Hey Mom! Do you have handcuffs at your house?

Should We Even Be Talking About This?

The phone rang.  It was my youngest daughter.  "Hey mom! Do you have handcuffs at your house?' she asked.

"Uh. . . that's a trick question right?" I replied, then quickly added "no. . not so far as you know. Why do you ask?"

That got a laugh out of her, and once you realize she is now a police officer, the question wasn't as kinky as you might have been led to believe.  What she really wanted to know was did I have HER handcuffs at my house?  She had stopped by and changed at my place and thinking she'd left them here in the rush to her shift. The fact that her question was worded as if I'd assume were talking about HER handcuffs, was the funny part. 

On her end of the phone, I can only imagine her rolling her eyes and saying "eweeeew! yuck!" in head, while she played along with me.

We laughed about this for a bit, then hung up and it struck me how odd it is to have certain conversations with your kids, even when they are almost as old as you (I maintain that I stopped aging long ago, and now my kids are getting old enough to be my sisters and brother).

This reminds me of the time I was cleaning out my pre-marriage and pre-weight gain lingerie drawers while my oldest daughter was visiting.  I was laying out beautiful nighties, etc. (I'll leave this part to your imagination so my kids don't have to hack into my blog and delete this) and my daughter was taking a few things that suited her, when her husband walked in the room. 

He looked at the lacy stuff laying around, and she showed him a few things and he said "Wow!  Those are pretty!  Where did they come from?"  And the look on his face was priceless when she said, "Oh from Mom!  She doesn't need them anymore!"  He then looked at me, blushed and said to us both "Oh great.. .that's a visual I really didn't need!". 

Then quickly realized how that comment sounded and he tried so hard to get out of the pile of poop he stepped in by saying "OH GOD!  Not that Mom wouldn't look great in. . . I mean. .  I just can't. . . .now when my wife is wearing that. . .OH GOD!....I'm getting out of here!"  And out the door he bolted.  I have no clue what became of those things and really don't need to know.  I can let that one alone for all our sakes.

Yep.  Having kids who are almost my age really makes for interesting conversation. 

I remember the time when my then-young step-son came into my room holding something behind his back and said "Hey, Jackie!  You LIKE fur, don't you?"  That is an entirely different post for an entirely different day.

TTFN
Jackie
(who really is so psychic!)

Objects in the mirror; change in blog name

Yesterday, while driving, it occurred to me that I had forgotten the perfect name for my blog that I thought of long ago.  There it was, right outside the window on the car mirror:  Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.  How crazy is that?  Why aren't the objects in the mirror just as close as they appear to be? 

I've always wanted that saying as some sort of article title, tag line or quote on my business card, and when I started my very first blog, it left me completely until yesterday. Just goes to show you I don't look at my right side mirror very often!

First of all, WHY do they (car manufacturers) do that?  With all our technology, you'd think they could make a mirror for the passenger side of the car that shows the REAL size and distance from the object to you. 

This little feature on the cars has haunted me since the day I first got behind the wheel in driver's ed oh so long ago.  Exactly HOW MUCH closer is this object?  Just a bit?  Quite a bit?  RIGHT NEXT TO ME?  How can I ever trust it?  What moron thought this is a good idea? OH GOD, I'll never trust my right-side merging and can I really believe that the driver's side mirror is telling me the truth?  Arrrghh!

Back in the day, there were no outside mirrors on cars, and then there was only one, on the driver's side.  Finally, some safety guy, or insurance person, or mother came along and said "we need a mirror on the other side too!"  But, maybe that mirror should be misleading, just to keep a little excitement in the driving experience!  Yeah, that's it!  Let's keep it fun!

So who made that decision to put in a funky mirror that distorts the image to make it appear farther away giving me a false sense of security?  Who I ask?

The newer cars have cool things in the mirrors that light up when someone is in your smack zone.  The closer they come to your zone, the brighter the lights get and some even beep.  So, if you look in the distorted mirror, you think the car is farther away but the lights KNOW the truth.  The light sensors shout "danger, danger - don't believe what you see in the mirror!"

Odd, eh?

Well, if I were an English teacher, or a philosophy teacher, I'd use this sentence as a class assignment.  It's a goodie.  Think about how it actually pertains to our lives, in a metaphorical sense.

The objects in the mirror are usually the things behind you, right?  Stuff from your past.  Looking back on your past, don't some events or situations seem LARGER than they really were?  Or, do they seem smaller than you thought at the time? 

