GrandmaM's Blog

I've spent half an hour this morning reading posts and counterposts. My conclusion is that I'm going to start a contest in which the goofiest malapropism each day gets a GrandmaM Doodoo-head award. 

You may nominate your favorite here. And please note, simple bad grammar and poor spelling do not make a comment worthy of the award. If that were the case, Wisdom Martin's featured rant about Ms. Palin's daughter and her unfortunate birth control gaffe would take the cake today.

Anyone want to play?

Another vacation come and gone.  We went to KC first and then to MN, and had a great time. Musings from the road:

How come gas was way over $4 a gallon in southern Chicago suburbs a few days ago and down to less than $3,50 a gallon when we got back home to PG Co.?

Do you have any idea how BIG the propellor for a windmill is? We passed several on the road, and it takes a looooong trailer to haul one.  Also saw many more wind farms than in past road trips.

It seems to be a great year for corn and soybeans through all the states we visited. God bless the farmers! I hope they are well rewarded for their hard work.

Columbus has at least one idiot driving. We watched him switch lanes many times in front of our RV, and figured he was lost. As we passed him, when he slowed to 20  for no apparent reason, I looked down and saw that he was reading what looked like a term paper as he puttered along.  A few minutes later, he sped up to about 75, and passed us, still reading the manuscript. Good Gravy!

Americans are a pretty nice bunch, and not nearly as awful as they seem to be in the news. Some of my favorites are country people in MN who are very likely to bang on your door and leave a whole bag of gorgeous produce at 7 in the morning, with a promise of a Walleye for supper. All they want in return is a plate of their green tomatoes fried up to eat with the fish. What a deal---what wonderful, kind people they are.

The big farmhouse on the hill where my Mom and Granddad were born is gone; it burned to the ground right after Christmas. I took that road into her town once, and it felt like my heart broke when I saw the empty place. Guess I'll use the other road into town until I can get over the shock.

I'm back here in Laurel, reluctantly, at my own house. My heart is still with my family in MO, and with the lovely people and the lakes and the loons and eagles of Minnesota. Yeah, the Minnesotans talk kind of funny, you betcha. I'd rather be sipping coffee with them this morning, than worrying if my doors are locked tightly enough here in Laurel. However, as my Mom says, "Bloom where you're planted."

I hope all of you enjoyed the summer, too, and are doing well.

Just when I think I'm a really clever user of Microsoft Office, I try something new, and probably fun, and I can't make it work!!  All I want to do is make a slide show for my Mom's birthday party. I have 80 photos already loaded into the PowerPoint show. I can make the slides stay on the screen for 10 seconds each, and have them transitioning gracefully. Darn it, I've created a hundred slide shows to use when I worked as a trainer.

Now. I want to add music. Never did that before. I'd even settle for just playing a CD along with the show.  I've worked since 5, and all I have to show for my time is a headache and an evil disposition. I keep following the Bill Gatesian instructions; no luck.  (Yes, I am a girl and will ask for directions---even read Help topics).

However, the geeky boy geniuses from Seattle  have not conquered me yet!  Tomorrow morning I'll fire up the  laptop and give it another try. It's become a matter of stubborn pride now.

I have to turn the computer off now and go to bed so my brain will be fresh for tomorrow's battle. See what you have to look forward to, kids? Getting old is no joke.

No...I didn't get it in the mail. Or from a stranger handing out brochures. It printed out at the grocery store register, pretending to be a coupon for Purina One.

Pete is going through large bags of the chow, and I'm thinking, Woo Hoo, maybe I'll get a dollar off the next sack. Nope. What were masquerading as several coupons were simply ADS with a disclaimer printed in fine red print, telling me that they were, in fact, worthless.

Not nice.

My 11 year old grandson has started asking me questions beyond my knowledge, and I could use some help, please, with today's puzzler.

He would like to know if a magnet could be strong enough to affect the iron in a mammal's body, causing the creature to be drawn toward the magnet.

Please advise if anyone knows...and thanks!  We were driving around the Beltway when he asked today, and now it's going to bug me 'til I know.

It is a lovely, warm summer day when your friends and neighbors and coworkers come to mourn you. I wish you could have seen it. I wish you could have lived longer, and I thank you for your bravery, and for daring to try to keep me safe.

I've been reading poetry this morning, and thinking of you. I don't think a sad poem will help you, so I give you this one as a remembrance and a prayer:

The Summer Day


Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is is you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?


