Well Thank Goodness That is Over..

Well, Christmas is done for another year, you will hear no complaints from me. I am not a Christmas person, I prefer Halloween, because it is a holiday you can choose not to participate in if you wish, but if you tell someone that you are not in the Christmas spirit they look at you like you just said you enjoy clubbing baby seals. While I did not send out cards this year, or go full out on decorating the house so that it could appear in this months addition of "North Pole Beautiful", I did suck it up, put on a happy face and greeted everyone who attended our festivities of the day with a Merry Christmas and a hug. It didn't help my disposition that I had had only perhaps 5 hours of sleep (I put off wrapping gifts until I could not any longer, which was, uhhh..Christmas Eve of course) and was suffering from a horrible cold. So by the end of the day, everyone was telling me how bad I looked (gee, thanks and I bothered to put on makeup this morning and all) and that I should go have a lie down, they wouldn't hold it against me. I just smiled and acknowledged that I did feel like crap on a cracker, but I would lay down after everyone went home. Yay me, I made it through the day!! So this morning as I finish getting my kitchen back into pre-holiday shape, I of course thought about the day and realized that it wasn't so bad after all. This year was the first Christmas in a while that my angsty teenager said she liked all of her gifts, when usually I have to hear about how she either didn't receive what she wanted or Santa had brought her the wrong kind of whatever it was she had requested. Now there is a Christmas miracle, if there was ever one. Everyone left with a smile on their faces and a full tummy so, all-in-all it was a reason for the season kind of day and not the day of gloom and doom I had envisioned or dreaded since Thanksgiving day. So, now comes the time to prepare for the New Year of 2012.

Our friends, the Mayans scratched out on a pile of stone that was their calendar that this would be our final year. What a positive way to start a new year! I'm ignoring them and their cheerful prophecy and diving right into 2012 with both feet. I received 2 calendars this year, they are only two of the four that I keep. I have one in the kitchen, that one is the master calendar, for all. If you want to know what you are doing on any given day of any given month my family knows that is the place to check. The one in my dining room, if for the angsty teen, so that she doesn't have to look at those unimportant dates, like dentist appointments, the start of daylight savings time or mom's birthday. My phone has a calendar with an alarm (yes all appointment alarms are scheduled to go off 10 minutes prior to when I need to actually be somewhere) and the one by my desk in my office is for add-on items, like band booster meetings, or bake sales, and at the beginning of the month is synchronized with the master calendar. All birthdays, holidays, competitions, and baby sitting days through the month of May have been added to these calendars so obviously, the world cannot end this year, because I have not scheduled for it.  

So how will we be ringing in the New Year? Finger foods, immediate family, and a rousing game of Monopoly to help keep us awake, a glass of bubbly and kisses all around at midnight as we watch our neighbors ignite hundreds of dollars worth of fireworks. It's what we do every year. Who needs that whole getting dressed up and dealing with the intoxicated drivers on the road. It's our tradition and a winter holiday that doesn't cause me to break out into nervous hives, I wish every holiday could be like New Years Eve.

Happy holidays, and New Year to you and your's from me and mine. Bring on 2012!

Until next time... ME

Now Don't You Wish you Had Stayed at home in Bed on Black Friday?

I read an interesting article in my newspaper this morning, yes, some people still actually get these delivered daily to their homes. Apparently, many of those people who stayed awake all night on Thanksgiving to hit the deals at the mall or camped out for days to be first in line at insert favorite box store name here are now returning their purchases. Say what? Yep, buyer's remorse is hitting the bargain shoppers big time this year, and they aren't even waiting until December 26 to make those returns. The article states that this year for every dollar the stores took in during that glorious shopping frenzy, they will have to return nearly ten cents. it looks like the credit card bills are rolling in, and consumers are in freak out mode. 

I have never been one of those black Friday shoppers, one year I did fold to the hype and headed to the local mall at 3am for a toy store's 6am opening. Armed with my ex-mother-in-law and the store's sales flyer, with all my planned purchases circled. I was not surprised that the store didn't have any of the toys I had wanted in stock, that's how they get you in there, I scooped up a couple of items I just knew my one year old daughter just had to have, and I was out of there. It was my last foray into the bustle of Black Friday. This year though I have to admit, I felt the nudge from the constant deluge of commercials and news coverage, you would have thought a major catastrophic event had occurred because the reporters where in hyper-reporting mode. "Oh my God...people are shopping," you could almost hear them say like exuberant cheerleaders, "you must get out here and buy something..anything!" So much so that even I, an avid crowd avoid-er felt like I could be perhaps missing something. Apparently I wasn't.

So now I am left wondering why so many people would do this to themselves. Why loose sleep, spend money that you don't have to buy things that you really don't need, only to have to return it, meaning that you have to haul it all back to the store from whence it came.  Do people watch the news, read papers, listen to the radio anymore? Our economy is in the toilet, there are millions of people unemployed and homeless or in foreclosure, it makes no sense to me. There is a difference between Christmas spirit and insanity, you know.

