Trust me...

It's rare for me to tell people what to do, but you've got to see this. Take seven minutes out of your life and watch this video.

Go on. I'll wait....

(Thanks to Greenpa for pointing this one out.)

--

A couple quick links...

So, what does a trillion dollars look like?

Like this.

Well, unless you're in Zimbabwe.

Just to follow up on that last post...

The crisis explained in one chart

This chart compares total debt (or “credit”) in the U.S. to GDP (or Gross Domestic Product) on a percentage basis. Current total credit-market debt stands at more than 340 percent of total GDP.


So that big spike in the 1930's was during the Great Depression. But it wasn't a run-up in debt that caused that spike. It was the GDP contracting out from under the debt value. (Remember this graph is debt/GDP ratio, so if you shrink the bottom half of the fraction, the line goes up.)

In the current crisis, up until now at least, GDP has not been shrinking. At least not much. The spike is because our debt is increasing. The remedy, supposedly, is even more debt. The line goes up. And what if our economy shrinks and our GDP declines? (What if!) Yes, the line goes up. Put them together, and.... well, hang on, we're already off the freakin' charts here. We're gonna take that line in the red oval, and cause it to spike?

Crap.

Our government is insolvent.

And I was really hoping for some nice tax rebates for solar panels and hybrid cars. And a functional health care system. And money for retirement. Oh well, maybe next time.

So start picking out names for the new country you and your neighbors will be forming.

A few thoughts when you're drafting up new laws: Don't give corporations the same legal status as individuals. Don't let bankers be in charge of banking regulations. Don't let chemical companies be in charge of agricultural policy. And don't have an electoral college.

Feel free to add your own suggestions.

--

The anti-Jared

Wow. Just wow.

Okay this has nothing to do with anything (which happens to be my current blogging theme), unless you're putting together your This-time-I'm-gonna-do-it New Year's Resolutions. And how I found this is too roundabout and not interesting enough to explain... but imagine for a sec that you weighed 420 lbs a year ago, and 215 lbs now. (190 kg to 97 kg for my metric friends.)

Here's what it might look like.

My favorite part is the progression of photos in the sidebar. You can literally see him getting more and more proud.

The idea of losing 200 lbs in one year boggles my mind. Amazing.

Now I shall digress.

This made me think of the song with the chorus that goes "Half the man I used to be"... which actually has lyrics that are too negative to tie to this story directly. I googled it to confirm my suspicions about the lyrics. It turns out most people think this is a Nirvana song (which was certainly my first guess). It's actually Stone Temple Pilots, and it's called "Creep". So there you go.

Now I shall digress even further.

Speaking of Nirvana, do you remember the album cover for "Nevermind" that had the baby swimming underwater, apparently chasing a dollar bill or something? (Looks like this.) Okay, if you remember that album cover, get ready to feel old... because that kid graduated from high school last year.

Okay, have I blown your mind enough times for one post?

Good, because I'm going to bed.

--

Just churning out more random posts...

Okay, so take yourself back in time about 2200 years. Place yourself somewhere in the neighborhood of Greece. On a ship, in the Mediterranean. Now, look around and try to imagine what kind of technology you have access to....

If you've never heard of the Antikythera device, well, you're not alone. I hadn't either. It's a mechanism of gears enclosed in a box, that was found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Mediterranean about a century ago. It has been dated to about 200 BC. It was very corroded and incomplete, but after almost a hundred years of studying it with everything from microscopes to X-ray machines to who knows what else, it seems they've finally figured the thing out. The video below shows a reproduction of the original Antikythera mechanism.



So, is that cool or what? Maybe it's just my inner geek, but I bet that's more sophisticated than 98% of the "modern" stuff in my house.

And we're not talking about some fanciful Da Vinci drawing or something. This is an actual device! From 200 BC!!

For more background, here's a 2 part clip from a Nature documentary:




--

Just sayin'...

May the light brighten your darkness
(but hopefully not at 5am)
May the homefires keep you warm
(homefires - not housefires)
May you receive whatever you need
(if not whatever you want)
May the next 12 months
be better than you could have possibly hoped
And may whatever you believe in
make you a better person
and the world a better place.

--

Nice...

Here is a non-cynical story for your holiday reading pleasure.

