26 things that are good about the BAD economy

Snow here and tired tired.
Ran across this article
as an example here are two of the things that might not be so bad:
26 not so bad things about the bad economy

17. Can stop worrying about what bling is.

18. You just might possibly finally lose weight.

Read the rest, will give you a laugh instead of listening to the Illinois Governors potty mouth.

How to Understand Kashmir and Survive the Jihadis: An Interview with Sir Salman Rushdie

Link to a VERY interesting story here.

If you know what a fatwa is or a Jihadi and know who Salman Rushdie is you need to read this article. If you don't know any of these things you REALLY need to read this article. If you can wade through it that is, VERY interesting. Doesn't tell you how to save money @ the grocery store but I do admire a man who goes about with an escort on crutches when his life has been threatened repeatedly by a rather large group of fanatics and the hotel clerk is afraid to mention his name aloud.

Puppies save three-year-old boy lost in freezing Virginia woods

It seems this 3 year old boy wandered away from home and spent a 17 degree night outside in the cold protected by two furry friends.

quote:
A toddler lost in the Virginia woods was back home safe Sunday thanks to two puppies who kept him warm through a harrowing night of freezing temperatures........another member of the search party that found the boy, said the puppies refused to leave his side.

As the child was placed in an ambulance to be taken to a local hospital for examination, "The puppies were watching where he went.

unquote:

Read the complete story HERE

I know dogs sense helplessness, I had a dog when I was a child that wouldn't let me get close to water and would start tugging @ me if I started climbing when I was a toddler, I can barely remember it but he was my built in babysitter, Shep, he was an english sheperd, big furry black dog. Lets remember our animal guardians today no matter how large or small.

whazz happenin

The English bulldog of my nephews has found a name, Newman, off of Seinfeld, I thought it was appropriate but Mikey (the nephew, he's over 6' and over 40 but he's still Mikey) wanted a literary name since he is like a high school English teacher or literature or whatever they're calling it. He likes to read like me. Anyway I reminded him that Newman wasn't a very literary name, haven't gotten a response back yet.

I let the kittens out for about half an hour (kittens are inside until they are like 1/3 grown and can survive outside hopfully, haven't been outside for like a month or two) while I was cleaning off the patio/apron/driveway/playground large chunk of concrete outside the back door. I put our 10 year old bar-b-que up, some sort of record for a grill, swept all the acorns (no acorn famine here) and sticks from the ancient oak tree at the corner. Our storage shed went flying in a tornado a couple years ago and hasn't gotten replaced so it all goes in sort of a hidden spot by the back door where the cats have a shelf to eat on and I keep my everyday gardening utensils and the grill etc. I put the kittens there and the other half grown kittens from the other two bunches of kittens I rescued were out there. My other outside dog was out there and maybe my cousins dog and my other two dogs. Guess what happened?? The young kittens rubbed against the dogs and followed them around and hissed @ the other half grown cats, they knew the dogs were familiar and friendly because they had been in the house some but the cats don't come in or aren't supposed to??? Makes me a little leery of letting the kittens out but the rule is dogs in the house that are housetrained but not cats and we have a building full of straw for them to stay warm in so soon the kittens have to go out. BUT what will happen to them if they love the dogs and expect no harm from them and are afraid of cats? I'm sure they will learn they are cats @ some point but it's rather amusing.

Also made me think about prejudice and how what we are used to is what we aren't afraid of. Not necessarily because it's better but because it's familiar.

We've all done our fair share of career changes and lifestyle changes lately. I hope we haven't made any flawed choices because of fear of the unfamiliar. I know our country is in uncharted territory right now and it is scary to have less money than you used to, trust me it's either been feast or famine most of my life, BUT that doesn't mean all things that happen will be bad. Board games and home cooking are making comebacks. I think people have came to the realization that they can think and what doesn't make sense really does not make sense, it's not because they are stupid that all the excuses for the economy doesn't make sense, it's because they are excuses for greed plain and simple. What does this have to do with prejudice? Sometimes prejudice is just fear of the unknown, we don't know what will happen to us or our country, personally I think it will get worse before it gets better. I hope it's never the same, I hope we are more sensible as a people and realize we can't have new ALL the time and we can still laugh and love and enjoy each other because that's where the true wealth and happiness are at.

Adopt a Boxer

You can find pets for adoption on moads4u or on the Stover Animal Control Website.
This is Miller, he is a boxer/lab mix with that special look that made me take my yellow puppy home when the last thing I thought I needed was a baby lab. Miller is beyond part of his puppy days but he still has that I wanna play look about him. Check him out or the other animals @ the websites.


More about Miller:
Nov. 5, Miller was an owner surrender. He does well on leash and gets along with everyone. He is partly house broken but needs work. The girl at the vet office said he never once made a mess in his run for the 24 hours he was there. He could not wait to get outdoors to go when I picked him up. His eyes have such a great expression. Adoption $75.00

David Carr The Night of the Gun

I've been reading David Carr's book The Night of the Gun where he relives his 20s in detail and then his later life and goes back to revisit the people who lived it with him to see what they remember about the past. The gist of the tale is the night the book title is taken from the ownership or if there was a gun or what happened with it differ hugely as with all the recollections in the book. Depending on the person’s personality, ability to recall, or differing interpretations among other quirks plus what actually happened all culminate into what each person ultimately remembers as truth. It's a good book, one that kept me up till 2am when I finished it!!

