I’m the world’s worst at blog rolling, so I think I’ll just reblog posts from bloggers I love. Here’s the first.
I love this blogger. He doesn’t post regularly, but when he does it’s absolutely worth it. Today’s post had me laughing out loud and I’m still smiling.
Category: Blogging
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This is one funny guy; read his stuff
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6000 words
I’ve been writing from a very dark place for the past three or four weeks. Today, I finished one of the pieces and needed to mark its completion. Sitting in the sun, playing fetch with my dog, I decided that there were tiny details in my garden that make it possible for me to overlook the lived-in, played-in overall mess that is our backyard. Here are some of them.
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Play ball!
Photo: Nike Last night, one of my first graders looked up at me with his huge warm eyes and said, “Miss Janice, I was tricked today.”
“Oh,” I said, “How were you tricked?”
“Some other boys were talking about balls and they were telling me to talk about balls, too. And so I told them that I like balls and they laughed.”
He hesitated. I thought he might cry.
“And then I found out they weren’t talking about soccer balls. They were talking about private balls.”
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Fifty Shades of Cleaning
A little background: I love cookbooks; I read them like novels.
I have a guilty secret. Well, it’s not that big of a secret. We have cleaning ladies; they aren’t particularly good. Now, you probably know that money’s pretty tight around here, so you may rightly ask, “Why do you have cleaning ladies, Janice? Particularly ones that don’t do a very good job?”
We have cleaning ladies because we are wimps and our son reminds us on a regular basis. The head cleaning lady has worked for us more than 17 years. She is old, she is sad, her health is poor, her daughter has cancer. Neither my husband nor I can bring ourselves to fire her.
Occasionally, I will decide I am a heartless beast and our family budget is more important. Invariably, that will be the day she tells me her daughter has had a relapse, or she herself has diabetes, or her granddaughter–who has no health insurance–has been passing the same gall stone for 11 months.*
Still, our son insists she must be fired. His latest gambit is that we, the family, can do a better job than she does. He is right, of course.
“But,” I said, “when you say ‘we can do a better job’, you are actually saying ‘Mom can do a better job’.”
“We can clean the house,” he insisted.
“You won’t do a good job,” I countered.
“So, you’ll supervise,” he said. “You can sit there on the couch with your tea and read Fifty Shades of Cooking while we do all the work.”
* These are all true. . .I think.
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Pants on fire
Two bits of background are necessary for today’s entry in “my kids say the darnedest things.” I regularly lose my glasses. I don’t need them to read, so take them off any time reading is required. So, I find them in the kitchen, the bathroom, on my nightstand, in the key bowl. Really, just about anywhere in the house.At the same time, my daughter has developed a penchant for fooling us by telling blatant untruths. Things like, “Mommy, I failed math this semester.” I am rather gullible and frequently fall for her foolery.
About two weeks ago, I was on yet another hunt for my eye wear. Exasperated at my failed attempts, I asked my family for help.
“Have you seen my glasses?” I asked.
“Geez, Mom,” my daughter replied, “they’re on top of your head!”
“Really?” I asked my husband, and reached for the top of my head.
“Don’t listen to her!” was his response. “She’s a liar!”
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What would Buddha do?
My son and I were watching TV. A commercial came on that my son found funny, in a bad way. He made a derisive comment, then caught himself.“I guess I shouldn’t make fun of a commercial about cancer,” he said.
“Pretty bad karma, I’d say,” I said.
“What would you know about karma?” was his reply, followed by, “Oh. Right. . .you’re a Buddhist.”
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There are 500!
Photo: Real Simple Just before I published the following post, I checked the stats on my site. There are 500 of you! Five hundred followers! Five hundred people who want to read my irregularly published ramblings. I am gob smacked. Thank you for your kind support and for giving me the opportunity to use “gob smacked.”
This post is dedicated to you, my faithful followers.
Bless Me Followers for I Have Sinned
Being a blogger seems to me to be kind of like being a Catholic. When a Catholic sins, she goes to confession, recites her sins, does her penance and rides her bike home feeling all shiny and new.
