Announcement

My great niece, Olivia Kaytlynn, was born May 29,2007. News is that mother and baby are doing fine.

May the future be kind to you, Olivia, and may you always know love.

This is for you, Grandma

and for all my relatives and friends who have passed before us.

May God hold your loved ones close to His heart
Until they're by your side once more.

In Remembrance

Tomorrow is the Memorial Day holiday and this is my annual Memorial Day posting. Memorial Day began as a way to honor the fallen Civil War soldiers and evolved as a day of remembrance for all of our loved ones who have passed before us.

My cousin Jeanne sent me this in an email message today. It's about love as seen through the eyes of children and I decided to share this with you because Memorial Day is about duty, honor, respect, and love.

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?"

"When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." Rebecca- age 8

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." Billy - age 4

"Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." Karl - age 5

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs." Chrissy - age 6

"Love is what makes you smile when you're tired." Terri - age 4

"Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK." Danny - age 7

"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss" Emily - age 8

"Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." Bobby - age 7

"If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate," Nikka - age 6

"Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday." Noelle - age 7

"Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well." Tommy - age 6

"During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore." Cindy - age 8

"My mommy loves me more than anybody You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night." Clare - age 6

"Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken." Elaine-age 5

"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford." Chris - age 7

"Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day." Mary Ann - age 4

"I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones." Lauren - age 4

"When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you." Karen - age 7

"Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross." Mark - age 6

"You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." Jessica - age 8

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy replied, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."

Well, I'll be

Is it just me or do you see an uncanny resemblence too?

Just a few more years till retirement ...

but I don't think I'm going to make it.

I'm looking for another job again. I hate looking for jobs. It's all a crap shoot.

1. You find a job ad that looks like it was written just for you. It has all your qualifications but your age and height. You wear your power suit and show up a few minutes early for the interview so the interviewer will know how eager you are. Somewhere in the middle of the two hour interview, you realize that you don't have any qualifications for the job. They just made up the job posting and they should have known from your resume that you weren't what they were looking for and vice versa.
2. You do your best at the interview and the interviewer enthusiastically shakes your hand and says, "You're just what we're looking for! We have to interview a few more people just for appearances, but you'll be hearing from us shortly" and then you never hear from him/her again. In case you haven't figured it out yet, if you hear "we have to interview a few more people", you ain't getting that job.
3. You do everything according to the book, dress professionally, show up on time, give a firm handshake, and speak confidently. The interviewer shows up in a wrinkled shirt and uncombed hair, 10 minutes late, and can't think of anything to ask you. You write a nice thank you letter even though you suspect he'll only use it to make a paper airplane. Then you never hear from him again. And you don't really care except if the "rules" say the interviewee writes a thank you note, why doesn't it say interviewers have to send you a note saying Thanks, but no thanks?
4. The interview goes OK and you get the job. It's even better than you imagined. You get a promotion and a raise before the end of the second quarter. The job ends before the end of the fourth quarter because somebody somewhere decides to re-organize the company, sell the company, or move to another state just because they have their head where it should be physically impossible to put it.
5. Everything at the interview goes fine and you get hired. One week into the job, you realize the interviewer lied about everything. Since the interviewer is now your new manager, you realize that you're going to have to start the job hunt all over again and you wonder if it would be too impolite to slap your resignation upside his/her lying face.

For many people a job is more than an income - it's an important part of who we are. So a career transition of any sort is one of the most unsettling experiences you can face in your life. ~Paul Clitheroe

Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they're looking for ideas. ~Paula Poundstone

Bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, bump

They are putting more speedbumps in my apartment complex this week. Between all the bumps here and the bumps (aka, hills) on the street to work my car is making strange rattlely noises.

I fully expect all the bolts to work loose some day and I'll find myself driving down the road with no doors, fenders, hood, trunk lid, roof - nothing but me, the seat I'm sitting on, and the steering wheel.

I'll look like a living cartoon.

