The Five Legged Dog
“It’s like trying to buy a five-legged-dog,” my friend started out. When a friend starts a conversation with an opener like that, she has my full attention. “You look and you look, but you know at some point your going to have to give up one of the legs to find a dog to buy.”
We had been talking about house hunting. You know what you want. This house has most of it, but that house has all of it, at a price you can’t afford. Another house has everything, at a price you can afford, but you can see endless maintenance costs associated with ownership of that property. In short . . . there is no five legged dog. Somewhere along the way, you give up wanting it all and settle for good enough.
I think about that friend and her saying often. It’s become a family catch-phrase, they have heard me tell it so often. We’re all in search of that five legged dog.
(photo from public domain pictures)
Sleepless in Pensacola
It’s cold in Pensacola. The high tomorrow will be 47°F/8°C and the lows are around freezing. You think of Florida as being warm and sunny, but with the chill wind, it is COLD. Luckily, we brought some cold weather gear.
But when a Florida baby is born, they get lots and lots of clothes of lightweight cotton, and no heavy duty sleep-blankets. Heavy duty sleep blankets are for those babies up north – AdventureMan and I know, because we went looking for them tonight, for our little grandson. Even though they have turned up the heat, Florida houses can be chill in the cold weather, and we searched in vain for a good sleep blanket.
There are new ways of doing things, different from when we were raising our son thirty years ago. Now you have to be sure the baby is sleeping on his back (we were all told to be sure they slept on their stomachs) and there can be no blankets in the crib or bassinet, no soft toys, no pillows. They recommend sleep sacks because the baby stays warm and comfortable, while lowering any risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). They know so much more than when we were raising children.
I was able to spend a few hours with my grandson today, holding him while his parents napped or relaxed. AdventureMan made a big pot of nourishing and delicious Beef Vegetable Soup. He is spending time with his grandson now – when the grandson squawks, AdventureMan starts describing one of Napoleon’s campaigns and within minutes, the squalls diminish and baby is sound asleep. LLOOOLLLL! He is on duty now, while I have crawled into bed. This being a grandparent is great stuff – we get to sleep all night; Mommy is nursing, and so she has night duty. They both have big circles under their eyes and are talking about the effects of sleep deprivation – if you’ve ever been a parent, you will know exactly what they are talking about.
Think I had better order a sleep blanket!
Life Intrudes
Yes, I am sorry. I left you with no indication that I wouldn’t be able to blog for a while, but – as it does for you – life intrudes. AdventureMan and I are on a GREAT adventure, a baby was born, and thus we became Grandma and Grandpa! We didn’t intend to be here for the birth, but babies have their own schedules, and we got here in time to spend time with our son and his wife AND to be able to see our new grandson before he was even an hour old.
Who ever thinks the thrills in life are over once you hit ‘grown-up’ is SO wrong. Life just keeps getting better and better, and is full of thrills – if you have the eyes to see, and the ears to hear, and the heart to know a miracle when you see one.
Every new baby is a miracle. We can’t make them happen – or not happen – by wishing. Babies, each and every one, are a miracle.
Photos? This was a mixed up trip. We have been on the run ever since we hit the ground. I have photos, but I left my card-reader in Doha. As soon as I can hit a store, I will show you a photo of the newest prince. 😉
Thanks for your patience with me.
First Things First
“I have some WONDERFUL news for you!” I gushed to AdventureMan when he picked up the call, “I found a third of the last fruitcake in the refrigerator!” I knew he thought he has finished off the fruit cake and that we didn’t have any more.
Pause. Pause. Pause.
“Hello? Hello? Are you there, AdventureMan.”
AdventureMan comes on, his work-a-day brisk, official self.
“When you start a conversation with ‘I have some wonderful news for you'” he says, “the next words out of your mouth really need to be that I am a grandfather.”
LLLLLLOOOOOLLLLLL.
I can’t make that happen any faster than it is going to happen. Baby grandson is now almost a week overdue, and we are waiting, waiting, waiting for him to show up. This is an eagerly awaited arrival.
I guess he is also happy about the fruitcake, but he really wants a grandson! 🙂
Thank You
At some hour, while I was sleeping, the blog hit 1M hits. Pretty cool, even though it is just a number.
