Tuesday
Gift of Life
gift giving at it's finest.
what better way to show your love than giving a gift of life.
water buffalo
llama
flock of chicks
flock of ducks
heifer
many animals to choose from.
you can give either all or a share of a gift.
i know i feel better giving a gift of this nature.
Saturday
idiots
shake my head time.
he pops the top walking out of the store then jumps into his car and takes off down the road.
what the idiot didn't realize was, there was a policeman parked around the corner of the store writing up a report from a stop he had just done - not 15 mins ago.
i watched him help push a huge orange pumpkin on wheels off to the side of the main road.
no clue. didn't ask.
what i am totally clueless about is why this dude, after getting off work and waiting that long to get to the store to buy this beer, couldn't just "WAIT" to drink that damn beer.
than we have a couple dudes that buy beer before work. at 5am ????
whatever.
Wednesday
this could be it
landed a new job this last week and it's a full time one. still not much in the way of thinking required to do it either. ouch.
maybe this one will stick.
the folding boxes and answering phones job was fun, but, sigh, I don't put up with games and one guy was definitely into games.
this guy is married and has an adopted 8 yr old child at home.
he asked not only for my phone number for a date, but also most of the young, cute teeny-boppers that he came into contact with through the store.
at one time he even locked himself into the office with a young, new hire and the other employees were puzzled but didn't knock on the door to ask this creep - wtf!
my guys asked me why I didn't pursue this and file charges.
hell, this has obviously gone on for quite some time.
I could care less about that store. if the bosses want to make an issue of it than they need to, not wait for some bleeding heart to make waves for them.
besides, to many of the people working there are into cocaine and I sure as hell don't want to work around people like that.
I quit it.
clocked out and left.
haven't been back.
so, anyway.
this new job seems o.k.
even though there are a lot of people, because I run a cash register I don't have to deal with them for very long and don't have a chance to get all nervous and anxiety ridden.
was funny - one guy kept looking at me. hard. like he was saying "look at me back just like I am looking at you." something was up for sure.
of course, it made me nervous and if you asked me I couldn't even begin to tell you what he looked like because I couldn't look at him.
so much for that.
easy job so far and pay is not half bad. hope I am able to maintain and stick around for awhile. would like to save some money and go to europe one last time.
love having goals :)
Sunday
drapes
If and I do mean if, I am able to get myself into a clothing store, I do try to make an effort and spend up to 20 minutes looking, max.
Not trying on mind you - just looking.
After about 20 minutes I can feel my body yank me out of the store. This yank is a bit rougher if there are more than just a couple of people in the store.
Than I start feeling crowded.
Heh, you say, a couple of people??
Yeah, I tend to shop at either consignment or Salvation Army/Goodwill stores for clothing and around here if I drive by and see only a couple of cars out front and I need to get something other than the usual clothes I wear that belong to my kids - I'll stop.
This doesn't happen to often as I really, really hate shopping.
No biggie though, even if the guys clothes are a bit big, it's nothing a belt and flip up of the cuff won't take care of.
I am blessed in that I have quite a few clothes given to me and if it fits and is half way decent looking, I'll wear it. That word "fits" translates into "loose and big", not binding.
I guess wearing the guys clothes for so long has spoiled me in the comfort arena.
Now - shoes are easy. If I need to buy a pair of shoes, I can tolerate slightly more time looking and trying on, because I know what shoes I like and I buy the same brand every single time.
Born, Birkenstock and Eco make darn good shoes.
I still have my first pair of Birkenstock sandals bought during the 70's and if I carried them in for a new sole job, they would be just dandy to wear. I leave them in their box though and have only had to buy one new pair of Birk's since.
So - once again, because I hate shopping, I'm not doing any Xmas shopping for this year. Just like last year and the year before that and...
Really though, if I wasn't on such a strict budget wanting to obtain my goal of being debt free by the end of next year, I would go nuts and get the claw foot tub and Victorian chain pull toilet I've been craving forever and a day.
But I won't.
This year for Christmas Eve, I want to do an Olde' English dinner with a Roast Beef w/au jus, Yorkshire Pudding and my Mom's Cheesecake Recipe.
Everything else is up for grabs.
Just as long as I make those three dishes I will consider dinner complete. And just as long as we are all together and reasonably happy and healthy, I will consider Christmas complete also.
Saturday
just thinking
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
The unimaginable horrors of the Thirty Years War actually taught men a lesson, and for more than a hundred years the politicians and generals of Europe consciously resisted the temptation to use their military resources to the limits of destructiveness or (in the majority of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihilated. They were aggressors, of course, greedy for profit and glory; but they were also conservatives, determined at all costs to keep their world intact, as a going concern.
Assuming, then, that we are capable of learning as much from Hiroshima as our forefathers learned from Magdeburg, we may look forward to a period, not indeed of peace, but of limited and only partially ruinous warfare. During that period it may be assumed that nuclear energy will be harnessed to industrial uses. The result, pretty obviously, will be a series of economic and social changes unprecedented in rapidity and completeness. All the existing patterns of human life will be disrupted and new patterns will have to be improvised to conform with the nonhuman fact of atomic power. Procrustes in modern dress, the nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind doesn't fit- well, that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and a bit of amputation--the same sort of stretching and amputations as have been going on ever since applied science really got into its stride, only this time they will be a good deal more drastic than in the past. These far from painless operations will be directed by highly centralized totalitarian governments. Inevitably so; for the immediate future is likely to resemble the immediate past, and in the immediate past rapid technological changes, taking place in a mass-producing economy and among a population predominantly propertyless, have always tended to produce economic and social confusion. To deal with confusion, power has been centralized and government control increased. It is probable that all the world's governments will be more or less completely totalitarian even before the harnessing of atomic energy; that they will be totalitarian during and after the harnessing seems almost certain. Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. At present there is no sign that such a movement will take place.