--

DONE

I hereby declare this blog a Cynicism Free Zone
for the rest of this calendar year.

4 Paws for Amelia
Fundraiser

--

Just putting something on here

...to get the shoe post off the top.

So there are too many unspeakably bad things to post about at the moment. I just don't want to get into any of them right now. The news itself is enough. Maybe some other time.

I hope this doesn't come across as minimizing the various tragedies that have unfolded in the last several days, but I recently heard a man on the radio quoting his grandmother who said something along the lines of, "If you focus on the bad, you miss out on the good." And I need to focus on Good tonight.

So here are some Good Things. Or at least no worse than Neutral.

- I bought the ugly shoes. Man I hope they last. (But not on Black Friday. The only purchase we made yesterday was food. You couldn't pay me to participate in that "holiday".)

- Despite what our "official" total says on the sidebar, our daughter's service dog fundraising could be done as soon as next week. We may even overshoot our goal. We can't believe it. The generosity, despite what's been going on in the economy, has been heartwarming to say the least. We may have that dog as soon as May.

- One side effect of the above is that it's made me really want to contribute more to local charities. Nothing against the big and/or international organizations like the Red Cross or Heifer International. I'm all for them. But now that we've been on the receiving end of charity, I want to do the same for other people. And I want it to be as local and as direct as possible. (Tip: Food pantries in many communities are really struggling right now.)

- Speaking of making things more local and direct, we found a neighbor just a few miles from us who is living out much of what we were aiming for. They have a small farm growing fruits, veggies, and pastured poultry. They're actually doing it quite well (unlike us at this point!). We bought a turkey from them. (They were nice enough to throw in a chicken too.) They said we could use their plucker and other facilities if we ever wanted to, which is awesome because for me, plucking was my least favorite part of butchering. Okay, second least favorite part. Anyway, I offered to help them out any time they needed it, in hopes of learning a few things.

- Sourdough breadcrumbs make excellent breading for chicken. Also, brining a turkey works really well.

- We have nearly weaned ourselves off satellite TV channels, so it might just be time to ditch it.

- I found a very cool online American Sign Language course. I don't know exactly why, but I've been wanting to learn ASL for a while. So now I get to try.

So what are some Good Things in your life?

--

Just to expand on my comment from yesterday....

I am proud, not because we have elected an African-American for the first time. I am proud that his being the son of a black African and a white American didn't matter. Obama didn't win because of his race. He also didn't win in spite of his race. He truly won because of the race he ran rather than the race he belongs to.

People sometimes tried to bring race into it, but it never really stuck. And despite reports of "huge turnout by the African-American community," the percentage of black voters in this election was not drastically different from previous elections. And it was proportional to the population as a whole.

Obama won among blacks, but he also he won among Latinos. He won among those making less than $50,000 per year, but he also among those making more than $200,000 per year. He won in the so-called blue states, but he also won in red states. He won with more votes than any President in history. He won on the largest voter turnout in a hundred years. He won running against a very experienced, highly respected opponent with crossover appeal. He won despite a series of smear campaigns that lost his opponent a lot of that hard-earned respect. He won without resorting to a smear campaign of his own, as far as I can tell. He made his case based on real issues rather than side issues, or imaginary ones.

In the end, it didn't matter that he had skin of a different hue than all who came before him. It didn't matter that his father was a Muslim from Kenya or his preacher was radical or his middle name was Hussein. It mattered that he ran a better campaign, that he had better ideas, and that he won more respect, and inspired more people.

The day will come when we no longer feel the need to remark on these semi-arbitrary firsts - first black to do X, first woman to do Y, first Hispanic, first Jew, first gay Asian, first black Hispanic Jewish woman... When there have been dozens of black senators, it won't mean as much to be the first black senator from Ohio.

Race and heritage will always matter, but it will matter to families. It will matter for traditions and customs and holidays. It will matter in a different, more positive way. We will stop thinking of people who are six generations removed from Africa, as African-Americans - they'll just be Americans. We'll stop referring to those with some small fraction of their ancestry rooted in Africa as black people. They'll just be people.

And that was the real essence of Martin Luther King's Dream. Not that a black man could become President, but that a man's being black wouldn't even factor into it. In Dr. King's own words:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

We're not quite there yet. But yesterday, we took a giant leap in that direction.



