Priorities?

I was online looking at the headlines for local news.
And if you are like me you might think (and even assume) that these story headlines would be given in order of importance.  Much like being above the fold or below, or being on the front page versus inside in the second section.

Here is what I saw:

• FORECAST: Cold front approaching, storm threat tonight
• POLL: Do you approve of gift registries for high school graduation?
• Girl shot in face

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Really?  Girl shot in face doesn't rate as high as gift registry poll?

We need some standards, people!

Seriously Random Stuff

Another of those posts that kind of follow my thought pattern.

1.  Do you ever watch t.v. and see a commercial that is either so hilarious or so horrible you immediately think, "Holy shit, I have to remember to blog about THAT!"??

Well, I do that all the time.  And by the time I get to youtube and go to look it up so I can share it with you, I can't remember what it was.  It's gone.  Poof!

2. We are still looking for a home for the little Mama Kitty who is the cutest, sweetest, most precious little teeny kitty you ever saw.  If you are at all interested in providing a loving home for this girl, let me know.

And before you ask, no.  She can not stay here. Angus MacPhee absolutely hates her and would make her life a living hell.  Angus is a dick.

3. My across-the-street neighbor was robbed yesterday morning.  In broad daylight.  While he AND his yard worker were both around.  It was a completely bizarre incident.  And 4 years ago when Ernest T. Bass was dropped off here I tried and tried to get my neighbor to take him.  And if he had, well, I don't think that idiot thieving thief would have made it into the garage.  Ernest T. is quite loud and protective of his property.

4. The Texas wildfires are popping up all over the place.  The area just east of us that is on fire is said to be the size of Connecticut.

5. Did I ever mention here that I am growing out my hair color and going all natural?  Well, I am.  Since menopause is totally kicking my memory's ass six ways to Sunday, I decided that I need to lessen my brain's exposure to chemicals.  Also, I am super annoyed with seeing people in their 70s trotting around with jet black hair.  And I didn't want to be one of them.

So I decided to embrace my silver hairs and let them grow in and let's just see what we shall see!  So far, people are very complimentary of the new color.  I never know if they really mean it or are just taking pity on the poor old gray haired lady.

6. This is the first year that we have kept the round card table up in the living room all year.  We put it up at Christmas time to do jigsaw puzzles near the Christmas tree.  And this year?  It has just stayed up and we have continued doing puzzle after puzzle.  It has to stay in that room because we can close it off away from the cats.

7. Remember the little crocheted bottle cap trivets I was making?  I got 3 more done before I ran out of bottle caps.  So that is 3 Christmas gifts done.  I need to get a source for clean, unsmashed bottle caps.  Any ideas?

8. Our garden is completely dead.  Nothing survived this horrendous drought and 4 months of 100+ temps.   I am worried about our massive oak trees.  I could give two figs for the damn stupid grass, but my trees?  That's another story.

9.  Normally, I have good book recommendations for you, but not now.  Lately, all I have been reading is about food, healthy diets, good food for your body and for the environment.  And you know what?  Some of these things contradict each other!  It's confusing.  I can't decide whether to try out The Diet That Seems Easiest To Work With or The One That Seems Best For the Earth and Hardest For Me.

It's a bit daunting and overwhelming, all this information.

10. And finally!  My last thought for the day.  Well, my last thought to share here, not necessarily the last thought I will have the whole DAY!

Life is good.  It can be as complicated as you want, or as easy and simple as you want.  It's all in how you look at it.

I have a friend who I play Mah Jongg with who has a needlepoint sampler on her wall that says something like "The difference between Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones, is in how you use them".  And that's kind of what I have been thinking.  The situation is what it is regardless of how you feel about it.  You can choose to have negative feelings about something but that doesn't make the facts negative, does it?  Facts are facts.  A situation is what it is whether you choose to love it or hate it.  Which set of feelings will get you through the day?

Here's what I forgot to show you earlier this week

Look at that!  It "snowed".  It snowed enought to cover the steps, sidewalk, street and other really cold stuff, but not fully cover the grass.  We must have really warm dirt.  See where there was another car that left early?

