Guess who . . . .

 

Guess who survived her birthday yesterday? 

Guess which birthday it was?

 Guess who can't quite figure out how the first fifty 

got away from her?  

Guess who is assuming she has about fifty more birthdays ahead?  

Guess who is going to take a friend's suggestion and 

begin counting her age backwards from this birthday? 

So, guess who is fifty, then forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven . . . .    

The true humpty dumpty

Today, as I was leaving J's school and on the way to my car, I stepped halfway on and halfway off the curb, twisted my ankle and went down fast onto the asphalt--tried to catch myself with my hands, scraped both knees, hit my hip soundly and then my shoulder.  I mean after it was all over, I was lying DOWN on the asphalt.  Who said falling is only for the elderly?  I'm the true Humpty Dumpty in the family, although I did get up and walk (hobble) away.

Divine Nature, April's value

Although the month is nearly gone, I'm sitting down to write about this month's Young Women's Personal Progress value:  Divine Nature.  The phrase "divine nature" is taken from 2 Peter 1:4-7 where it talks of divine qualities of: diligence, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.  The idea is that as children of God we have inherited divine qualities and we should strive to develop them.    

For Divine Nature, some of the things the young women work on are: (1) increasing their understanding of womanhood; (2) making their home life better; (3) keeping baptismal covenants; (4) being more obedient to their parents; and (4) being a peacemaker at home and at school by refraining from criticizing, complaining or speaking unkindly with others.   

For me, the word "peacemaker" takes in all the things that Divine Nature contemplates:  when we understand more about womanhood and we keep baptismal covenants, we're making peace with ourselves; as we are more obedient to our parents and strive to make home life better, we are making peace at home; as we are peacemakers at home and at school, we make peace with people in the world around us.  Wouldn't being a peacemaker behoove us all?  In summary, here is a prayer by St. Francis of Assisi about being a peacemaker:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

And where there is sadness, joy.

Anyone published his/her blog?

I am thinking that I would like to publish my blog in a one-year segment, maybe in September which would be the one-year mark for my blogging, or at the end of 2009, which would be a logical cut-off point for a year's worth of blogging (and in my case, a year and three-and-one-half months of blogging).

I've looked into Blurb--I downloaded the software and uploaded my blog contents. I like that I could:

• get a black background for the cover,
• get black backgrounds for the pages,
• have each post on one page,
• edit the content,
• edit the pictures,
• edit the page layout,
• delete text and pictures that no longer seemed so interesting as when I posted it,
• end up with what promised to be a beautiful product.

However, I did not like:

• that not all pictures were usable,
• that the editing worked worse than Shutterfly (and I am still suffering from Post-Christmas-Shutterfly-Photobook-Trauma) so this issue was the kiss of death:

(a) I would lose photos (I don't recall about text) during editing (even Shutterfly did not do this),

(b) there were not enough page templates or not enough suitable to my purposes (worse than Shutterfly), and

(b) it was very time-consuming process to arrange every page (because it was cumbersome,

and every page needed arranging).

.

So after fiddling with it for a while, I deleted the software from my computer.

Next, I tried Blog2Print. I liked that:

• I didn't need to download software in order to create the blog book;
• it uploaded my blog in a sensible format;
• it gave me a quote (gasp) right away as to how much it would cost to print;
• all pictures were (evidently) usable, and
• I could really just upload it on January 1, 2010, and it would be ready to send to the printer right then, no muss, no fuss.

However, I didn't like that:

• I couldn't tweak it (it was how it was, period),
• the photos were a uniformly smallish size,
• my 6-month amount of blogging came to $49.95 for a soft-cover book (so what would my one-year cost be?!),
• the posts sometimes spread to another page with little dangling, partial sentences there (a little pet-peeve of mine),
• the "look" of my blog was just not there,
• the cover looked boring (despite having my header on it), and
• the "style-factor" for the pages and the cover was the book equivalent of sensible shoes.

Have any of you published your blog or experimented with other sites that you could recommend?

A lunch bunch

Normally I don't post photos of people who aren't "mine" to post but I thought these gals were all mature enough to handle "getting posted." This was photo #1 and in photo #2 a big gust of wind came up and totally gave us that "women in a wind tunnel" effect. These gals are, left to right: MWW, VSG, D_H, GGE, PGB and GCH. I need to get them all a copy of this lovely photo!

At my friend Sheila's funeral, someone mentioned that Sheila had gone to lunch every year with a group of ladies who were also born in Sheila's birth month. So I approached GCH, whose birthday is the day after mine, and proposed that we get a few gals together and "do lunch" in honor of our birthdays. G loved the idea. So she invited two friends and I invited two friends. We all know one another and all of us have spring birthdays. We met for lunch at Ted & Allen's in one of the Tri-cities. We had a great time.

At Sheila's funeral, the thought stood out to me that life is short and I should enjoy and be mindful of and engaged with the people around me while they're around. So, here's to Sheila and her fun idea!

Adding Easter photos a few at a time!

