Here is a list of Family Blogs ordered by Most Liked, posted by members. A Blog is a journal you may enter about your life, thoughts, interesting experiences, or lessons you've learned. Post an opinion, impart words of wisdom, or talk about something interesting in your day. Update your blog on a regular basis, or just whenever you have something to say. Creating a blog is a good way to share something of yourself with others. Reading blogs is a good way to learn more about others. Click here to post a blog.
Usually around the holidays
All day yesterday I kept thinking if we can make it one more week without any tragedy, we can make it through this holiday. Last night my bro calls to say Aunt Carire passed at her kitchen table, she put her head down and without any prior heart trouble she succumbed to a massive heart attack. What a great way to go if one were to get to pick. She is my last Aunt, her husband which is Dad's brother was expected to go first since he is in the final stages of cancer, wasn't meant to be. He will probably follow shortly though. I feel so bad for Daddy.
I've watched both my folks watch each of their sibling pass. I myself have never lost a sibling (to death) but I imagine it is excrutiating, at least it will be if I ever have to go through it. Selfishly I hope I'm the first to go.
/sigh - It's this life drama one cannot avoid but my family will all come together to plow through it. This is why I'm so happy I rarely have to deal with trivial drama caused by people with the inability to find inner peace and need chaos. Not for me.
I've watched both my folks watch each of their sibling pass. I myself have never lost a sibling (to death) but I imagine it is excrutiating, at least it will be if I ever have to go through it. Selfishly I hope I'm the first to go.
/sigh - It's this life drama one cannot avoid but my family will all come together to plow through it. This is why I'm so happy I rarely have to deal with trivial drama caused by people with the inability to find inner peace and need chaos. Not for me.
You soar up like an eagle and as the days go on you will become stronger
Hello ItchyW
May all your sorrows be filled with peace,love and happiness. May all your troubles land up in a kit bag,and smile,smile. May you overcome your heartache and dry your tears.wish i was there to comfort you. 3am S.A time still on duty. Peace and light will shine once more.whatever is the problem. That will become history.
May all your sorrows be filled with peace,love and happiness. May all your troubles land up in a kit bag,and smile,smile. May you overcome your heartache and dry your tears.wish i was there to comfort you. 3am S.A time still on duty. Peace and light will shine once more.whatever is the problem. That will become history.
Love
It is done!
A few blogs ago, I told about my fathers death. The other day, my sister wrote me, saying the the tombstone was put in place. Immediately I felt some relief. Finally he is resting in peace! It is about time too.
Now I can visit him whenever I want to. No more empty grave site. This chapter of my life is now closed. Now I can get some closure.
I am taking it slowly. I do not want to rush it, because I fear I will not have the closure I need.
Taking one day at a time, at the moment. So far, it is working.
Now I can visit him whenever I want to. No more empty grave site. This chapter of my life is now closed. Now I can get some closure.
I am taking it slowly. I do not want to rush it, because I fear I will not have the closure I need.
Taking one day at a time, at the moment. So far, it is working.
Happy thanksgiving to all our CS Americans
I so like the idea of a dinner just for giving thanks - been invited to a few in Scotland by an American family living a long long way from home and it was great - amazing food (marshmallow yams????) 
best turkey dressing ever and pumpkin pie simply shouldn't taste that good but finding the positives in a life when we all moan about our problems was the best part.
Whether you have your slice of pumpkin pie on your own in front of the telly, or are driven slightly nuts by hordes of relatives you only see once a year, have a good one. This is a great tradition and the best way to see out Scorpio season
Carrots and Peas, anyone?
best turkey dressing ever and pumpkin pie simply shouldn't taste that good but finding the positives in a life when we all moan about our problems was the best part. Whether you have your slice of pumpkin pie on your own in front of the telly, or are driven slightly nuts by hordes of relatives you only see once a year, have a good one. This is a great tradition and the best way to see out Scorpio season
Carrots and Peas, anyone?
A little Turkey humor
My baby sister, cuter than a bug's ear, has hosted Thanksgiving for many years. All us households have prepared our dishes. While I wait on a bro to pick me and the dishes up, I checked FB. First thing I see is picture's of my son's dishes, he is excited and probably on the road to this town. Then I see a post from my sister saying Happy Thankgiving - she intends on having a stress free day so she soaked the Turkey in Vodka and stuffed it with Xanax. Turkey coma forecasted.
Welcome Wagon...
I'm winding down on the 'shopping list' of final documents needed before the closing date. One important paper gets me a reduced rate on the mandatory insurance for the structure (and contents) is called a Wind Mitigation Report.
