Hope

Yesterday, in an attempt to avoid the unavoidable (cleaning my floors), I decided to take my dog out for a walk.  Little Thurdy, as we call him, was all excited and happiness was literally radiating off his little, black body.  Even his ears looked happy.  Don't laugh.  This dog really does have very expressive ears.  But I digress, as usual.  While I was walking along our little road, in our little neighborhood, I was doing what most of us do nowadays.  Talking on my phone.  I had a good excuse.  My hubby is back on his travel schedule which means, phones, emails and such are the only way we get to communicate. He had been home for quite a spell due to some illness, so having him gone, as it always is when he has been home for an extended period of time, was a bit hard.  Annnnyway, as I was saying.  I was walking in our neighborhood, not paying any particular attention to anything other than the conversation I was having with my hubby and Thurdy's behavior on the other end of the leash.  We had just turned the corner onto another road that would take us back to the main road.  Dragonflies were darting and playing tag all around our heads.  Their games were driving poor Thurdy quite mad.  It's so hard being a natural born chaser and not being allowed to chase!  I was commenting on how annoyed I was feeling with these little bugs, who were making it necessary for me, to keep a really short leash on my four legged walking companion.  My eye followed a black dragonfly,  who suddenly darted up in a dramatic zigzag.  My breath caught and conversation stopped.  There, in front of me, was the most beautiful composition of light and color I had seen in a long time.   Shafts of translucent yellow bursting from behind a blue cloud. The first thought through my head was, "Oh gosh!  This is so beautiful!"  Followed by "DARN!  I don't have my camera."  Which in turn was followed with, "Your phone has a camera ..."  I quickly apologized to my hubby and put him on hold so I could quickly snap this lovely picture.   While I was trying to get it composed properly in my viewfinder,  my soul whispered, "Hope."  I took a deep breath and smiled.  Thurdy flapped his soft ears, loudly.

"Sorry, Darling." I said to my husband, "I just had to take a picture of this sunset!"  In my heart, I thought, "Wish I could have shared it with you."  So I did.  I uploaded the picture on Facebook.

On Designer Arachnids and their Furry Webs

Where I live, living with various kinds of critters and creepy crawlers is part of everyday life.  "Want me to check you for ticks?" is not just a pick up line, but a right neighborly thing to do.  I cannot say that I particularly like creepy crawlies and there are some critters that I prefer to ignore (i.e. skunks) but it would appear that my rather awkward attempts at being more hospitable have been recognized by the little souls in the creepy crawly community, and they just love to come on over to introduce themselves.  Normally, an introduction to somebody (or is that some-crawly?) wouldn't be too big of an issue.  I'd simply do what all great, proper "Southern Women" do.  Smile politely, ask the usual introductory type questions, and then once they leave, say something like "Bless his heart!"  The problem is, as it is with most inter cultural/species relations,  "How do you do" means something different, in say, Arachnid, than it does to us.  In Arachnid, "How do you do" seems to mean, "Well, move on in!  And bring grandma and PawPaw too!"  It was my grandmother who told me that spiders should be left alone when they're in your home.  Apparently, they help with keeping flies and mosquitoes down to a manageable level.  Then again, she also use to offset that by not minding the geckos coming in either.  Why?  Well, they help keep the spiders in check.  Out here, we don't have any gecko's.  Except for Gordon Gecco in my DVD collection, but I don't think he eats spiders.  Maybe newborn babies, definitely NOT Arachnids.

Previous years, I have been really good about spraying the house boundaries, inside and out.  I like Dr Henry McCloud's advice on keeping good boundaries in relationships.  It helps keep the relationships healthy and reduces unnecessary distress.  No reason why this shouldn't work with relationships of every kind, right?  As long as you do indeed spray your boundaries with "Bug b Gone" the creepies and crawlies tend to leave you in relative peace and your home can look like (and I don't mean to sound buggist here) quite human.  Sadly, when you forget to establish your boundaries properly, or the weather doesn't co-operate and stays at temperatures that cause the "boundary establisher" to lose some of it's "boundary staying power", then you have a serious influx of creepy crawlies, buggies, flies and even some strange caterpillar looking dude with bad hair (at least I hope that's hair!)