AdventureMan said “how about if I take you out for dinner tonight to celebrate.”
(Thursday night is always date night. We always go out for dinner. He was being funny.)
But he reminded me that I used to thank my readers, and I haven’t done that for a long time.
Most of us who blog, and who continue blogging (it’s the continuing part that is hard work) blog because that’s the way God made us – he created us wanting to share the written word. For me, it’s sort of like thinking out loud, and many times I throw out ideas hoping to get other points of view to help me see things more fully, from more perspectives.
You, my readers, have given me unexpected points of view many, many times, and I thank you. Months after I write an article, you will read it and comment – and I read every comment. Thank you.
Coming soon, AdventureMan and I are starting a whole new adventure. I’m not so sure I am going to continue blogging. I won’t be living in an exotic country; I will be living a more normal American life, as a Grandmama. I know it will fascinate me, but I am not so sure you will find it all that interesting, LOL.
Again, thank you for your support and input these three years of blogging, and for finding me and my ideas and my fascination with current events much more interesting than I find myself. 😉
And, for those of you who always ask, yes, the Qattari Cat will be going with us, and yes, he is till with us (crying right now because AdventureMan has left for work and his heart is broken), I just haven’t taken a lot of photos lately because mostly he sleeps, and he looks pretty much the same.
LLOOLL, Dumb and Dumber in Florida News
I found this hilarious article in The Pensacola News Journal
Bizarre news much the norm in Florida
BRENDAN FARRINGTON • ASSOCIATED PRESS • DECEMBER 30, 2009
TALLAHASSEE — You know you’re living in a weird state when the governor promotes a pay-per-minute sex chat line.
Or when a congressman asks the House speaker to move a day’s worth of votes so he can watch a college football game.
Or when employees at not just one, not two, but three state prisons use stun guns on their kids as part of “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.”
That’s Florida, once again making people snicker at its dumb criminals, strange animals and all-around oddness.
Gov. Charlie Crist was embarrassed when an on-hold recording he made transposed two numbers for an uninsured child helpline and callers instead were led to “horny” girls willing to talk about anything for just $2.99 a minute.
It wasn’t the only odd moment in politics. Rep. Cliff Stearns asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi to basically shut down Congress early so he and some of the Florida and Oklahoma House guys could go watch their teams in the national championship game. She said no.
Candidates for local offices were also embarrassed in 2009. A Miami Beach mayoral candidate was disqualified from the race after his qualifying check bounced, and a minister running for Belle Glade City Commission was charged with swinging a bat at a woman outside a polling place. He lost the election.
Two 8-year-old Alachua County boys made better use of their baseball bats — they successfully fought off a man armed with a gun who was threatening to kill the mother of one of the boys.
Booze A Factor
Alcohol seems to lead to a lot of Florida’s oddest stories.
Tampa police arrested a man who let his 12-year-old son drive his SUV so he could drink in the passenger seat.
A Marion County man was charged with driving under the influence after crashing a stolen riding lawnmower into a school bus.
A 22-year-old South Florida man climbed aboard a locomotive with a friend and took it seven miles down the tracks for a joy ride. They came up with the idea while heading to a local bar.
A Clearwater man was charged with drunken driving after police pulled him over for driving a car with only three tires.
Pasco County deputies arrested two men they said were fighting over $3 in gas money on the way home from a strip club. The weapons involved: a fish tank and a beer bottle.
In other random stories:
• A Lakeland eighth-grader was suspended from riding the school bus after farting to make other students laugh and badly stinking up the bus.
• A Melbourne-area woman changed diapers for a man who was faking disabilities. The man, whom she met through Craigslist, paid her $600 a week for the services. It took her three months to figure out he wasn’t disabled.
• The University of Florida’s disaster recovery plan included a section on dealing with zombies.
• DeLand authorities said a man strangled a pet rat after accusing his wife of taking his last cigarette and a Jensen Beach man was arrested after drenching his wife with a hose for smoking in the house.
• A woman sitting on a toilet in a Tampa restroom dropped her gun, which discharged and shot a woman sitting in another stall.
• Bank of America in Tampa refused to cash a check for a man born without arms because he couldn’t provide a thumbprint.
