Testing

Today is Monday (often a trying day!); it began on a note I pray will only improve as the week progresses. Thankfully, it ended with a gathering of good women educating & entertaining each other, which made my later than usual dinner more worth waiting for.

Cats spilling trash cans including wet coffee grounds, teenagers complaining about my assessment of a less-than-well written essay for homework, younger children clamoring for attention, & husbands not even getting home for several hours yet are less of a burden & more of a gift seen through the right lens. I got a good dose of that lens with my fellow students at church (after my youngest child's Girl Scout meeting cancelled itself because only two of seven children showed up, & three of the missing were ill!).

May that lens last the rest of the week so I keep my perspective! And may the temperature remain below 80, with minimal if any humidity! :)

Oink! Flu! How do you do?

I couldn't help co-opting & corrupting the title of a children's book my collegiate sons used to have about a geologic age ago entitled, Oink! Moo! How Do You Do? (I've long since forgotten the author of that toddler-friendly tome.) The (swine?) flu has been making its way through our local community, to the point that a private school in a nearby town has shuttered itself for the rest of the week. This is because nearly 300 of their students AND a number of teachers are (allegedly!) infected with it. If, indeed, it IS the swine flu, then so much for the efficacy of the vaccine that won't be available until NOVEMBER!

Meanwhile, everyone in town is buying hand sanitizer & antibacterial soaps--which don't do much against influenza VIRUSES--& Lysol, which DOES kill germs AND viruses. Right about now I wish we'd get a raging COLD SNAP (say, overnight temperatures in the 20s) that would KILL everything in the air, we might just feel better! Sadly, our overnight lows right now are in the upper 60s; I don't see a frost hitting for at least another month and a half. ("Frost on the pumpkin," common in October north of the Mason-Dixon line, doesn't really apply here before Thanksgiving--if that early!)

Pray the flu in ALL its forms (swine, type A, & otherwise) misses me and mine--I'll do the same for you, dear readers!

Lengthy Hiatus! & I'm Dreaming of...WHAT? WHEN? WHY?!?

It's been quite a while! Forgot my last posting was just as school was reopening...Now I'm back into the routine of running amok behind two school-aged girls (one teen, one tween) & the two college men, who are seldom even home anymore. Therefore, like every other mother on the planet, I've had less time for "me" & my pursuits than I had over the summer.

The weather is cooler, but I'm in no rush for the hustle & bustle of the holiday season. Nevertheless, one of our local big box hardware/home center stores was already putting up Christmas displays (!!!) yesterday; hubby was there to see it firsthand. Try to convince me (if you CAN!) that Christmas isn't overly commercialized when the decorations are going up MORE THAN THREE MONTHS before "the big day!!!"

Charlie Brown was right to scold Snoopy for his crassly commercialized doghouse decorations, but at least they didn't go up in SEPTEMBER!!!