The home inspector I hired 3 weeks ago is licensed to make the report and he sent over a copy last night that I forwarded to some insurance companies who are preparing quotes. That report along with photos shows the structure and condition of the roof from the inside. It's all done to building code and shows no signs of leaks.
Chasing around to a few people will be in my life now, I asked the company who handles the Home Owners Association (HOA) if they have a welcome wagon and will walk me through some important things... like mailbox, location of trash bins, ID badges for entry and most importantly, if there is a preferred list of licensed companies like plumber, electrician and air conditioning technicians.
The first thing on my list is to replace one of the toilets and I cannot risk an unlicensed handyman to do the work, especially since I'm on the 2nd floor!
They haven't replied about the welcome wagon request. Perhaps one doesn't exist. logically speaking with 300-400 residents in this community, they've got to have some orientation - start package I can review BEFORE I arrive. I know 40' long furniture moving trailers are banned entry and the small amount of things I'm moving can be done in a standard van.
Yeah... moving furniture, I'm not looking forward to that part!
The home inspector I hired 3 weeks ago is licensed to make the report and he sent over a copy last night that I forwarded to some insurance companies who are preparing quotes. That report along with photos shows the structure and condition of the roof from the inside. It's all done to building code and shows no signs of leaks.
Chasing around to a few people will be in my life now, I asked the company who handles the Home Owners Association (HOA) if they have a welcome wagon and will walk me through some important things... like mailbox, location of trash bins, ID badges for entry and most importantly, if there is a preferred list of licensed companies like plumber, electrician and air conditioning technicians.
The first thing on my list is to replace one of the toilets and I cannot risk an unlicensed handyman to do the work, especially since I'm on the 2nd floor!
They haven't replied about the welcome wagon request. Perhaps one doesn't exist. logically speaking with 300-400 residents in this community, they've got to have some orientation - start package I can review BEFORE I arrive. I know 40' long furniture moving trailers are banned entry and the small amount of things I'm moving can be done in a standard van.
Yeah... moving furniture, I'm not looking forward to that part!
Cute article in the NY Times this week on Walking your pet cat.
In response to:
Yes, You Should Walk Your Cat
Today’s indoor cat is a tiger robbed of his dominion, a Lamborghini left idling in the garage.
By David Grimm
Mr. Grimm is the author of “Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship With Cats and Dogs.”
Dec. 5, 2018
About 13 years ago, my fiancée and I started to go for walks in our neighborhood. When we’d step out of the house, cars often lingered at the intersection out front a bit longer than they should have. People would stop us to ask questions. And the patrons of a restaurant across the street framed by large, plate-glass windows would occasionally run outside and shout, “It’s you — we’ve heard about you!”
Perhaps this wasn’t so surprising. We were walking our cats, after all. On leashes.
We weren’t trying to start a movement. And we weren’t the only people in the country who had the crazy idea to buy a small dog harness, strap it onto a nonplused feline, and pray that the tens of millions of years of evolution that separate dogs and cats would suddenly evaporate. We just wanted our two kittens — Jasper and Jezebel — to experience more of the world than our cramped 800-square-foot apartment in the heart of Baltimore. We also wanted to keep them from running out into traffic.
In the past two decades, there has been a growing movement to confine our feline friends indoors. Veterinarians argue that this significantly extends their life spans, protecting them from disease, cars and predators. Wildlife advocates contend that outdoor cats are a blight on ecosystems, killing countless birds and small mammals every year. Increasingly, it seems, no one wants to cross paths with an outdoor cat.
Yet cats belong to a proud race of savanna kings and nomadic carnivores. Their ancestors slunk out of the deserts of the Near East 10,000 years ago to hunt mice in our early villages, and they have been free to roam our backyard jungles since. They have not evolved to slumber in our living rooms.
People began to keep dogs as indoor pets in large numbers in the late 1800s, thanks to the invention of flea and tick shampoos. And yet, cats remained outside. Even the advent of Kitty Litter in 1947 could not contain them completely; tomcats still prowled alleys at night, in search of a mate — or a fight. Today’s indoor cat is a tiger robbed of his dominion, a Lamborghini left idling in the garage.
So how do we honor cats, while protecting them from the world — and the world from them?
The solution lies in what we’ve already done with dogs for decades: We need to start walking our cats. I’m not saying that you should put your cat on a leash like we did. They don’t like you telling them where to go. But we should let our cats outside for 30 to 60 minutes a day to rove yards, stroll sidewalks and disappear into shrubbery.