We don't get any blinking lights that go off and say "hey! that old stuff is sneaking up on you again and it's getting close!  There's gonna be a big bang here!"  Memories are always conjured up with filters on them.  Either we make the story bigger, worse, more drama, or we minimize what happened.  We pick and choose what we remember, for the most part.  And HOW we remember it.  We give memories new or continued life if we keep talking about them, writing about them, dwelling on them.  Some are good, and some need to be given a proper burial and let go of completely.

So there you have it!  My blog name has been changed to what I originally wanted it to be.  And if you have any thoughts about the car mirrors, memories or whatever, leave me a comment.  By the way, be careful while driving, and keeping old memories - be sure to watch for the signal before the big bang!

TTFN!

If it itches, scratch it!

I just read a book call Spontaneous Healing  by Andrew Weil who talks about the body's ability to heal itself.  After all, it is how the human race, and most living things, survived.  You get cut, your skin heals.  You get an infection, and your body sends little white blood cell soldiers to attack and repair.  Your skin is constantly renewing and replacing old skin.  Your body wants to survive and wants to be in a state of wellness. This is a great book!

So that brings me to my itch.  And why I scratch it against everyone else's admonishing "LEAVE THAT ALONE!"  What the hell sense does that make?  My body is sending me a signal:  something is bad here,needs help to repair so pay attention to this area! Scratch me! Now, please! (FYI - this is NOT in Dr. Weil's book!  It is my own revelation about how the human body works).

Think about this.  If I swallow wrong, and start choking, which is my body's normal reflex to save itself.  It is a series of violent spasms set off by my brain after it says "holey crap, we're losing oxygen fast and we gotta get this damn thing outta here".   Not one person in the room will say "hey Jackie! Stop that extreme coughing and hacking!"

When I cut my finger, not one person will say "hey! don't press on that - just let it bleed!"  Nor will they say, "Stop that sweating! Right now!  You don't need to sweat!  I'm sure you'll cool off your internal organs and brain some other way."

But when you have an itch. . .now, that's a different story, eh?  Stop scratching!  Quit that!  You'll make it bleed!  God, you are making ME itch now!

Well, this is how I feel about that.  If I itch, I WILL scratch.  And I have been.  This year, for the first time in my life, I have developed eczema on my legs that turns into hives.  I've soaked in oatmeal baths, used all manner of creams, sprays, lotions, and have had steroid shots and pills.  Through all of it, I continued to itch and only scratching brought relief.  So I scratch.

Did it bleed?  Yep, it did.  Did it scab? Yep, it did.  Did it bruise from such crazed scratching?  Yep it did.  Did it heal?  YEP IT DID.  All of it.  And I felt better while scratching and after scratching.  That is what God invented scratching for!  In case you get an itch!

I've had plenty of time to think about why the body itches in the first place.  Something bad is inside and wants out.  It wants out so badly it will erupt and nudge, and jiggle your nerves until you help it out by scratching it right the hell out of you.

I actually believe that by scratching, you send some signal to the brain saying "Hey buddy, I'm helping you out as much as I can here!  Here's the place!  Yep, right here!  Send white blood cells!  Dude, you aren't sending enough!  What if bleeding and open sores happen?  Will you send more little white cell soldiers then? Good, because here comes a bleedy sore for you!  Yeah buddy, right here right now". 

And the brain GETS IT!  It says "finally, you moron!  I've been nudging your nerves all day now to get you to scratch here to help the blood flow faster to that area with the yucky stuff, and finally you listen to me!  Here's some relief for ya sister!  And stop listening to those people who say "stop that itching".  What the hell do they know?  They are not your BRAIN!"

So that's my take on it.  Not very scientific, except for the part that the body was meant to survive, be healthy and reproduce.  And I know it sends me signals to help it do that:  hunger pangs mean feed me, sneezing means get this crap out of my nose, pain in my ear means turn the music down, and itching means . . .scratch me!

Can you deny this?  Go ahead.  Tell me your thoughts. Just don't tell me to quit scratching, cause I won't!

TTFN

Why are "annuals" called that, when they don't come back every year?

Let's just talk about this crazy word for a minute.  When we talk about annual plants, that means you have to buy them fresh and new every year.  You can't just plant them once and watch them pop up again every spring.  Who, in their right mind, decided to call them annuals? 

In my mind, the plants that come back every year, are annuals, like this definition of Annual from the dictionary:

adjective

1. of, for, or pertaining to a year; yearly: annual salary.