This year the Arachnids seem to have undergone a wonderful baby boom!  Mazel Tov!  Not so much reason to celebrate: the amount of time I spend taking down unwanted cobwebs.  No, there are no such things as wanted cobwebs in my home either.  When you pair a burgeoning Arachnid populace with at least three animals trying to shed their winter coats and just not quite getting there, you end up with "fuzzy wall" effect.  It's when it looks like part of your walls, or stair risers or odd corners near the ceiling, have on little fur coats, or little hand muffs or those wonderful looking fur hats they need to wear in Russia during the winter months.

I will say this for my eight legged "friends".  They do have individual style.  Some of them like to use all three types of fur available to them i.e. dark grey, light grey and black.  Other's like to keep their palette more monochrome (or is that mono-critter?) and stick with only one.  Some make interesting patterns with the different kinds of fur, and others just don't care and just throw a whole bunch of stuff together and hope it works.

June must have been their equivalent of fashion week!  Man, were these little bugs diligent workers.  No sooner had you wrecked one creation, than another one was underway.  I'd go to sleep in a fur free home, and wake up to new furry cobwebs in the corners.  Some audacious dude, actually made a furry "stairway" from the kitchen light to the kitchen counter.   I had hoped that repeatedly tearing down their work would have sent the message loud and clear:  GO AWAY!  Alas, I suspect that tearing down their work so diligently is Arachnid for:  GOOD JOB!  KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!  I thought that by withholding their main raw material source (malting animal hair) that would slow them down.  The animals were subjected to heavy bushing, and in desperation, yes, vacuuming to get the malting done with.  What was I thinking?  These little dudes aren't afraid of getting the raw material from the source themselves!  And enlisting the help of a six legged friend is not beneath them either!   So today begins my Arachnicide.  Maybe word will get round and they'll stop trying to set up shop in Mason D' Lang.  I can only hope ...

The State of the Economy as Analyzed by Aldi's Parking Lot

About three years ago, my hubby and I took serious stock of our financials.   He has a really great job and gets paid quite well for it, but for some reason, it didn't feel that way at home.  Any analysis requires the use of spreadsheets, especially if you're married to a geek.   Columns were set up, formulas entered, data entered and duly crunched and the result was perturbing ....  We were to blame.  If we chose to use an analogy for our bank account, it would be an incredibly holy bucket.  No, I don't mean the sacred, sanctified kind either.  I mean the kind with holes in it, that leaks everything out at a rapid pace.  Dear Liza would be at a loss as to what to prescribe for this Dear Henry's bucket!  We weren't much better than Dear Liza.  We looked at the numbers and then ran them again.  After the third or fifth time of doing so, there was nothing to do but accept the truth:  we were wasting and squandering our money.  No, there was no warm fuzzy feeling that came with that.  Quietly, I berated Suze Ormand for suggesting a truthful evaluation of financials with partners on the latest Oprah show.  Maybe the folks who believed Oprah had some nefarious agenda were right:  She's coming for my bliss!  Nothing to do but face the seriously, off-key, out of step crazy noise that was our music at the time.  Way to depressed to come up with anything positive right then, we did what every mature person does in that kind of situation.  We ordered take out and watched a movie.

Not too long after, we girded ourselves with courage (which I have to admit, felt like an ill fitting garment being held up by rope) and started talking about how we could improve our situation and mend "Dear Henry's" bucket.  One of the first things we decided was to start shopping at Aldi.  If I only learnt one thing worth learning in Germany (which, by the way, I learnt way, way more than that) it was that Aldi and Lidl are the best, most cost effective little places to shop.  Period.  Why?  Well, for starters, they only stock necessities for the most part.  They also don't have oodles of brands.  Most of the time you have one brand to choose from.  However, they do strive to get you the very best quality at the very best price. So the single brand isn't too bad (on most things). The entire time we lived in Germany, that's where we shopped.   When I first started going to my old stomping grounds, the parking lot was hardly full at any given time.  Most of the cars in the parking lot were really old, some of them looked as though they barely made it to the store at all.