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Aldous Huxley
Above quoted from Foreword
"A Brave New World"
interesting how we need so many things now a days. how we are still a product consuming, throw it away driven "mass" of sheep.
how we bury ourselves in "stuff" distracting us from the truly important issues of the care of our hopefully long term existence as a living organism on this planet.
i am not anti-techno, anti-progress in the least. i think Huxley used his extreme imagery to convey his thoughts and fears for our future as a race if we were to allow government and science to dictate how we utilize resources.
my fears are for the ones i meet day in and day out that are so wrapped up in "buying what the "Madison Ave" folks keep pumping out in front of them and the "hiding behind "drugs, alcohol, sex, non-stop rush rush" yet on the other hand rant about the state of our being. how much gas costs yet driving gas hogging vehicles, on and on. they are so clueless.
i have no clue where i am going with this but i do have enough of a clue that sometimes, just sometimes i read something written and am struck by the thought ... well. indeed.
Thursday
house breathes
you can almost see my house inhale and in they come, flowing through the living room, bumping the crates and guitars into the door jambs in their hurry to get set up and banging.
inhale out, they flow out and i have silence for maybe - 15 minutes.
another breath in and another set of kids present themselves, ready to go at it.
don't get me wrong, i am not complaining at all.
this has been going on since my kids were 1 and 2 years old.
i had pots and wooden spoons set aside just for them to bang away on and if neighbor kids showed up, out came more pots and wooden spoons.. but outside.
we had set up the yard as a kiddy wonderland, just so neighbor kids would come to "our" house to play. that way i knew just where my kids were at all times.
as they got older and the gear got vastly more expensive they moved into the barn. now it is the back of the house. go figure.
i also know how empty my life would be with out this constant breathing.
thank you life, for the little pleasures you give me.
done deal
they offered him a plea bargin and he will be in jail for a year.
very mixed emotions about that.
he is also having to deal with a probation violation, but at least for the next year, he won't be able to hurt anyone else.
glad that is over with as i am sure the guys are.
Tuesday
Monday
a song for martin
my second assignment with this company was caring for an elderly woman with alzheimer's.
i was utterly heart-broken for her husband and the family.
some days i would arrive to find him in tears, retreating to his chair, muttering. "why, lord. why".
i over heard him begging her to remember who he was.
i had to walk out of the room.
he had spent his married life working to provide this woman he loved so deeply with the means to enjoy their retirement years.
that dream was destroyed by one word.
i came to have a deep respect for him and his determination to keep his wife in her home surrounded by the life they had built together.
i do not know what the outcome for this family was as i was reassigned to an aphasic patient nearer to home after only a month, but i doubt it had a happy ending.
this past weekend i saw the movie "A Song for Martin".
i finally had to run grab the tissue box.
A Song For Martin
Sunday
it's fixed!
well, it's back! it's fixed! and it's about time.
i was into the withdrawals bit!
pcmovieman.com, webranger.net and saltwaterchimp.com kept my tears at bay, but it is still nice to have it all in one easy little program.
Saturday
nuturing of spirit
as we walked towards the lotus pond and Grotto, dedicated to Mary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, they would stop grazing - turning as one to stare at us for a few moments.
again, as if by a hidden signal, their heads dipped down as one, intent once more on their grazing, not bothered by our presence in the least.
the carekeeper drove up to unlock the chapel and hall for us all the while relating to us the incredible story of one Priest Chavara from Kerala, India that inspired the order of Catholic Priests named the "Carmelites of Mary Immaculate".
we walked into the chapel and as i looked around at the stained glass windows, Jesus on the cross above the altar, the hardwood floors and ceiling, the restored "Stations of the Cross" plagues, all lovingly done by hand .. i was quickly overwhelmed.
dang eyes - smarted, dang nose got stuffed up.
if you ever find yourself near Liberty,TN. treat yourself to the beauty of this gift of love nestled in the TN hills.
Larry the carekeeper, who in actuality is so much more to the wonder that is the Carmel Center of Spirituality, is an endless source of information and how this "piece of heaven on earth" came to be.
Carmel Center of Spirituality
Located 55 miles southeast of Nashville in rural Liberty, TN, is owned and operated by the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, an order of Catholic priests established in 1831 in Kerala, India.
Drop Larry or Bonnie Bean a line if you plan to visit at
- Carmel Center of Spirituality
P.O. Box 117
Liberty, TN 37095
P.S. as soon as i either - [1] get a new scanner to replace the one my kid stepped on or [2] get batteries and a cable for the digital camera a friend loaned me - i will post some pictures from the brochure i picked up.
Friday
dances on tippy toes
i won't pretend i know what he was doing over there (supporting the NATO contingent) as he is not allowed to discuss it with anyone.
i can only guess, coming from a military family and our father having done a tour of duty in Korea and a few in Vietnam, but i won't.
all i know and care about? is that he is home, he is well and he is with his family.
they are touring Europe and i can imagine him shaking off the last 6 months of being away from them.
welcome home.
and
take some pictures bro!
Wednesday
he is out on bail
the guys show up only to find out the crack head got out on bail as of 4am this morning.
new court date on the 8th of dec.
not looking good.
i am wondering how the crack head got the money to post bail on a 50k bond.
curious.