Collin, he's 10 years old

I wasn't able to find an Angel Tree this year.  However, after talking to my study group, we decided to "adopt" two families for Christmas.  I was assigned Collin, he's 10 years old.  When these families are selected to be made available for Christmas "adoption" the children are asked to make a list of Christmas gifts they would like to receive.  To me, it sounds a lot like asking Santa for gifts, but instead of going in one ear and out the other, these kids will have a shot at actually getting the things they want for Christmas.  So, you can call me Santa, Collin.  It's crystal clear I have not been hanging around with many 10 year old boys lately.  I'd like to share Collin's list.  Any insight into what the heck some of these things are will be appreciated.

Pajama pants - size 10-12
Color Explosion 3D
Color Explosion Illusion
Color Explosion Glow Book
Color Explosion Glow Dome
Halo Character Masterchief
Connect 4 Sponge Bob
Sorry Spin
Sonic Book Volume 13
XBox 360 Disney Universe
XBox 360 Skylander
XBox 360 Spy Rose Adventure

Yikes!!!  I know what pajama pants are.  I'm fairly clear on Connect 4, however the Sponge Bob thing has me a bit baffled.  Everything else is a mystery to me.

I'm very happy to be able to adopt Collin this Christmas.  I hope he has a wonderful Christmas morning and feels the love.  I have to have the gifts purchased and wrapped by Monday, so there is that pressure (I'm going to AC for the weekend).  But, all in all, I'm loving it.  So far this Christmas is turning out to be one of the best, EVER.

My tree is up.  My house has lights on the outside.  I bought ingredients for one type of cookies, but I'll make four batches for gifts.  I'm anticipating the coming of my King.  Today I read about Jesus being the servant of all.  In Mark's gospel, Jesus took a child in his arms and told his disciples whoever received a child in his name would receive him, and the one who sent him.  Today, I will focus on being a servant.  The first person I will serve is Collin.  He's 10 years old.

Linked to Emily at Imperfect Prose.

I'm a winner

I am a winner in my life.  This year I have done a complete 180 in my attitude about my job.  This year I have become accepting of the next four years of my life on Tamoxifen and its side effects.  This year I have become focused on being positive in my life and being a positive influence on others.  This is why I am a winner.  Jim Tressel shared 10 tips for leading a successful life.  These tips can give you the encouragement and be a guide you need to become a winner in your own life. 
 
1.  Decide your purpose and set your goals

• Success at any endeavor is not in the trappings of awards or trophies.  Success is found in the peace of mind attained by knowing you have done your very best to become the best you, you are capable of being.  Success is internal.

2.  Develop an attitude of gratitude

• Count your blessings.  Stop whining about what you don't have and focus on what you have.  I've been continuing to add to my gratitude list and it really does make an impact on how I view myself.

3.  Create your own enthusiasm

• We all know the law of inertia in physics.  A body in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.  Enthusiasm for yourself provides that forward motion.  Of course there is always the possibility of being acted on by an outside force, but when you provide your own enthusiasm, you provide your own forward motion.

4.  Discipline is a daily decision

• Every day is a new day.  Every day you can decide to do what you need to do and do it for just that day.  No matter what the activity.  Whether your activity is exercise, or study, or smiling, or cleaning house, or whatever, decide you will do this activity each day and focus on each day as its own entity.

5.  Be your best where you are

• Focus on the moment.  This breaks the daily decision of discipline into small increments.  Focus on the moment you find yourself and be your best.  Just for that moment.

6.  Pursue excellence

• I've posted that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you successful at it.  Don't settle for mediocrity.  Strive for excellence.  Put in the time.  Put in the effort. 

7.  Have faith and believe

• Trust in something bigger than yourself.  Have a faith in a higher power.  Have a belief in your purpose.  Having a faith and believing in your purpose is not about what you can accomplish.  Faith is the foundation of who you are.  Belief is the outward expression of that faith by what you do.

8.  Learn from failure

• Be persistent.  Don't give up.  Winners don't let failure stop them.  Winners learn from their failures and try again.  Quitters are never winners.

9.  Be prepared for adversity

• Adversity is not a question of "if."  Adversity is a question of "when."  Adversity will come our way.  If our attitude is negative and we become defensive when faced with criticism, we will blame others and miss our opportunity to advance.  Embrace the obstacles on your path to success.

10.  Love

• Love isn't about receiving pleasure from a person or pursuit.  Love is about how much we want to give to a person or a pursuit.  If we love something or someone, we want to give back.

Sunday 160 - Making bread

Bad choices make great stories
Do they not?
Fodder & grist for the mill
Mixed with her tears
Baked with his ire
I will enjoy the fruits of my labor
With butter & jam

This is Monkey Man's last time hosting the Sunday 160.  I didn't post here very often, but I loved the challenge of the 160.  Fare thee well, Monkey Man.