In the beginning, I would supplement my Aldi cart with some Big Chain Store shopping too.  Why?  Well, and I do beg your pardon Aldi, their dishwasher liquid just didn't clean the way I liked.  So I would trek off to Big Chain Store Inc. to get dishwasher liquid.  In the beginning, Aldi didn't have a great choice in meat cuts, so I would get that from Big Chain Store Inc too.  Sometimes, I do confess, to getting other cleaning products from Big Chain Store Inc.  This went on for a while, until even I couldn't ignore a very disturbing trend.  My Big Chain Store Inc bill was inching up every month.  For what I would pay for a cart choc full of groceries at Aldi, I was having to pay for just a few items at Big Chain Store Inc.  I started trying more and more of Aldi's products to see how many I could get away with using.  During this same time, I started noticing that the parking lot at Aldi was filling up.  On some days, you couldn't get anywhere near the door.  Heavens to Betsy!  You actually had to walk!  At first the cars were still kind of old, beat up jalopies.  You know, the ones that are held together, quite literally in some cases, by duct tape and string.  A few months after that, I was having to wait for a space to open up and the car I was waiting on was one of those huge Infinity SUV's.  For those of you who don't live in the States, this is what it looks like.  Those baby's are usually only driven by the well to-do's.  It was at that moment that I scanned the parking lot.  Oh my stars!  The parking lot still had it's "usual" customer jalopies, but these were interspersed with Lexuses, Lincoln's, Acura's, new model Honda's, brand new Nissan Quest's.  It hit me like a ton of bricks:  everyone is feeling the pinch.  That neighbor living down the road in that really big house, with all those fancy cars out front, yes, even they are feeling the pinch.  I can remember being so shocked by what I saw in that parking lot that day, I called my husband and told him about my observations.  We both wondered why there hadn't been a story on the economy at that point.  Or why there was no talk about inflation or what our inflation numbers were.  Having originated from a country where, more than a huge chunk of our adult lives, had inflation in the double digits, we could recognize the signs of "upwardly mobile" inflation.  All that could be heard on the main news outlets was deafening silence or lots of busy noise.

My local little Aldi is still doing brisk business.  It's parking lot looking very similar to the lot at one of Nashville's premier shopping malls.  It's clientele has changed from being elderly and poor to being a snap shot of every walk of American life.  Students, young professionals, lots of housewives from every conceivable income bracket, the elderly and poor.  We're all there, trying to squeeze one more tear out of Mr Lincoln's eye.

So for now, I will use my Aldi parking lot as an economic barometer.  When I have to engage in less aggressive parking procurement from the Lexuses, Acuras, Infinities and Lincolns, I will know that our economy has finally, truly, turned a corner.

Educating Jared ....

When it comes to school and my son, the reaction is a bit like oil and water.  The two simply don't mix unless you put them in a blender and pulse it really well.  You can see why that wouldn't really work, right? First, I can't really put my son into a bl .... oh, you get it?  Great!  I was using the analogy to show how tough it has been, not just on my son, but on the rest of the family, to get him through school.  As with any parent, the goal isn't to just get him through it, but to help him do his best.  This year we start high school, and I have to admit to some trepidation.  If previous years are anything to go by, it's not going to be fun.  Why?  Well, my son has ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and Dyslexia.  The combination of these two things make traditional school a bit of a challenge for him.  Add in hormones and teen angst, and you have a wonderful little concoction guaranteed to bring all manner of fun and games for the school year.

 I need to make it clear that my son is not a dull boy.  He is really smart.  However, keeping track of worksheets and paper is a SERIOUS challenge for him.  We once did a Social Studies assignment THREE times.  Exasperated, I eventually emailed his teacher and begged him to come up with some plan for my son to get credit for this work.  He was doing it, but getting it from home to school and then from school to the teacher's desk, was presenting a really HUGE problem.  We managed to come up with something that worked.

The longer my son has been in school, the more I have realized that traditional schooling just doesn't work for kids who are borderline.   They're smart and can do the work, but they face other challenges that aren't addressed within the school system as it is now.  Dyslexia is no longer recognized as a learning disability.  I'm sure there is benefit to that, but I think there does still need to be some kind of provision made for children who do have dyslexia.  As someone who has a touch of it myself, I can testify to how miserable it can make your life.  How difficult it can make learning, understanding maths, or try to do something like accounting (try doing that when you keep swapping your numbers around). Yet research has shown that these kids are often the creative ones.  The original thinkers who invent useful things or birth new ideas.  If you can stop them from falling through the cracks, that is.