I wish we had real snow, real winters.  I loved it so much when we were in Minnesota, the land of 4 distinct seasons.  I loved how things changed so much from month to month.  Come spring, every single month there were totally new things blooming.  There was not a single season I didn't love there. Funny how it is not on my short list of places to retire.  I might have to think on that.

Then when the huge drifts of snow cleared, Mr. Big Ed and I went mattress shopping!  Yea!!  We have needed a new bed for forever it seems.  I got a fabulous coupon deal in the mail from Sears and we spent a lot of time online scoping out what was available and getting Mr. Big Ed over his sticker shock before we ventured out to brave the cold, snow and ice.  And listen, it can be downright painful shopping with Mr. Big Ed.  He shops with both hands tightly over his wallet and his eyeballs glued to the price section of all the signs.  "Mr. Big Ed, which bed is most comfy and the one you think you can sleep on for the next 10 years?"  His answer?  "The cheapest".  Really?  Low prices make you that relaxed, do they?  Me, I need a little more from a bed than just cheapness.

Anyhoo, we headed out to go to Sears and take advantage of the great deal they mailed to me.  But we stopped off at JC Penney first.  We tried out every mattress there.  Now, if you are like me and have not shopped for mattresses in the last 10 years, here's a little head's up. They have store models that have a "Firm" side and a "Plush" side.  This is good because they can show off twice as many beds in half as much space.  It is BAD because there is no possible way for you and another person to both try out the same bed at the same time.  But since Mr. Big Ed thought he wanted a Firm, Hard as a Brick, Really Cheap bed, and I wanted the softest, Princess and the Pea Plushy model, it would have been perfect serendipity if they would just sell us one of those floor models.  Right?

Not a snowball's chance in Texas.

I started taking pics of the beds to document which ones we liked but it turned out to be more informative to take pics of the signs on the beds to remember the names of that model, since they all pretty much look the same.  So we narrowed down the Penney's beds to 4 that we liked.  The Sealy Oak Grove, the Serta Gentle Haven, the Simmons Danvers and the Simmons Marlowe.

Then we drove down to Mattress Firm, which threw me off my game in trying out beds because they had the word FIRM on all the beds and I didn't want to try them out.  And can I just say here that you know you are getting old when you fall in love with the bed with the electric controls to raise and lower the head and the knee sections?  Loved that bed.  Loved that bed.  Mr. Big Ed?  Not so much.  He saw the price and went in to a complete sticker shock and refused to get in it.  Dick.

FINALLY, we made our way to Sears and tried out all their beds and narrowed it down to 4 as well.  Then I pulled out my lovely letter from them entitling me to not only the 50% off, but the store was having another 10% on top of that and my letter gave me an ADDITIONAL 10%, PLUS free delivery and hauling off of Old Lumpy AND a free bed frame.  Turns out only 1 of the 4 we had selected was eligible for all this free stuff.  So we were between 1 bed at Sears and the 4 at Penney's.

Mr. Big Ed came out of his high price-induced coma and told me that the one feature that impressed him above all the others was the ones that had completely separate coils that worked independently from each other rather than as one big connected wire bouncy thing.  That narrowed the list down to 2 of the Penney's beds.  The beds that have this are the Simmons Beautyrest, in case you care.  So back to Mr. J. C. Penney's store we went.

And here is the winner!  The Simmons Beautyrest Danvers in the Plush, cushy, comfy version.  It is due to be delivered on either the 16th or the 18th.  Then Old Lumpy will be carted off by the Penney's people to get a Viking funeral or some such thing.  Normally, I really care about what happens to things, where they go and keeping things out of the landfill that don't necessarily need to be there, but I don't know of anything I can do with this poor, tired old bed.  So if you are in the market for a really old, sad, lumpy, saggy bed you have until either the 16th or the 18th to come get it.

Meanwhile, please feast your eyes on the soon-to-be new bed!  Aaaaah, can't you just feel the relaxation?  I sure can!

And for the last time this month, please do let me know if you want to be in the drawing for some FREE tea!  I will be choosing someone next week.  Maybe I will get organized and do it Monday for Valentine's Day?  Let me hear from you!

Random Things from This Week

Nothing like a big serving of randomness, is there?