On my way to work this morning I was followed by two of the stupid drivers that are responsible for the speedbumps. Two inches from my bumper was a little sports car and two inches from his bumper was another fancy car. In front of me? A school bus. It was a two lane road. Where did those idiots expect me to go? Through the bus? Over it?

When we got to the stop light, one car turned off and the other sped around me going about twice the speed limit, only to turn at the second right.

For pete's sake, it was 7 in the morning. Nobody should be in that big of a hurry to get to work.


Brookview cartoons are drawn by Raph Hagen He is available for hire by your company for going away gifts, corporate newsletters, safety brochures, etc, as well as personal unique Christmas and birthday gift caricatures and cartoons. www.hagenstoons.com

You're Rambling Again

It's very quiet here this morning. There aren't even any birds singing. No children yelling back and forth. No lawnmowers, cars, or trashtrucks. It makes me feel like the earth ended during the night, but nobody bothered to wake me up to let me know.

There's somebody stirring around upstairs. I can hear footsteps crossing the floor, but tentatively as if they don't know where they are going. It's almost like the proverbial waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop.

Last week, I hurt my hip or back or something that's connected to my leg. Funny thing, it only bothers me when I'm trying to do housework. I think the problem with my hip is that I need a new pair of tennis shoes with more arch support. But I can't go buy shoes untill I get new socks because my old socks are gray and thin from age. And I can't go buy new socks because the store where I bought them has gone out of business and they're my favorite socks.

Oh, well. Nothing last forever. Not the quiet, not the pain, not even my favorite socks.

Deja vu

Do you remember a little over a year ago when I talked about losing my job through no fault of my own? Well, it's happening again. Even though we are at a new company we got the same tired speech about "working hard" because if we do, everything will be all right. What a load of crap!

After more than 30 years working hard, I can tell you it ain't worth it. It has little to do with whether you get ahead, get a raise, get recognition, get peanuts for breakfast.

A sense of humor will help you get over the hard spots, but hard work will only make you bitter and give you blisters.

Time on My Mind

I got a new wall clock this week. It cost $3.98. Functional, but not pretty. It's most outstanding feature is the tick, tock. It tick,tocks authentically as it counts down the seconds of each day. For a cheap clock it does it proudly, which is to say, loudly.

I'm thinking of selling it to the secret service to use as a torture device. Just shove a spy into an isolated cell with nothing to hear all day long but TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.

Trust me. Even James Bond would be spilling his guts in an hour or two. Which is 30 ticks and 30 tocks an hour.

If I had to do it over again .........

(1) I'd have been nicer to some people and nastier to others.

I was trying to remember the names of the kids in my 8th grade class the other day. As there were only a little more than a dozen of us, it wasn't all that hard even though it's been a long time ago. I thought about a classmate named Joyce whose parents were migrant farm workers so she would attend our school sporadically. I really hope I was nicer to her than I remember. It's not that I wasn't nice , I'm just not sure I was nice enough. I was probably condescendingly, cursory nice.

On the other hand, I really regret not telling more people where to get off. Maybe that's not my job, but you know they aren't going to learn unless somebody tells them and if not me, then who? You know their mothers need smacked for the lousy jobs they did.

As I get older, I find I'm getting better at being nastier. As a consequence, I occasionally go out of my way to be nice. I hope when I get to heaven's gates, it all evens out.

(2) I would have attended college in my 20's instead of waiting a decade. I can't say I regret becoming a nurse though I really wasn't well suited for the job. The traits that made me a good nurse also made me not a good nurse. But I saved enough lifes, had enough people tell me that I made their illness easier to bear, saw enough eyes light up when I walked into a room in my white uniform that I can't say I regret it. It may not have been good for me, but I'm glad I was there for you.

(3) I'd have been thinner and taller. And I wouldn't have had freckles after the age of 8.

(4) I'd have written down the grace my father and his father said before meals. I always meant to, I just never got around to it and before I knew it, they were gone. After my grandparents were gone, I wrote a poem that mourned their passing. One line said, "How could I not have known you would not last forever?"