--

A brand new day

I have never been more proud of my country, nor less cynical, than I am right now.

--

Checking the hole cards one more time....

Okay, so the US Government didn't quite go all in yet. But I thought it was interesting that when the no vote came through on the $700 billion bailout, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 777 points. The next morning, it was reported that the loss in the market meant the US economy lost $1.2 trillion just in that day. Which suddenly that $700 billion seem a bit small.

So let's play with that ratio a little.

So if -777 points = -1.2 trillion dollars
700 billion dollars = 400 points

So if that bailout money were directly injected into the economy, that would theoretically amount to an increase of 400 points. A pretty good increase for a single day.

But what about the next day?

If the DJIA is sitting at 10,000 points and we bring the above ratio into this, then those 10,000 points would equal $17 trillion.

Billions, trillions... Gah. These numbers are way to big. Let's shrink the economy WAAAY down.

I hereby declare that the entire US economy is valued at $100.


Good old Ben.

Now, if my math is right - which is always a risky assumption, I'll admit - that puts the bailout package at about $4.12.

One quarter, one dime, one nickel, and two pennies.

I hope they don't spend it all in one place.

--

The real situation in Houston now

Sometimes collecting money for an assistance dog feels trivial compared to a crisis like the one described below.

From my friend Pat:

--

I know the woman who wrote the message below quite well; I've known her
online for more than ten years. This will not be rumor, but simple truth.

My friend is definitely of the 'be prepared' school of thought, and she
taught her daughter to do the same.

Not only is this a testament to the values of being prepared, it's also a
rather serious indictment of the present US administration: apparently,
they aren't doing a hell of a lot better than they did in New Orleans. With
all that time to get straightened out too....

It shows you what happens when cronies or political donors are appointed
rather than people with actual qualifications (qualifications other than
how much they bribed....err... 'donated' to someone's campaign, that is).

The message is unchanged, just as I received it, except that I put a few
more paragraph breaks in and took the writer's email address out.

Pat

==============================

My daughter Jennifer lives in Houston outside the outer beltway. Three
days ago, her electricity came back on. Since the hurricane, services that
we take for granted are a hardship, even for the people who are lucky
enough to have power. At the grocery store, people are allowed into the
store accompanied by store employees. Only 20 people are allowed in at a
time.

They can get a limited selection of groceries - milk, eggs and bread being
very precious and hard to get. They are then checked out using cash. The
lines are long and Jenny has waited upwards to a couple hours for food. Gas
lines are the same. This is still happening on a daily basis for her. Of
course, she considers herself one of the lucky ones - she had emergency
cash on hand and has non-perishable food to last several weeks.

Now, magnify Jenny's plight by millions. Not hundreds, not thousands,
MILLIONS. 1.2 million people are still without power in and around
Houston. These people are running out of cash, are having difficulty
getting around to get groceries because they need gas for their cars, and
are doing the best they can to survive. Neighbors and family are helping
each other. But there are people there without that family or friend
network.

Since she's capable of caring for herself, Jenny decided to volunteer in
some way to help the people who've lost everything, including their homes.
Because the news is filled with headlines about the latest political
campaign, Houston's massive cleanup and rebuilding its infrastructure have
passed from the public's eye.

Jenny has been volunteering at a Red Cross shelter for the past 3 days. The
shelter is an old big box store that was closed down. The Red Cross has
set up cots, handed out blankets, and given each person a small bag
of travel-size personal toiletries. Port-A-Potties and the trailer
showers have been set up outside for hygienic purposes. Hand sanitizer is
scattered throughout the shelter to help people keep clean. Each day, more
busses arrive with more people. An entire group of mentally disabled
people is now housed in this shelter. Their own facility is gone. The
website says that only people who are being bussed back are in this
shelter.

However, Jenny says there are several people there who claim they were
homeless before the hurricane. There are about 1000 people at this place.
So far.

There are 40 Red Cross volunteers - 2 groups are from Taiwan and Mexico's
version of Red Cross. One individual is the "mental health officer." In
trying to handle the crisis, the Red Cross volunteers have been at the
shelter from 6 AM to 10 PM - without breaks. Many have had nothing to eat
all day. Anyone who appears to possess food is descended upon by the
clients and there's simply no way to share with everyone. So because the
Red Cross workers can't take a break, they are simply not eating.

