I just wanted to pop in to say "hi", and to apologise for not having got 'round to everyone's journals lately. I promise to be by to visit over the weekend, but it will take me a while to get to everyone. I am looking forward to it, though. I'm wondering how everyone is doing, and looking forward to being amused, enlightened, and intrigued! No pressure, there, right?
See you soon!
I can't take credit for this; it came to me in an email from a friend!
POSITION:
Mother, Mom, Mama, Mommy, Momma, Ma
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work
variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities. Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects. Must have ability to plan
and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next. Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end
product. Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.
POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:
Virtually none. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills,so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.
PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE:
None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.
WAGES AND COMPENSATION:
Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you
die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.
BENEFITS:
While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth and free hugs for life if you play your cards right.
On April 3, 1974 I was just a few days short of my 8th birthday, a second grader at Hardinsburg Elementary School, in Breckinridge County, Kentucky. I have only one really clear memory of that day, and that was when our school bus stopped about a quarter of a mile from our house, in front of what had been the house of a great-aunt.
This was not a scheduled bus stop, so when our driver slowed to a stop it brought my attention out of the book I was reading. I looked out the right side of the bus and was greatly surprised to see my mother standing there. I called to my sister, Barbara, six years my senior, "What's Mom doing there?" She looked at me like I was an idiot, and that is when I realized that Dad was there too, holding a chain saw, along with other men, neighbors, cousins and uncles, also with chain saws, and they were engaged in cutting up the huge oak that stood at the end of my great-aunt's drive. The tree had been pulled up out of the ground by the roots, and as my horrified gaze drifted past that sight I realized that the old house that had stood a bit back from the road was gone!
Our driver, after talking to some of the adults outside, continued on the route; ours was actually the next stop. I was thoroughly upset. My sister was still irritated with me -- "Didn't you know we had a tornado come through today? What did you think that tornado drill was all about?"
Well, I swear I have no recollection of any tornado drill. I don't think I even had any memory of it at the time she said that. Either the fact that a tornado had come through that close to home and had destroyed a house that was familiar to me had wiped all other recollections of the day out of my mind, or the drill had been conducted as a regular drill and had been so innocuous that it had meant nothing to me, I don't know. I'm sure the older kids, like my sister, had either been told by their teachers that it hadn't been a drill, but the real thing, or they'd figured it out, but I'm sure we younger ones were just led to believe that it was only a drill.
I found out later that at our house, my father, who had been outside working in his shed when the weather took a horrible turn, had watched from about a half-acre to the back of the house as the tornado had headed straight for our home and then had seemed to just "jump" over it. He said it literally picked itself up right before it got to our house, stepped over the house, and then lowered itself back down. This would have been right after it had taken out my great-aunt's house.
Inside the house, my mother, two of my sisters, a four-year-old niece and a family friend, had all crawled under my parent's iron bed as soon as they saw the tornado approaching. We didn't have a basement, and that was deemed the safest place to be on such short notice. A lot of praying was going on under that bed, I can tell you!
That tornado, an F5 by the time it hit Brandenburg, to our East, was one of at least 26 deadly tornados that hit Kentucky that day. The one that jumped over our house was considered the most severe and one of only 7 F5 tornados recorded. In Breckinridge and Meade Counties I believe 31 people died. The most damage in our county was done to the town of Irvington, to our East. The city of Brandenburg, in Meade County, was almost completely wiped out, and many of the deaths were of children playing outside. The city of Louisville, Kentucky, in Jefferson County, was hit by a different tornado and also saw a lot of damage and deaths. The April 3, 1974 tornado outbreak is considered one of the worst, if not the worst, in U.S. history.
The following is a quote from this site:
Last month my journal celebrated its second anniversary on the 12th, and I forgot all about it! So in honor of that March, I'm reprinting an entry from March 31, 2005 about Eler Beth and the word "grounded". The entry is entitled --
I Wish The Word "Grounded" Was Never Invented!
She had kept putting off doing an assignment all week that is due tomorrow, therefore the late night. And while I was trying to help her AND do her hair at the same time I got a little bit of attitude. The attitude didn't improve after a warning, but got worse, therefore the grounding. Now that the hair is done, the assignment complete and in the backpack, and frayed nerves have been smoothed somewhat, regret has set in. Suddenly someone remembers what she's going to be missing out on tomorrow evening if she is grounded. And now she wishes the word had never been invented.
I don't ever remember being grounded when I was a kid. I can remember being spanked, made to stand in the corner, or denied some treat, but I don't think my parents were ever aware of the term "grounded". I was born in 1966, the youngest of seven children, to parents in their forties. I honestly don't think "grounded" was in their vocabulary. And if I had ever been grounded, what would I have been grounded from? Reading? That's all I ever did. We didn't have video games back then. No computer. We lived out in the country, so it wasn't as if neighborhood kids would be knocking on the door to see if we could come out to play. I guess in my teens I could have been grounded off the phone. Come to think of it that would have been really bad! Or denied going to a friend's house, having a friend over, or using the car. Yes, I guess there were a few things I could have been grounded from. But I never was. I was a good girl. No drinking, smoking, partying, running around, breaking curfews or sneaking out! Wow, I must have been boring. I don't think being boring has scarred me, however!
These kids of ours have so many things we didn't have, and so many opportunities that weren't open to us, that I actually feel guilty when I DO have to take something away from them. And I really shouldn't because it isn't going to hurt them in the long run. It is going to make them more appreciative of the things they have. Yeah, that's right. So, here's to the person who "invented" the word "grounded"! All hail!! Long live groundings!
Good Sunday morning J-Land!
After a brief early morning shower, we're having a sunny, mild day here in Southern Indiana.
I have been MIA for quite a while now, but now I'm back. Last week was Spring Break. We didn't go away anywhere, but we did have a few local activities that kept the kids and me busy. Our weather has been superb; actually it had been just a wee bit too warm for early Spring, but I have enjoyed it. My flowering almond is flowering; my lilac bush and my rose of sharon bushes are leafing out beautifully; hostas, irises, live-forever plants, etc. are coming up, greening up, or budding up.
I have spent nice mornings on my front porch, sipping tea and reading, or shady evenings in a lawn chair in the back yard, reading and watching Eler Beth and the dogs playing. I have actually read five books in the past week! I hadn't been on a book-reading binge like that in a long time! It felt good.
I hope everyone out there is having a wonderful Sunday, April 1, and watch out for those pranksters today!
Oh, and don't forget to click to fund free mammograms!
LADY APRIL by Richard Le Galliene
So, April, here thou art again,
Thou pretty, pretty lady!
With broidered skirts of sunkissed rain --
A grown-up girl, already!
Thy sister May
Is on her way,
And June, with tresses shady;
But, of the three,
I love best thee --
Thou pretty, pretty lady!
Thou hauntest all the sobering year,
With echos of thy laughter;
And life is nought till though appear,
And but remembrance after.
Though Autumn's yield
From garth and field
Run o'er from floor to rafter,
Thy wild-rose breast
Haunts all the rest,
And makes it poor with laughter.
This is one of the very few poems that I memorized when I was a child and that I can still remember. It wasn't something I was assigned to memorize; I simply found it in a book once, loved it, and committed it to memory.
April was always my favorite month, I suppose because it is my birth month and also the first full month of Spring, my favorite season. I love most of LaGalliene's poetry, but this one was always special to me. My ten-year-old self was charmed by the flow and cadence of the simple, pretty words.