2. occurring or returning once a year: an annual celebration.

 

Got that?  "Returning once a year.  Yearly".  Well, that is NOT what happens with THOSE kinds of plants.  The kind of plants that need to be replanted each year should be called "quarterlies" or more like "3-monthlys" for they really only last about 3 months and you gotta replant them every season.

 

I was talking about this with my daughter the other day we wondered how did these plants ever survive in the beginning?  If they don't come back in the next spring, that means they just completely die.  They don't sow any seeds that sprout back up in the new season.  Or if they do sow seeds, why don't they just grow right there where they were dropped?  They don't leave roots behind to re-sprout.  They leave nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.  Yet somehow, magically, they are here now. 

 

So where does the fresh crop of "3-monthlys" come from?  I think they come from seeds, but who gathers them?  And if they can be gathered, why can't the plants just drop them in the dirt, scattered by the wind, or bird poop, and grow the next year?

 

I am wondering if no one harvested the seeds, if the annuals would be gone forever?

 

Perennials, on the other hand, are plants that live for MORE than 2 years.  They appear to die out, but return each growing season.  Actually, they continue to grow, albeit so slowly, all year through stem or root systems.  So they seem to be named correctly, according to me.

 

It's the "annuals" that I just can't grasp.  Like, how it all got started - who figured it out and how they managed to collect the seeds before all the flowers were gone forever.  Smart little cave people!  Or, maybe it was the aliens. . . hmmmm....still could be.  Every year, the aliens stop by earth and drop off a fresh batch of "annual" seeds to . . .umm...Burpee and. . .Andersons. ...yeah, that's it.  Aliens.

 

Let me know if you KNOW where the real, true source of the "annual" seeds come from each year, or how it all started in the beginning. 

As far as I'm concerned, the 3-monthlys come from aliens and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

TTFN!

 

 

Getting my Feng to Shui in my sewing studio

My sewing projects have come to a stand still in spite of the awesome new fabrics I've just brought home from New York, several sewing group challenge deadlines looming and a promise to sew for some Leonberger friends.  I have new trims, buttons, threads and a crap-load (yep - that's a lot) of new patterns piled high, yet I can't get my Mo Jo going. I finally figured out what was going on.  

Walking the dog today, I had an idea about this standstill in activity.  It must be that the feng shui in my studio is off!  Of course! That had to be it. 

When I first moved into my current home and was able to turn a stand-alone apartment into a sewing (aka Poker) studio (a girl cave) I had the furniture situated with my chair in the middle facing east, putting my big desk in the center of the room so I could walk around all 4 sides of it for cutting ease, etc.  For a few years, I sewed regularly.

Well, I got bored with that arrangement and decided I wanted to face looking out the sliding glass door to watch the deer graze and look at the woods.  So I moved my desk 45 degrees and had my back to the entry door, facing south.  This placement opened up the room more, and I started planning a way to get a new cutting table in the room.

But, the whole thing was awkward.  Nothing got done, crap piled up everywhere and not one poker game even finished in the money :(   So today, I moved the furniture around in the room again, going by "feel" instead of by logic.

The desk got moved up against the east wall, and my chair faces east again.  Even though it looks smack into the wall, I'm closer to the glass window, and as I type this a young buck is nibbling leaves only 100 feet from me.  I can actually see him with my peripheral vision, and if I just turn my head so slightly, I can see him in full view from my east facing chair.

In the middle of all this, I got out my feng shui book and checked a few important elements of this art of positioning furniture, colors, numbers and images for success, health and happiness and I discovered that my Kua Number is 4 (based on date of birth and sex- Male/female, not how much I've been having lately).  Here are my best items for personal growth:

• Wood is my element (my floors are hardwood, my desk is wood, my pencils are wooden, my door is wooden, and my studio is IN the woods!
• The SUN is my Trigram (trigrams are root symbols of the I Ching) and there will be more on that in another post
• Best color for my home is blue/green (note to self - get some paint soon; goodbye white and oyster colored walls)
• Best direction for personal growth is in the southeast -which is exactly where I have placed my desk today! 

Once I get all the boxes, fabric and junk picked up off the floor, I'll post a photo.  Now, if I don't get motivated to sew, I guess I need to paint my room blue and green (sigh. . .not my favorite colors).  If that doesn't help my sewing Mo Jo, I'll read the next chapter of the feng shui book.

And, I think I need to read further into the book to see if need to change the orientation of my PC desk - for better results at Poker.  Hmmmm....I might even need an entirely separate room and set up for that feng shui!

