The Groundhogs are Out!
It’s been nice enough the last couple of weeks that the sleepy groundhogs have been coming out of their habitats and stumbling along seeking food. There have been several dead ones hit on the roads (that’s what they get for getting out of bed when they are too tired to pay attention)! But they are just as cute as always. We’ve seen some really big ones this spring. Mostly they are on the thin side after a long winter, but not this year. Fat and chubby, they look like they are already set for their summer fun! We should be getting some chippie babies in a month or so, it will be fun to see those little critters! Ah, wildlife… I love living where I do. It’s starting to get a bit too overcommercialized, but at long as there is still room for the critters I am happy.
It’s already April
Here it is already April and I haven’t posted nary a word on here! Shame on me. I guess the uproar over politics has got me down and I’d prefer to just shut up and be quiet. That having been said, it’s time to start posting things again.
Now that the snow is finally gone and the really cold temperatures (well, except for that 13 degrees we had about a week ago at night), it’s time to start enjoying the sun as it comes out to take a look at the spring world. Today it’s mostly cloudy but now and again the sun comes out and it’s beautiful! It feels good, especially when I go outside and I can feel it on my skin and face. Yesterday was a nice day too, til it started raining. It came with thunder, lightning, wind and hail also. We went to Ethan’s dek hockey game in it and Ann, Cindy and I sat out on the bleachers talking while everyone else was heading for cover. All of a sudden there was a big flash of lightning and a sudden loud clap of thunder and we bailed off the bleachers in a hurry for cover! LOL! I think it was God’s way of telling Cindy to get rid of her lightning rod umbrella! We managed to get the rest of the game in between lightning breaks, and sadly Ethan’s team lost. But it was fun just the same. HE’s playing an age group up this year, and he is the smallest guy out there. Surprisingly, he is one of the best players out there, so I’m looking forward to good things from him. We aren’t expecting any rain this afternoon, and the sun has just peeked out from its cloudy shroud. Life is cool, sometimes.
Holiday Blues
Thanksgiving has passed and the Christmas season is ramping up. Well actually the Christmas season has been ramping up for a month now. After a wonderful thanksgiving at the Weisser’s home, we’ve pretty much been laying low. I can’t stand how the commercial side of Christmas seems to permeate everything. WalMart had their Christmas stuff out the beginning of October! It’s all about shopping and buying gifts for people in our lives, not at all about Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. Electronics, toys, jewelry, you name it. It’s disgusting! Now that Black Friday has come and gone the malls are crazy with people wanting to buy stuff. I mean, there’s hardly a spot to park in! I will be staying away from our local shopping mall because of the traffic and rude drivers and such. Shopping online is for me. Out Amazon.com membership gets us free two day shipping. We can find just about everything there. It allows us to do our shopping without the hassle of all of the people!
This Christmas we will have a hard time trying to get a gift for our buddy Ethan. What do you get a kid that loves hockey and is 13 years old? We got him a t-shirt and a gift card for Pure Hockey for his birthday in October, but 13 years old is hard to buy for. I will have to think about this some. He’s just a cute kid and we love him to death. Commercialism for this kid is okay. I will get something for his parents as well. But it won’t be one of those over-zealous hunts for something big, just small tokens of friendship. Christmas is a sad time for me. People in my life have died or been very ill during those times and I keep remembering them as they were, and it reminds me of the good times and I get sad thinking about the times we could have had. Oh well. No going out to shop, no stress of what to get people. Just a mediocre time to spend until the actual Christmas holiday arrives. And goes. And then another year of struggling to survive in a world that isn’t always kind.
Thanksgiving Gratefulness
We had a good time at the Weisser’s for Thanksgiving. All of Cindy’s family was there, as well as a couple of friends. I’m always kind of shy when it comes to being in the company of people I don’t know. But Cindy’s family were all very nice and it made this task much easier that I’d imagined. We had all of the fixins for dinner – turkey, stuffing, broccoli, brussels sprouts, green bean casserole, candied yams, dinner rolls and Ann’s famous cranberries! Dessert was a whole other class by itself! Chocolate pie, cherry pie, peach pie, pumpkin pie and a couple of other ones I don’t remember. I had the pumpkin, as usual, as I think that pumpkin is a traditional Thanksgiving treat. Special thanks to Cindy, Jerry and Ethan for welcoming us into their home, and sparing us a dinner of ramen noodles and pop! LOL!
Election’s over, but questions remain.
I survived the 2012 Presidential Election – not easily, as it was a nail biter, but Barack Obama won re-election and I’m glad. The odd thing is that the country is evenly divided, 50-49, over the agenda of each party. That having been said, it is readily apparent that Congress is going to have to work together in order to get anything done. Whatever is done will have to be done with concessions from both sides. I don’t think that the people will take anything less than bipartisan action.Well, I’m not so sure about the Republicans, but I know the Democrats expect work to get done in a fair and unbiased fashion. Tactical stonewalling by the Republicans will NOT go over well. The scary part is that the Republican powers that be flat out told the world that they were going to use their numbers in Congress to effectively block all Democrat-inspired legislation. That doesn’t sound like a party that is ready to get work done. They blocked a ton of legislation in the past 4 years that would have done wonders to create new jobs and start reducing the national debt. This is just absurd. I do not like Republican legislatures, with the exception of Tim Murphy. Okay, that’s my wandering rant for the night. 4 more years!