This is Homecoming Week at my younger son's school. He's been working every evening after school for several hours each day helping his classmates build the float for the junior class.
Each day this week was designated as a certain type of dress-up day. One day was set aside for 50's day and this is how my son dressed to go to school.
Yes, in case you are wondering, he did say "Ayyy!" Fonzie-style just before I snapped this picture.
His girlfriend will be home this weekend to go to the Homecoming football game and dance with him. It will be good to see her.
By coincidence, we are celebrating another homecoming this week. My older son flew home from Florida on Tuesday this week. He will be here just for a few days. He flies back on Sunday. He came to attend a wedding of one of his friends. Although he will be spending part of his time at the wedding and with his friends, it is still good to have him home for a little while. It's really nice to see him. I have missed him.
Remember the concert series, I mentioned in my last post? Along with the concerts at the theater in our town, we also have reciprocal admission tickets for concerts at the venue in Kendallville, Indiana. Last night the Purdue Varsity Glee Club was performing at Kendallville, and we decided at the last minute to go to the concert. Although it was about an hour's drive away for us, it was well worth it.
This group of talented young men performed a wonderful concert. I really enjoyed listening to them sing. I didn't make this video, but here's a little sample of their music. In keeping with the homecoming theme today, I chose their version of "Back Home Again in Indiana" sung in conjunction with "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away." There are several other videos of their music on Youtube if anyone is interested in hearing more of them.
This afternoon took me back in time and made me almost feel like I was twenty years old again. Music, more than anything, has always been a time machine for me. My town has a Community Concert Association which brings musical acts to perform on stage at our local arts building. Today we attended a performance which was the first of this year's concert series. Jim Curry, a John Denver tribute artist, was the performer. This is the program cover from today's concert. When the usher handed me this program, he said, "Welcome to the '70's" and then gave me a big grin.
I have to tell you when I was young, I was a big fan of John Denver's music. I saw him in concert on four different occasions, watched his TV specials, had all of his records, and knew the words to all of his songs. So when I heard that the concert association was bringing a John Denver tribute artist to town, I was very skeptical that he could do justice to Denver's music. However, I was pleasantly surprised at today's concert.
Jim Curry, who both looks and sounds the part of John Denver, gave a wonderful performance of Denver's songs. He, of course, didn't sound exactly like John Denver, but he really did do an amazing job. He was also personable and friendly and frequently invited us in the audience to sing along with him, which we did. This is a picture I took from today's concert. Curry's wife is to the right with the reddish-brown hair. She played guitar and mandolin and sang along with him.
I was glad that we went to the concert. Curry and his band played many favorites including, "Rocky Mountain High," "Annie's Song," "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy," "Take Me Home Country Roads," "Calypso," "Perhaps Love," and many others. One of the songs Curry sang today that he did an especially good job with was "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Denver sang and wrote that song, but it originally became popular when it was sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Although this video isn't from the performance today, here is Jim Curry and company singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" to give you an idea of how similar his voice is to John Denver's voice.
It was fun to hear the music that was so much a part of my youth this afternoon. It's nice to know too that Curry helps to keep John Denver's music alive.
David who writes the blog Brits in the USA has kindly chosen me to receive a 7x7 Award. Thank you, David, for choosing to pass this award on to me. If you haven't visited David's blog, stop by and read some of his posts. His blog posts are thoughtful, clever, often humorous, and always very well-written.
I'm supposed to list my top blog posts in each of the categories below and then pass the award on to seven others. I don't know that I really know the answer to these, so a guess is the best that I can do.
Most Beautiful: This category was a tough one for me to choose because so many things can be considered beautiful in different ways. Some of my posts about spring flowers or the colors of autumn leaves I thought were beautiful. Other people might say some of my posts about icicles in the winter were the ones they remember as beautiful. What I finally decided on was one of my sunset posts. It is called Sunset Punch and has a poem I wrote as well as photos of a changing sunset that I viewed.
Most Popular: According to my Google stats, my most popular post ever on this blog was one called Stilettos, Squints, and Kibbles and Bits.It was one of my mish-mash posts that I wrote after a short absence from blogging when I caught up my readers on what had been going on in my life. I think the only reason it was popular was because it had several key words in it that were popular in Google searches, not because it was particularly interesting or well-written!