And we should be there to watch them. We should pick them up when they head for the street. We should whistle or clap our hands when they begin stalking a bird. And we should have a bag of treats ready when it’s time to call them back indoors.
We don’t let our dogs wander unsupervised or destroy whatever they want. We should exercise the same responsibility with our cats.
Yes, You Should Walk Your Cat
Today’s indoor cat is a tiger robbed of his dominion, a Lamborghini left idling in the garage.
By David Grimm
Mr. Grimm is the author of “Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship With Cats and Dogs.”
Dec. 5, 2018
About 13 years ago, my fiancée and I started to go for walks in our neighborhood. When we’d step out of the house, cars often lingered at the intersection out front a bit longer than they should have. People would stop us to ask questions. And the patrons of a restaurant across the street framed by large, plate-glass windows would occasionally run outside and shout, “It’s you — we’ve heard about you!”
Perhaps this wasn’t so surprising. We were walking our cats, after all. On leashes.
We weren’t trying to start a movement. And we weren’t the only people in the country who had the crazy idea to buy a small dog harness, strap it onto a nonplused feline, and pray that the tens of millions of years of evolution that separate dogs and cats would suddenly evaporate. We just wanted our two kittens — Jasper and Jezebel — to experience more of the world than our cramped 800-square-foot apartment in the heart of Baltimore. We also wanted to keep them from running out into traffic.
In the past two decades, there has been a growing movement to confine our feline friends indoors. Veterinarians argue that this significantly extends their life spans, protecting them from disease, cars and predators. Wildlife advocates contend that outdoor cats are a blight on ecosystems, killing countless birds and small mammals every year. Increasingly, it seems, no one wants to cross paths with an outdoor cat.
Yet cats belong to a proud race of savanna kings and nomadic carnivores. Their ancestors slunk out of the deserts of the Near East 10,000 years ago to hunt mice in our early villages, and they have been free to roam our backyard jungles since. They have not evolved to slumber in our living rooms.
People began to keep dogs as indoor pets in large numbers in the late 1800s, thanks to the invention of flea and tick shampoos. And yet, cats remained outside. Even the advent of Kitty Litter in 1947 could not contain them completely; tomcats still prowled alleys at night, in search of a mate — or a fight. Today’s indoor cat is a tiger robbed of his dominion, a Lamborghini left idling in the garage.
So how do we honor cats, while protecting them from the world — and the world from them?
The solution lies in what we’ve already done with dogs for decades: We need to start walking our cats. I’m not saying that you should put your cat on a leash like we did. They don’t like you telling them where to go. But we should let our cats outside for 30 to 60 minutes a day to rove yards, stroll sidewalks and disappear into shrubbery.
And we should be there to watch them. We should pick them up when they head for the street. We should whistle or clap our hands when they begin stalking a bird. And we should have a bag of treats ready when it’s time to call them back indoors.
We don’t let our dogs wander unsupervised or destroy whatever they want. We should exercise the same responsibility with our cats.
(Continued in my first comment below)
online now!
Memories
I normally don't say much about anyone in my rl here or anywhere online but this is a funny memory I got of my father that I think is fine to share.
Every Friday after supper, me and 3 other buddies would always end up at the house having a smoke figuring out our plans for the night. When we knew what we were doing, we leave my room and on the way out, one of them nudge me and say "ask him, ask him". We would find dad sitting at the table with his cup of tea and I would say "dad, armwrestle". I sit to the table, we lock our hands. One of the b'ys would then stand to my side and put both his hands behind mine, the 2nd and 3'd buddy would follow (we were fairly big boys for our age).
I would say "3, 2, 1, go", and on go, me and the b'ys would put 120% of whatever strength we had in our bodies and push like bastards against dad and dad would just sit there holding us at bay, no change in his face, no effort in his face what so ever. We would be huffing puffing, red in the face screaming working like slaves and it would start to go in our favor a bit, we thought "omg, maybe he is tired or something, we may win this evening". We would grunt and roar and get a little more on him. We were feeling pretty fking good and we slave and slave on him then next thing we know, dad would push back and the four of us was slung across the kitchen into the walls against the fridge and stove and we seeing stars.
Dad was a scary insanely strong man who I watched do things that humans should not be able to do strength wise. He never showed off, didn't believe in it, but he would always let us try to arm wrestle with him, it amused him and no matter how many times we did it, there was just no way to prepare for it when he pushed back on us and we go flying. It gave him some amusement for the evening and amazed the hell out of us. We go to the party then telling everyone about the umteen armwrestle we had with him and how it was the same result again lol.