I hope that next year these shoppers remember the lesson of this year and spend the time they could have been in line being thankful for their loved ones, spending time with them, eating left-overs, watching football games or one of the many cheesy Christmas movies that start playing the week before Thanksgiving. Because no matter what you buy on sale, there is no return policy on family time and love. If you miss a sale, another one will come along, not so with missed moments with those you love and that is the real meaning of Christmas.
Until next time..ME

70 Years Ago.. Today.. December 7, 1941


I could not let this date pass, I believe the statement "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" . There are few left alive that remember witnessing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor first hand. Even those who where children, are old now, and their memories are beginning to fade. Of the 60,000 members of the armed forces stationed at Pearl Harbor that day only about 2,700 are still with us today. It is important that we learn this history, pass it to our children, before the historical revisionists have their way with the facts, and this date becomes only a footnote in time.


Imagine for a moment, Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941 you are at your home, anyplace USA. You have had your family dinner, which is customary at your house. Talk centered around the approaching Christmas holiday, the children excited about choosing the perfect tree for the living room. Mom and dad, Mr and Mrs Middle America with coffee cups in hand and their children Bob and Sue adjourn to the living room and turn on the large Motorola radio so that the tubes will warm up. The song playing on CBS is "Chattanooga Choo Choo", by Glenn Miller, it is the number one song in the country that day, then the regularly scheduled broadcast is interrupted by the news at roughly 230pm. It is the first time the American mainland is informed that there has been an air attack by the Japanese lead by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and Vice-Admiral Chuichi Nagumo on the small Hawaiian islands at a far away US Naval base called Pearl Harbor. It is not until the next day when President Roosevelt addresses congress and the American people giving his "December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy" speech, do many citizens realize that this one act has dragged America  into World War II.

The attack began shortly before 8 a.m. and continued until just before 10 a.m. Prior to the first bomb dropping the United States had seen the signs that this attack was coming, even in the early morning of that dreadful day the powers that be had been alerted to a submarine approaching Pearl Harbor, possibly 2. Radar on Oahu had seen the fleet of Japanese planes, many retrofitted with the mechanisms to release torpedoes approaching, but the report was passed off as a fleet of American planes approaching, because those where expected to arrive. The result for the United States after the smoke cleared, flames died, and cries of agony subsided would be 2,388 dead, 1,178 wounded, 21 US ships sunk or damaged, 323 aircraft destroyed or damaged.  Not all of the dead where members of the armed services, some where civilians.  I have found the mention of the deaths of 3 women, and 9 children ranging in age from 3 months to 12 years old.

 There had been 23 years of peace between WWI and American's entrance into WWII. By the end of the 6 years we where in the war 16 million men and women would belong to the Armed Services or 12 % of the population of the United States and 292,000 would die. There would be wars after this, but we would not be attacked again on our own soil until 9/11. Please take a moment today to remember those brave souls, our greatest generation, which where lost and many who still rest beneath the waters of Pearl Harbor.

Of the 90 ships anchored in Pearl Harbor, 7 in what was known as Battle Ship Row where sunk or damaged. We shall not forget. USS West Virginia, USS Oklahoma, USS Arizona, USS California, USS Maryland, USS Tennessee, and USS Nevada 

Until next time..ME

2011's Most Over-Used Words According to Me

Today's blog started with one word..scamper. Every morning I listen to local talk radio while I play  on my  Facebook. This is the way I wake up, de-stress from the morning of getting everyone out of my way for the day, and wrap my mind around the day as a whole. So, the news guy is reliving what in his estimation was the New Orleans Saint's play of the game and they replay the game announcer who says that the player "scampered across the goal line". I must hear this every Monday morning about 5 times during football season, and I am sick of it, which got me started thinking about other words that have been done to death this past year. So here are some words that need to just go away for 2012..

Scamper to run nimbly and usually playfully about. The word itself, brings to mind little Disneyesque bunnies and squirrels hopping around the forrest, not 200+ pound linebackers barreling towards the end zone. I don't even think they would appreciate being described this way, and who wants to make those guys mad?

Viral relating to or caused by a virus. This is the original meaning of the word, as in "she had a viral infection that put her in the hospital". Now it's used for videos, blogs, recordings of songs, etc, for instance "today's viral video is the lady across town with 42 cute kittens, it's had 200,000 hits this week". I'm tired of things spreading like the flu, and I have seen some of these and they where either made by people so sick they had at least a 106 degree fever which is why they felt the need to share the content of the video with the world or where so sweet I'd want to throw up, which would give the word a more appropriate meaning. 

Epic extending beyond the usual or ordinary in size or scope. As in Epic Fail. No one, I repeat, no one can fail as badly as this word suggests, except perhaps, the guys with their fingers on the nuke buttons. Get some self esteem and stop making your mistakes (or the mistakes of others) seem that bad.

A-ha Moment There is no definition in the Websters dictionary for this one, so I suppose it is self-explanatory. The first time I heard it, it came from Oprah's mouth, so I imagine it is all her fault, but now everyone is having these A-ha moments (they must be viral). Now, after seeing Oprah's television channel ratings, I believe that her 15 minutes of fame are up, it's time for her and this saying to go away, retire or something. For the record, I've only had one of these moments, and it was followed by me obtaining a divorce. 

These are just a few, feel free to add your own. Now I urge you dear reader to go out and do not use these words again.. 

Until next time..ME