(5) I wouldn't have stopped writing poetry. So it wasn't great poetry, it spoke to me. And some lines were music to the ears.

(6) I'd have learned to dance. And play piano and tennis and golf. Pipe dreams - I have no rhythm and I'm uncoordinated to the point of walking into doors. I can't do anything.

(7) I would have learned to keep house. Honestly, I can't clean, dust, iron a shirt, or sew a hem that lasts more than one wearing, and I can't afford a maid to do it for me.

(8) I'd have married a rich man. The only advice I can remember my grandmother giving me was "It's just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one." But I never met a rich man. I'm still looking.

(9) I'd have planned my life. I almost wrote "planned my life better", but I never planned it at all. I just let it happen.

(10) I'd have followed my dreams.
Maybe it's not too late to realize at least one dream. So I can't go work on the Alaskan pipe line, or have a dozen kids (OH THANK GOODNESS!), or complete any of a dozen other ideas I thought were great when I was younger, I can still dream. And to prove it, I'm going to take a nap.

And Time Goes By

My baby brother died a little over a year ago. It still doesn't seem real. His daughter is expecting her first child later this month. A daughter. It doesn't seem real that his baby is having a baby.

I sent a box of pink and frilly things to Heather for the baby. As I was boxing them, I remembered when we did that for her.

This is a picture of my brother.

He was proud of being a ham radio operator and his work as the Section Emergency Coordinator for West Central Florida. He loved to joke about going to Ham Fests to get Ham & Beans. (You probably won't get that joke without being or knowing a ham.)

Nothing

Did you ever get tired of everything? Tired of brushing your teeth over and over and over? Tired of having to stop to get gas when you just want to keep driving? Tired of going to sleep every single night? Tired of getting out of bed the next morning? Tired of putting up with those stupid little noisy smelly kids at the supermarket?

Ennui! Ennui!

Time to Go?

Not many people read this blog anymore. Too many companies block it so my friends can't access it at work. At least, that's what they tell me. They don't say they don't have the time or the inclination when they're at home. They don't say it's because my writing has disintegrated, or because I'm too lazy to post more than a couple of times a week so it's not worth the effort. They don't say it's because I don't write about them as much anymore, now that we're not working together.

I do get the occassional blog surfer dropping in and they often stay long enough to read several pages. I know this because I have a counter that let's me see how many people a day view the blog and how many pages are viewed. It also tells me where visitors are from (but, rest assured, I can't see your names or any other identifying information), and I sometimes get visitors from overseas. I hope I make a good impression on them, for America's sake.

Anyway, I don't know how much longer I'll be doing this. I started it for myself, and for a class that's long over. I don't seem the time or the inclination to write anymore than my friends have to read. I don't know their excuse, but I think it's because I have been struck down with ennui.

She said ENNUI, you dipstick, not EMU!

(Ennui (on-we) is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli: suffering from a lack of interesting things to see, hear, etc., or do (physically or intellectually), while not in the mood of "doing nothing". )
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennui

An Empty Cup of Coffee

I was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through a magazine when he came downstairs and reached for a cup and the coffee pot. The pot was almost empty, of course. I stopped making his coffee the day he moved in his toothbrush.

I barely glanced at him, but started the morning routine as if I still cared, "Good morning. Sleep well?"

Without looking I knew he would be standing there, frowning and wrinkling his brow as if he were trying to remember. Looking at the empty pot like coffe was going to make itself.

"What a dumbass," I thought to myself, taking a sip of coffee from my cup. "I can't put up with him one minute longer."

"I've got something to tell you," I said abruptly. "I found somebody new to take your place."

"Wh what?" he stammered.

"I want you out of the house by the time I come home from work." I continued.

He stopped me with a light kiss on my forehead. "No problem," he said softly, "I've found someone of my own."

He set down his empty cup, turned, and walked away.