Go ahead, you disbelievers, poo pooh this is if you like, but the principles of feng shui are ancient guidelines and practices attributed to the Chinese, that use the invisible lines of energy present in everything, to create a harmonic flow of these 'currents".  There's a lot more to it than just that, but you get the idea.  A great book on this is "Total Feng Shui" by Lillian Too.  Link to Lillian's web-site

Hey, most of us have no clue how an email gets into our PC, or how a show gets onto our TV right?  Well,this is the same thing, kinda.  And I want every advantage I can get to make life easier, happier, healthier and more prosperous, so I'll move my desk, put a picture of dragon under my mouse pad, and put some crystals in each corner of my room.  Stand back, I can feel the chi flowing!

Now for the sewing. . .

TTFN!

Beautiful Ball Gowns and what happened to dressing up?

Most of you who are reading this blog, may have just been on the edge of a time when dressing up and dressing beautifully was very important.  In 1964, when I was 11, I remember going to see Mary Poppins at the Valentine Theater in downtown Toledo, in a taxi (because most people only had one car, and our dad's took that car to work) with my mother and sisters on a weekday afternnoon.  We were dressed in dresses and I wore white cotton gloves and carried a small patent leather purse.  I remember it was hot outside, but very cool in the theater, and wanting to take my gloves off, but my mother insisted that I leave them on, because I was a big girl now and I had to act like a lady.  I know she did let my sisters take theirs off because I had to put their tiny gloves in my empty (except for a crochet-edged hanky) purse. 

I think that was the last time I ever wore gloves, except in the winter and to prom.  The world was changing and it took away our graceful manner of dress, many of our manners and courteseys, and in exchange, gave us "comfort" clothing, casual days, jeans for everyone and every day and fewer and fewer formal events.

Ah.  My heart pines for those days - the dressing up and manners parts.  This link will take you to a video, with narration, about ballgowns.  Not that most of us will ever get to dress like this, but it is the stuff that girls dream about and is good eye candy for today!


Beautiful Ballgowns

My "senior's" Discount! Wow - that's a harsh reality check!

When checking out my groceries today, the young woman ringing my stuff said, in a matter-of-fact way "Senior discount?".

And I said "Huh?".

So she said "Today is Senior's Discount Day.  Do you get the discount?".

It took all my will not to grab her by her pretty young neck, pull her over the counter to my side and shake the living crap right out of her and shout "do I LOOK LIKE I QUALIFY FOR A FREAKING SENIOR DISCOUNT????".

But, I did not.  Choking on those other words racing through my brain and keeping my hands firmly wrapped around my cart, I managed to gracefully smile and ask "Oh, what age does one need to be in order to qualify for that discount?"

Sweetly she says "60!".  And I say back "OH!  Honey!  I've got one more year before I turn 60 and I'm gonna milk it for all I can, to the very last day.  You just keep your discount another year!"

There was a bit of giggling, some insignificant small talk going on between us as I glanced around the store and at the people in line.  I realized most of them were only about 4 1/2 feet tall, stooped over, silver-haired with big ears and pastel clothing.  I heard her yammering something about "first Tuesday in the month. . " and fought off the urge to grab my purse and check my make-up to make sure my lipstick was still inside my lip lines and my blush wasn't too round and dark on my cheeks.

Finally, she winks at me and says "Look!  I gave you the discount anyway!  You saved $9.07!  Oh, and be careful in the parking lot!"  I ask why, thinking there were robbers or something unusual out there today, but she just nodded toward a little old lady who was bumping her cart into a display and said "see, there? watch out for THEM!"

I raced home, after stopping at the tea shop to pick up some white tea (erases wrinkles you know) and went straight to the bedroom.  I looked for my 6" platform heels, my low-cut evening dress and my dangly earings.  Yep, still there.  But the question now was - do I have to wear these things to the grocery store - and stay about 10 feet back from the cashier - just to maintain some semblance of youth?

Or, do I just give in now, and accept the fact I'm more likely to be mistaken (hahaha....yep....I said MISTAKEN) for a senior than a . . . 40-something?  I did save $9.00. . . .which will buy me a great martini. . . .

Hell no. . . Iknow I'm going into old age, but I am going kicking and screaming and wearing high heels as long as I can!  Screw the discounts! 

And tomorrow, we'll talk about the email ads I keep getting for scooters and funeral planning.

Bastards!