56 similes found in in the Post or hs student papers (or neither, but they’re still hilarious)

I'm always looking for ways to improve my writing.  Especially to improve my poetry.  I think similes are so helpful in bringing words to life.  I found this HUGE list of similes and they are HILARIOUS.  It's hard to tell where this list originated.  Some say it was from a Washington Post contest.  Others avow the list is collected from high school English teachers.  Who cares?  They are funny.

Feel free to select your favorites in the comments.  :)

I hope your weekend is joyful and relaxing, like a stressful and sad work week isn't.

1. Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.
2. He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.
3. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
4. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
5. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
6. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
7. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
8. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
9. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
10. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
11. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
12. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
13. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
14. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
15. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at asolar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
16. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
17. Shots rang out, as shots are apt to do.
18. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
19. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
20. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
21. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
22. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.
23. Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
24. He felt like he was being hunted down like a dog, in a place that hunts dogs, I suppose.
25. She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.
26. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
27. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
28. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
29. “Oh, Jason, take me!” she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.
30. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
31. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
32. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
33. The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.
34. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.
35. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.”
36. The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.
37. The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
38. She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
39. Her pants fit her like a glove, well, maybe more like a mitten, actually.
40. Fishing is like waiting for something that does not happen very often.
41. They were as good friends as the people on “Friends.”
42. Oooo, he smells bad, she thought, as bad as Calvin Klein’s Obsession would smell if it were called Enema and was made from spoiled Spamburgers instead of natural floral fragrances.
43. The knife was as sharp as the one used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
44. He was as bald as one of the Three Stooges, either Curly or Larry, you know, the one who goes woo woo woo.
45. The sardines were packed as tight as the coach section of a 747.
46. Her eyes were shining like two marbles that someone dropped in mucus and then held up to catch the light.
47. The baseball player stepped out of the box and spit like a fountain statue of a Greek god that scratches itself a lot and spits brown, rusty tobacco water and refuses to sign autographs for all the little Greek kids unless they pay him lots of drachmas.
48. I felt a nameless dread. Well, there probably is a long German name for it, like Geschpooklichkeit or something, but I don’t speak German. Anyway, it’s a dread that nobody knows the name for, like those little square plastic gizmos that close your bread bags. I don’t know the name for those either.
49. She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.
50. Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
51. It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.
52. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.
53. You know how in “Rocky” he prepares for the fight by punching sides of raw beef? Well, yesterday it was as cold as that meat locker he was in.
54. The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.
55. Her lips were red and full, like tubes of blood drawn by an inattentive phlebotomist.
56. The sunset displayed rich, spectacular hues like a .jpeg file at 10 percent cyan, 10 percent magenta, 60 percent yellow and 10 percent black.

"I wish my husband didn't have to go to work. EVER"

I recently saw a fb status saying "I wish my husband didn't have to go to work.  EVER."  The posting of this status was quickly followed by dozens of likes and dozens of comments stating how much these commenting wives wanted their husbands home with them all day.  How they LOVE to be together.  How they NEED to talk to them and be with them.  <3

After a few minutes of laughing out loud, I took a breath and thought about the feelings and thoughts behind these "likes" and comments. 

Did these women really want their husband home with them so they could spend all day together, doing things together?  Or, was it the desire for their husband to be home and to do their work FOR them?  These posting, liking, commenting women were all stay at home moms with small children.  These are women who had made a conscience choice to quit their jobs and stay home with their children.  Don't get me wrong, I think being a SAHM is a wonderful thing to do.  If your family can afford to do it or if you can adjust to living within the means of a one income family, I think it is the best thing you can do for your family.  I also think, having made this decision, being a SAHM is a job.  Part of the job is being the support the working spouse needs to continue to go back into the working world day after day.  It doesn't mean your spouse works for you.  What happened to the Proverbs 31 woman?

I know my mom thought I had it easy while I was home with my child.  And, I did.  I had a washer and dryer in my house.  I had a dishwasher and a microwave oven.  I had a VHS with as many Disney tapes as any child could view.  I could afford to call long distance to my mom whenever I needed her.  Compared to the 1950's and 1960's when my mother was home with my brothers and me, you bet I had it easier.

Now I'm looking at these women posting their status on facebook and having their status liked and commented on within a split second of posting.  Are they on facebook ALL THE TIME?  It makes me wonder.  Where is the time spent playing with children?  Where is the time spent reading to children?  Cooking for them?  Oh, and pouring a can of soup over rice isn't really cooking.  Washing their clothes?  Cleaning up after them?  How do they have time to be on facebook so much?  Btw, the status poster also commented that she and her husband emailed and called each other many times during the work day.  So,it seems, neither of them are putting in a full day of work.     

I saw a magnet on my mom's refrigerator.  It said "Retirement, twice the husband, half the money."

This ^ is my future.  I'm not saying I'm not looking forward to being retired.  'cause I am.  I'm not saying I'm not looking forward to being with my husband ALL DAY.  'cause I am.  I guess I'm saying, I may end up being on facebook a lot more.  ;)