I Could Write a Book

Went to this website and pasted some text and what do I discover?

I write like
Mark Twain

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Hot and Heavy

Just a quick update -  the doggie girl is fine and dandy.  Several hundreds of dollars later, x-rays and such we are glad to hear that nothing untoward is causing the stomach upset.  Maybe a change of food will take care of the situation and a change in the weather to less hot and humid.  It's really too hot to type.  It started to rain so I'm hoping for a cool down and a dry breeze.  Well I can hope can't I?

I'll be back when that happens or when we put in an air conditioner.

Doggie Woes of Sorts

Our puppy girl has had another bout of the up chucks.  I think it's the heat and humidity and hubby, of course, thinks the worst.  Until her appointment next week, she is on chicken and rice and teensy tiny bits of her own food.  She loves it.  It constipates her.  The rice, I'm sure.  I understand that.  Hubby thinks the worst is even worser.  I found this on some blog somewhere while searching for what could be making the girl vomit.  I found it so funny that I sent it via email to the hubster.  He did not find it so amusing.  I think you might though.  Here it is:

The four types of dog vomit


YELLOW URKA-GURKA

Dog runs around the house and hides under furniture while making a prolonged ‘uuuuurka-guuuuurka, uuurka-guurka’ noise. (This noise is the only thing guaranteed to wake up a true dog lover who is hung over from a post dog-show celebration at 3:30 a.m.) After mad scrambling to capture the dog and drag him outside, the episode ends with an inaudible ten yard slimy yellow froth from the living room rug to the back door.

BLAP DISEASE

Dog exercises hard and (a) eats large mouthfuls of snow (winter Blap Disease) or (b) drinks a bucket of water (Summer Blap Disease). Within two minutes of returning inside, the dog spews out large amounts of clear slimy liquid while making a distinctive ‘blap’ sound and a sharp percussive noise as it hits the linoleum.

GARKS

Dog suddenly clears his throat with loud and dramatic ‘gggaark, gggark’ noises generally followed by prolonged ‘iiiksss’ and then loud satisfied smacking noises. There is nothing on the rug. Don’t investigate, you don’t want to know.

RALFS

Apropos of nothing, the dog strolls into the dining room and waits till the innocent dinner guests are all watching him. Then, with a single deep gut wrenching ‘raaaalff’ dislodges the entire weeks’ contents of his stomach on the dining room rug.

Variation: Then he eats it.

In all the above events the dog is entirely healthy and indeed deeply pleased with himself.

Summer Season

Summer is here for sure.  The houses between here and the beach are filling up.  The renters are here.  The kids are playing in the streets.  Flags are waving and birds are singing and it sure is beautiful.

Here's the morning walk but now there are more flags.

Here's the beach at the end of that walk.   This is at high tide and now there are people on the beach.

Around here the seasons are not only about weather.  The numbers of people here change with the seasons.

A Day of God's Blessings

Well. I think God is hearing me and smiting them one at a time. Good bye Helen. About time I say.

So, I'll take it. Strip them of their masks bit by bit and sooner or later they'll all be standing there like the emperor stitch starch nekkid. That's ok. Not boils or frogs but it works.

More good news. Today, I went for my walk later than usual and what did I see? This

Yes indeed. The Bluebird of Happiness. That was my father's favorite song by the way. Well, maybe not the most favorite but a favorite. He could pick that out on the piano with two or three fingers.

Be like I, hold your head up high,
Till you find a bluebird of happiness.
You will find greater peace of mind
Knowing there's a bluebird of happiness.
And when he sings to you,
Though you're deep in blue,
You will see a ray of light creep through,
And so remember this, life is no abyss,
Somewhere there's a bluebird of happiness.

Then, what to my wondering eyes doth appear?

Man, God is always with us isn't He? What a wonderful day this has been. Hope all of you had the same good stuff going on. We are so Blessed.

A Plague upon Them

Wow.  It's been a long time since I've been here.  Wish I had tons of things to regale you with that caused my hiatus but, sad to say, it ain't so.  Life has just bubbled along and I have been like flotsam and jetsum bobbing and bubbling along with the current.  Graduation party here, shower there, vomiting dog here, trip to the vet, chicken and rice for her (better dinner than ours in most cases), laundry, water the lawn, sit and read and talk on the phone.  There it is.  My life.

I have omitted the countless outbursts of rage against our current administration and the main stream propaganda arm of theirs.  I have ranted about the nonsense that is being thrown at Israel and have prayed fervently for God to step in and smite someone...rain down those hot coals Sir, show Iran who the real boss is............................please, please please.  Sigh...

