Do something fun today while grilling the burgers. :-) Go to this link and vote for your favorite film short in the 5th NFB Online Short Film Competition.
It's cloudy and rumor has it we're going to have severe weather today. That's okay with me, since I had no outdoor plans, but I'm sorry for the folks who like to kick off the summer at Lake Lanier or the more humble Lake Allatoona.
I plan to spend my day sewing and recovering from last week's pre-graduation madness. My oldest daughter is working, my husband worked last night and works tonight, so it's me and DD#2 who is in kind of a stupor right now. For me, it's a perfect day to hole up in the sewing closet and get some work done.
Graduation pictures.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Graduation
Today my younger daughter graduates from high school.
We're having a brunch for her before the ceremony since only six tickets were given to each student. After the three of us that leaves three family members who will be able to attend - her grandmother, someone to look after grandmother and one more person.
It's an interesting place to be, watching the youngest step out into the world. On the one hand, I'm so relieved to be done with school (public school) and for her to begin being responsible for herself (as if she weren't already). On the other, it scares the hell out of me that the last 17 years have flown by so quickly. Will the next twenty do the same? I will be 79 in twenty years. Twenty short, fleeting years.
She will be thirty seven.
Over on Althouse they were talking about whether women are unhappier now than ever, in spite of having so many choices.
Maybe it's the choices that make some women unhappy.
I for one, since I don't have enough money to buy happiness, take pleasure in simple things.
For example, in preparation for my daughter's party this morning (in 5 hours), I cooked most of the day. Blintz casserole, key lime pie cupcakes, hash brown casserole.
Then I went out and washed the windows on the front of the house, downstairs, where folks will be sitting and looking outside. I managed to get DH off his butt and he helped scrub the mildew off the lower part of the siding. We get zero sun and mildew will take over if you're not diligent.
Then I scrubbed the garage door, also a little mildewy.
Then I planted four or five hostas that a friend gave me.
Finally, we spread mulch over the front yard where we tried in vain to get grass to grow for many years, finally threw up our hands, admitted defeat and went with mulch. It takes 30 bags to cover that little patch of ground. I should post some pictures.
I was very happy. The old house looked pretty good, the yard looked nice, the food smells great. Friends and family are coming to share the day with us.
I was pretty happy.
My mother believed in making the best of what you had and she didn't have much. She lived in an old house that was built by her father some time in the 1930's. It's where she grew up, where she and her other ten siblings lived.
It wasn't particularly well built so over the years it started looking bad and required a lot of propping up. But she scrubbed and painted and did her best, and was happy that she had a place to live and wasn't in debt and wasn't like a lot of older folks who had to pay rent. In that way she was not unhappy, she didn't envy others or want for things she couldn't afford.
Some of my family members coming today live in a $2 million dollar house. Notice I don't call it a home. I am not envious but I do wonder what it's like to have that kind of money. I wouldn't buy a $2 million home with it because living in that kind of neighborhood doesn't appeal to me. I would, however, buy a huge parcel of land with a small house so that I could have as many animals as I could afford.
Sometimes I'm intimidated by their success and feel that I squandered too many opportunities but then, I do not have the personality or temperament to deal with what you must deal with to become wealthy.
I do admire their perseverance and vision and hard work and stick-to-itiveness.
But my family member is not happy. She is really depressed and takes medication for it. I have another friend, same story. They've never had money problems, she lives in a modest, mere $450,000 home (or it was, a few years ago), good kids, good husband. She's depressed, sees a shrink, takes medicine.
Me, I just go out and wash windows and dig in the yard.
We're having a brunch for her before the ceremony since only six tickets were given to each student. After the three of us that leaves three family members who will be able to attend - her grandmother, someone to look after grandmother and one more person.
It's an interesting place to be, watching the youngest step out into the world. On the one hand, I'm so relieved to be done with school (public school) and for her to begin being responsible for herself (as if she weren't already). On the other, it scares the hell out of me that the last 17 years have flown by so quickly. Will the next twenty do the same? I will be 79 in twenty years. Twenty short, fleeting years.
She will be thirty seven.
Over on Althouse they were talking about whether women are unhappier now than ever, in spite of having so many choices.
Maybe it's the choices that make some women unhappy.
