A Prelude to Change

Thought for the day:  Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.  [Douglas Pagels]

No telling what kind of pot you might find at the end of a rainbow, but if you drink enough water, you'll be plenty happy to find the kind that's in the picture.

In the meantime, let's enjoy the slide, shall we? This is Labor Day weekend, which of course means... no labor, people! (For you folks in Canada, Australia and the U.K., that's Labour and labour...) It's a time to relax and let things slide a bit. You could say it's the last gasp of summer, or a preparation for the upcoming change of season. Time to forget about baseball, (especially if you're a Braves fan) and start thinking about football. (Even if the thermometer is still reading close to ninety degrees...)

If work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.  [Lane Kirkland]

According to the calendar, summer doesn't officially end for another three weeks, but for all intense purposes, most of us consider Labor Day weekend to be our last hurrah. Our last desperate effort to squeeze in another round of fun in the sun. You can be as active ... or inactive... as you'd like.

There's lots of things you could do this weekend, but whatever it is, I hope you take a little time to ...

escape from the usual grind.









                         
                                           
You could take a nice relaxing bubble bath,

take a nap in the great outdoors,








                                                          or enjoy a good ol' barbecue.

    Don't forget the watermelon!

You could spend the day at the beach,









                                                               or lying in the grass.

You can run, drive, golf, swim, fish, sightsee, or just curl up with a good book. Do whatever the heck it is you want to do, but don't forget...

summer will be over ... and the chairs will be empty... before ya know it.









And so, I raise a cup o' kindness to you, (You can fill it with whatever you'd like)

and wish you all a wonderful Labor Day.

At the end of this Labor Day weekend, I hope you can look back on it and say... It was truly golden.

                   Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

** Images courtesy of morguefile seniorark and perfectlytimedphotos

P.S. Next week, I'll be posting on Wednesday, instead of Friday, as part of the Insecure Writers Support Group. (Yep, I'm a little insecure... I am a writer... and God knows, at my age, I need all the support I can get!) Hope to see ya then.

Let Me Entertain You

Thought for the day:  I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.  [Albert Einstein]

The lovely (and irresistibly sweet) Austan of Austanspace passed this spiffy award on to yours truly, and the object is for me to tell you seven things about me that you don't already know, and then pass the award on to some of my other favorite bloggers.

Hmmm, after doing this sort of thing multiple times before, it's getting harder to come up with something new to tell you guys, but we'll give it a go.

1.  At our wedding reception, I took a teensy sip of champagne to acknowledge the toast, and then quietly traded it in for a glass of milk.

2. On our honeymoon, the man running the chair lift at the Natural Bridge (VA) thought I was my husband's youngun. 

3. When we were in third grade, a friend and I sang a sappy rendition of Over the Rainbow for an elementary school talent show.









4. For our high school drama class, two friends and I performed You Gotta Get a Gimmick. Once. When we told our teacher what we were planning, he asked us to do our routine for him after school. So our one and only audience was Mr. Adams and a small handful of fellow students. We got an enthusiastic response, but our teacher decided it wasn't appropriate for us to do. Too bad. We were reeeeeally funny. Not familiar with this song? It's from the Broadway musical Gypsy. (I was the one who "did it with a switch.")

5. The first time I ever flew in an airplane was a long, long flight from Baltimore to Chicago to Honolulu. After we left Chicago, the plane got caught in horrific turbulence, and at times, it felt like we were on an airborne roller coaster ride or free-falling elevator. How bad was it? Even one of the stewardesses was barfing. Me? I kept crocheting. Because I had no point of reference, I didn't realize the flight was so awful.

6.  I'd been pretty sick for several days, but my appendix decided to  burst after my husband and I went to bed one night. I lay there in the dark quietly panting, as though I were in labor, but once it burst, the pain level went down dramatically, so I went to sleep. (Or passed out? Not sure.) But I didn't want to bother my husband by waking him. And didn't go to the hospital for several more days. (By then, I was turning a peculiar shade of green.) Pretty dumb, huh?

 7.  We went to the horse races once. It was at Timonium, Maryland, and the we was my husband, parents, mother-in-law, aunt, two sons, and me. Through sheer dumb luck, I won enough cash to cover food and drinks for all of us, with money to spare. I actually picked the first place horses for the trifecta, too, but didn't know enough to bet them all at once. I made each bet individually. Had I bet them all at the same time, I would've won a ton of money. Because I kept picking winners, my father bet my pick in one of the races. The horse came in dead last.


So, there ya have it.