Here I am, posting Easter photos kind of piecemeal . . . spreading out the fun, I guess.

We colored Easter eggs this year for the first time in a few years.

It was fun, and B & I even got in on the action a little bit.

J & L hard at work.

L dabbing an egg (and you can see some of our creations--I cooked just 15 eggs, so to make the fun last, each egg was colored carefully, and multiple times).

Mr. T (:-) using his favorite color green for this creation.

A good time was had by all. :-)

We'll need to color eggs again next year. Maybe then B will teach us the Swiss method of egg coloring, an old Santa Clara tradition using plants and flowers, since we're all of Swiss descent around here, anyway!

Brainiac

Yes, this is my third post this morning but then I'll be done for the day.  

Last night, I finished reading Brainiac by Ken Jennings, the guy who had a record winning streak on Jeapordy!  I really like biographies and autobiographies--in fact, I might even say that they are my favorite kinds of books although I've read fewer of them in the past few years for some unknown reason.  

I thought Brainiac was really well written and interesting.  Once in a while, his reconstructing the history of trivia was a tab much for a non-trivia girl but not often.  I also rarely guessed the answers to the trivia he included but I thought that was still a fun thing to include (particularly in a book about the King of Trivia).  He has a great writing style and I should have stopped to look up some of the words that flew right over my head.  I particularly liked reading Ken's behind-the-scenes report of his whole Jeapordy! experience, even if I didn't watch any of his appearances at the time and even if I haven't watched Jeapordy! for years.  

All together, the book was a great look at a whole different world.  The world IS wide.

All of my children gathering Easter eggs . . .

R has the distinction of finding the first Easter egg of the hunt!

You can see determination and concentration on the face of T!

L got up off her sick bed for this event!

The eggs J collected contained the most money.

Adventure Quest Hero Mom . . . for a few days

Sunday night, J was desperate to obtain an Easter item on Adventure Quest--a sword.  T had earned the item and, supposedly, T was to have earned the item for J.  But he hadn't/wouldn't.  So at bedtime, J was very distressed and upset.  Thinking it was the last day to earn the seasonal item, I volunteered to work on it for him for a little while--like maybe half an hour. J spent about half an hour trying to teach me what to do and he wrote instructions for me.  

Well, that little while turned into four hours, into the middle of the night, as I became progressively more determined, probably due to (1) derangement from being so tired, (2) pride that I could lose at something so repetitive and seemingly mindless, and (3) love for J.  It involved battling the same "Grizzle Spit" character over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . . . I still hadn't earned the item by the time I could no longer stay awake.  I felt very sad because I knew how disappointed J would be in the morning and how hard I'd tried to earn the sword.  

Come to find out, J had forgotten to tell me an important piece of information--that I had to reselect that quest if I got booted off the game for some reason (which happened two or three times), so I was working about 2/3rds of that time for nothing.  

It was an interesting view into something my boys love to do--these online games.  At one point, I became so bored of the battle fruitlessly repeating and repeating itself, I started to try other buttons that looked like battle powers.  That helped keep me awake for a while but then another other player said, "Stop using mana!"  I had no idea to whom he was speaking--there were at least five other characters simultaneously battling and re-battling this same character--and I had no idea what mana was.  So I kept doing what I was doing.  Then he said the name of J's character "S___, are you stupid or something? Stop using mana!"  I replied, "What's mana?"  He said, "Are you a retard??!"  I said, "I'm Sonic's mom."  He said, " . . . sigh.  Just don't use the blue bar."  While this was a little embarrassing to my sons when I recounted it in the morning, it really made me laugh.  Needless to say, I didn't know what the blue bar was and I didn't ask but figured it had something to do with those attack powers so I quit using them. Come to find out, using mana delays the drop rate (which, interpreted means, delays the rate at which you get the sword).  Soon after I quit using mana, the guy got the sword and lived happily ever after. 

Anyway, Monday, after being advised by my sons as to the missing details, I tried again and, as luck would have it, J was here when I earned the item.  Ta da!  It put me in favored mom status for the day and that status spilled over into the next few days that followed, because besides the sword, I'd also earned J something like 77,000 "gold," a new mana power, and I had advanced his character from rank 7 to 9 (and T was still rank 7).  Yea Mom!  :-) 

Now it is Thursday, my hero-mom status has waned and I'm back to my former status of "just mom."  However, I have been severely tired the entire week and not very effective at anything other than basking in my favored mom status. :-)  Maybe I should have battled Grizzle Spit to win something like a virtual maid and virtual chef for our home!  So there you have it, the highs and the lows of a mother's adventure in online game play.

Had a nice Easter; hope you did, too.