I for one, since I don't have enough money to buy happiness, take pleasure in simple things.
For example, in preparation for my daughter's party this morning (in 5 hours), I cooked most of the day. Blintz casserole, key lime pie cupcakes, hash brown casserole.
Then I went out and washed the windows on the front of the house, downstairs, where folks will be sitting and looking outside. I managed to get DH off his butt and he helped scrub the mildew off the lower part of the siding. We get zero sun and mildew will take over if you're not diligent.
Then I scrubbed the garage door, also a little mildewy.
Then I planted four or five hostas that a friend gave me.
Finally, we spread mulch over the front yard where we tried in vain to get grass to grow for many years, finally threw up our hands, admitted defeat and went with mulch. It takes 30 bags to cover that little patch of ground. I should post some pictures.
I was very happy. The old house looked pretty good, the yard looked nice, the food smells great. Friends and family are coming to share the day with us.
I was pretty happy.
My mother believed in making the best of what you had and she didn't have much. She lived in an old house that was built by her father some time in the 1930's. It's where she grew up, where she and her other ten siblings lived.
It wasn't particularly well built so over the years it started looking bad and required a lot of propping up. But she scrubbed and painted and did her best, and was happy that she had a place to live and wasn't in debt and wasn't like a lot of older folks who had to pay rent. In that way she was not unhappy, she didn't envy others or want for things she couldn't afford.
Some of my family members coming today live in a $2 million dollar house. Notice I don't call it a home. I am not envious but I do wonder what it's like to have that kind of money. I wouldn't buy a $2 million home with it because living in that kind of neighborhood doesn't appeal to me. I would, however, buy a huge parcel of land with a small house so that I could have as many animals as I could afford.
Sometimes I'm intimidated by their success and feel that I squandered too many opportunities but then, I do not have the personality or temperament to deal with what you must deal with to become wealthy.
I do admire their perseverance and vision and hard work and stick-to-itiveness.
But my family member is not happy. She is really depressed and takes medication for it. I have another friend, same story. They've never had money problems, she lives in a modest, mere $450,000 home (or it was, a few years ago), good kids, good husband. She's depressed, sees a shrink, takes medicine.
Me, I just go out and wash windows and dig in the yard.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
R.I.P. Jack Kemp
Cesar Conda's remembrance of Jack Kemp.
Kemp's last Townhall column honored the President he so admired: Abraham Lincoln. Some very interesting quotes from that column:
In the 200th year since Lincoln's birth the voters of this country has at last elected a black man as our president: ironically, however, not one who embraces the noble ideals of Lincoln, but the oppressive goals of socialism; an apologist and appeaser; one who believes not in the "true equaliity of opportunity" but in the fantasy of some universal "equality" which will never exist unless it is forced on the populace by the government.
Yet, I believe as Jack Kemp said in his last column:
America is not over.
Kemp's last Townhall column honored the President he so admired: Abraham Lincoln. Some very interesting quotes from that column:
It is as true now as it was then that so much depends on having the right leadership with the right motives and at the right time in history.
For Abraham Lincoln, true welfare meant not dependency, but well-being; not equality of reward, but equality of opportunity; not reliance on the state, but reliance on oneself and one's family. He wrote, prophetically, "The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself, that he may work on this own account and hire somebody else ... is the great principle for which this government was really formed."
[Lincoln wrote] "I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. ... I want every man to have the chance -- and I believe a black man is entitled to it -- in which he can better his condition -- when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system."
As the world's leading example of democratic capitalism, we must make it work better at home so that all our people are empowered and fully enjoy true equality of opportunity.(italics mine)
In the 200th year since Lincoln's birth the voters of this country has at last elected a black man as our president: ironically, however, not one who embraces the noble ideals of Lincoln, but the oppressive goals of socialism; an apologist and appeaser; one who believes not in the "true equaliity of opportunity" but in the fantasy of some universal "equality" which will never exist unless it is forced on the populace by the government.
Yet, I believe as Jack Kemp said in his last column:
Because of democracy's long march from Independence Hall through Gettysburg to the streets of foreign lands, the world increasingly knows this simple yet profound truth: The yearning for freedom cannot be extinguished, the struggle for inalienable rights will never end, and nothing can deny the transcendence of liberal democratic values.
America is not over.
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