Bruno the Leonberger with the funky tail fur

Just a short post for my Leonberger friends who have heard about Bruno's tail. Yep, never grew back right after he lost a lot of hair last year.  As far as he knows, it's a beautiful tail!

How I think Risoto was discovered

Last night, we had friends over for dinner and made a wonderful Truffle butter, chantrell mushroom and shallot Risotto with broth and white wine. It was so good, I ate the leftover for breakfast!

I don't make risotto often, it takes quite a bit of time and fussing compared to rice. I think risotto is Italian for "rice that is stuffed full of liquid over a long period of time".  The rice itself can be cooked like normal rice; 2 cups of water, 1 cup rice boil till done, etc.  But to make risotto, you use the same rice with 5 cups of broth and 1/2 cup of wine and you add it to the rice in 1/2 cup increments, only adding the next 1/2 cup after the first is fully absorbed.  That, my friends, is a lot of liquid going into a little bit of rice!

I wonder who discovered that method?  Probably the wife who cooked the rice with a normal amount of liquid, and when her hubby didn't get home from the orchard on time,  she added more liquid.  When he still didn't come home, she added more.  She did this about five times, is my guess.

On the sixth time, when her hubby still didn't show, she sat down and had a glass of wine, and then another, and waited.  By the time she saw him coming down the lane, the rice was drying out and she was down to 1/2 cup of wine in the bottle - so she dumped that in for one last effort to keep the rice moist and fluffy.

Well!  The rice was quite the hit with the husband!  Or at least he knew better than to say a word about this new-textured creamy concoction (having noticed the empty wine bottle on the table, and the wild look in his bride's eyes). 

He raved about the creamy rice and when he asked her what she called it, she said, in a slightly tipsy fashion "thish is reese-oh too!", meaning to say, "this is rice TOO!"  (she also said a few other words about him being late from the orchard again, but that's another story)

Not wanting to offend his wife, he told all the neighbors about the new rice-oh-too, and the wife started having the neighboring wives over to show them how to make the new dish. After much experimenting with rice, water and wine the recipe became our modern day risotto.

If you know a different version of how this was discovered, please post.  Otherwise, this is my story, and I'm sticking with it!

TTFN!

Reverting to childhood and motion sensored monkeys

My hubby came home from a business trip and dumped a pile of treasures out of his suitcase, onto the bed.  "Here," he says.  "You can have these if you want them.  They are the ad items the vendors gave us."  Since he was at a very prestigious event, the ad items were pretty high end: Leather Ipad cases with attached note pads, ergo pens, a silver ball puzzle globe, I-accessories like ear buds and misc. and a Snoopy dog dressed in a tuxedo. 

I riffled through the stuff, having an IPad - some of it was of mild interest.  I snagged the puzzle globe for the grandsons, and put the ear buds on my night stand.  I giggled like a schoolgirl over the cute Snoopy dog and sheepishly put it back in the midst of the other little treasures.

When I came back to the bedroom, the pile was picked up, clothes were put away and there on my pillow - sat the Snoopy!  He is adorable!  My brain screamed "awwww!" but I just smiled and was reminded once again, how well my husband knows me and how much he takes care of me - especially in the "awww" and "wow" departments.

And while I'm thinking about it. . . as a child, I never had a soft spot for stuffed animals.  I didn't have a bear collection, had only one Barbie, one stuffed Rabbit on my bed from an Easter gift.  Then, a few years ago, I started to find and gather up sheep decor (for my yarn shop).  Figurines, stuffed animals, yard sheep, soap sheep, puppet sheep.  And I also started to notice places like Build a Bear shops with the cool clothes for the Bears and the neat shoes and accessories!  There was a lot of "awwww!" in that store. 

I also started to pick up stuffed animals and rock them like an infant as I browsed through the piles of big-eyed, long eared, fluffy soft toys searching for just the right one.  I caught myself more than once, rocking a stuffed sheep in the cashier's line. . .

It also happened that people could not really pick these creatures for me.  My hubby would hand me a sheep and say "here's a good one!" and I'd look at it and say "No, that one isn't right."  He thought I was nuts.  How can it not be "right", he'd ask?  Well, for one thing - look at the eyes.  The eyes aren't looking right. And the shape of the head. . . too flat.  Ears - too short.  Nose - too pointy.  Body - too stiff.  But thanks for trying.