Most Helpful: I don't know how helpful any of my blog posts are. I don't think many of them are really helpful to anyone, but one that might be considered helpful would be the one called It Runs in the Family. It was one that I wrote that came from the heart about saying final goodbyes to my Mom. The only reason that I think it might have been helpful is that it addressed an issue that many of my readers could identify with. Many of my experiences in that post were similar to the ones my readers had lived through or are living through now.
Most Controversial: I don't think I've written many controversial posts. Focusing on controversial topics really isn't something that I choose to do. Alienating people isn't one of my goals. However, there is one post that I wrote called African Wild Cats in the Basementthat caused a bit of a stir. It was a post I did about my sister-in-law's business of raising exotic cats. I mistakenly gave wrong information in the post and people wrote to me from all over to let me know that I had gotten it wrong! haha! I didn't mean to lead anyone astray, I just had been given the wrong information. I added an update to the post and the controversy, if you can call it that, went away.
Most Surprisingly Successful: I don't know for sure how to answer this one either, but I do remember several posts that I did about a bunny nest that was in our yard that seemed to go over well. This is one of the several posts that I did on that topic. This post shows the baby bunnies first Venturing Out of the Nest.
Most Underrated: I guess for this category I would choose something that I posted long ago in one of those first early months of blogging. I would say it is underrated mainly because I don't think many have ever even read it. I posted it when I had very few visitors and followers to my blog back when I was first starting. It is actually something quite different from the kinds of things I post ordinarily on my blog now. It is a children's story with a bit of fantasy thrown in. Lily and Randolph (a children's story) was the title.
Most Prideworthy: For this category, I would probably choose one of the posts written about my sons, because I can't think of anything I'm more proud of than my sons. It is hard for me to choose just one post, but this one titled I Must be Doing Something Right came to my mind.
Well, that is my list of seven. This was much harder to pick and choose than I thought it would be.
Now I am supposed to choose seven bloggers to give this award to so they can do this meme. However, I'm not going to choose partly because I read so many great blogs that I don't think I could narrow the list to just seven and partly because I know that many of my readers prefer not to do these tag types of posts, and I don't want to put anyone on the spot.
But, if you're reading this and would like to do a post like this on your blog and feature your top seven in these categories, please tell me in the comments and grab that picture up there to post with your list. Then, I will link your blog to this post for everyone to read. Thank you again to David for passing this on to me.
This past weekend I went to the Leadership Class retreat that I mentioned here in an earlier post. It got off to a rocky start for me because I was battling a cold that wouldn't quit, and it was raining and quite chilly when I arrived at the 4-H camp where the retreat was being held. (Although I took the camera with me, I didn't have the opportunity to use it, so the pictures in this post are not mine.)
I dosed up on cold medicine to help me make it through the day. Although the rain was coming down when I first arrived, it eventually stopped. The sun never really came out much to warm us up, but we muddled our way through the activities just the same under a cloudy sky. Our hoodies and jeans kept us warm enough, but they couldn't take the damp, clammy feel out of the air around us.
Upon arriving, we were each given a slip of paper with an area of the camp that was our responsibility to clean before we left the next day. Our first assignment was to get our beds made up with the bedding we had been told to bring with us.
There were twelve of us in our group, eight women and four men with our ages ranging from early twenties to the sixties. The women were in one cabin and the men in another.
After we had our beds made and our bags stored, we met outside for some icebreakers and activities which were designed to help us learn each other's names and start to get to know one another. From there we moved on to several team-building activities. These activities were like puzzles that we had to work together to solve as a team. If you have ever watched those reality shows where one team is pitted against another while trying to solve some sort of a physical and/or mental challenge, and the only way for the team to succeed is if all the members of it work together, then you have an idea of what the activities were like. The only difference being that we weren't pitted against another team. It was just the twelve of us. We faced challenges that we had to solve by working together to find the answers.
I felt a little out of my element, and as one of the older members of the group, felt that my age added an extra challenge for me that not all of the team members had to struggle with. We stuck it out and made it through the day. They fed us a lovely spaghetti dinner that night and then it was right back to more activities. We also had a short course that evening where we studied some chapters from a book on leadership followed by a discussion of the main points of the book. We finished out the night with a bonfire before we headed to our bunks for the night.
