I saw a story in the major news sources last week that wm is dropping prices on thousands of their products to draw consumers back into their stores because they have had the lowest same-store sales gains in their history this year. I can't take ALL the credit for that, but I'm sure my significant drop in purchases there made at least a small blip at our local store. The chain says that their customers are concerned about gas prices so they aren't buying as much. That might be true, but I also think that there are way more people like me who have just had their fill of wm's destructive business practices.
Sadly, we've probably made more purchases at that store in the last month than in this entire calendar year. The majority of shopping trips I've made there have simply been out of convenience. There is no other grocery store in that particular part of town (except an off-brand retailer) and if I'm in that area running other errands and need to pick up bread or milk, it is just too easy to go there rather than drive four or five miles in a different direction.
Since this was the original intent of this blog I will aspire to improve my own habits.
And in other news...
a woman in Jersey reported that her pool...a pool similar to the one we fondly refer to as our "hillbilly pool"...was stolen WITH the water in it. Hogwash. These pools are HEAVY when they are full of water. The Reenactor calculated at one point how much our own pool weighed filled with water, and it simply isn't possible for someone to have taken it without emptying it first. Not to mention the fact that if you so much as lean on the side (with intent) you dump all the water out in a tsunami of chlorinated water...I've witnessed this very event in years past. A person, or extensive group of persons, could NOT steal a full pool.
Beach time....chat amongst yourselves for a few days!
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
pass the chicken and gravy!
According to a map posted on the CNN website this afternoon the state of KY is one of several in the deep south with a 25% obesity rate. Well, kiss my cheese grits.
My observation with this is that oddly enough, the majority of the states that are obese are also the states that most support the current administration.
Coincidence?
Maybe if you get up off your arse and exercise once in a while your brain fog clears.
My observation with this is that oddly enough, the majority of the states that are obese are also the states that most support the current administration.
Coincidence?
Maybe if you get up off your arse and exercise once in a while your brain fog clears.
Monday, July 23, 2007
yet another sign
I seem to be on a theme of finding signs that catch my attention in a weird way. I saw this sign about two weeks ago, but didn't have my camera with me, and had it with me when I was on this particular side of town again. My personal reaction to it is one of two things: 1) You can't buy beer in this town on Sunday, but by golly, you can get buy-one-get-one-free adult movies; and 2) when you think of Sunday do you REALLY ask yourself "gee, do I have enough porn to get through until Monday?"
Sorry if I've offended any of you, but this sign offended me.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
ladybird
There's a wonderful children's book called "Miss Rumphius." It is about a woman who as a child tells her grandfather that when she grows up she will travel to faraway places, and then live by the sea. Her grandfather says that is fine, but she must also, "do something to make the world more beauiful." She spends her life travelling, and when she finally settles down in her hometown by the sea she tries to think of how to make the world more beautiful. So she plants wildflowers....everywhere. Whenever she goes for walks she takes wildflower seeds (specifically lupine seeds) in her pockets, and tosses them into the dirt along the paths she takes. A lot of the people in her town think she is crazy, but she continues to do it. Soon, the fields and walkways of her town are covered in beautiful flowers and when she dies she is remembered as the "lupine lady."
If there is one thing that Lady Bird Johnson did with her power as First Lady it was to beautify the highways of the United States with a simple idea...plant native wildflowers in the medians and right of ways. It is an incredibly simple idea, yet there are places where the results breathtaking. One example, the KY-TN line on interstate 24 is a sea of reds and yellows at certain times of the year when flowers planted there are in bloom. When driving for miles and miles on highways that are monotonous at best it is so refreshing to see that spot of color.
What if we all took her idea a step further....what if we found just one place in our hometowns that could benefit from a patch of flowers...wild or otherwise? I'm going to buy wildflower seeds in the next few days and see if I can't get my own Ladybird spot started.
Find a way to do something to make the world more beautiful.
If there is one thing that Lady Bird Johnson did with her power as First Lady it was to beautify the highways of the United States with a simple idea...plant native wildflowers in the medians and right of ways. It is an incredibly simple idea, yet there are places where the results breathtaking. One example, the KY-TN line on interstate 24 is a sea of reds and yellows at certain times of the year when flowers planted there are in bloom. When driving for miles and miles on highways that are monotonous at best it is so refreshing to see that spot of color.
What if we all took her idea a step further....what if we found just one place in our hometowns that could benefit from a patch of flowers...wild or otherwise? I'm going to buy wildflower seeds in the next few days and see if I can't get my own Ladybird spot started.
Find a way to do something to make the world more beautiful.
Monday, July 9, 2007
happy birthday Mom
Today would have been my mother's 90th birthday.
One year ago today my kids and I were with her, and my children gave her an "angel" teddy bear. My mother collected teddy bears because as a young girl she was friends with several other girls in her very small town in Missouri and as a club they called themselves the Teddy Bears. They remained friends all their lives and I think only two of them survive.