Every Friday after supper, me and 3 other buddies would always end up at the house having a smoke figuring out our plans for the night. When we knew what we were doing, we leave my room and on the way out, one of them nudge me and say "ask him, ask him". We would find dad sitting at the table with his cup of tea and I would say "dad, armwrestle". I sit to the table, we lock our hands. One of the b'ys would then stand to my side and put both his hands behind mine, the 2nd and 3'd buddy would follow (we were fairly big boys for our age).
I would say "3, 2, 1, go", and on go, me and the b'ys would put 120% of whatever strength we had in our bodies and push like bastards against dad and dad would just sit there holding us at bay, no change in his face, no effort in his face what so ever. We would be huffing puffing, red in the face screaming working like slaves and it would start to go in our favor a bit, we thought "omg, maybe he is tired or something, we may win this evening". We would grunt and roar and get a little more on him. We were feeling pretty fking good and we slave and slave on him then next thing we know, dad would push back and the four of us was slung across the kitchen into the walls against the fridge and stove and we seeing stars.
Dad was a scary insanely strong man who I watched do things that humans should not be able to do strength wise. He never showed off, didn't believe in it, but he would always let us try to arm wrestle with him, it amused him and no matter how many times we did it, there was just no way to prepare for it when he pushed back on us and we go flying. It gave him some amusement for the evening and amazed the hell out of us. We go to the party then telling everyone about the umteen armwrestle we had with him and how it was the same result again lol.
All in a day’s work
I turned up at the address with the boiler I was delivering and a man who looked like he was in his late 60s answered the door. He had bright orange lips that glistened and his mouth was hurrying to get rid of the last remnants of whatever he’d been eating. I asked him where he would like me to leave his boiler; whereon he pointed to a door along the hallway and said, “in there, but are you squeamish?”
I’m not particularly squeamish but I was reluctant to commit myself before knowing exactly what I would be encountering behind that door. Before the look of uncertainty had left my face he went on to explain that his wife had recently died and was in the room where he wanted me to put the boiler. Quite a few possible scenarios darted through my mind in the short interval before he revealed that it was merely his wife’s ashes that were residing in the room.
Now if he hadn’t said anything about his late wife being in that room I would have been in and back out again without noticing a thing, other than how untidy the room was. But, knowing she was in there, obviously the first thing I did on entering was to scour the room for her. Even then it took longer than I would have expected to find her. It turned out that she was on a coffee table in a little wooden box, blending in with all the other clutter. I don’t even think I would have realised that it was her had there not been some sort of bereavement card propped against her box.
I put the boiler down in one of the few spaces in the room where it would fit and then went into the kitchen, where I put the delivery note down on the worktop next to the plate covered in baked bean residue, which explained the orange lips, and asked the man to sign it. I couldn’t help noticing how cheerful the man’s demeanour was for someone who had very recently lost his wife. I speculated to myself that perhaps the man’s wife disapproved of baked beans while he rather liked them and his new found freedom to indulge himself more than compensated for his loss.
Just as an incidental observation regarding my squeamishness; I found the remains of the man’s lunch on that sauce smeared plate a lot more off putting than those of his wife.
I’m not particularly squeamish but I was reluctant to commit myself before knowing exactly what I would be encountering behind that door. Before the look of uncertainty had left my face he went on to explain that his wife had recently died and was in the room where he wanted me to put the boiler. Quite a few possible scenarios darted through my mind in the short interval before he revealed that it was merely his wife’s ashes that were residing in the room.
Now if he hadn’t said anything about his late wife being in that room I would have been in and back out again without noticing a thing, other than how untidy the room was. But, knowing she was in there, obviously the first thing I did on entering was to scour the room for her. Even then it took longer than I would have expected to find her. It turned out that she was on a coffee table in a little wooden box, blending in with all the other clutter. I don’t even think I would have realised that it was her had there not been some sort of bereavement card propped against her box.
I put the boiler down in one of the few spaces in the room where it would fit and then went into the kitchen, where I put the delivery note down on the worktop next to the plate covered in baked bean residue, which explained the orange lips, and asked the man to sign it. I couldn’t help noticing how cheerful the man’s demeanour was for someone who had very recently lost his wife. I speculated to myself that perhaps the man’s wife disapproved of baked beans while he rather liked them and his new found freedom to indulge himself more than compensated for his loss.
Just as an incidental observation regarding my squeamishness; I found the remains of the man’s lunch on that sauce smeared plate a lot more off putting than those of his wife.
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