I love kids. All kids but there’s a special place in my heart for kids in the primary grades and not just because I’m a former first grade teacher.
I love them because at that age kids are happy, optimistic, and ebullient. They all want to learn and they all believe that they can.
Side note: They can learn. They all can.
In all the years I taught first grade, I never met a kid who didn’t want to learn. Never met one who didn’t believe they could learn to read and conquer the world.
A horse-loving daughter convinced us that we needed horses. We decided she was right and got a horse. Then another. And so on. When we got that first horse, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. But we learned! Did we ever learn!
The main thing to know about horses is that they like to go visiting. As in break through their fencing and wander about the countryside. Especially if you have one horse that’s unusually social. We had such a horse. And when he went visiting, the rest of the horses went with him.
Our neighbors were wonderful. We got calls when our horses showed up in their barnyards. And we went to get them.
One time, my daughter – the horsewoman – and I were the only people home when we got such a call. So we went to get the horses. And guess what – I had to help bring them home. Which meant I had to actually get on one of them and ride said horse home while helping to convince the others to follow.
This took place along a busy highway.
I was never so scared in my life.
My daughter, of course, wasn’t unfazed and when we got home said, “That was nice, wasn’t it?”
What most people don’t know is how powerful a cupcake is.
Think about it.
It’s small enough not to feel guilty about eating one. And since there’s no obvious spot missing to show that you sneaked a treat as there would be if you cut out a piece of a cake, no one will know if you eat more than one. Or more than two. Or more than three. And so on.
See what I mean? Just by existing and sitting so innocently on the kitchen counter and looking so delicious they draw us in until we succumb to their siren’s song.
All that taste! All those calories! And we don’t regret eating them because no one will know unless they count and who counts cupcakes? Not my friends because they like cupcakes too!
When I realized that coffee was giving me indigestion, I almost had an emotional breakdown. I mean, who can live without coffee, especially in the morning? I certainly couldn’t.
How could I surivive without my morning coffee? COULD I survive? Not likely!
Actually, tragedy never did strike. I did survive. I transitioned to tea and it wasn’t even difficult.
Did you know you can drink tea with cream and sugar or those wonderful flavored creams?
So I’m now a dedicated tea drinker.
I hope tea never gives me indigestion. If it does, what will I do next?
My mother was such a person. When she died at 103, the church was filled to overflowing with people she’d helped during her life.
Some shadows are very long but aren’t as nice as my mother’s. Control freaks. Pushy people. Gossips.
My husband’s shadow was longish. He fished, hunted, played football, snowmobiled, and did just about every other masculine, difficult thing imaginable and often took a kid or two with him. Our kids are now self-sufficient adults and I believe that he was part of the reason why.
Not everyone has a long shadow. I think mine is small and I prefer it that way because I prefer living my life in solitary contentment and letting each day unfold as it will.
My daughter took this picture a few mornings ago. She was at work as the sun came up and she thought it was beautiful so she took a picture and shared it with the world.
What is it about sunrises that speaks to us so deeply? The promise of another day? The beauty of the colored sky? The return of light after darkness? The awesome expanse of grandeur slowly spreading across the sky and surrounding us? The beauty of a new beginning?
I admit that I don’t know. Don’t have a clue.
I just know that I’m glad my daughter shared this picture with the world because perhaps it’s all of those things jumbled together and because of her we too can experience that lovely morning.
I admit it. I’m a cat person. And a dog person and a horse person and more.
But for the last few years my life companion has been feline so my animal musings these days tend towards cats.
I love a cat on my lap and Smoke isn’t shy about telling me when he needs ‘lap’ time. He’s also not shy about telling me when he’s hungry, even if it’s two in the morning. Especially if it’s two in the morning. And I’ve not needed an alarm clock since he came to live with me because he makes sure I don’t oversleep.
In other words, he’s an expert on being a cat. If he ran for president of the House Cat Society, he’d have a good chance of winning. He knows every nook and cranny of his kingdom as well as the idiosyncrasies of his subjects.
But I love him to pieces. Including when he’s asleep. Maybe especially when he’s asleep. Like in the picture. He’s so cute.
I love onion rings. Love them. Actually, I love anything fried but onion rings hold a special place in my heart.
But there’s a problem with onion rings and I’m throwing this out for any entrepreneur who wants to start a new business.
The one and only problem with onion rings is that whomever makes them seems to always use huge onions. This is a problem because, as anyone who eats as many onion rings as I do knows, it’s nearly impossible to eat just a part of an onion ring. Impossible to bite down and just get a bite sized portion because if you try, what happens is that the onion slides out and drops to the ground (ugh!) leaving just the fried coating. And you can’t fit an entire very large onion ring in your mouth in one bite. (Unless you are willing to look like a greedy fool.) So you are left with the coating and no onion.
Maybe it’s old age, but I simply can’t eat a whole, huge onion ring. Sooooo — like I said —- if anyone out there starts making fried onion rings with onions that are small enough to eat in one bite, I’ll be first in line to get some.
I woke up this morning and looked out the window and stared in shock. Why? Because the world was white. Again. It snowed last night. It actually snowed. Inches.
Yesterday the snow was almost gone. Some in the woods where the trees are thick enough that the sun doesn’t reach and, of course, the places where snowplows left huge drifts. But that’s all.
This morning, though, it’s white out. Again.
It looked like it looked last week. Again.
How did this happen?!
After the first shock of all that whiteness when the world had already turned brown, I realized why.
It’s March.
March is the month when we can have green shoots coming up through the dirt one day and blizzards that strand motorists the next. Yesterday was a day of tow trucks pulling motorists out of ditches a bit west of us. You know – west – the direction from which our weather comes.
So I should have known it was coming. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the world was white today.
More to the point, I should have just reminded myself that it’s March and not been surprised by anything at all.
