Warming? Since When?
Quote of the Day
“If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” – Steve Jobs, Entrepreneur (1955 – 2011)
Cutting The Grass
This is my neighbor.
He has no idea I took this photo from my window.
When my husband was deployed, one of the worries we had was about the grass.
Who would maintain the yard?
I could go out there and cut the grass myself, but with everything I had on my plate with the two girls, I wasn’t feeling it.
We could try and find a lawn service, but that still meant me having to make sure it got done and that they did a good job.
I wanted as little additional worry as possible while my husband was deployed.
This is where Steve comes in.
I sent him a text and told him about the deployment. I wasn’t sure if he would say yes, but I asked.
“Could you help cut our grass? He will cut it today before he deploys tomorrow, but it would be great if you could cut it and help me maintain it while he is gone. We can pay you.”
He responded right away that it wasn’t a problem at all and that he would not accept payment. He wanted to help.
I let my husband know, and we both breathed a sigh of relief.
When your husband is deployed, whatever worry you can take off your plate means the world.
Knowing the grass would be taken care of was enormous stress off my shoulders.
About an hour later, daddy was playing with his girls.
He was trying to soak up as much time as possible with them before deploying the next day.
He told them he could play for a bit, but he also had to go outside and cut the grass soon.
Then we heard it.
A mower.
My husband said, “Aliette, Steve is cutting the grass! Maybe he misunderstood that we didn’t need him to help us until next week when I’m already gone.”
I went outside. “Steve, we didn’t need you to start until next week, and he was going to do it today before he leaves tomorrow.”
Steve responded, “I know. But I’m not the one about to leave my family for deployment. He can spend time with his family, and I got it.”
My face swelled with tears.
Tears of worry, gratitude, anxiety, relief all rolled into one.
It all came pouring out on Steve, who probably thought I was a bit overly emotional about grass.
But it wasn’t about the grass.
It was about the gift of time he gave us.
A neighbor stepped up to help when we needed it.
As I came back inside, I thought of Mr. Rogers.
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood,
A beautiful day for a neighbor.
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day,
Since we’re together, we might as well say,
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Reading
“I read so many books, but I forgot most of them. But then what’s the point of reading? ”
This was the question a pupil once asked his Master.
The Master didn’t answer at that moment. After a few days, however, while he and the young pupil were sitting by a river, he said he was thirsty and asked the boy to get some water from him using an old filthy sieve that was there on the ground.
The pupil moved, because he knew it was a request without any logic.
However, he couldn’t contradict his own Master and, when he got the filter, he began to do this absurd task. Every time he was drowning the sieve in the river to pull some water to take to his Master, he couldn’t even take a step towards him because there wasn’t even a drop left in the sieve.
He tried and tried dozens of times but, as he tried to run faster from the shore to his Master, the water kept going through all the holes in the sieve and got lost along the way.
Exhausted, he sat next to the Master and said: “I can’t fetch water with that filter. Forgive me Master, it is impossible and I failed in my task.”
“No – the old man replied smiling – you have not failed. Look at the filter it’s like new now. Water, filtering through its holes cleaned it.”
“When you read books – the old Master continued – you are like the sieve and they are like the water of the river.”
“It doesn’t matter if you can’t hold in your memory all the water they make you flow, because books will anyway, with their ideas, emotions, feelings, knowledge, truth that you will find between the pages, clean your mind and spirit, and you they will make you a better, renewed person. That’s the point of reading.”
Have a good read everyone.
Defeating Lyme disease with essential oils
Truth be told, Lyme is a rather serious matter so first off, tick bites should be avoided plus monitored closely if prevention fails.
https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/health-healing/defeating-lyme-disease-with-essential-oils/
Being Alive IS The Special Occasion
The House With Nobody In It
One of my favorite poems, this piece was written by Joyce Kilmer.
Kilmer wrote this poem in 1914 and in April 1917, he enlisted and was deployed to Europe to fight in WWI. He would not survive as he was K.I.A. by a German sniper’s bullet on July 30, 1918 in France. He was 32 years old.
“Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there’s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.”
I Am Loose With Dr Seuss
Alas they’ve come for Dr. SEUSS,
they wish to hang him with a noose.
They claim his tales were racist bent,
they judged him fast, missed what he meant.
But if we look inside his tales,
you’ll find the balance of the scales.
Remember when Horton heard a Who,
and we heard the wisdom of the Lorax too.
The lesson behind Green Eggs and Ham,
that changed the mind of Sam I am.
Remember too the rotten Grinch,
who once would never give an inch.
He taught us lessons, one and all,
boys and girls, big and small.
So if you’ve judged his works as poor,
you should re- read them, I implore.
The man we know as Dr. SEUSS,
turned our imaginations loose.
His impact was beyond compare,
he taught us it was good to care.
To accept the red, the blue, the green,
and on each other we can lean.
So if you still won’t give an inch,
your heart has hardened like the Grinch.
Release the grudge, the hate, the rue,
and embrace the hope of Cindy Lou.
We support the Seuss!!!
Newlyweds
The young woman who submitted the tech support message below (about her relationship to her husband) presumably did it as a joke. Then she got a reply that was way too good to keep to herself. The tech support people’s love advice was hilarious and genius!
The query:
Dear Tech Support,
Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slowdown in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.
In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Atention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as: NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and House cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.
What can I do?
Signed: Desperate
The response (that came weeks later out of the blue)…
Dear Desperate,
First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating
System.
Please enter command: I thought you loved me.html and try to download Tears 6.2. Do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. However, remember, overuse of the Tears application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad progrm that will download Snoring Loudly Beta version.
Whatever you do, DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Mother-In-Law 1.0 as it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.
In addition, please do not attempt to re-install the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.
In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Cooking 3.0.
Good Luck
Tech Support