Personally I've found this to be true in all groups especially families or extended families. We had an ah-ha moment in our family recently where decades of seemingly mean, cruel, or rude remarks suddenly all made sense. (Also my mother’s dedication to being strict with her kids was explained partially, it backfired in a big way, she raised two black sheep!) Decades of secrecy were suddenly shot down and it turns out EVERYONE knew, just not anyone under the age of say 75 in 2006. This led me to question relatives on another facet of family history which turned out to have two VERY different interpretations. We won't go into detail because some of those who care are still alive but it was either a case of abandonment and rescue of an unmarried mother or parental interference in a love affair that turned out badly and then the parental influence repeating itself in the subsequent generation. That's why my cousin and I are only 1/2 cousins. Seems our family has more than it's share of these accounts and differing interpretations but not enough to cause rifts, just puzzlement. Such as the great great-grandfather that abandoned his family and had another family but came back to visit the first family and wife, to give money or see his first wife hasn't been decided, they would meet in the woods across the highway from where I now sleep.

We question our children’s memories and those of our grandchildren, how could they possibly possess the rich and varied fabric our memories bring us? I let my kids go wander the farm but not the countryside like my parents did with me. My grandchildren had their Rhino type vehicle over here on Thanksgiving and rode it around the farm, they were never out of hearing and seldom out of sight though, that’s just the way the world has changed since the days when I was a child and couldn’t be found for hours and hours. They and their mother and aunt tried to find where the original log house stood before MY great grandparents moved it to it's present location and couldn't. I think I can find where it stood but we are talking almost 130 years ago. Family legend has it that it was the doctor’s house and when our town was burned during the civil war it stood on the south end of town and was spared. My great-grandparents moved from Germany with their 5 children and bought the farm and moved the house piece by piece, log by log, to the almost exact center of the farm. It's been covered in tin for as long as I can remember so it's remarkably well preserved. It's also hideously spooky with tattered wallpaper, broken boards and it's share of creatures (and lipstick writing on a door from my cousin and I one day!!). BUT it's a memory for my grandchildren and hopefully their children. So is riding the Rhino through the fields with their mother and their aunt whooping and jumping terraces, terrace jumping is a big sport and probably not what my dad had in mind when he built them but oh well. My great-grandparents never thought an automobile would be involved in a nostalgic memory, much less something called a Rhino, I never thought guitar hero or wii boxing would be a family memory but they are intertwined now too. All of these memories whether pleasant or unpleasant are part of our wealth as a person, as people, as a country, and as citizens of the world and should be cherished.

Memories and Ramblings

I came home from work Thanksgiving eve to find the turkey breast done in the slow cooker thanks to my daughter, my nephew and youngest stepson were also here. We aren't talking teenagers here, stepson was the youngest and he is 25. We had a really good talk about family etc., my stepson echoed most of our thoughts in that his childhood wasn't idyllic when he was living it, his stepmother was known for sneak attacks for one thing, catching him doing something wrong and punishing immediately, imagine the horror!! LOL But after being around others who came from TRULY dysfunctional homes or abusive situations we all realized how very lucky our lives had been. We all sat around recalling memories and analyzing the latest member of the family we thought needed analyzing.

This isn't a sales pitch but it involves a website for ads something like craigslist. It's the brainchild of my cousin with embellishments by me. MOADS4U came about because we were tired of being pushed around by Ebay and wanted something for locals and beyond. Right now it's a little rough but it does work. Collectively we have 20 years of computer and web experience. My cousin is the web person, I'm more of an OS hobby person, I think networking is fun? We've been on ebay for 6 years, been power sellers, I want my feedback on my tombstone, that's how good it is.

What does this have to do with family (I can sense the stifled yawns right now)? My cousin and I have been friends for all of our lives, best friends. We never had to think about it, we always had a best friend. She had a sister who was quite a bit younger and we both had older brothers but we were always best friends. We aren't even first cousins, her mother and my father were first half cousins (and were always there for each other, all of the old diaries from the 30s and 40s have the two families getting together around the wood stove playing board games and then playing in the snow or that's how it seems). On the site MOADS4U the top pictures are her grandpa, a old bus or car, a bank building which was the office where we both worked for awhile (it was the office for my husbands trucking company then), her mother as a girl (my surrogate mother when I needed one), and a creek which was known as Uncle Sam's (not the guy on the poster, Uncle Sam White who used to own it). The creek was a magical place with a rope to swing off of, a log to sit in the water on or dive off of till the next flood washed it away, a gravel bar for fires and wiener roasts. Back in the 70s before pollution or keeping babies away from life was thought of I took my oldest daughter swimming there when she was only 5 months old, she LOVED it and was surrounded by all the town kids who had come down to the swimming hole to cool off. The water ran through miles of woods and fields, it wasn't chlorinated but if it had rained that summer it was fairly clean. We've taken her children there, they think it's great but REALLY like the pool. LOL