And it wasn't just sheep!  It quickly moved to penguins, a collection that was supported by my son-in-law who seemed to find just the right ones with just the right faces.  Some how HE got it right! Gifts from him included the penguin seat belted into my back seat of my car that I didn't see for 2 days even thought I drove a lot - each day, to a penguin cookie!

Then, my need for "awwww" moments moved on to baby animals.  I noticed that I had been spending a lot of time looking at puppy stories on Facebook, bought a baby polar bear calendar, and spent time chuckling over pets dressed in halloween costumes!  What is going on here?  In my career, my office only had tastefully framed photos of my children and their ocassional art work (sometimes taped to the back of my door or inside of my credenza doors to keep my office "professional" looking yet let me keep my children close to me).  Looks like the dam broke and now every cutsey, fluffy, big-eyed animal found its way to me in one form or another.

I wonder if this joy of simple, ever smiling, soft and cuddly toys and adorable baby animals is a function of age?  Getting older and finding a need to laugh more, cuddle more, and play more?  If so, then I guess reverting to childhood isn't such a bad thing, until it comes time for the Depends. . . .

Gotta go.  There is a motion sensor monkey in the family room, who laughs and giggles and rolls on the floor when you get near him, calling my name on this fine Sunday! 

TTFN!

No sewing MoJo today

though the day isn't over yet, I doubt if I'll keep my promise to myself to sew something every single day. I did go buy some tension shower curtain rods to put in the unused doorway of my sewing room so I can use them to drape fabric over, instead of folding and stacking it. This is a new situation, since I came home from NYC with some leather skins and some fancy pre pleated designer fabric that should be rolled and not folded, and I had no clue how to manage that. At first, I considered buying a drying rack (stand that is used for hand wash dry flat laundry) but noticed the hanging rods were quite small, plus they took up a lot of floor space and it is likely I'll always have some sort of delicate fabrics around so I needed a better solution. There stood the empty, unused doorway and the idea popped into my head! I'll go give it a try and post a photo if it works. If it doesn't, that loud whining sound you'll hear will be me...

Opportunity Coincidence for Step-son

A couple of weeks ago, on a Friday morning, I was putzing around the house thinking about how I was going to help find some volunteer opportunities for my step-son to add to his college experience in his field of Wildlife Management.  His thing is hunting, fishing and all that goes with that.  He was fortunate to find a college degree program in just that line of work.  Now, going into his Junior year, he needs to start having "work" experience or internships in that line of study.  Here we are, in Toledo, Ohio and I am mulling over how I can ever find him opportunities here, when my door bell rang.

It was the guy (from a distant town) who fixes my roof.  He stopped by, unannounced,  not to check on my roof which he just repaired the prior week, but to ask if my husband might be available to help him over at the Boy Scout reservation down the street with an event for kids teaching them how to fish.  Hmmmm....I said.  Hubby is sick, but how about the step-kid?  Might it be possble that he could get some bona-fide credits for his portfolio if he helps out?

Why absolutely, was the response.  In fact, my roof guy handed me a card for the step-son from the American Sportsman's Club and told me of numerous volunteer opportunities for my kid, all across the country in all seasons!  From over night camps, to day events at Cabella's, the sponsors are looking for help to teach people how to hunt, fish, camp, trap and skin - and his first opportunity was the very next day. 

Thank you Universe!  You heard my call for help and answered my specific request for volunteer opportunities from the hunting, fishing, camping world!  And my goodness, how quickly you responded!

Coincidence?  Pre-knowing?  This time around, it sure felt like manifesting to me.  Getting in alignment with something I wanted and assuming it would come, letting the how and why up to the Universe.

In any event, step-son is now on a fast track to filling his internship/volunteer dance card and all he had to do was make the first phone call to the number on the card. 

TTFN!
May all your thoughts be good ones!

It has even happened here!

As I was setting up my blog, I discovered the option to allow advertisements to be shown on my page, and fought with the gadget for an hour or so with no success.  I tried to sponsor sewing machines, fabric, patterns, knitting stuff to no avail.  Just before signing off (having been "errored out" several times) I thought to myself "Well, since none of those products seem to be offered as options, I suppose I can always sponsor health insurance (my old occupation)!"  And then I thought, nah. . .I'll find something tomorrow.

So, I wake up today, turn on my PC and go to my blog.  And guess what?  There are ads on my page!  Not only that, but the main ad is for a health insurance company!! Go figure.

I've got some work to do on this, but in the meantime, I'm thinking I best be careful what I think about since it seems to comes to me very quickly!

Coincidence?  What do you think?