There is no way to cook food. The Red Cross is handing out self-heating
MREs (Meals-Ready-To-Eat). Tonight, Verizon donated 100 pizzas and 43
sandwiches to this shelter. Jenny said the "clients" fell on the food like
starving wolves. Many of them have had little to eat for days.

The volunteers are there to help the people fill out forms to get aid, try
to get them whatever they need as far as personal stuff (some only came
with the clothes on their backs) and generally help people get settled with
a cot and corner to call their own until FEMA and other emergency measures
can be taken.

From what I understand, FEMA has been so overwhelmed that the supply line
is backed up and people are not getting the resources they need. The
newspapers paint a rosier picture, but the reality is, thousands
and thousands of people have lost not only their homes, but their
livelihoods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/us/21houston.html?em

Many of the clients come up to the Red Cross personnel and ask if they can
help find a job. They understand the predicament they're in, and are
desperate for work to help themselves. Sadly, there aren't any jobs
available and even if there were, the Red Cross can't give them one.

Up close and personal - Jenny says the biggest issue is FOOD. These
people, including the workers, are going hungry. At different times during
the day, she says even the Red Cross workers have broken down over the
misery of not being able to alleviate the hunger. Sure, the clients are
getting at least one meal a day, which is better than nothing, but for
bodies used to 3 meals a day, its hard. One Red Cross worker hid under a
desk so no one could see her crying. Then she wiped her tears, dusted off
her hands and went back to work.

I am asking each of you to go to the Red Cross website and donate money or
your time. If you can go down there to volunteer, please go give the aid
workers help if its possible. If you can, take a busload of people with
you - maybe your church group or your cheerleading squad or your boy scout
troupe. I realize school is in session and this is probably unlikely. But
you could ask your schools and work to do a fund-raising drive for the Red
Cross.

I realize a lot of folk were not happy with the Red Cross a few years ago
due to issues that made the news. But that has changed. Jenny has
volunteered to man a TV hotline for aid, a FEMA POD center and the Red
Cross shelter she's now at. She says the Red Cross, BY FAR, is the most
organized, most helpful and most reliable at getting the goods and services
out there. But they are being slowly overwhelmed by the magnitude
of Houston's dire straits. Here's the link for Houston's Red Cross:

http://www.houstonredcross.org/

Please, if you can help, donate.

Thank you!

P.S. You have my permission to send this email to anyone as you see fit.

==============================

Adrenalin

I'm not an adrenalin junkie. Don't get me wrong, I like thrills up to a point - roller coasters, sporting events, the occasional suspenseful movie or life-changing decision... Heck, I even went white water rafting once, and loved it. They put a photographer on top of some big nasty rock, and take a picture of your raft just before you smack into it. In the photo of our raft, everyone was either paddling like mad or hanging on for dear life, concentrating on that rock. Everyone except for me. I had one hand off my paddle and a big grin on my face.

But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. (I just used the word "thing" twice in one sentence. Somewhere a shudder runs up an English teacher's back.)

First, our daughter was playing on the front porch, which she loves to do. Between the porch swing, the sky chairs, the water that collects on top of the rain barrel and the shady fresh air, I can see why. But in order to let her play out there somewhat unsupervised, I had to build a gate to close it off.

I was going about my business inside, when I realized I didn't hear Amelia's singsong chatter. Probably a nap, I thought. No - they said she napped at school. I went out to check on her, but she wasn't there. I checked in all her favorite napping spots, and still no Amelia.

Then I went back out on the porch, and saw that the gate latch was popped. She'd pushed it hard enough to get it open despite the locking pin. The hinges swung it shut again, so I didn't notice right away.

How long had it been? Was she out in the barn? By the water bucket? In the shed? Near the dirt?

Shit.

Every parent's worst nightmare. And for newer readers, Amelia is five years old, she's autistic or something like it, she has almost no language skills and no sense of danger.

I got in the truck and drove the length of the driveway. I looked up and down the two (50 mph) roads that border our property. I called Lori to find out how soon she'd be home (any minute) and keep an eye out for Amelia because I couldn't find her.