Now, I'm supposed to pass the award on to seven other bloggers. My track record here hasn't been nearly as good as it was at Timonium. Rarely do the people I pick care to follow through. That's fine. I'm not gonna worry about it. What I'm gonna do is select blogs I haven't already tapped in the past. These are all blogs I thoroughly enjoy, so if nothing else, maybe the rest of you will check them out. And better yet, maybe these folks will participate, and I'll learn a little more about them. Here we go :

• Geo at Train Ride of the Enigmas 
• Pearl at Pearl, Why You Little ... 
• Mr. C at Termites of Sin
• Cro at Magnon's Meanderings
• Murr at Murrmurrs
• Paige at There's More Where That Came From
• Beach Bum at The Life and Times of a Carolina Parrothead

One last thing. In case looking at that picture of strawberry pie has got you craving some, here's a super good (and super easy) recipe for you to try. Guaranteed to please.


                                      Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Thought for the day: Why didn't Noah swat those damned mosquitos when he had the chance?

Yup, it's still raining.

In fact, it's rained so hard, that gritty yellow-green car that's been sitting in our driveway got a decent cleaning, and whattayaknow? Found my little red car under all that pollen.

I know. Once the rain stops, the pollen will be back with a vengeance, but for now, the world is shiny and bright and new again. (On a Claritin day, you can see forever.)

When the cats aren't stomping on the keyboard or posing in front of the monitor, they're curled up nearby. Nothing new. Seems like they're always either taking a nap, looking for a place to take a nap, or just waking up from one. On this dreary rainy day, though, their curled-up contentment reflects and magnifies my own sense of well-being. I swear, they're the perfect poster girls for being tucked safely in the house on a wet chilly day. Looking at them makes me want to purr. Or take a nap.

But I like the rain. Yeah, we're getting close to the full mark now, but still. I like it. The way the air smells, the way it makes nature turn a brighter green, the way it sounds dancing on our metal roof. I like to walk in it, too, but hate umbrellas. Have a couple yellow fisherman's hats, and they suit me just dandy. Love to take long lazy rides in the rain, as long as I'm not the one behind the steering wheel. Love the rhythmic sound of the windshield wipers, and looking at the world refracted through the wet windows.

I even love thunder and lightning, and the fiercer, the better. Don't wanta be out there dodging lightning strikes, but love being the silent observer, watching from the safety of the house. Best storm ever was at a crabhouse in Maryland, right on the water. The wind whipped the patio furniture every which way, and the water was so choppy, it looked like it was boiling. Lightning reflected in the water. Awesome.

Yeah, it's still raining. But if I build an ark, I think I'll go with something a little more stylish. Maybe something like this. Neon's such a nice touch, dontcha think?










Ok, enough yammering about the rain.

There's something much more important to report. I'm lost. Doomed. Doomed, I tell you! I've discovered the attraction of Twitter, damn it. After all the disparaging remarks I've made about it, too. I did not know. I shot off my mouth, but I did not know. There are some really NEAT people out there tweeting. Smart people, funny people, professionals in the news world, in the literary world, in the world of science and technology, and probably in a kazillion other worlds I haven't yet discovered.

And ya know what? It's much easier to be clever in 140 characters or less than it is in a blog post. Go figure.

OK, so I've succumbed to the allure of blogging and tweeting. But I absolutely refuse to get sucked into online game-playing. Then, I'd be a goner for sure.

Ooooh, the sun is shining. Time to go look for a rainbow.

Found mine. Hope your day is filled with them, too. Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.


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No trees were killed in the sending of this message. However, a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

In Search of a Rainbow

Thought for the day: If you want to see a rainbow, you have to put up with some rain.

It seems that managing a website, even one as "simple" as blogger, is not my best bag. For eight years, I supported a wonderful amateur radio website, but all I had to do then, besides pay for the hosting and domain of the thing, was provide input to our three fabulous webmasters and PRESTO! they did some kind of mysterious voodoo with it and BAM!  posted it just like THAT! (And let me tell ya, they really made it look G-O-O-D, too.)

Now, here I am, floundering in a sink-or-swim situation, and to tell the truth, my swimming capabilities never were all that hot, and I still don't know what the heck I'm doing with this blog. Honest, it really wasn't my intention for the header and header picture for this blog to take up a whole darned screen, but shrinking it down to a more reasonable size has eluded my meager capabilities so far. Still haven't figured out how to add more than one picture to a blogpost yet, either. And alas and alack, maybe I DO need to change the title to a more "original" one, after all.

But hey, I'm still a newbie, right? This blog is only a week old, so I'm bound to get better. One can only hope. (On the other hand, I could always learn to love a full-screen header ...!)  In the meantime, I'll just keep on plugging. I don't expect to find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I WOULD like to make it to the rainbow. For now, though, I reckon I'll just have to put up with the rain. And that's just fine. I have two handy-dandy yellow rain hats.

So, no time to be discouraged, right? Sure, this whole blogging thing is a little outside of my usual comfort zone, but it's time to expand something other than my girth. By George, I WILL get it! I WILL reach the rainbow! But just so ya know, I'm not ready to jump into Facebook or Twitter just yet. I'm not ready to "tweet" yet. However, I may "toot" now and then, especially after I eat some of my husband's sugar-free cookies.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other. I believe I'll take a nap.