1. Yesterday I posted my usual thing of obit reading.  But I also talked about a t.v. show that ended.  And since I led with the t.v. show and ended with the best obit I have ever read, I kinda thought that the last thing you read would be the first thing commented on.  Nope.  Not so much.  Either y'all don't really give a shit about the obits, or you really liked the husband from the t.v. show!  Ha!  That was pretty much the concensus of the comments.  Everyone liked that guy.  Did anyone give a rat's ass about the poor dead concentration camp survivor guy?  Apparently not.

2. We had a storm come through here last night and dropped the temp about 50 degrees, with lots of wind and rain.  And this usually makes for some great sleeping at my house.  Love, love to sleep during a rainstorm.  However, last night?  All the flipping pets were up at one time or another and were all a bit on edge.  None of us got a good night's sleep.  In spite of that, I still have a full day of things to do.  Those dogs and kitties?  I am sure they will be basking in front of a window with lots of warm sunbeams on their fur.  I intend to poke each of them and wake them up every time I walk by and see one of them sleeping. Twice if they were one of the ones who kept me up all night.  Revenge, it's what's for breakfast!

3. I am reading a book that my son has for one of his classes this semester.  He brought it in and said he thought I might like it and he doesn't have to start on it for a few weeks.  So I have been reading it at night and it is really an interesting premise.  Let me go get it so I can tell you the title.

Okay, I got it.  And I went ahead and took a pic of the cover so you can see it.

A World of Babies, Imagined Childcare Guides for Seven Societies.  The little blurb on the bottom left is from T. Berry Brazelton, my favorite of all pediatricians.

So, here is the deal on this book - The opening chapters are explaining what the premise is behind each supposed childcare guide.  Then with each childcare guide there is a synopsis of this particular society, how it functions, how large it is, what are the social, religious, spiritual more's, etc.  Then there is the imagined childcare guide written from the perspective of a healer, a grandmother, a midwife, or whoever would be a respected person from that culture.

It is really interesting.  And all these babies will grow up just fine not because of the way their parents rear them, but in spite of!  There are so many conflicting customs.  Some believe in bathing babies 5 times a day, some 2 times a day, some not until they are 210 days old.  Some swaddle tightly for months, some never.

What all this means is there is no one right way to do things.  There never has been.  What is appropriate in one society in one time period would never work across the world in that same time period or any other.  What we can take from this is that we should all be open to learning new ways and not judging things as "right" and "wrong".

I think I am on the 4th society and have 3 more to go.  I will let you know if I change my opinion when I finish.

4. Since Lester Buster made it back home safely, I have not let him go outside at all.  Everyone else thinks I am being too hard on him, taking away his Outside Privileges, but I swear to you I lost 5 years of my life worrying about him and I don't think I can do it again.  I am sure that in time I will loosen up and let him go out front again, but for the time being, he needs to be indoors.  Which brings up all kinds of my codependent issues.  It's like I am learning to be better in one area of my life, and BAM! Lester goes missing and I fell right back into my old familiar pattern.  Nice.

5. Yesterday would have been the birthday of one of my sisters.  She died 15 years ago, way too young. Her best friend and I sent each other email messages remembering things about her.  It was a rather sad, nostalgic day. R.I.P. sweet beautiful girl.

6. And before this turns any more maudlin and depressing, I have this for you!

I sure hope he gets picked up for a new series or new movie or something.  He is a cutie, isn't he?

What Hermine left behind in her wake

Hermine the Hurricane, and who exactly is it that decides the names of these storms?  Hermine?  Really?  That's the best H-name they could come up with?  Hailey?  Hannah?  Hildegarde? Harriet? Hilda?

Hermine was predicted to head over to the northern part of Mexico, right at the area where they just found a mass grave with 72 people, you know, just in case those poor people hadn't already had enough drama and upset in their lives from all the Drug Land Mafia Turf Wars.  And at the last second, Hermine said to herself, "Self, I think I will spare that part of Mexico and just head inland over Texas and up to Oklahoma and come to rest in Wichita, Kansas".  And here in central Texas we have been slammed, and I mean, slammed with wind and rain.  Gusts up to 60 mph and the whole storm moving at 18 - 20 mph.  It took a long-ass time to make its way across here, is what I am saying.