Lori went one way up the road and I went the other. How long had it been? How far could she have gone? Did I check everywhere inside the house? A flood of worst case scenarios were racing through my head as I tried not to crap my pants.

Then after what was probably a short while, but that seemed like an eternity... I saw her.

She had wandered across the road to a house that was under construction. It's a good quarter mile away at least. Thankfully, the workers had let her play and kept her out of danger.

And I felt like the worst parent on the face of the earth. And not like the "Bad Father" gag from my last post. I felt like throwing up.

That experience motivated us to start filling out the paperwork for something we'd heard about not too long ago: Service dogs for special needs kids. (I'll write more about this at a later date.)

While we were filling out the forms, not two hours after Amelia's Bogus Journey, she started choking on a mouthful of pretzels. Her mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. Her arms were flapping and she looked panicked. Lori did the Heimlich Maneuver, or something approximating it, several times until Amelia threw up her pretzels and started crying.

Everybody is ok, and Amelia is no worse for wear. I'm not sure about her parents.

Amelia prudently chose a different snack, and went back to her happy routines.

Meanwhile, as I implied above, I think I've had more than enough adrenalin for one day. I've probably had enough everything for one day. But sleep seems far off right now. I wasn't sure if I should write about this, or if I wanted to. I'm still not sure, and I don't know what purpose it serves except to get it out of my system. But here it is.

Not very fun emotions to revisit. I'm scared all over again, long after the fact. But it's over. Life can resume it's normal course.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put on some clean underwear. Again.

--

Everybody loves Crunchy

You know, there's been a lot of love out there in the blogosphere for Crunchy Chicken and her family. Everybody says how great she is, how wonderful her blog is, how inspiring...

Retch. Let me ask you: What do we really know about Ms. Chicken? How carefully have we been reading her posts? I think it's time to put Crunchy under the microscope.

I've carefully examined over two of her blog posts, and I see nothing but trouble. Let's just let her own words speak for themselves...

"I was a TP whore"

"I best go get my ass waxed!"

"I even ground some crackers."

"I just make too much money"

"I've been getting a lot..."

"And then I could sell my hairball jewelry on Etsy."

"I just about sprayed Yogi Tea out my nose"

"I got back several very positive responses and started working on a website, Goods 4 Girls. It's been a busy week and since then the website is up, I've got aid organizations on board, and the donations are coming in. It's been very inspiring and I have you all to thank for the encouragement and offers of donations."

"I just wanted to fill you all in on the latest shipment of pads to Africa from Goods 4 Girls. This week I sent out 500 pads (100 kits)! They will be delivered to South Sudan in early May by the Vermont-based non-profit called the New Sudan Education Initiative (NESEI). "

Is this really a person we should be heaping praise on? Should we really be donating money to her causes?

I'll let you, dear readers, decide for yourselves...

--

What kind of world do you want?

to help a cool charity
to watch a cool video
to learn something

Scary Halloween Video Blogging

I try to keep it light here for the most part. I'll tell you when things are crappy, but I try to keep some perspective. I'm an optimist at heart.

But sometimes I see things that I can't find perspective on. And sometimes I feel the need to share them. So here's some scary stuff for your Halloween viewing pleasure...

This is a short one. I'm no climate change expert, but this can't be good:


This is a two-year timelapse from NASA of the Arctic ice shrinking. It reminds me of putting an ice cube in a bowl of hot soup.

Next up is a very funny mock interview from the BBC about the subprime mortgage debacle. If you keep hearing about this and thinking "WTF?", watch this clip:


And finally, if you have a couple hours to spare (and you wouldn't mind finding yourself gibbering in the corner a couple of hours from now), check this out:

I don't know if you'll believe everything you see there, but I think it's good to challenge what you do believe every now and then. This will most definitely do that.

--

A Happy Ending

Last week I travelled to Connecticut to attend my grandmother's funeral. I'm not sharing this to lament her passing. She had in fact, looked forward to it, so she could be reunited with her true love. My grandfather died about 15 years ago, and she's been missing him ever since. Her death was five days before what would have been their 69th wedding anniversary, and six days before her 94th (and my 37th) birthday.