We had a nice Easter weekend and we hope you did, too. My Young Women personal progress activity Friday afternoon went just fine and I felt good about what we accomplished. L was sick this weekend but Saturday we still had a nice Easter breakfast and then colored boiled eggs. We haven't done that for a few years. We had lunch here, since the weather called for rain (but it didn't end up raining), and we had an Easter drive to see some of the countryside around here. We live in a beautiful part of the state. Just as well that we just drove because L was sick that day, too, but she rode along. Sunday, we had a nice ham dinner and an Easter egg hunt (money in the eggs instead of candy--we've come to that). The only downside to the weekend is the dog R seems to be sick. We now have medicine for her and I hope she starts getting better. I saw Mom this weekend, too (besides today) and she is fine. The folks at BH had an Easter outing to a BH in Coral Canyon arranged by the recreation person for BH so I'm glad about that.

Another gadget I'm thinking of buying

Another gadget I'm thinking of buying is a crystal ball.  I thought I had things all covered with my earlier purchases I wanted to make but there are always things that can't be helped with levitation, an invisibility cloak or a mind reader so that brings us to the crystal ball.  The crystal ball could show various choices and their outcomes or just plain tell us what to do.  How handy is that?   

Happy Easter

Happy Easter Everyone!  I hope you have a good Easter weekend. 

 Thanks to a younger J for this great Easter painting.

I hope we remember to color Easter eggs this year.  We've forgotten the past few years . . . or maybe I have just forgotten on purpose (because no one seems to eat the eggs after they are boiled and colored) but I'm ready to color eggs again.  The kids will insist on our Easter egg hunt (I now put money instead of candy in the eggs).  B will insist on a big Sunday dinner (he will cook some of it along with me).  I am hopeful we'll squeeze in a picnic on Saturday, although B has another commitment that day, right during prime picnic time.  

I hope you get to do all the things you'd like on Easter, too.

The gingham dog and the calico cat . . .

The gingham dog and the calico cat 

Side by side on the table sat; 

T'was half past twelve, and (what do you think!) 

Not one nor t'other had slept a wink!

Actually, our cat and dog get along famously, and aren't likely to tear each other apart like the gingham dog and the calico cat of the nursery rhyme, but this picture made me think of that rhyme.  It is interesting how very nearly the same color R & S are.  

Back by popular demand.

I think no single post (in my six months [!] of blogging) has generated more comments than my last post (with picture) about my mother. So I decided I'd try posting another couple of pictures of Mom. These aren't very good pictures, in terms of photo quality (I need to learn to get rid of the yellow, even if I can't see it when I take the picture and can only see it once the picture is uploaded), but I think Mom looks more like herself in these photos than most other photos of Mom that have been taken in the past year, so I'm including them.

L and I visited Mom on Saturday and somewhere between this picture of Mom and me that L took without a flash (above) . . .

and this picture of L and Grandma that I took without a flash (above), Grandma's reaction to the camera's flashes in all of the photos between these two pictures made L and me laugh. Mom can't stand bright lights and kept being taken off guard by the flash of the camera so she would grimace or flinch or both. The more L and I tried not to laugh, the funnier the whole thing became. That hilarity also accounts for Grandma's expression in the photo as she's going along with all of our laughing. Mom was happy to see L and hear about things she's doing.

End of soccer season

For J, Thursday was a soccer game and the end-of-season party. They also handed out their team pictures and a medal for playing. Before the game, J said, "Mom, you come to the game; I'm going to make a goal today." :-) As it turned out, I did come and he did make TWO goals. Yea J! Then, Friday, their last game was rained out, so Thursday was a happy end to a fun season.

Shoes

I've always loved shoes. They were always a guilty pleasure of mine. Not that I was ever a REALLY fancy dresser but I've always felt that, "Shoes make the outfit." However, since my foot problems began several years ago, I've had to choose shoes based almost entirely on comfort (well, the shoes have to be comfortable but I have to also like them enough to wear them). Comfortable shoes aren't easy to find and, for the most part, I let one pair "do" for several purposes. I do draw the line at wearing tennis shoes with dresses but if I can find one good pair of shoes, say, for casual, that is my ONE casual pair. I'm sure money factors in here, too, but for the first time in my life, I have hardly any shoes in my closet. But, in looking for a google image to include with this post, I came across a picture of someone with no feet. I've decided that I should be thankful that I have feet rather and that I do have some shoes, rather than feel sad that I have so few shoes and sore feet.

Thought for the day

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." - -Thomas Aquinas

Four books I've read lately

When I started this blog, I intended to include something about books that I had read. Then, not long after I started the blog, I was called to serve in the Young Women organization so most of my reading went by the wayside. However, I am starting to read again, a little here and a little there. These aren't the only books I've read since November, but these are the first books on this blog just because.

These books are juvenile fantasy fiction. I picked them up at the library for my children but I took the first book on our Arizona vacation and finished it on just about the first day of the trip.

Each book in the series is better than the previous book. I do not think I have ever thought that about a series. Usually my high praise for a series is that it stays consistently good throughout the series but this improves.

These are stories of teenagers who travel through time, in a parallel universe of sorts, from England to a place called Talia which is a version of our Italy but not entirely. A person who travels back and forth between these places is a Stravagante. There are problems to solve in both "universes" and the kids have to solve them.

I am just now reading the fourth volume. Future publications of these books will have different covers, as you can see, below.