Day to day to day....

We have a new walker in the family. Cooper definitely joined the world of the upright yesterday and there's no holding him back now. Isn't it amazing how once we humans find our legs we're off and running, never satisfied with creeping and crawling again? I thought I was busy before but if yesterday was any indication of what's ahead of me...oh my. I couldn't turn my back on him for a second. In fact, not only has he begun walking but also climbing! I went in to the kitchen for a minute, only to find him up on my desk when I came back into the dining room. He'd used their Fisher Price garage to climb up in to one of the toy bins, then managed to pull himself up on to the desk. Lord, help me! I think I aged 10 years then and there.

Spring has sprung but it sure hasn't lost its chill yet. And it's been very showery, unpredictably so, making it very iffy as far as getting out and walking is concerned. I think the boys and I have a bad case of cabin fever and I'm hoping today's weather will cooperate so we can get out. Dear Hubby went in for a physical yesterday and got a prescription that needs filling so that will give us a destination, as well as the library where I have until tomorrow to pick up some books that have come in for me. I've been eagerly awaiting Maeve Binchy's new book, "Heart and Soul" and that's one of them. Now if I can find the time to read it! I've got plans for this Saturday and Saturdays are usually my reading day if I go out to one of the archery ranges with Dear Hubby. But he's planning on going bear hunting at the coast so I'm going to load up my pick up with stuff I've been putting in the basement and on the back porch and take it to a nearby school. I'm not sure how many years this has been going on now, but each Spring our neighborhood has a clean-up day where we can take junk to this school and drop it off for $20 per truckload. We never seem to be able to find the time or want-to to take a load to the dump so this is the perfect opportunity and I plan to take advantage of it. Time to get rid of the stuff that's too big for the garbage can! A broken fan...a small kettle barbecue we never have used...the kids' broken play table. Good riddance.

Last weekend was busy. We had a family birthday party we attended late in the afternoon on Saturday but I found some time to go out and do some weeding and transplanting of some plants that have grown so much they're crowding each other out. The showers we've been having have been good for that because everything I transplanted seems to be thriving. There's a huge Rummage/Plant sale I go to every year -- well, I missed last year and why that was I don't remember...oh yes. I was recuperating from my hysterectomy. Anyway...that will be happening this weekend so I might grab my neighbor Sharon and see if she'd like to go with me. Their prices are to die for. I usually spend $20-$30 and get around a dozen mature plants. Some come from nurseries affiliated with the Center the sale is held at. Some are dug up by members out of their own yards. I've gotten some very unusual and not very commonplace plants from them. Hopefully my trash-hauling won't take too long!

Beyond that, it's the same old, same old. The days whiz by. Why does life seem to speed up the older we get? Tomorrow's the first of May already and I hardly remember January thru April, they were here and gone so quickly. No wonder it's said our lives aren't much more than a vapor. I can do a speedy re-wind of my life in my head and from my first memory at the age of three until now isn't much more than a blink of the eye. Scary thought.

On a Clear Day

This week I read a blog post and it hasn't, in itself, stuck with me. What has stuck with me is a comment written to me by the author in response to a comment I'd made about the post's subject. I wasn't offended by it. My feelings weren't hurt by it. But it's given me a lot to ponder. About faith. This is the comment:

"It saddens me because spirituality isn't reality based. It's fantasy based."

Now, how does this person know that?

Doesn't this person know me well enough yet to realize I'm not the type of person who'd base the most important beliefs of my life for the past 32 years on fantasy? That it's an insult to my intelligence to say such a thing?

What is so ironic about this is once upon a time I felt exactly as this person did about 'organized' religion and Christians. I was sanctimonious and smug and fully convinced that my lack of any faith or belief in God's reality was the right opinion, the only opinion. Because it was my opinion. I delved deeply into satanism and various aspects of the occult for seven years. I sat back and smirked and snarked and belittled Christians. I loathed their hypocrisy. I blasphemed the concept of God in ways that I look back on now and wonder why He didn't strike me dead on the spot.

This person needn't feel sorry for me. And I hope, if they come by and read this, they realize this isn't pointed at them in a harsh way. It's not...no, not at all. What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that none of us should try to pigeon hole another person's beliefs or lack of belief, to judge them by what they believe or what they don't. That I don't particularly like being lumped into the masses, assuming my religious beliefs aren't reality. Sure, there are a lot of fantatical Christians. There are a lot of fantatical agnostics. And fanatical atheists. It all boils down to which side of the mirror we're looking from. And from my side of the mirror the reflection of myself that peers back at me knows the Truth of what I believe in. Because, at the moment I began to believe, the changes in me were real. And what was 'old' passed away and never came back. Who I am now is not who I was then. Not even close. Not even in the same league. I am strong-willed and self-disciplined but I couldn't have carried this out for 32 years if it was based on fantasy. It would've been too much work, too much effort. And why put forth that much effort for something not 'real'? No...sorry. What I have isn't a hardship. It isn't work. It's my life and it's a wonderful life, a clean life. A good life. And, as I said in my comment to the blog's author, I feel very blessed to have it.

