A GREAT FamilyThanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving.  This is a long story but some of the lines contained within are worth it, trust me. I know it's supposed to be great every year but sometimes it isn't? This was my nephews idea. It was all a big surprise for my brothers 70th birthday (there are only two of us, brother and I, 16 or 17 years difference, depends on when you ask). Anyway it was all a big surprise, my brother knew my husband and I were coming and maybe his son, my nephew.  The rest was a surprise....we were missing one of my brothers nieces, the step kids, and of my brother grandkids but we had a great deal of the family together...
My daughter her boyfriend and his two sons showed up first, that was a big surprise to my brother.  We made like this was the reason we kept telling brother we needed more ice, chairs, silverware, etc.  Then his daughter (giving rabbit ears in above picture) appeared.  I wasn't there to see it (I ran out to say hi) but they said his mouth actually dropped open, he said "I'll be dammed" and he grinned and went for the door when he spotted them out the front window. 
A great time was had by all, the "I'll be dammed" will go down in family lore as we usually figure out when something is "up."  Everyone was there, even the 5 dogs...(two were left behind with sitters). It had been a long morning, lots of coffee, I decided that I had time to visit the facilities before the blessing.......I knew I'd made a grave mistake when it was deadly quiet before the flush...I came out of the bathroom to face like 30+ eyes.....then my niece said in an impatient voice tapping her foot ......"Jesus is waiting!"  My daughter said the blessing and she did make it through it but then we bent over double....was just too much...  So now we aren't really a sacrilegious family, but that will go down in history.
So then I put the above photo on facebook, it has been blurred and crinkled to protect the not so innocent...We were trying to decide which family photo we liked best on facebook.  My daughter who wasn't there got on and said "I'm the pretty one." I replied gently, "but you weren't there."  She said "I'm still the pretty one." 
So you get the gist of how the whole thing went....TOO much food and laughter.
I'm just wishing everyone could have a Thanksgiving like that at least once, even including asking the lady walking down the street if she wanted to be in the photo......no we didn't but it was mentioned......and no we hadn't been drinking...

Quality, Tools and Values That Are Meant To Last

I've had these shears,clippers, loppers, or brush cutters since 2000 or 2001. I went to our local lumberyard and said OK I've broken every pair of clippers we've had. (my daughter said I stole her upper body strength in a satanic ritual? she stories but I can break handles and keys and clippers easily) anyway I said I want a pair of clippers that won't break.  I was also taking care of my father who had Alzheimers and was perhaps a bit frantic and preoccupied, didn't want to keep running into town after tools.

This is what they sold me. It's been 9 or 10 years. Granted the clippers were like $20 or $30 but it's been YEARS!  They told the truth, I've never sharpened them and I CAN NOT break the handles. The brother of the man who sold them to me is the carpenter that helped my dad build the house we live in now. It's almost 40 years old and we still call it the new house. A bit dated but still SOLID and actually in better shape than many new houses I can think of. Once again Quality and care.

Both of these men are gone, the owner of the lumberyard and his brother but they both represented solid values not always seen today.

I'm friends with the daughter in law of one of these men on facebook, she knows who she is.  As I was using these clippers the other day I remembered how I bought them and thought I would share this story.   I wonder how many other people have similar stories of tools they use?

Adventures With Bluetooth

I've learned more about cell phones and bluetooth than I ever wanted to know in the past day. My husbands company gave him a bluetooth for his phone because they aren't supposed to be distracted @ all during the day which is a great safety policy! So now he can answer the phone and talk without using his hands. Problem is he has me do all the phone and computer things and he is 700 miles away and he had to connect the bluetooth. I'm pretty good on computers but haven't messed with them much lately, phones I can punch the numbers in and send pictures etc. connect with the web but that's about it. I'm always afraid something is going to cost money after our first bag phone cost like $11 a minute when roaming in Utah once. Does anyone even remember bag phones?
So he gets the bluetooth and tries to connect it to his phone, trouble is I was @ a family gathering till late and he was out to dinner so he didn't try to get this all working till almost 11pm last night, I was in bed TRYING to go to sleep. We had both been up since 5 am. He says he's not firing up his computer so we will see if he reads this, LOL. Anyway after a couple conversations, the last one consisting of I thought we were going to get this going in the MORNING!, we said goodnight, or rather he said love you bye right after that. So I couldn't sleep then and got up and googled how to connect a motorola to a samsung. Turns out I had the wrong samsung and the menu options were different. Neither one of us had the owners manual for his phone since it's my old one that I got from my grandson who got it from my daughter when she got a state of the art phone from my other daughter, got that? I bought husband a new phone but he didn't like it so I have that one and he got my old one which isn't old, it's a slider and actually pretty neat. I have one with a keyboard which is what I was after all along but I need a memory card now and a bigger texting plan, I can see this!
Somehow my husband who is not dumb @ all and in some ways is probably smarter than I am (read he's a genius but I don't like to admit it) is convinced computers and anything related to them such as cell phones and bluetooth are evil beings set upon this earth to torment him. He can figure out what's wrong with an engine by listening to it or looking @ the exhaust quite often. I swear he's not as computer illiterate as he says because somehow when we first got internet back in the 90s he figured out how to go to history to see what web pages I'd been on? This was like the FIRST time he was on the internet so I think he's playing dumb quite often so I will do things for him?
So after 3 phone calls this morning and a few web pages, downloading the proper owners manual we finally figured it out.
The steps are:

1. Enable bluetooth on your phone usually under settings. (OK, for those who are truly phone illiterate you get to settings under menu usually)
   
2. Turn your bluetooth headset on, this might require holding the button for several seconds.
3. Go to Tools or Connectivity (the connectivity one is the one that had us stumped) look for bluetooth and click on add new device or something like that. It should find the headset, you might have to enter a pin code off of the bluetooth device or the phone or both.
   
