On the way to a volunteer party for the Jim Valvano events, I was driving blithely down the road, thinking about the people I'd see and the good food we'd have.  I noticed a guy waiting on a side street to pull out into traffic. I was in the right lane and there was a car in the lane left of me, but behind me a bit - just off my rear on the driver's side. As I passed the side street, I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see the crash that accompanied the sickening bang I heard.

As I passed the side street, the guy on my right pulled out quickly and  immediately smashed into the woman whose car was on my left rear. I guess he couldn't see her there.  The impact turned his car in the opposite direction (towards me), but luckily I was already far enough down the road that I had no problems. With surprise and disbelief, I saw him drive off down the road, and turn right into the next side street. I have no idea if he stopped there so his car would be out of traffic - or if he was avoiding being caught and drove off to run away. I doubt he got very far, unless he set out on foot because his car was already smoking as it turned the corner.

Maybe I should have pulled out my cell phone and reported the crash. I saw several other people on phones immediately, so I didn't stop because I thought they were doing the right thing and calling 911. I sure wish I knew what happened; whether the woman was hurt or not and whether the guy actually did run away. 

The sounds of that crash brought back very quickly the rear-ending wreck we were involved in last January. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I can certainly see how post-traumatic stress syndrome can be a problem for soldiers.  I was shaken by it, and the sound of  the impact was nothing compared to war time.

What would you have done?

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Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts for my friend. I don't have any news yet, but I'll keep you posted.

The frustration is building here at Casa Kenju. I have all this business inventory to get rid of and it feels like I am drowning in the clutter. I can't seem to find a good time to have a garage sale until late September, so I finally put an ad on Craigslist last Saturday. I have had zero - zip - no email at all in response to that ad - except a lot of spam. I had always heard how great Craigslist is - how easy it is to buy and sell through it - so I'm a bit bewildered by the fact that it hasn't worked for me.

I don't know what to do. I put signs up in each of the two wholesale florist places here, which only brought 5 people to see the stuff. I sold a lot to those five people, but I really need to sell most of the rest of it and then give the rest to charity.

There are vases, silver-plated containers, nice baskets, supplies, a ribbon rack, over 200 bolts of mostly unopened ribbon, pedestals and it is all too good to just give away - although I've offered a lot of it to my children and gave a lot of ribbon to my employer.  Do you have any advice? 

                                                        ***

While driving last week, I saw a car with the license plate "WaitWait." I wondered if that was in honor of the PBS radio show "Wait...Wait Don't Tell Me" or if it referred to the fact that the driver was so darn slow that all cars behind  him had to wait...wait....wait to get to their destinations.

My good friend with two black labrador retrievers  has the plate "twolabmomma" and yesterday I saw a car with "twolablimo". I guess labs are so popular as to spawn all sorts of homage.

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Today, my neighborhood women are going on a field trip to a spot south of Chapel Hill for lunch and browsing. I hope to have some good photos for you tomorrow.

Remember the half-runner green beans of which I was singing praises?  They are sooooo good! I made them last Thursday and we have eaten some everyday since then. The longer they sit in the pot, the better they taste!! Wehad them olast night with London Broil and mashed potatoes. Ummmmmm good!

Lastly, today is the third anniversary of mr. kenju's stroke...and that's enough said about that.

A Sinking Feeling......

Did you ever lose something and get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach?

This morning, after arising at 9am (lady of leisure today) and spending 90 minutes on the computer, I went outside to make my rounds: cleaning out the pool skimmer, looking for deer in the woods and then I went out to the street to collect the recycle bins and the trash bin. On the way to the street, I picked up some fallen branches (we had a heck of a storm last night!) and threw them into the woods. Arriving at the street, I picked up the newspaper, put the recycle bins into the trash bin and as I closed the lid, it jumped up and hit my upper arm (don't ask me how that happened). I rolled the can back up the driveway and suddenly, I realized I didn't have my glasses on. 

I put my old pair on and I retraced my steps twice (with mr. kenju following me) and couldn't see them anywhere.  I was nearly in tears, because I had only had the glasses since July 16th. Can you imagine how distraught I was at the thought of having to replace them???  I'm not rolling in money and that would be one of my least favorite ways to part with some.

After that I spent some time doing chores around the house; laundry, etc. I went back out a few minutes ago to look for them again, just as I saw the neighbor's lawn man pull up into the cul-de-sac. Uh-oh, I said, if they're out there, he'll crush them! I decided to look in the lawn and further out into the street - and there they were! Three feet from the edge of the grass. I can't believe I didn't see them when I looked before - but no matter - since I finally found them and I can relax!Whew! What a morning.

P.S.  I was wearing the glasses. I think that when the lid of the trash receptacle hit my arm, I jerked my head and they flew off. 

YOU WANT WHAT FOR THAT???

While cruising the purse aisles at TJ Maxx on Friday, I honed in on one that I really liked the looks of. I don't care for purses with a lot of hardware or unnecessary ornamentation on them, and this one was just my style.

And then, I saw the price tag.....
























Yves Saint Laurent..... I nearly fainted when I saw the tag. I can always find the most expensive thing on the racks and go right to it, but THIS is ridiculous!



Up to this point, the most expensive purse I had ever seen there was $399. I wonder how long this one will hang there before someone takes it home? Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll reduce the price by about $1,100.....LOL

A Proud Moment

Friday and Saturday were spent watching our older daughter get "pinned" and graduate from nursing school. We could not be more proud of her - she accomplished this while caring for six children, a husband, a home, two dogs and two cats. Her original class consisted of over 70 people, but only thirty-some of them made it to graduation. It wasn't easy; so we are doubly proud of her for studying hard and hanging onto her goals!