Our Birthday Boy

April 2

Cooper

One Year Old

Connections

I admit I've joined the Facebook crowd tho I've deactivated my account a few times since I started it. Then I hear "Where are you? Where did you go?" and I cave in and activate it again. One of my blog friends - Danielle - recently wrote this post about why she loves it. They're good and legitimate reasons. But as I was reading the comments left by her readers I had to agree that it seems a lot of people are blogging less and less as they get more 'in to' their Facebook lives. I'm skeptical, for myself, as far as finding it addictive or even compelling me to go there outside of having become addicted to one of the games they offer on their Applications called PathWords -- I'm a sucker for word games. Maybe it's because a lot of the people I have listed as Friends don't post a lot there, either. Then I had another one who posted so often my page was full of nothing but what she had to say. So I...ahem...deleted her. I find Facebook kind of boring. But then I never got in to Bebo or MySpace or any of the other 'social' networking sites, either. Maybe it's just me. I'm not what you'd call the most social person in the world. I am when I want to be or if I'm required to be but, in all honesty, that's not very often. I am happy in my own little corner of the world. And I am oh-so-boring myself. I go there. It says "What's on your Mind?", and I sit there and stare at it and can't think of much to say. If anything. Not like here. Where I can't shut up once I get started. So I'll leave my Facebook active, I guess. But I prefer my little corner of the blogosphere...my comfort zone. My social network of one.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words...

I'd like you to go take a peek at Lynette's photos. She and her Mama are transplanted Mississippians...is that what people from Mississippi are called?...who've lived here in Portland for a while. Lynette is great at capturing Portland life and what I like about her photography is she views it from a little different perspective than we long-time/native Oregonians do, I think. She catches a lot of the quirky stuff we take for granted. Portland is a very...unique...city. And Lynette lets the whole world see it.

A bit of unneeded excitement....

I've noticed the past few weeks that whenever our microwave was done heating something up it'd make kind of a weird 'clunk' sound as it turned off and began cooling down. Then I noticed the dish of margarine I had sitting on the top had melted down quite a bit. Hmmmmmmm.

Last evening Dear Hubby put a packet of microwave popcorn inside to pop. About halfway thru the cycle he yelled, "FIRE!" and the kitchen began to fill up with the most acrid, stinking smoke. Plus the packet of popcorn was in flames inside. I yanked the plug out of the wall and I've never seen Dear Hubby pick something up and toss it outside a door so fast in my life as he did the microwave oven! Windows flew open. Fans were turned on. And several hours later it finally smelled like 'home' again.

Thank goodness we still have a house to call home!

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~Edward de Bono

I am back from my beach trip and decided I'd sit down and try to recover all of my Favorite Coffee Stops, which I'd accidentally deleted at 4:30 the other morning. Trouble is, now that they're gone I can't remember most of the links to retrieve them, I so automatically clicked on my own links to go read them. So help me, please. If you'd like to be 'reinstated' and knew you were on there before, please help this addlebrained nincompoop and comment so I can go and find you again!

So far I've gone grocery shopping and put all of that away. I made the bed. I packed. I walked the dog. I've got laundry going. I've folded towels and put them away. I've got coffee set up for Dear Hubby so all he'll need to do is turn on the coffeemaker. It's 9 am.

My son just called and he's on his way. I'll make a bottle for the baby.

It's raining outside.

Pray for sunshine.

During our short session of pillow talk before we went to sleep last nite I told Dear Hubby I feel like this blog is dying a slow death. Each week I drift further and further away from it. Not out of choice, mind you. I feel like yesterday's news...deja vu` all over again...a broken record when I say that time - or lack thereof - is the culprit. I try to rob a few minutes here, a few minutes there, but it still boils down to the fact that no more time can be added to a day. No matter which way I try to work around it there are still, and forever will be, only 24 hours in a day. It really bothers him that I've had to put my writing on the back burner at this stage in my life. It bothers me, too, because writing has always been my 'outlet', my way of venting and letting off steam. Of relaxing and kicking back. He told me he hopes I at least find time to still come here and chronicle a lot of my daily life with the grandboys because he thinks this will be a wonderful legacy for them someday. Not only will they be able to look back and see what their infancy and early childhood was like but it might even jog a memory or two of what I was like as well, once I'm gone.

I'm heading off tomorrow with my son and grandsons for a weekend with them at the beach. My daughter-in-law has plans to get both the boys' bedrooms painted while we're away and they know the only way that will happen is if the boys are out of the house and she can focus on what needs to be done. A weekend alone with the boys is something my son feels he can't quite handle on his own at this stage and I tend to agree with him. I hope the weather cooperates so we can get them outside for most of the days we're there. Tomorrow we're planning on taking them to the aquarium before we go claim our motel room. I know Dylan especially is going to love that. And Cooper won't allow himself to be left out of anything now, either. He is Dylan's eager companion.