I know He is in charge and since I read the end of the Book, I know we'll be okay but seriously folks, don't you want just a couple of the old plagues to hit that fool in Iran?  Don't you want that UN crew to have boils and frogs and such?  Maybe the big O could have a small jolt of pain whenever he tells a lie.  One that would make him say "Youch"  and jump a little.  Something!  Just something!

Well, maybe you'll be all righteous and say "We just pray for their well being and leave all the rest to God".  Me?  I'm for the smiting and plaguing. 

The More Things change - The More They Stay the Same

When I was in college I wrote a paper for some class where I used the technique of anthropomorphism. I argued against foreign aid by setting up the United States and the foreign aid recipient country as if the USA were the parent and the recipient country the child. I had just completed a psych course and this Social Studies course seemed the ideal guinea pig for my sophomoric theories. Well, I posed all of the good parenting skills that we had just learned and tried to answer the seemingly never answered question, “Why, oh why, do they hate us?”. I said that when we treat these countries like idiot children without the skills and abilities to care for themselves, when we mindlessly shower gifts upon them that are useless, unearned and truly undeserved, when we patronize them and pat them on the heads and then say go away and let the grown ups talk…..sure, they hate us and then show their contempt by accepting any and every good thing we give them and rub our noses in whatever the gifts should have been by breaking them throwing them away etc etc. Well, we had just learned that spoiling the child thing and the lack of respect the child develops for the parent. I was told that I was foolishly simplistic. The complexities of foreign diplomacy could not be reduced to simple one on one human interaction. “Why?” I asked. “It seems to me that everything has to be reduced to that since the whole process boils down to one person interacting with another.” “Run along and grow up " I was told.

I wrote that quite some time ago....things have not changed have they?  I wrote that paper in 1962.  More than 40 years later the elitists are still trying to complicate the simplest of things aren't they?  Maybe I just haven't grown up yet.  In my opinion this concept can be brought in to our domestic policy of welfare...can it not?

Ta-Da! Pictures Have Popped.

Finally, the pictures have been pried out of that nifty little camera....well, now, that was easy!!  Not for me.  My husband the computer GENIUS (and he is) finally sat down and made it work.  He is a self employed computer consultant and you know how that shoemaker's kids saying goes?  yes.  they had no shoes.  Same with the computer genius' spouse.  Oh what the hey...it all comes together event-u-walleee. 

Now...here is a taste of the Nantucket Daffodils Weekend old car parade and dog show.  Fun!

How fun is that?  Lots.  Oh, by the way, I have sixty bazillion pictures to dazzle you with.  Brace yourselves.

Happy Mothers' Day

Eleven years ago today my mother passed away.  My neice always remembers Nana's birthday and anniversary date of her passing and when she calls me she will always say, "and Nana said we wouldn't remember her when she was gone."  My mother did say that.  I almost believe that she willed herself to pass on Mother's Day so that we wouldn't forget, ever. 

One of her favorite stories was "The Little Match Girl".  She loved the drama and tragic ending and the tears.  Just a small glimpse into her Cinderella fantasy world.  She would tell us that when she was a girl they would wear carnations to church on Mothers' Day.  A pink carnation meant that your mother was alive and a white carnation meant that your mother was dead.  She told us that she always felt sorry for those in church wearing white carnations.  Well we would naturally say that we were so glad our carnations would be pink and then she would be pleased.

Here are my flowers today Mom and I wish they could be pink.  I'll bet that Mom is pleased.  Love you Mother.

The View

Happy Spring.. The view from my window....ok so this is last year but the view today is the same except for the for sale sign.  That house has sold and we will have new neighbors.  A young couple with a six year old.  This will be their summer home.  It's a very nice house.  Obviously in a very nice neighborhood.  Seems that for some the economy is not too bad.   For that we are grateful.

The Agony of DePictures

I have dozens of the best pictures ever from Daffodil days and the new camera I used to take them is refusing to release them to my computer.  I have loaded and reloaded and unloaded and uploaded and downloaded and?  Nothing.  Zip.  Zero.  Nada.  Blank screens and really bad language.  That be it.

By the time I manage to unload them I will be unable to remember where they were taken and who those people are.

At least I have managed to restrain myself from throwing that danged thing out the window.  I must now return to the task of uninstalling and reinstalling and grinding my teeth.  Thanks for listening.

Nothin'

Sigh.

That's all I have.

Just sigh.