Unfortunately, I didn't sleep at all well that night. The air still felt clammy. I was too warm with my blanket over me and too cold with it off of me. My head was stopped up, and I was sneezing and coughing intermittently. I was in the cabin with seven other women, of course, and several of them were snoring loudly.
I have to take a water pill for the high blood pressure I have that I inherited from my Mom, and it seemed to be working overtime that night making it necessary for me to don shoes and a jacket and arm myself with a flashlight several times during the night to leave the cabin and follow the dark trail back to the recreation building where the restrooms were located. To say that it was not a restful night for me is an understatement. The bed was not comfortable for me at all. Am I the only one who doesn't sleep well when not in my own familiar bed at home?
The next morning I got up so stiff I could barely move. Although I am only fifty-two years old, I have arthritis in my spine, my hips, my knees and my hands. Most days I can keep the pain under control with medication, but relief wasn't coming for me that day. There were too many factors working against me: the dampness in the air, the chilly temperatures, the strenuous activities of the previous day, the sleepless night, the strange, uncomfortable bed, and the fact that I was still struggling to fight off that head cold and that my immune system was not functioning as well as it could. All these things contributed to making the pain that I had worse than it normally would be.
I got dressed and went to the dining hall where we were served french toast and fresh fruit and yogurt with granola for our breakfast. The food we were served for all three of the meals that we had there was quite good, and it was nice that I didn't have to do any cooking those two days.
After breakfast, we had to get geared up in mountain climbing harnesses and helmets and then headed out to the high ropes course there at the camp. I told the director of our program about the pain I was in and told him I was not going to be able to do the course. He had no problem with that and told me I could cheer on the others from the ground. One other lady, who is in her sixties, also declined the chance to do the ropes course. I was glad I wasn't the only one sitting it out. She has knee problems and had recovered from a heart attack from some time in her past, so she was wise to forego the adventure too, in my opinion. Clint Eastwood's scene from Dirty Harry came to my mind.
A man's got to know his limitations, and a woman needs to know hers too. That ropes course was definitely beyond my limitations that day.
I still had to wear the gear and learn the techniques and the safety warnings with the others, but I didn't have to climb the ladder up twenty feet off the ground and balance on cables suspended between the trees or climb and swing from the ropes and such. The high ropes course, although part of the Leadership class, is done totally by choice, so anyone who didn't feel comfortable with it could watch from the ground while the rest "took to the trees," literally.
This video is of a high ropes course similar to the one at the camp. It is a little different but much of it is the same. It gives you an idea of what the course was like, at least. For some reason this video begins with the ride on the zip line which was actually the finishing up point on the course at the camp where we were, but if you keep watching, you will see more of the ropes course up in the treetops.
After the ropes course, we met again for a final discussion of the things we had learned during the retreat. Then we were served tacos and salad for our lunch. After lunch we had to pack up our belongings and then clean up the areas we had been assigned when we first arrived at the camp. We met one final time for a quick reminder about our next meeting before we all headed out on our separate ways.
Although there were some definite down sides to this retreat, I still thought it was a positive experience for me. I learned quite a bit, I met some interesting people from a cross section of our community, and I made some new friends. I'm looking forward to the once a month all-day classes that I'll be attending with this group of people for the next nine months. I'm wondering what experiences I will have and what I will learn. I hope I am able to grow from this class and learn some useful leadership skills. Stay tuned. I'll let you know more about it as time goes by.
I'm dancing around tonight, my friends. Dancing, dancing, yes, indeed!
Today, finally, FINALLY, the refund from Albuquerque arrived. I am relieved that this mess can at last come to a conclusion. However, what is quite odd and astonishing and amusing is that another check came in the mail today too!
I was delighted to see that the check I had been waiting for arrived today. I was quite surprised to open a second letter that came from my mother's health insurance company that she had PRIOR to the health insurance company I had been waiting for the refund from. It seems that an audit was recently done on their records, and they discovered that my mother was owed a refund from them also!! I wasn't even aware that this other refund was owed to her!
I am wondering if all the noise that I've made in the last few months finally was noticed and got someone at the Social Security Office or with Medicare checking some records, or if this was just an amazing coincidence that her prior health insurance company was audited and that they issued a refund to her account.