Today...well, today will be a busy one but I might have a small window of time to myself this evening. Dear Hubby has a special project he's involved in at work and probably won't be home until 7 or so. It's Subway sandwich nite for me, woooooo hoooooo! No cooking!

I'm rattling. I've got things to do before the boys get here. So I'll bring this to an end and get started on my day.

Oh, good grief!

One should not attempt to do any deleting at 4:30 am. I meant to delete one of my favorite Coffee Stops, a blog that's gone on hiatus, and ended up deleting the whole thing. You can guess what I'll be doing later tonite...trying to remember which ones I had there and finding the links.

Sigh....

It is the evening of the day....I sit and watch the children play...

I had one of those bittersweet moments this weekend. I cleaned up Cooper's activity/walker with bleach water, then set it out in the yard with a "Free" sign on it. Five minutes later, when I looked out the window, it was already gone. That's just about as fast as his babyhood is passing, too. What is particularly bittersweet about it is knowing that this is probably the last time in my life I'm "passing this way again". I've been fortunate...I'm having the added blessing in life of having a very active part in the lives and upbringing of my two young grandsons on an almost daily basis. But I realized as I placed Cooper's walker out there on the grass, as I begin to rid our home of all the baby paraphernalia piece by piece in the next few years, I most likely will never do it again. These are the last of the babies, the last time our home will be filled with the hustle and bustle and pure craziness of having two young and rambunctious boys running thru the rooms and scattering toys and laughter everywhere they go.

And this time...this time...I know better than to wish, "I can't wait until they grow up a bit!" Because I know now just how quickly they do.

Flux: 1. a flowing or flow. 2. Continuous change, passage, movement

I haven't written here in a week now. In the past that would've put me into a state of near panic. Am I drying up? Have I finally run out of words to say, thoughts to share? No.

I'm in a state of flux. It began a month or so ago when I decided I needed to reprioritize my Life a bit. To regain some control of myself. To calm down. To let go. To decide what areas are important and what areas aren't so important. And I'm finding that by doing so, I'm finally regaining a sense of peace and stability in my life again. I am no longer spinning on an axis I can't seem to get off. Life itself isn't any less busy but I am less busy, and therein lies the change.

And here it is, Easter morning. Christ is risen, just as He said. And I am rising out of the ashes, having found what's important, what keeps me centered and sane.

And I am content with that.

Now, this would wake you up, wouldn't it?

I'm married to such a good man...

Dear Hubby asked me a few hours earlier why I wasn't on the computer this afternoon. I told him, "Headache." I've been suffering from a doozy of a sinus headache - seasonal allergies - since Friday afternoon. He said I don't seem to be on here much any more and I told him since I did a lot of soul-searching and decided to re-prioritize my life a little and try to SLOW IT DOWN a little bit, I've come to the conclusion I'll come on here when I have the time and not fret about it any more when I can't. He sat and thought on that a moment and said, "Well, it's sure sad because I know it gives you so much pleasure to write. It's a shame you don't have the time to enjoy it like you should be able to."

That touched my heart.

Think Pink!

Get That Mammogram!!!!

I just thought I'd let you know...whether you get up at 4:15 or 3:15, there still aren't enough hours in a day.

Never.

I'd Copy & Paste these little darlings any time!

Be honest....

How often do you read email Forwards?

And what motivates you to read the ones that

you choose to read?

How often do you Forward them

to people you know?

What is happening to me?!

Once upon a time I was a nite owl and did all of my writing in the evening, all my life.

Now, I'm finding myself writing at 4 in the morning.

Does that still mean I'm a nite owl

or have I become a true early bird?

Or maybe I'm just plain crazy....

The "Welcome Wagon" Ladies

We blog writers are always thankful for those faithful readers who come by and read what we say - or what we don't have to say - on a regular basis. And it's always nice to open up the Comments and find someone new who's brave enough to say hello!

So...

Welcome, Jennifer and MamaHenEm !

Speaking of "Welcome Wagon" ladies...do "Welcome Wagons" still exist?! I remember when my family moved to Vancouver in the mid-60's, two "Welcome Wagon" ladies stopped by to welcome our family with all kinds of little goodies from merchants all over town.

Now, wouldn't this world be a better place if that still happened in communities?

When's the last time you reached out and welcomed a new neighbor?

My gripe for the day....

Yesterday morning I came to my blog site and saw several links in my previous post that I had not put there. As I clicked on them I realized someone, somehow, had figured out a way to link certain words I'd written to advertising sites. So...fiddling and searching and much aggravation spent later....I was able to uninstall a program that had been installed on my computer very innocently on my part while playing games on Facebook. The culprit was a site called GameVance. Little did I know when I downloaded their 'player' it would be able to somehow access my computer. As I went to do a full-system Norton scan I was 'told' I had been infected by 16 Trojan viruses. I'm not sure if all came from that particular site, but I'm thinking that it must've been.

Sooooooooo....

Beware of what you innocently do on your computer. And shame on Facebook for using such sites as game hosts.

It caused me enough blood-burning to last me all week.