The previous school year was a tough one for us.  It was touch and go as to whether our son would make it through.  We had received a couple of notes from the school indicating that he might not qualify to be promoted. He surprised us all by passing based almost entirely on his TCAP (State standardized tests) results, which he totally ACED.  Proof again, the boy isn't dumb.  It also proved to us, that maybe we need to start looking at other ways to educate our son.  It doesn't seem right to keep him in a system that seems to undermine his confidence and play primarily to his weaknesses all the time.  Who of us would like that?  Then again, there aren't that many options out there for families who don't want a "religious" based education (not that I have anything against it, it's just not for us) and can't afford private schooling (who seem to think that adding workload is the way to go).  With a fair amount of digging, I was able to find some online options, which look really promising.  One is totally covered by the State, so tuition is free, but all the work (which follows the same curriculum the schools in our state follow) can be done at home, online.  There's plenty of support for parents as far as planning and instruction is concerned, which is something this mom needs, and the student can work at their own pace.  The only downer?  They don't have approval for High School in our State yet.  Translation:  we'll have to fork out some money.  Not as much as we would for private school, but still a substantial amount.  Our only solution:  to send him to "regular" school for the first two semesters, and then school him at home for the remainder of the year.  That way we can see if he can cope in "regular" school and it helps us with cash flow a little.

There really is a need for our education system to accommodate kids with ADD/ADHD and dyslexia.  Especially seeing as most of our kids are on some kind of medication for ADD/ADHD.  They're not in the minority anymore, and I suspect that it wouldn't take BIG, expensive changes to make school and learning enjoyable for these, often, talented and super intelligent, children.  Maybe just a new way at looking at education and how to go about it.

The Eye of the Beholder

So I was going through my usual news feed to see what's going on in the world today, when I came across this blog.  Anyone who knows me, knows I love movies.  I would never consider myself a "critic", but I like to think I know greatness from drivel.  Going through that list, I'm not so sure.  That got me thinking again about the age old discussion about art and beauty.  Something that was really entertaining to me, could  easily be not at all entertaining to others.  A piece of art that appeals to my aesthetic, might be considered absolute nonsense to someone else.

In keeping with the original concept, I decided to go through the movies I have seen in this century, so far, and pick out the ones I really enjoyed.

1.  Bridget Jones' Diary

2.  Lord of the Rings (first and third films were the best!)

3.  The Harry Potter series (everyone was well done and totally "magical")

4.  Monster Inc

5.  Captain Corelli's Mandolin (little known, but oh so romantic!)

6.  Catch Me If You Can

7.  The Pianist

8.  About A Boy (I loved the story!)

9.  Minority Report (one of the most watched DVD's in my home)

10.  The Bourne movies

11.  The Spiderman Movies (the old ones stary Toby McGuire and the new reboot)

12.  The Shrek movies

13.  Secondhand Lions  (Great story)

14.  Peter Pan

15.  Mystic River

16.  Matchstick Men

17.  Elf

18.  Super Size Me (my family's support of their chain dwindled to almost nothing since watching that movie!)

19.  Finding Nemo

20.  The Incredibles (laughed out loud in the cinema!)

21.  Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (surprisingly good)

22.  Finding Neverland

23.  The Aviator

24.  Million Dollar Baby

25.  Hellboy

26.  Ray

27. Hotel Rwanda

28.  The Constant Gardner (it seems to move slowly, but the story was really great)

29.  Pride and Prejudice

30.  Walk the Line

31.  A History of Violence

32.  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (I really loved Johnny Depp in this movie!)

33.  Cinderella Man (Beautiful!)

34.  The Queen

35.  Casino Royale

36.  Little Miss Sunshine (surprisingly delightful)

37.  Letters from Iwo Jima (even war has two sides)

38.  Ratatouille

39.  Juno

40.  Eastern Promises (violent but great movie)

41.  3:10 to Yuma

42.  Iron Man

43.  Transsiberian

44.  Wall-E

45.  Precious

46.  Up (the best story ever told!)

47.  District 9 (go SA film industry!)

48.  Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (the kids enjoyed this one)

49.  Avatar

50.  Inglorious Bastards

51.  Toy Story 3 (WOW!!)

52.  True Grit

53.  The King's Speech

54.  Tangled

55.  Black Swan (twisty)

56.  Inception

57.  Despicable Me

58.  Catfish

59.  Senna (a documentary)

60.  The Artist (surprisingly entertaining)

61.  Moneyball

62.  Mission Impossible (all of the them)

63.  The Descendants

64.  Jane Eyre

65.  Rango

66.  Source Code

67.  The Avengers

68.  Hunger Games

69.  Brave

70.  Jeff, Who Lives At Home

71.  Madagascar 3

72.  Chronicle

73.  The Rum Diaries

74.  Alice in Wonderland

75.  Gran Torino (Mr Eastwood, you amaze me!)



Enjoy your weekend and hope you get to see some great movies - whether in the cinema or at home.

Of Food and Politics

What is a girl to do if she just wants a really good chicken sandwich?  One without a side of reproach and a lashing of intolerance?  It has been a real quandary for me.