We started the website together after doing websites for many people around the country. We share that and a view (my cousin lives next door, down the road if you will) dogs (my dog races their car when they come home and their dog is always here when I come home) and sometimes vehicles. Our lives have paralleled with first marriages that were "forever" to guys who were friends and had some drug problems shall we say. We both grew tired of the lying and just general craziness being married to those two brought. We both ended up getting divorced although hers was more drawn out and mine was faster, she had 3 kids, I had two, we acquired 2 and 5 stepchildren with our second marriages. We were remarried within 2 weeks of each other to a cop and a truck driver although they are so much more than that. Her cop is a gunsmith @ heart and my truck driver is a farmer @ heart (BTW they aren't perfect but we don't wonder what they are up to most of the time). Our children whether natural or step have done us proud which is probably a mid western term but that's how it is.

All of this talk of family the other night (we stayed up till 2 am, STUPID when we had to get up @ 7 am and start cooking and go to the train station) reminded me of our childhoods and while not totally idyllic by today's standards they were almost so. We rode horses and rode horses, sometimes with saddles, more often not, one Indian Pony we could ride without a bridle and jump on him from behind. We broke a pony for the neighbor and it ended up rolling over on me, luckily it didn't weigh hardly anything. We took my pony in an old abandoned log cabin and then discovered there was a cellar that wasn't too sturdy under the pony, all was well and good but that was probably the stupidest thing we did. We swam with the horses and on occasion my pony would chase us, she wasn't known for her pleasant temperament (biting, chasing, and rearing were more here style than nuzzling) (we probably should have been killed @ some point from being thrown off a horse but we figured out how to roll in a ball and relax and could be tossed with the best).

We climbed every roof on the farm except where our parents could see us climbed to the peak, slid down, and then jumped off, luckily it was only like 10 ft to soft grass but it still wasn't smart (all the falling or being bucked off of horses came in handy probably). We explored another abandoned house in the woods (was actually my great aunts but I didn't know it @ the time), my cousin had a broken arm and we took the nails out of the window panes and put the panes of glass in when we climbed out then they promptly fell out and broke. The house was full of awakening black snakes and others in the spring which gave us both a horrible lifelong fear of snakes, the walls had been insulated with mud and straw and I guess it was a good place for them to hibernate. We ran to a door which turned out to be a cellar with steps going to nowhere but a pool of water and bones from animals that had fell in the cellar window and not been able to get out. SPOOKY!! LOL especially for 11 or 12 years old! Where were our parents? Our mothers were doing something in the house with their bouffant hairdos and flowery dresses or Capri's, as long as we didn't have to go to the doctor when we got back and our clothes weren't in tatters we were OK as long as we were GONE and we would just show up for meals. Our fathers were in my dads mechanics shop in overalls (our dads were both big men, not tall but both dark and burly, spoiled us but we did what they said when they said it) working on something or another or exchanging stories with Sunday loafers around a wood stove with bottles of pop in glass bottles, sometimes we played in the shop, whirled each other around with an automotive belt while the other one was on a mechanics stool with wheels and then LET GO! We grew up with tales of how the moon would spill it's magic out if a quarter moon was tipped or how the Spaniards had abandoned some treasure long long ago. The first one nobody really believed the second one no one ever found the treasure and I think it's long gone if it ever was there, a form of that story exists almost everywhere. We had annual beginning of summer and end of summer cookouts @ the creek with swimming parties where our parents actually would get wet and quit fussing about all the work they had to do. When my husband and I were cleaning out 50 year old hay etc. out of the barn last winter we found the trivet device my dad had made for those cookouts (actually he made it for cooking while hunting I think but my mom put a stop to the 26 foxhounds he had @ one time). Our cookouts were kool-aid, fried potatoes always and hamburgers or fried eggs and they always tasted GREAT. We went exploring @ my cousins farm also to old abandoned mines filled with water that we threw rocks in and speculated on their depth and whether their were bodies in there, exotic names like the Ouchita, signs of mans work in the woods abandoned and grown over. We got older and rode in her brothers old cars and wondered which of his friends might be boyfriend material. Then marriages and children came, working and hoping and surviving, now we are both grandmothers.

I'm hopefully able to look back with fondness and ahead with zest although the zest is hard to conjure up some mornings,we are not OLD yet though. My cousin would abhor the thought as she is only a year younger, OK a year and 43 days, but we do have a treasure trove of memories and history. Actually our parents were both older than normal for the 50s and 60s so we are of an age when we remember our parents best. I don't think we are totally unique in our relationship but life has given us each someone to lean on and remember with (what brought this on was trying to remember if we cleaned Aunt Betty's house for her one day and WHY we cleaned Aunt Betty's house, which used to be Uncle Oscars and had a huge screened in porch, was once a log cabin and was by a creek, I thought I can ask Peggi if she remembers!). I look on our website as a modern day quilt made by two cousins, friends, sisters, however you want to qualify our relationship. A few stitches here, a blog there, a scrap of fabric here, a new ad there..... and life goes on.