And other than a lot of flooding, downed branches and leaves and debris everywhere, our only problem was that the power had gone out.  It was out for about 12 hours here at our house.  Other places had it much worse.  When Mr. Big Ed got home from work he said "What's with the big tree laying down in the street?"  So of course we all go running outside to see the tree and then I ran right back in and got my camera.  It seems that our across-the-street-and down-one-house neighbors' biggest and most beautiful oak tree just fell over.  It didn't crack or anything like that, it just tipped right over.  Right over the middle of the street, thankfully, and not over their house.  I would much prefer to have to find an alternate route in and out of the neighborhood than for them to have a big hole in their home with another night full of thunderstorms and no power coming at us.

Here is what it looked like:

Doesn't that just break your heart?  Keep watching.

I made my friend Vanna  Debra go stand next to the tree top that is now laying across the street so that you could have some perspective.  Now, how sad is that?

It gets worse.  Here is the aftermath:

Sorry about the car door in the last 2 aftermath pics.  Heartbreaking is what this is.

Our neighborhood is known for the multitude of live oaks on every property, and that one was one of the prettiest on theirs.  So sad.  Another casualty of Mother Nature and her fury.

Feel like a hummingbird

Yes, I am feeling like a hummingbird. Just flitting from topic to topic.  Hither and dither.  My brain couldn't just settle on one thing to discuss, so here we are.

Firstly, o. m. g.  Did we have a thunderstorm come raging through here last night or what?  Wind, hail, sideways rain, thunder and lightning like nobody's business!  We were without power for a couple of hours but nothing major.  The power company said on the news that 190,000 were powerless after 9 separate transformers went down.  Check out this link to the local news site where people sent in their photos of the storm.  Of course, these are all amateur shooters, but they are good pics nonetheless.  I am going to go out and check out the neighborhood and see what all was tossed about in the wind.

Do you iron?  I do.  I iron a lot of things.  I like, no that's not right, I really love the smell and the feel of freshly ironed sheets, pillowcases, tablecloths, napkins, most anything made of cotton or linen.  I even buy ironing water to give my sheets a light fragrance.  Here's the thing, I was throwing away multiple cans of spray starch and Magic Sizing (whatever the ingredients of that product are!) every week and put my foot down and said "No More Cans!" This was years ago, by the by.  So I started buying the liquid concentrated starch stuff and mixing that in a spray bottle and that worked pretty well.

But then when we started moving and globe-trotting as ex-pats it was not convenient to haul big gallon jugs of concentrated starch around.  And I found that many places still sold the old school starch in a box that you cook and then use.  Do any of you remember this?

One of my most vivid memories of my childhood is coming home from pre-school or 1st grade and it being ironing day.  My mama would have the big pot of starch cooked and the smell just perfumed the air and the clothes were starched and sprinkled and then rolled up so they wouldn't dry out too quickly.  She used an old over-sized glass coke bottle with a cork stopper that had a little sprinkler head on top to sprinkle the clothes with water.  And then when the hot iron hit those clothes with the starch, well that is just about the best and cleanest smell in the world.  I love this starch.

So this is what I have been using all these years.  When I was living in Mexico they also sold a box of Niagara starch and I had several of these that got pushed to the back of the pile.  And recently, I was running low on starch and started checking out all the local stores.  No one had any, and I repeat, ANY little aqua boxes of starch!

Then I had to start looking online.  And wrote to Faultless and to Niagara both to ask where I could get my beloved little box of starch.  You know what happened?

They both wrote me back.  Shocking, isn't it?  And the Faultless people sent me the nicest really long really informative letter as to what happened, why there is no more box of starch.

I kept searching and found the Argo people, yes, those same ones that make your regular corn starch you cook with, have laundry starch.  It is available through Lehman's and Amazon.  So I ordered a box of starch.  A box, meaning a case.  A case of 24 boxes.  Enough to last my lifetime.  My kids may inherit a box or two of starch, is what I am saying.

I will report back after I make my first batch with this new brand and let you know how I like it.  I better like it with as much of it as I have!  This new stuff better be really good if it has a chance of replacing the memory of my Faultless.

R.I.P. little aqua box of Faultless starch.  I will miss you.  Something that was around on the shelf at home and at every grocery store all of my life is gone now.