Mary Oliver

The only football news I've heard this week was that Springs might come around or might not...I get so tired of summer. I'm trying to learn to be excited about the Nationals, but it's tough going. COME BACK SOON, DEAR REDSKINS! Grandma M. misses you.

I heard y'all teasing Gurvir about her description of hard rain early this morning (shame on you--it was great).   

The best one I've heard is "it was a log floatin' duck drowner!". 

So you guys be nice to our favorite future Mom!

I noticed an article on the Fox home page about controversial husband obedience training. Well, I don't know about "obedience" but here's how I've kept my guy "in line" for almost 37 years:

(1) I wanted him to be faithful, so I've never even kissed another guy since I put on his engagement ring.

(2) I wanted him to come home every night to me, so I kept a clean house and smiled at him when he walked in.

(3) I wanted him to be healthy, so I learned to cook healthy food that he liked better than McDonalds' food.

(4) I try to be nicer to him than I am to anyone else, including our kids and my mom, and he's put me on top of his courtesy list in return.

(5) I fight fairly when I'm mad, and don't drag up every quarrel we've ever had, and he tells me the truth when he's mad at something I've done.

(6) I pick up after him, because I figure he could find somebody else to do it if I can't be bothered. In return, he picks up heavy stuff for me, and carries the groceries in and up the stairs.

I could go on and on, but you're probably sick of this by now. In conducting my training, I never forgot that I'm a woman and he's a man. We don't have a perfect marriage, but we still like each other, and we have each other trained to behave in a loving way. If you think this is all hokey BS, tell me how long you've been married...

AveMaria22, that was about the silliest thing you've written so far! To quote:

"The strains of "I feel the earth move under my feet; I feel the...." Did any of you feel the earth move from the Annandale, Va. source? Well...I didn't either, however I have noted a faint bouncing occasionally when sitting on the floor with the pups....and they are sleeping. It has happened before (the bouncing)....once when Japan had an earthquake and once when California had one...but today's quake, supposedly centered in Annandale here in Virginia, is a complete surprise.  Did any of you take note when it happened??? "

I would have answered you in reply on your own blog, but my answers or comments always disappear by magic.

Back to the subject:  No, I don't have a psychic butt, so I cannot sense earthquakes in Japan or California when sitting on the floor with my dog.  Did you feel a faint breeze from the Burmese wind storm? I did feel an earthquake in Jamaica a couple of years ago, but so did other people in the hotel.

Take your menopause meds, girl, and it will all even out for you.

LilBits, you keep me coming back when I get disgusted, so thanks. I saw your note to another blogger, and agree.

I am not of the same faith as Pope Benedict, but we are both Christians, and part of the family of God, and I don't like to hear any of my brothers or sisters libeled.

His message this week has been one of hope, and of reconciliation, and of love. No matter who we are, all Americans can benefit from thinking of those principles, and from trying to live thankful, good lives.

The government has finally gone in and rescued the children in an extremist polygamist cult out West, and now they aren't sure what to do with the children...and their children.

My first question is, why did it take so long?  How did a group living in a fortress-like compound get away with rape and child abuse for years? Is their so called religion reason enough to make child social services in that state ignore them?

Next, will the traditional Mormon church step up and offer shelter and foster care for children who share to some extent their basic doctrines? Putting these innocent victims in traditional foster care won't work. It will be punishment for children whose only sin was being born female to child molesters.

What is wrong with people?

In a DC suburb, you know you're married to an old curmudgeon when he snarls as he's leaving in the morning that he's going to have to clean the @#$% neighbor's cherry blossoms off the car's windshield before he can go to work.

After that, my day can only get better! Thank goodness he went back to work right after he retired.

Oh my, say it isn't so. Hillary Clinton told a great big lie about landing in Bosnia and dashing for her ride in a hail of sniper fire. Cool thing is she really seems to believe her lie, got little Chelsea to confirm it, and thinks that the rest of the world forgot all about the truth.

Those of you who want to vote for her, stop and remember old Dick Nixon. He would lie when the truth was better, and Hillary has the same respect for truth as Tricky Dick did. She just isn't quite as smart.

When we consider all the real heroes, the kids who ARE being shot at by snipers, Hillary's supposed bravery really seems disrespectful to them. But then she and Billyboy were notoriously anti-military.

Even if you were dumb enough to vote for her sleazy husband, please don't waste your vote on Ms. Clinton. She deserves only our scorn.