Picture Perfect Thursday III – “Leaving Summer”
Autumn is once again upon us. A time for putting away the summer chairs and patio furniture, packing up the yard toys and the seemingly never ending task of raking leaves.
This photo that I took a year ago (a year ago? really? Geez) occurred during another one of those times that LatteGirl helped remind me to stop and appreciate what is around me.
She loves, picking up colorful leaves, making her version of decorations and center-pieces out of them. But just as important to her is her seemingly unabashed love for nature. No expensive toys needed this day, no huge plans or trips. Entertainment is as simple as jumping in a huge pile of leaves.
She is not alone of course in this. Kids everywhere love that opportunity to just dive into that pile of leaves. Unfortunately many times, the adults of the world, forget too easily the joys of such things, only concerned with getting chores done, or not wanting to have to “rake all those leaves again” to let these simple yet wonderful chances to take place.
Autumn offers many people, who do not give it a second thought most of the time to sort of get reconnected with this planet we live on. It is a time for Apple Picking, Pumpkin Picking, enjoying a warm glass of apple cider on a crisp autumn day and many other simple pleasures that we tend to ignore in our techno-rushed world we live in.
As I have gotten older, autumn started to lose some of this for me personally. It became the time of year for Antique Shopping (OK, TheWife was shopping, I was just the “bag man”), “winterizing” and other things that made the season dreary for me, as by the time I finished everything else, I missed it. Autumn was gone and winter was already upon us.
This year, I hope to take more of that in. Stop to see the color. Look at the world again like a kid. And maybe, just maybe take a leap into a pile of leaves. Won’t you join me? I’ll have the warm cider ready.
Scary People Part II
It is only a bit more than a month right now until Halloween. Do yourself a favor. Get your kids to decide on a costume and go get it NOW! Don’t wait until the last minute.
We have never, ever waited on getting LatteGirl’s costume. In several cases, because we acquired it from the Disney Store (can you say overpriced?), we had her costume literally MONTHS ahead of time.
Back in the days before child, I often had to start on my costume early, because I usually made all or part of the costume myself. Those days are gone, unfortunately since it would now become a choice between making a costume and and the few hours of sleep I am actually managing to get. Obviously sleep wins. And the past couple of years due to work, etc I have waited until the last minute to try and grab a costume. Oh sure, by the time I went, they were “on sale.” But the things that became obvious were, first the reason the costumes remaining were on sale, was because nothing that was left was anybodies first choice (things like Jar Jar Binks costumes, and worse), second they figured they needed to give you a couple of dollars off so that you could purchase some Aleve on the way out. It was a battle zone as procrastinators, fought for each and every one of these costumes.
Yes, I have added some links over on my sidebar, and if you happen to decide to click on one, and you wind up buying a costume, I will make a few pennies (see my Disclosures and Policies). But, please. Don’t click if you don’t want to. Shop at Target, Wal-Mart, whereever. Just stop procrastinating. I did not post this today as some ruse (ala PayPerPost [note lack of linkage there]). I put the links up now, and wrote this today, because looking at the calendar reminded me that I swore I would not go through that war zone again. And If I can save just one other person from that this year, I will feel as though I have done my job to make the world a better place.
Scary People
Halloween is still more than a month away. But already I am scared. Very scared.
I found this article by way of Reality Me, and I must say, it sent chills down my spine.
What I can’t figure out is which is worse. That people actually will stand up in front of a room full of people and make a claim like:
“Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world”
or the fact that people actually ever listen to these people again after this. No they actually FOLLOW them. It is amazingly sad.
I forgot what comedian said it, and at the time it was funny, but now it sounds more plausible than ever when you listen to this nuts:
“… What will they do next? I suppose if I masturbate at the same time
some woman, according to their computers is ovulating they will arrest us both
on ‘Conspiracy to commit abortion’ …”
Do these people ever think about, maybe just maybe if they stopped shoving their daughters into “Virginity Pledges” and other such stupidity, and taught something in addition to abstinence (note I did not say replace it… “abstinence is best, but if you are going to …”) then maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t have so many “pre-born” children that they would need to go and save?
Oh No! They Got Me!
OK, so we handled the gas crisis. We are a one car family, and I take public transportation to and fro. Gas and Electric prices jumped. No problem. High efficiency light bulbs and new air conditioners reduced our Electric use almost 40% from last year. Heating Oil prices up? New digital thermometers and lowering the temperature a couple of degrees helped reduce the pain (I can’t deny that is was still a bit painful… but not as bad as first imagined).
But now I have been hit where it hurts. You see, it was announced today that Starbucks has raised the price of a a cup of coffee by a nickel and .50 a pound for their beans. (See more here).
I guess sooner or later there are some increases that you just can’t get around.
Goooooooooooooooooooal!
We survived the weekend unscathed (for the most part).
LatteGirl got a bad case of nerves prior to her game, and didn’t want to go. In trying to teach her to honor her commitments, we told her she had to go since she had already promised her team and coach that she would be there. Many tears were shed, but she went.
Well, not surprisingly she had a blast playing and even scored a goal in her first game, and her team won making her all smiles, and of course she now loves it more than ever and is looking forward to playing again.
By the time Saturday evening rolled around everyone was pretty well wiped (no big surprise there) so we put off the carnival until Sunday. So LatteGirl and I hit the carnival together (TheWife had other plans with her sisters for Sunday which is why we were originally trying to fit everything in on Saturday). Our luck was absolutely phenomenal. I expected to spend around $20 and maybe… MAYBE wind up with one stuffed animal from the games of chance. We stopped after spending around $15 because we already had 6 LARGE stuffed animals and we just couldn’t carry any more. Sure these were cheap stuffed animals and the total cost of them was probably around $6 total, but we had a blast, and LatteGirl got a kick out of being the one getting pointed at by other kids, who wanted to win “that” particular item, or “that many” prizes.
So, I guess you could call it a win-win-win weekend.
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