There were a few tears, but many more smiles at the thought of her and Ossie celebrating together once more. The funeral service was the warmest and most heartfelt I could imagine. We were all amazed when the printed pamphlets for the funeral ran out, and the people kept coming. They always try to print extra, but for her they underestimated by half.

The minister hit all the Biblical touchstones for funerals, but he read them in such a way that I felt like I was hearing those well-worn words for the first time. He captured her life so well you'd have thought he was related - even poking fun at the fact that she'd leave brand new clothes boxed up because she still had her old clothes to wear out. She had long ago picked out the hymns she wanted sung at her funeral, and my aunt read a poem called "A Garden Lives", which captures Grandma's world about as well as anything could. Tulip bulbs were handed out to any who wanted them.

She lived in the same home for almost 70 years. Two of her three daughters lived just across her back yard, on land my grandfather bought for them long before they were born. It was wonderfully nostalgic to visit their home one last time. I have a higher concentration of fond memories in that place than perhaps any other. Her big vegetable garden. The blueberry bushes. The flower beds. The see-saw my grandfather made. Sailing with my aunt and uncle. Playing "Marco Polo" with my cousins in my other aunt and uncle's swimming pool. Building elaborate "haunted houses" in my grandma's attic. Playing with the train table in their basement. Eating, and even sleeping, on the enclosed porch my grandfather added on to the back of the house. Drawing with chalk on the blacktop driveway. Looking through my aunts' and my mom's old toys, pictures, puzzles, games, 45's. My grandfather's workshop. Finding three four-leaf clovers in one day on their front lawn. (They are probably still pressed in tissue paper in my mom's big dictionary - under "clover".) Paintings of familiar places, done by a family friend. The beach. Getting lost at the beach during the 4th of July fireworks when I was about five, and having my name mispronounced over the loudspeaker, because I was crying too hard to communicate. Their early remote control TV, which you could trick into to changing channels just by clapping. A dozen or more TV stations instead of just four. Endless reruns of Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch. Blueberry buckle. Seven cousins ready to play at any time, right across the back yard. Family photos everywhere - hundreds of them, on every spare surface. An intricately detailed sailing ship built entirely from scratch by a good friend of my grandpa. Hiding in closets. Sitting on the sloped cellar doors. The tablecloth that my mom had everybody sign and write messages on, which she then stitched over to make permanent. The ever-present bird field guide, and birds everywhere. The ancient German cuckoo clock my grandfather repaired that use to entertain me to no end. The precise but impossible-to-describe scent of the house....

Walking through one last time, taking it all in, I was seeing it with slightly different eyes. I saw details in a different way. My grandfather's workshop was so cleverly organized. The lids of mayonaise jars were nailed to the floor joists of the floor above. The jars were then filled with various nails, screws, and other bits of hardware, and screwed onto the lids. You could easily see what you needed. He did a similar trick with a block of wood. He put several baby food jar lids along the four long sides of the block. He attached the ends to a bracket hanging from the ceiling, so the block could spin, and you could rotate it to see all the different jars. Even the stacked boxes of nails each had one representative nail taped to the front.

The walls of the basement pantry were lined with shelves. Each shelf was just deep enough and tall enough to fit a single row of canning jars, so nothing was ever hidden. The root cellar was actually two small closets, one for fruits and one for vegetables. Each section had a blacked-out window with a small vent that could be adjusted by rotating to let the desired amount of air in from outside. I always loved the fact that the clothes could be hung on the line from inside the screened porch. A window slides open, and the line is right there with a pulley going to a pole in the yard. And of course on top of the pole was this cool wind gauge that had a propeller that turned showing wind speed and direction, but the turning of the blade made a little woodsman saw back and forth forever on a little log.

To think all these memories accumulated in one or two weeks per summer.

I was struck by the fact that the sum total of their appliances amounted to a 40-year old gas stove, a fridge, a chest freezer, a washer and dryer, and a television. No answering machine, no blender, no food processor or disposal or microwave. No computer or stereo or DVD player. No VCR, DVR, computer. No answering machine.

My grandmother wasn't all cream and sugar, especially toward the end. But she never stopped living. She volunteered at a local thrift store for four decades, right up until she died. She bought most things second hand, and she used them until they were worn out. Then she'd find a new use for them and wear them out a second time. She put my poor aunts and uncles to work keeping her gardens neat and trim, and they could barely keep up with what she used to do by herself. She loved her garden, she loved her family, she loved her husband forever.