There are other chains who make chicken sandwiches.  I've heard tell they are good.  Problem is I've already committed to boycott the one chain for their shameless advertising to kids and for, in my mind, contributing towards the obesity problem that is facing, not just this country, but the world.  Which leaves me with only a few places to go in search of my chicken sandwich.  If taste weren't an issue, I'm sure the other places would be just fine.  But there's something really magical about having a "chikin" sandwich as opposed to a chicken sandwich .... and there in lay my unending struggle.

It's well known amongst patrons,  Chik-Fil-A are a company run on Christian principles.  Just ask any sad soul who had a hankering for their magical "chikin" sandwiches on a Sunday.  Yes, they are one of the few big chains that do not do business on Sunday in adherence to "keeping the Sabbath holy" commandment.  If you think it's a pain having ONE business closed on a Sunday, try the majority of businesses closed for business on Sunday in Germany (no, they do not consider themselves a "Christian" country). You see,  it could be worse as far as inconvenience goes.  Therefore, it couldn't have come as any surprise when the company's CEO was reported as saying that they support the biblical definition of marriage and family.  Again, anyone who has needed their "chikin" fix on a Sunday, could have figured that one out.  Yet the furor his statement caused, I think, surprised everyone.  To my way of thinking, he is entitled to his opinion, and his statements are in line with the principles his company is founded on.  Where my discomfort began was in finding out that they support groups who actively advocate against gay rights.  It just seemed .... wrong to me.  If, as Christians, we are to treat others as we would want to be treated, does it make sense for us to be funding anti-gay rights?  Wouldn't that money be put to better use in supporting education or healthcare for the poor?  Shouldn't we be careful how we tread lest we end up having our rights trodden on?  As Christians, we believe that what you sow, you reap.   We cannot sow intolerance, bigotry and judgment and expect a harvest of mercy, love and peace.  Yes, we have been called to be light and salt in the world, but we achieve that by the love we show each other and in how we treat others who are different from us.  I think there's a reason why Jesus shied away from politics in his time and sometimes I wonder if turning our faith into a political movement, has been a disservice to us as a community, and our faith as a whole.  We can still be involved in politics.  We should go vote, but leave the political maneuvering to the politicians.  When Jesus was presented with a coin and asked who they should pay taxes to (a hot button political issue in his time), Jesus response was to ask them who's head was on the coin.  At that time it was Caesar's.  To which Jesus replied, "Pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God."  Shouldn't we be remembering that we are supposed to be Christ's Ambassadors while we are here on this earth.  The things we say and do in His name reflect on Him.  Are we accurately portraying who Jesus is?  While He was here He was considered by the religious to be a drunkard, glutton, womanizer and a friend of tax collectors.  I have no doubt that if He were here today, He would attend Pride and stop by Chik-Fil-A afterwards for lunch.

In this country, we have freedom of religion and speech.  There was nothing wrong in someone expressing his opinion of an issue.  We shouldn't be trying to bully him just for expressing an opinion, but should a company express an opinion and if it's known for being a Christian company, is it wise to express a political opinion?

While ya'll argue and chew on that, I think I'll go get me a chikin sandwich ...

The "Learn Something New" Club

A few of my friends and I have committed to get together to try and learn new crafts every week.  So far we have tried crocheting (single crochet stitch) and painting a waterfall.

I enjoy crocheting, and so it was up to me to show my friends how to go about doing it.  It didn't take long for me to realize that as a crochet instructor, I totally stink!  Still, it was fun to try and teach (I use this term in the loosest sense of the word) these ladies how to do a single crochet.  This week, it was my other friend's turn to host a "Learn Something New" gathering.  She love's art and wanted to learn how to paint and so found an instructional video on YouTube that would show us aspiring artists how to go about creating a masterpiece.  Masterpieces they were (especially if you think of a Masterpiece being a one of a kind or first of it's kind ergo Master).  What amazed me the most is how very simple a great artist makes something complicated look.  In a few deft strokes he had the beginnings of a great landscape picture.  Our reproductions, didn't seem to mirror anything like he had.  Oh well ...  The point wasn't so much about being completely proficient in something, so much as the experience of stepping out of your comfort zone and learning something new.  In that regard, I think all of us scored a high "A".

Below is an example of my finished project in yesterday's adventure into something new.  However, if you want to see some really beautiful pictures, you should head on over here to my friend, Elsa's virtual art gallery.  Now that's some beautiful art!