And finally, some readers might recall that a costumed Tigger was acquitted of charges he groped women at Disney World a few years ago. This year a 60-year-old man was convicted of groping Minnie Mouse at the same theme park.
Ahh, Florida, a whole new way of thinking . . . LLOOLLL!
I am dying laughing, what a way to end an old year and start a new one. I hope your celebrations are full of laughter and you keep your sense of humor through the coming New Year. 🙂
Baby Shower Diaper Cake
I wasn’t there. AdventureMan and I would have loved to be there, but it wasn’t possible. We spent Thanksgiving apart from our son and his wife. We also missed the BABY SHOWER! Her sweet aunts arranged a wonderful shower for them, and sent me a photo of the “diaper cake.” I don’t think this is a real cake . . . but I am not sure entirely what it is. I know only that it is adorable!
Where to Start a Difficult Conversation?
“Mom,” my son started out, “I have some bad news.”
My heart sank. They are expecting a baby in late January. Please Lord, let this baby be OK.
He starts into a long story, which has to do with an old friend who lost a job, who is staying with them temporarily, who has been very helpful, and on and on and on; I live in a family where nuances are important, and details help understand the conclusions, but it is hard to hold your breath that long!
Then he gets to the point. While he and his wife were at work, the friend was in the house recovering from jet-lag and it started raining hard. His friend thought he heard drips in the attic, and upon exploration, they discovered a small leak in the roof. He will call the contractor we work with, but he wanted me to know.
Bad news?
“Son!” I said, laughing, “when you start a sentence with ‘I have bad news,’ it needs to be followed immediately with ‘I am OK, my wife is OK and the baby is OK’ so I don’t have a heart attack!”
We both laughed. He said “yeh, I thought about that about halfway through the explanation, but I didn’t want to break the train of thought.”
When you have bad news, get it out on the table. Start with “I have bad news, (fill in the blank.)” Then go into the background, and the proposed solutions. My son did everything right, except for the part about I was scared for him and his wife and the baby.
On the other hand, after all that build-up, I was so happy that it seemed like such a small problem, compared to the possibilities.
My husband tells a joke, the point of which is to build up gently to bad news. Not to start with “the cat is dead” but to start with “the cat was on the roof . . . ” The day came when I had to call him with some very bad news, and because I am wired to laugh in the face of the worst things that can happen (it is a sort of hysterical reaction, I have to work hard to control myself at funerals and weddings, I cry at weddings and want to laugh at funerals. The big things are just too overwhelming for me so I react inappropriately. Our family joke is that “inappropriate” is the grown-up word for “stupid”) I had a very hard time not starting off with “the cat was on the roof,” which would have been totally inappropriate but I was overwhelmed, knew I needed to let him know immediately, and you think when you get to be a grown-up you will have all the answers, but we don’t. We really don’t. Like you, we do the best we can.
What I really like was that when our son gave us the bad news, he also had a proposal for how to handle it. Wooo HOOO.
Then he told us they are planning their Halloween costumes. First, because his wife is now very visibly pregnant, they were looking for a cheap doll to take apart and glue some appendages coming out of her little basketball-tummy, but now they are looking for tentacles, a la “Alien”. LLLLOOOOLLLLL! I thought it would be the perfect occasion to wear her wedding dress, our son could wear a tuxedo and the friend could go as the angry-Papa, carrying a shotgun. Yes, we are a little weird in our family, but we have a great time.
LOL Cats Really Made Me Laugh
I was such a bad mother. Here’s the problem. Life doesn’t come with instructions. You get faced with new situations, you just have to do the best you can. You might think your parents know a lot, but we are just like you – sometimes we are over our heads.
The first time we moved to Florida, our cats got fleas. The whole house got fleas! We had to give the cats flea-shampoos and we had to flea-proof the house.
Here’s where I was a bad mother. I made our son shampoo the cats. We did it as a team, but he was the one who had to stand in the shower and do the actual shampooing. I was the one who caught the second cat and held her while he shampooed the first cat (it was a walk-in shower with a door that shut, so once inside, the cat couldn’t get out) and then I towel-dried the totally-freaked-out cat while my son shampooed the second cat, etc.
My son – my hero. There is a part of me that still feels guilty for making him to the shampooing. It’s because we didn’t have the chain mail:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
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