When we went to see her on her birthday last year she was calm and sleepy, which was her "normal" state then. She had been in a nursing home for four years, and because of things misfiring in her brain, and the cocktails of drugs they gave her there, she was—to quote the Pink Floyd song—"comfortably numb." She sat forward just a bit in her wheelchair when the kids came into her view....T1 and T2 always caught her eye. I don't know in her last few months that she understood that they were her grandchildren, but she did know that shorter, cuter, more active people were in her room than normally appeared there, and she reacted to them. I talked to her and told her happy birthday, but I don't know how much of it made sense to her.
The next day we went to see her again, and this time she was angry. I could tell as soon as I walked into the room. Even though Mom was in very poor health she could still show emotion, and on that day-after-her-birthday I realized as soon as I said hello to her that she was mad, and I felt like it was directed at me. She refused to acknowledge me and had a "set" expression on her face that I remember very well as a child..a look that meant she was not pleased. After sitting with her for a few moments I realized that the anger was her way of telling me that it was time to go. Not for me to leave, but for her to move on.
When I got back in my car that day I called my sister and told her what I had seen. A week later my brother visited Mom, and called me and told me he had the same "feeling" when he saw her....that she was mad, and ready to go.Three weeks later, she died.
I report all this because since her death I have had her "permission" to read letters she and my father wrote to each other while they were courting, and during their early marriage while he was overseas serving in the Army in WWII. There are hundreds of letters, and I have started typing them—a few a week,—and forwarding them to my family to read. In those letters I am seeing a side of both my parents I didn't know. You know how you sometimes wish you could go back in time and meet your parents when they were teenagers, or in college? It is sort of like that...I'm finding out what songs she liked to listen to on the radio, what movies she went to see, how she spent her free time, how much she loved my father, and how hard it was for them to be apart.
Even though I've only read and typed about 20 percent of the letters I have learned that my mother was funny and smart. I knew these things already, but reading the letters is like hearing her voice all over again but in a younger, more carefree voice. I have also realized that the lifelong "teasing" she endured for being a bit of a "scatterbrain" is actually something that started when she and Dad were dating. There was a popular song by Frankie Masters called "Scatterbrain" and it was one of "their" songs. And, in trying to follow Mom's stream-of-conciousness writing style I can see why Dad would have used that as a term of endearment for her. She often flits from a serious topic (the draft and her worries for Dad going in the Army) to something silly someone at work said to her, all in one paragraph.
I've also learned from the letters that Mom was frustrated by her limited career choices as a woman in the early 1940s. She was getting a degree in education, but after having taught a couple of years at a rural schoolhouse to earn money to keep attending college, she was disillusioned by teaching, and really didn't want to go back. In those days teaching was one of the only "professional" jobs a woman could have. Even though she eventually did get a degree in education, and taught off and on for many years, I am beginning to understand in reading the letters that it really wasn't what she dreamed of doing.
I think this is why she encouraged all of her own children....three daughters and one son....to follow their dreams. The world was a very different place for her daughters than it was for her. This especially was true for me having been born so late in her life, I got to take full advantage of the freedoms and opportunities created by the women's movements of the sixties and seventies...something I think most younger women take for granted. I often wonder what Mom would have been if she had been able to choose any degree she wanted when she was in college. My best guess is that she would have been an architect or interior designer. She loved studying houses and floorplans and dreaming of ways to arrange living spaces.
So today would have been Mom's 90th birthday. For you younger women reading this blog, consider this: When my mother was born women could not vote. That amendment to the constitution was passed when she was three years old. Think about that....think about how your place in the world would be affected if you could not even participate in the democratic process of choosing your government.
In her lifetime there were two World Wars, and two "other" wars...in Korea and Vietnam. There have also been the two wars in Iraq, and numerous other military actions and "operations." She and my father watched the Twin Towers fall, and I think that day they remembered back to watching newsreels of Pearl Harbor exploding in flames, and probably wondered what sort of World War we were going to be drawn into this time.
My mother (and father) grew up in rural Missouri and as children lived in very modest circumstances by our standards today. But in spite of the fact that a Great Depression had caused families like theirs to be cautious about how their money was spent (go watch a "Waltons" episode if you need a refresher on this) they both managed to graduate from college, as did nearly all their friends in their high school class of 27 young men and women... an accomplishment I still find astounding for the time.
Later in her life my mother finally found her "true" vocation. She became a librarian. She loved showing her patrons the world through books. There were no computers when she was in her library, and she was to many people in my hometown the first "google" they experienced. Ask her a question, she could almost always find the information you were looking for. Tell her you are writing a research paper on moths and she would bring you a stack of 14 books to use as reference. She would call friends and acquaintances who were experts in certain areas for reference if she couldn't find the information there in the library.
Mom loved a birthday celebration and reveled in being surrounded by family and friends to talk, laugh and have cake.
I'll be having a piece of cake today in honor of Mom. I'm sure she is enjoying her 90th surrounded by her Howard, her parents and brothers, and of course, her Teddy Bears.
One year ago today my kids and I were with her, and my children gave her an "angel" teddy bear. My mother collected teddy bears because as a young girl she was friends with several other girls in her very small town in Missouri and as a club they called themselves the Teddy Bears. They remained friends all their lives and I think only two of them survive.