Daffodil Days Are Here Again!!!

So now that the kids have gone I must clean and wash clothes and dust and wash sheets and clean the shower and wash towels and ..... more company coming for the weekend.  Yes!  It's DAFFODIL days in Nantucket and we MUST be there to record the event for posterity.  Dogs in tutus and old cars covered with ribbons, yellow of course, and ladies in LARGE daffodil adorned bonnets.  Remember last year?  No?  Well here's a bit of a reminder - - -

And this too

Can't wait.

Tired Tired Tired

It's Sunday and this busyness thing?  It is really, incredibly exhausting!  Just sayin'.

Busy Busy Busy

Did I say that my husband had reunited with his children after an absence of about 40 years?  We went to visit in September and then went back for a week in March.  They are really great kids and this week they are coming for a visit with us to see the area and meet family.  Here's the Itinerary:

Tuesday:

Check the house, make the beds, bring supplies;
Grocery shop
Drop off Raven at Canine College

Pick up DD in Providence approx 4 PM

Pick up DS in Westwood approx 7:30 PM

Grab a bit to eat

Return to Cape

Wednesday:

Breakfast

Walk to beach and around neighborhood

Eventually drive to Ptown stopping along the way to view Marconi, Highland Light,

Coast Guard Beach walk to water for Atlantic dipping and on to Race Point

Ptown – see the Monument and walk through town to pier – etc

Back home and ?

Thursday:

Breakfast and walk

Drive to NY

Check in and see Central Park and Empire State

Dinner at Gallaghers

?

Friday:

Breakfast

Check out

Drive to Ground Zero

Drive to NJ and Liberty State Park

Tour Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty

Drive Home

Saturday:

Breakfast

Darling Niece arrives

Drive to Boston – The Pru to get tickets for Duck Tour

Hopefully do the Duck

Drive to Constitution for a tour

Drive to Marketplace – walk around and eat at Durgin Park

Home

Sunday:

Breakfast – Walk

Drive to Plymouth – Rock and Mayflower

Lunch in Kingston at 1 – til?

?

Home

Monday:

Breakfast – walk

Drive to Holbrook pick up Raven

Back to visit in Kingston

No plans

Tuesday:

DD leaves

Wednesday:

DS leaves

Thursday:

Be sad

I'm Organizing Today

How does this lady know me so well?

The Miracle

C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 112, 115-17.

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .

In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.

But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too.

In this descent and re-ascent everyone will recognise a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life re-ascends.

It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult.

So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a re-ascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth–go down to go up–it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the centre. The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God. All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key. I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Re-birth: for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and re-ascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation.

Thank You Lord for Miracles.

Easter Round Up

Sorting through the Easter activities and things have really turned around.  We are having a new septic system put in and right now the house is almost inaccessible.  The size of this thing is unreal.  We have a teeny tiny house and the system we have to install takes up more land than the house does.  There is a moat that runs along the house on two sides.  I say we could flush a bazillion more times than we ever have in all the years of the house's existence and it will still never be full.  Oh well.  For that reason we have changed plans to have the whole fam here as we usually do.  There is no parking available and with the rain, the mud and muck is everywhere.  Easier to go out and go out we shall.  Meanwhile I still have to clean and such since my nephew will be with us for the weekend.

Oh and yes, at the moment we only have one car since on the way back home on Tuesday my husband went through what he thought was a puddle and instead it was a lake.  The car ran for a while after that but then stopped.  Fortunately he was able to coast into a rest area and call AAA.  Naturally parts have to be ordered and blah blah blah, might take until Monday to be back with us.  So, as you see, business as usual here.

I will probably be back before Easter but just in case I don't have a thought to share, let me share this one.

Maxine is Always Correct

And today all those power mad creeps will be all over television telling us to calm down over their power grabbing health (no)care bill.

Something I needed Today

All of this nonsense being imposed upon us by power grabbing, morally bankrupt leftists led by that man who lied and posed to get into office has disturbed me greatly.  I needed this and I think there are more of us out there than the press will let us know about who need it too.

HUMBLING, ISN'T IT?
Especially when you know our sun is just one of many in this mix

And yet, God knows how many hairs are on your head;

and, not even a single sparrow dies apart from His will.

(Mt. 10:29-31)!

NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?

AND, HOW BIG ARE THE THINGS THAT UPSET YOU TODAY?

AND

HOW BIG IS YOUR GOD?

KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE!

Our God is the Creator of everything and is on His throne in charge of the same. 

Thank You Lord.