It was clear during my visit that things change. The trees are so much bigger, and I'm not a kid anymore, so the whole place seemed much smaller. And over the years, cousins have grown and have families of their own. Things you remember aren't there any more. It'll be so odd to have strangers living in my aunts' back yard after all these decades. But even so, the memories are everywhere.

An assortment of relatives walked through her house, looking for particularly interesting or special items to remember her by. I wanted something that would remind me of her every time I looked at it, but that I wouldn't have to worry about the kids breaking. I also wanted something that would get used and not just looked at. I took an old wooden chair/stepladder that had been a fixture in her tiny kitchen for at least half a century. I know my mom sat on it as a kid watching her mother cook, and I know my kids will sit on it and watch my wife cook. It may still be around for my great-grandkids.

We rummaged around in dark corners and opened long-sealed boxes. We laughed at my mom's old wallet full of pictures of her high school friends. We were amazed at a letter from my great-great grandparents, congratulating my grandma on the birth of their new daughter, and being thankful that The War was finally over. We marvelled at the hand-made items and the beautiful antiques - many still in regular use. We remembered things we hadn't thought about in half a lifetime.

We were all smiling when I left her house for the last time. And I'll always smile thinking back on it. I hope I can someday leave everybody smiling too.

Ok, so...

...this is why I try not to get too bogged down in self-pity when things are frustrating or difficult. I have no real, actual, serious problems in my life. This is Serious. This was far closer to Slapstick.

Barefoot Gardener said at least I keep my sense of humor when things aren't going my way. Well not always, but I try. Even so, I've got nothing on this guy below. Now I don't tell people what to do very often, but I'm telling you to watch this:
(Sorry, they force an ad in front of it...)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
  
• Part 4

The lecture linked above was given by a friend of a friend.

--

Life is good. No, really.

So what's up?

Not one, not two, but three projects at work involve yours truly as the bottleneck. For our three biggest clients. All three projects are late. And the other guy in the office who shares duties with me is heading to India for a month, starting tomorrow.

E5 has gone into one of his "monster" phases. Coming up on his fourth birthday, he's already become a grand master at stubbornness, arguing, boundary testing, and finding loopholes in the rules. With the sun going down late and coming up early, he's not getting enough sleep, which makes him cranky. I hope we can move on from this phase again soon.

Amelia is on antibiotic #3 for a really nasty ear infection. She's feeling better at the moment. Hopefully it doesn't come back again.

The car's check engine light came on. Luckily it doesn't look to be serious, but we'll see. It does need some work though.

We overdrew our checking account. I'm still not sure how, even though all of our transactions are right there in front of me. For some reason it's like trying to find a leak in an inflatable mattress. You know the problem is there somewhere, but it's just not standing out.

The donkey still won't play nice with the goats. We tried him again with the boys, who are big enough to defend themselves now. Unfortunately, Jinx cornered them on the roof of their shelter every time they came out to graze.

We're out of hay, and there's none to be had anywhere this time of year. Our pastures are over-grazed, but our non-pasture areas are overgrown. I tried to set up a temporary electric fence to allow some additional grazing space, but it doesn't work. For the life of me, I can't figure out why.

The goats' milk tastes terrible. We can't figure that one out either.

Our pole barn still isn't done. It was slated for completion in early March. We have almost fully grown chickens pooping all over our garage, our driveway, and our front walk.

As expected, the tractor won't start after a winter of sitting idle. I did my best troubleshooting, but couldn't find the problem. So I called my neighbor down the road who's helped me out with it from time to time. He walked through some possibilities with me and found that I've got a couple bad spark plug wires.

His teenage daughter had a leg amputated earlier this year due to cancer, so I asked how she was doing. I won't soon forget the look in his eyes, as he told me that they buried her on Easter Sunday. The long pause he gave earlier, when I called and asked, "Did I catch you at a good time?" suddenly made sense.

She was an honors student, a leader in the marching band, and on the volleyball team. He showed us the tattoo he got in her honor, and a recent photo of her, when her hair was starting to grow back in after cancer treatments.

It's amazing how silly all our little problems suddenly seemed.