When we went to see her on her birthday last year she was calm and sleepy, which was her "normal" state then. She had been in a nursing home for four years, and because of things misfiring in her brain, and the cocktails of drugs they gave her there, she was—to quote the Pink Floyd song—"comfortably numb." She sat forward just a bit in her wheelchair when the kids came into her view....T1 and T2 always caught her eye. I don't know in her last few months that she understood that they were her grandchildren, but she did know that shorter, cuter, more active people were in her room than normally appeared there, and she reacted to them. I talked to her and told her happy birthday, but I don't know how much of it made sense to her.
The next day we went to see her again, and this time she was angry. I could tell as soon as I walked into the room. Even though Mom was in very poor health she could still show emotion, and on that day-after-her-birthday I realized as soon as I said hello to her that she was mad, and I felt like it was directed at me. She refused to acknowledge me and had a "set" expression on her face that I remember very well as a child..a look that meant she was not pleased. After sitting with her for a few moments I realized that the anger was her way of telling me that it was time to go. Not for me to leave, but for her to move on.
When I got back in my car that day I called my sister and told her what I had seen. A week later my brother visited Mom, and called me and told me he had the same "feeling" when he saw her....that she was mad, and ready to go.Three weeks later, she died.
I report all this because since her death I have had her "permission" to read letters she and my father wrote to each other while they were courting, and during their early marriage while he was overseas serving in the Army in WWII. There are hundreds of letters, and I have started typing them—a few a week,—and forwarding them to my family to read. In those letters I am seeing a side of both my parents I didn't know. You know how you sometimes wish you could go back in time and meet your parents when they were teenagers, or in college? It is sort of like that...I'm finding out what songs she liked to listen to on the radio, what movies she went to see, how she spent her free time, how much she loved my father, and how hard it was for them to be apart.
Even though I've only read and typed about 20 percent of the letters I have learned that my mother was funny and smart. I knew these things already, but reading the letters is like hearing her voice all over again but in a younger, more carefree voice. I have also realized that the lifelong "teasing" she endured for being a bit of a "scatterbrain" is actually something that started when she and Dad were dating. There was a popular song by Frankie Masters called "Scatterbrain" and it was one of "their" songs. And, in trying to follow Mom's stream-of-conciousness writing style I can see why Dad would have used that as a term of endearment for her. She often flits from a serious topic (the draft and her worries for Dad going in the Army) to something silly someone at work said to her, all in one paragraph.
I've also learned from the letters that Mom was frustrated by her limited career choices as a woman in the early 1940s. She was getting a degree in education, but after having taught a couple of years at a rural schoolhouse to earn money to keep attending college, she was disillusioned by teaching, and really didn't want to go back. In those days teaching was one of the only "professional" jobs a woman could have. Even though she eventually did get a degree in education, and taught off and on for many years, I am beginning to understand in reading the letters that it really wasn't what she dreamed of doing.
I think this is why she encouraged all of her own children....three daughters and one son....to follow their dreams. The world was a very different place for her daughters than it was for her. This especially was true for me having been born so late in her life, I got to take full advantage of the freedoms and opportunities created by the women's movements of the sixties and seventies...something I think most younger women take for granted. I often wonder what Mom would have been if she had been able to choose any degree she wanted when she was in college. My best guess is that she would have been an architect or interior designer. She loved studying houses and floorplans and dreaming of ways to arrange living spaces.
So today would have been Mom's 90th birthday. For you younger women reading this blog, consider this: When my mother was born women could not vote. That amendment to the constitution was passed when she was three years old. Think about that....think about how your place in the world would be affected if you could not even participate in the democratic process of choosing your government.
In her lifetime there were two World Wars, and two "other" wars...in Korea and Vietnam. There have also been the two wars in Iraq, and numerous other military actions and "operations." She and my father watched the Twin Towers fall, and I think that day they remembered back to watching newsreels of Pearl Harbor exploding in flames, and probably wondered what sort of World War we were going to be drawn into this time.
My mother (and father) grew up in rural Missouri and as children lived in very modest circumstances by our standards today. But in spite of the fact that a Great Depression had caused families like theirs to be cautious about how their money was spent (go watch a "Waltons" episode if you need a refresher on this) they both managed to graduate from college, as did nearly all their friends in their high school class of 27 young men and women... an accomplishment I still find astounding for the time.
Later in her life my mother finally found her "true" vocation. She became a librarian. She loved showing her patrons the world through books. There were no computers when she was in her library, and she was to many people in my hometown the first "google" they experienced. Ask her a question, she could almost always find the information you were looking for. Tell her you are writing a research paper on moths and she would bring you a stack of 14 books to use as reference. She would call friends and acquaintances who were experts in certain areas for reference if she couldn't find the information there in the library.
Mom loved a birthday celebration and reveled in being surrounded by family and friends to talk, laugh and have cake.
I'll be having a piece of cake today in honor of Mom. I'm sure she is enjoying her 90th surrounded by her Howard, her parents and brothers, and of course, her Teddy Bears.
Friday, July 6, 2007
but what if I want to purchase some?
I know a lot of places around here that could definitely use a rental of this stuff....
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