4. The phone should pick up the headset and you can click on connect and voila! it should all work just fine.
   

So that's a short and dirty guide for all of you who may have been putting off getting a bluetooth headset. If you have problems call BR 549.
Now I think there is a way to get my cell phone pictures off of the sim card and onto my computer but I'm not sure how, going to find out!
Postscript, duhhhh, figured it out, email them. Didn't know I could do that, told you I was phone challenged.

My Guilty Life

The above picture is of my parents the winter before they got married I believe, they were in their mid twenties. I actually do look like both of them but more like my father. Of course I never knew them like this or even remotely, when I came into the world they were 18 years older and MUCH heavier. They had one child, my brother and thought they were through because my mother couldn't eat while pregnant and almost died. I was a mistake, an afterthought, a whoops if you will.

I couldn't go to sleep easily last night, no particular reason but this thought came to me then. My mother watched my kids when I was working and going to college for about 2 years off and on, not every day because sometimes my husband did and I only had night classes the last 3 months of college. She would watch them sometimes after that but I stayed @ home mostly until they went to school and then I started working outside the home again. I always felt guilty about that and nothing really against my mother (I've come to terms with all of it I think) but she encouraged the guilt. Reminded me of all she had done etc. etc. Not only watching my daughters but other things she thought I should feel badly about.

I had a rather unique 20s and 30s, I thought I sort of paid my parents back even though I had a house partly rent free and the loan of a vehicle when I needed one, as long as the trip was OK with them. LOL. I cleaned their house every Friday, washed and set my mothers hair every Friday afternoon, they were getting older and I took them to doctors appointments (I didn't work for awhile because of too many doctors appointments), went over paperwork, helped them grow the gardens they were so intent on growing, cleaned the basement when it flooded which was sometimes weekly (it still gets damp and we live on top of a hill?)and chauffeured my mother around a great deal of the time, and mowed the lawn and cooked quite a few BIG family dinners @ their house, I'm not complaining, we had a good life. We also cut 21 cords of wood per winter for two houses and a shop. My dad, my ex husband, the kids when they were older and I did the wood, mom went to the woods once and lost the pin to the tractor hitch and never went back, probably because we reminded her of it and she didn't like the outdoors. My dad became crippled because of a botched knee operation, he figured out the cartilage in his knee was gone when he JUMPED down off of a big tractor @ the age of 72. All that is neither here nor there. I think I paid my ex husband back for all the work too when I let him stay on my parents farm after the divorce and I left!! So he moves his girlfriend in and she throws away 1000's of $ worth of antiques (old spice, medicine and oil containers are worth something?) but.........

So I'm thinking about the guilt I felt in specific for my mother watching the kids, they weren't bad kids but they would get into mischief. Shall we say adventuresome? That's a good word. Then I realized my husband is only a few years younger now than my mother was when she watched the kids. He could watch a handful of them with one hand tied behind his back and watch football and take a nap to boot, he'd probably have them cooking and getting his tea too but that's not the point. He wouldn't make anyone feel guilty about it. We practically raised my second oldest step grandson for the first two years of his life, he started calling about 5 people mama. But he had a single mama (divorced) and needed us and Tate was soooo cut and he was ours no questions asked. BTW one of the last memories of my mother I have is her holding Tate, she was in a wheelchair in the nursing home and he was so quiet and good on her lap. I watched my grandkids when they came along, I never really thought about it till last night but since there are 4 of them and the oldest is 14 I'm sure I've put in much much more time than my mother did. I didn't work or I worked out of a home office or took them with me when I worked for my husband, no problems, and I wasn't going to be the continual babysitter grandma. I don't want my daughter to feel any guilt and she shouldn't, I did what I could and should have done more probably but she had a sister to help too. Now I feel guilt if I can't do things for them because I'm working. I must say when the grandkids are here you can hardly call it watching, other than feeding them and diapers when they needed them and a lap to cuddle in they didn't require much entertainment, they were GOOD kids, and that isn't just grandma talking.

So why all my guilt? I'm 51 years old and have to look @ everything from a new perspective now, a little guilt is good, I put clothes in the washer this morning and stripped the sheets from the bed because I felt I must do something even though I have a glorious 2 days off. I have to go now, need to make time because I just realized my grandchildren don't have most of their mothers children's books or mine, I have to go hunt them down in the old house if I can so I can take them over when I go to Easter dinner over there. I'm not contributing to the dinner, guilt again. So the problem wasn't my mother wanting me to feel sorry for her, it's my conditioned guilt. I know this isn't a great psychological light bulb but most cognitive theories don't seem to apply to your life until it just hits you one day, there is no need for these bad feelings, they are not good for you or the people around you.

I hope everyone has a HAPPY EASTER and maybe a little time for self examination. What are you carrying around that is a needless burden? Comments anyone?