I did confession like a good little Catholic girl for quite a while. Every Saturday, I’d go to church, tell the priest the horrible things I’d done and go home feeling shiny and new. One Saturday, though, I didn’t really feel like I’d done anything really wrong. Hadn’t fought with my brother. Wasn’t snotty with my mom. Didn’t swear, talk back to my dad or even stick my tongue out at my sister.
“I have nothing to confess,” I told my mom.
“You have to have something to confess,” she replied.
“No, Mom. I don’t.”
She said something about no one being perfect and there must be something I’d done that I wasn’t proud of and I was going to confession whether I had a sin to confess or not. So, I went to confession. And I made something up. I made it believable, like I was jealous of my brother or I coveted by sister’s Barbie, though I really liked my Barbie best. The priest did his four-thousand-words-a-minute blather, gave me a couple of Hail Marys and told me to go forth and sin no more.
That was when I had my first ethical dilemma with the Catholic Church. How, I reasoned, could I sin no more when I had to make up sins to confess every Saturday? Wasn’t confessing my sins making me into more of a sinner than I would have been had I not been forced to confess sins? A year later, I learned that no matter how much I wanted it, I couldn’t become a priest. That was when it was all over between me and the Church.
But recently, I have become a sinner. I have sinned against my followers and, to make my soul whole again, I confess the following.
I have not responded to you.
The Blogma states that new followers should be acknowledged and thanked. Following being Freshly Pressed recently, I strove to respond to every new follower with heart-felt thanks. I was rapidly overwhelmed. (I just scourged myself for bragging about being Freshly Pressed.) So, I created a folder for Follow follow-up. I haven’t followed up.
I have deleted you.
As a recovering Catholic, I admit to mountains of guilt over this. There were just so many posts and comments—hundreds every day—and so little time coupled with so little energy. (I’m fasting right now for mentioning the Freshly Pressed thing again.) The first time I deleted, I started with a comment and I closed my eyes before hitting the button. Soon, though, it became easier. Then, it became cathartic; I deleted not just comments, but entire posts. Eventually, there was no more backlog and I heaved a guilt-ridden sigh of relief. Please note: I never deleted all of any one blogger’s posts. I have some sense of decency.
I have failed to pass on blogging awards.
I’m honored when a reader passes on The Versatile Blogger award, or the Inspiring Blogger award. I’d even be honored to receive the Makes Too Many Self-aggrandizing References Award. (Forgive me, more bragging. Just put on a hair shirt.) I haven’t passed them on; I’ve wallowed in my “I’m too busy”-ness.
I haven’t published regularly.
Oh, I’ve posted a new “my kids are funnier than your kids” story every Tuesday, but other than that? I’ve been kicking back, taking it easy, neglecting my bloggly duties.
It’s been more than forty years since my last confession. Regardless, the feeling following is the same. I’m all shiny and new, ready to get back on my blogging bike and ride.
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Birds, Bees, Beer
My daughter’s been learning the facts of life at school lately. Naturally, she’s had lots of questions, most of them about the workings of male-female relationships.“Mom,” she asked me. “What happens when a man and a woman get married?”
Before I could answer, my son jumped in.
“When a man and a woman love each other very much,” he said, “they get married and then the man can’t have beer with his friends anymore.”
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This is what it’s like
I often feel people who know me don’t really understand what it’s like to have bipolar disorder. Sometimes I don’t even understand, but I’m starting to work that out.
Here is a post from another blogger with bipolar disorder that very accurately describes one aspect of living with bipolar disorder. I hope you’ll read it, especially if you are close to me or are close to someone who is bipolar.
http://manicmuses.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/the-energy-post/
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There’s no day like a snow day
This morning, at 5:30, I was woken by the call I most dread, the one from my school district with the joyous news that my children will be home with me . . .all day . . .bored . . .and whining.My daughter bounded up from the breakfast table, into her snow pants and out the door to make snowmen. Yes, they are still called snowmen; snow people just sounds so wrong.
We live one suburban back yard away from a huge barren depression in the landscape retention field where the neighborhood children sled. My daughter started her part of the snowman in our back yard; her friend started the other part in her backyard. The intent was to meet in the field for assembly.
“How’s your snow man?” I asked my daughter on her return.
“Oh, by the time I got to the field, my part was so heavy we couldn’t lift it, so we just left the parts next to each other and made snow boobs.”
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