In any case, both of these checks arrived today, and now I can close out my mother's estate account. This is a weight off of my shoulders and you probably heard my sigh of relief from where you are sitting.
So as Paul McCartney says in his song, "You can come on to my place if you want to" because I'm definitely going to be "dancing around tonight," and I'd love to have you join me. I can dance alone, of course, but it would be much more fun to dance with my friends.
(To those who have been readers here a LONG time, yes, I have had this song posted on this blog before. Twice, I think! It fits perfectly with how I feel tonight, so I'm posting it again. I hope you won't mind.)
This was a quiet weekend. My husband was out of town for most of it. My younger son spent much of his time with his girlfriend who was home from college for the holiday. I got to see her for a little while too, which was nice. I've missed her. My son also worked on his homework and got the grass mowed for me.
What did I do this weekend? Well, let's see. I didn't do much out of the ordinary: bought some groceries, did some laundry, did some cleaning, baked cookies, did a little reading, bought some new walking shoes, talked to my older son on Skype. It was a quiet, mostly uneventful weekend. We had some rain off and on and some much cooler temperatures. It was in the 50's all day today--chilly enough I had to wear jeans instead of shorts and had to wear a sweatshirt hoodie when I went to the store.
I didn't do much of anything that was worthy of a blog post. I wanted to post today, though, as it has been a few days since the last one. I finally decided to try using a random writing prompt generator that I had come across not too long ago to see if it would spark an idea for a blog post for me. The generator actually is intended for use by school students, so some of the prompts don't really apply to me, but I clicked through a few until I found one I wanted to try. It was kind of fun. If you want to try it some time, click here. The prompt I chose was "Think of something that happened to you that made you laugh recently and write about it."
I didn't have to think back far to come up with something that happened to me that made me laugh. This morning I was in taking my shower when I suddenly heard a loud buzzing noise in the bathroom somewhere on the other side of my shower curtain. My first thought was that the buzzing was coming from the overhead ventilation fan. I assumed that something had gone wrong with it and that it was going to need to be repaired or replaced. I was annoyed by the buzzing noise, but didn't get out of the shower just to turn off the fan. After I finished my shower and stepped out, I flipped off the switch for the fan.
I was quite surprised to notice that the buzzing didn't stop when I turned the fan off. I stood there puzzled for a moment and then decided that it must be the light fixture that was buzzing. I stepped back from it for a moment wondering if one of the light bulbs was about to explode. I remembered many years ago when a light bulb exploded in a ceiling light fixture above a friend of mine. She received a severe cut on her cheek from the glass that rained down on her when it popped.
With one eye watching the light fixture for any signs of an impending explosion, I reached over carefully and flipped the switch to turn off the light. The fan was turned off. The lights were turned off. And yet, the buzzing continued. Well, now, I have to tell you I was beginning to get a little freaked out about this buzzing noise. For a brief moment, I thought about a co-worker relating a story about a hornet's nest she had accidentally discovered at her house. I dismissed that thought, though, because this didn't seem like that kind of buzzing. This buzzing seemed more mechanical or electrical.
I turned the light back on and listened carefully. The buzzing seemed to be coming from inside the bathroom cabinet. I cautiously opened the cabinet door and peeked inside, not sure just what I was going to find there.
What I found was my son's electric razor dancing and buzzing away there on the metal shelf. There must have been enough of a vibration of some sort in the house to jar the little sliding button that turned it on!
OK, so that wasn't really much of a story, but I did find it amusing how many places my mind jumped to while trying to solve this little mystery.
It served as a little reminder for me as well. Oftentimes we will hear a little "buzz" of gossip about someone or something going on around us. Without really knowing the whole story, our minds will sometimes jump to fill the gaps, making assumptions that may or may not be true. That dancing razor bouncing around on the metal shelf not only gave me a laugh, it also reminded me that it isn't wise to trust rumors or to try and guess the particulars about a situation if we know only bits and pieces of the story. Often the conclusions we jump to and the assumptions we make will be false ones.
So how was your weekend? Did anything funny happen to you? I hope if it did, that it didn't involve any exploding light bulbs or buzzing hornets' nests!
Are You My Mother?
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I would say this is a VERY patient dog. Just the term "milk pants" made me
laugh, but to see a dog wearing a pair and to see why, well...you can watch
and...
