjoy seeing them happy and communicating with one another.
• However, that doesn’t explain why my 19yo and 22yo have been watching the one hour long YouTube video of nursery rhymes that has over 800,000 million hits in the past year.
• This is a scheduled post because I’m hiding out overnight at the lake, where book group was expanded to include an option for a sleepover. I will be back in town for the afternoon farmers’ market; hopefully we won’t have to shut down early again due to dust storms, poor air quality (smoke and dust) and closed roads. I am blessed that my husband seems to understand my need for getaways, even though I’ll miss seeing the cosplay and hearing about the latest happenings at World Con.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods? 

Fiddlehead Fern

slowly unfurling
this tightly closed scroll of green
will it play music?

My Town Monday: Smoky Skies

The Pacific Northwest has been burning.  Nothing good about that except for the incredible sunsets.

By the numbers: the current summer tally

Weekends spent camping: 1

Weddings attended: 3

Cross-state trips (round-trip): 4

Days spent selling at the local farmers’ market: 9

Current mileage on my minivan: 112,180

Time spent with family and friends: PRICELESS

Ten on Tuesday, the Bachelor[ette] Edition

It occurs to me that I should probably post here occasionally, just in case anyone is still reading.

1. On July 21st, I went to work but the computers, water cooler, and the radio/cd player were gone — also a few candles, a coffee table, janitorial supplies, a vacuum, and some shopping carts garbage cans. Also missing was the window on my (internal) office door, although there was broken glass all over the floor to prove its former existence. The police still have the fire extinguisher as evidence (they’ll eventually give it back to us, won’t they?) — it’s how the thieves broke the window, heaving it through the glass — but sadly we don’t yet have a suspect.
2. Most of my work is done on the computer, so I think I accomplished all of 20 minutes of “real” (normal) work on that 10.5 hour day with no computers. The police and insurance company say things like, “We’ll email you” and I give them a funny look… although that’s straightened out now. I’ve been bringing my laptop in to work ever since that day, and by the time I get home, I just don’t feel like typing anything on it anymore. (Scrolling through facebook is a different matter, as it is relatively mindless and very little typing.)  Since it takes longer to work on a laptop with a single screen vs. a keyboard with mouse and two monitor screens, I’ve been bringing work home with me. After two years of refusing to know how to do it, I learned how to remotely access work e-mail. Suddenly, I am the adult child of workaholics.  Well, I was one before this, too, but those tendencies had been carefully guarded in the past. *sigh*
3. I dearly hope I can go the rest of my life without talking to reporters on camera. It’s simply not my favorite thing to do.
4. I miss going barefoot at work. There are still glass shards deeply embedded in the carpeting.
5. The week that all happened, I was “baching it” at home. I survived by eating whatever provisions I could find with minimal effort at 9pm. Good nutrition, it was not. H-J was at a housesitting job, SuperDad & SnakeMaster were at Boy Scout camp, and EB generally avoided me when he wasn’t working swing shift.  I tend to nag him to do things like take a shower and pick up his dirty dishes, so I suppose he has reasons to avoid me. Luckily, the dog and cat still wanted me near them, which kept me from utter loneliness and despair in the dark hours of the night. Books and wine helped, too.
6. The work incident was two weeks ago, but I’m still hauling in my laptop & cords on an almost daily basis, along with the most important paper files. Between facebook, trying to catch up on reading blogs (as usual, I’m hopelessly behind), selling beaded items and photography notecards at the farmers’ market, and occasionally paying attention to family or household needs, I’m also working some from home. I’m no longer quite as comfortable working late because it was pretty clear that someone had cased the place prior to the burglary.
7. The worst of the burglary (for me, anyway) is that the thieves also took the external hard drive we were using as a backup for our documents. Because really, who steals from a church that has no money and 5-year-old computers? We were worried about internal hard drives crashing.  I thought I had an older backup on a thumb drive… but today, I plugged it into my computer and found a bunch of empty files. Yes, I waited two entire weeks to find this out — and I’m glad I did, because last week it would have made me cry. This week, I am merely sighing in resignation. I’ll be recreating a lot of documents… many, many of them. Ugh.
8. Our skies have been rather smoky for the past week due to the wildfires all over the state (really, all over the Pacific Northwest, including Canada). Despite this, SuperDad and SnakeMaster are off on yet another Scouting adventure — this time, they are climbing Mt. Adams.
9. I plan to go for a quick visit to see some of SD’s side of the family at his parents’ home on my day off. I’ve seen pictures of my grand-nieces and grand-nephew lately and they have grown so much in the past year!
10. Did I mention I’m going to be a grandma sometime around December first? *Squeeee!*