Here she is with Mr. kenju, the proud father.

The weather cooperated, although it was hotter than Hades - topping out in the high eighties both days. The pinning ceremony took place in a lovely interdenominational church in Pinehurst, NC, The Village Chapel. Many proud parents, children and grandparents were on hand to witness this special moment in a nurse's life.

Graduation Day started out balmy. Our son-in-law had gone to the college early to secure chairs under a large, sheltering tree and we were the envy of those who had to sit in the sun. The sky was a bit cloudy at first, but soon cleared to a brilliant Carolina blue, while light breezes caressed and cooled us. I had not been to a college graduation since the early 90's, when my youngest child got her degree. There was much pomp and circumstance here as well, as professors and various trustees marched in to the strains of the typical music reserved for important ceremonies. Before these began, the college jazz group played selections that made me want to dance and the college choir sang the National Anthem and "Lean on Me", with a few soloists who seemed ready for Broadway. After a few requisite speeches, parents watched their sons and daughters march up to receive their diplomas, all smiling broadly, snapping photos when they could.

We went back to our hotel to check out and then meet the rest of the family for lunch at Chili's, after which we drove back home. It was a perfect day, until...until.....

Mr. kenju asked if I had left his sport coat in the car, and we discovered that it had been forgotten in the closet at the hotel (90 miles away). My name is MUD, since it was my fault. When we went to the hotel on Friday night, he intended to leave his coat in the car, but I didn't know that, and I brought it into the room and hung it in the closet. When we checked out today (in a big hurry) I didn't check the closet, believing that he had it with him. Our son-in-law called the hotel, and was told that housekeeping had gone and would not be back until Monday, so we have to wait until then to see if his sportcoat has been saved/turned in. I'll ask you to keep good thoughts about it. Mr. kenju is really mad at me right now.

Update: the jacket has been found, thank Heaven!!

Is There Such A Thing As Adult-Onset Dyslexia?

A repost from my old blog, Just Ask Judy on July 16, 2005

What is happening to me?

Lately I cannot type the word "that"; I leave out the "a" every time. I have also noticed that I am transposing letters and numbers; for example, I type the phone number 555-1586, when it really should be 555-1856. Or I type the words "beautiful dreamer", for example, and it comes out "baeutiful draemer".

I am spending more time correcting typing errors than I am in actual post writing. Do any of you have that problem? I hope I am not the only one!

There was an article recently floating around the web purporting that it doesn't really matter if some of the letters in a word are scrambled, since we tend to read the word as a whole and process the meaning anyway. Though it may be true, I spend so much time trying to correct my errors in consideration of my readers. God forbid I should tax your brains any more than absolutely necessary!

Numbers are an entirely different story, however. If I am typing a phone number - or some such important numerical info - it behooves me to type it correctly. Short of proof-reading again and again, I don't know how to cure the problem. Any advice?

Edit: This post has received more on-going comments (40) than any other post on either of my blogs. Apparently, I am not alone with this problem.

Expand Your Vocabulary and Get a Haircut!

termagant

PRONUNCIATION:

(TER-muh-guhnt)

MEANING:

noun: A quarrelsome or overbearing woman.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French Tervagant. The term originates after an imaginary deity that Christians in medieval Europe erroneously believed was worshiped by Muslims. It was represented in morality plays as a violent, overbearing personage. Over time the term became generalized to apply to any brawling person, and eventually only to women.

USAGE:

"[Mrs. Lincoln], the wife of one of our most beloved presidents, has been characterized as a sharp-tongued termagant who made her husband's life miserable."

Larry Eskridge; The Tragedy of Mary Lincoln; The Daily Ledger (Canton, Illinois); May 16, 2009.

Explore "termagant" in the Visual Thesaurus.

(From

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg)


I think mr. kenju would agree with this definition and I know who he'd be likely to hang it on.

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About two weeks ago, he got a haircut which looked okay right after, but the next day, our daughter said...."Daddy, when are you going to get a haircut?" His curly hair grows very fast in the summer anyway, and add to that the stimulus of his daily vitamins, he often "looks like some guy named Luigi who just landed off the boat." Today was chosen for the next haircut, and I voiced the opinion that I should go in with him and tell the stylist to cut it shorter this time. He didn't want me to say that (he'd feel like a ten year old boy and I'd come very close to being the definition above), so I let him off in front of the shop and parked close by to read my current novel. So far - so good - but we'll see what tomorrow brings. Of course, the stylist didn't take the blame for not cutting his hair short enough. She blamed it all on summer heat and vitamins.

\\\::///

While I was parked there, I noticed an older woman sitting in the back seat of the car parked nose-to-nose with mine. After we had been there for about ten minutes, she got out of the car and started walking around rather aimlessly. She did that for 2-3 minutes, then she got into the front seat of the car, then out again immediately and walked around some more. She stopped behind the car 2 spaces down and appeared to be studying the license plate (or maybe a bumper sticker). When the man who owned that car came back, she engaged him in conversation and it was soon obvious that he wanted to leave. I couldn't hear any of what they were saying, but she was smiling and animated. As soon as he left, she got back into the car for a mere minute and back out again to walk in the parking lot. She didn't go far, but I was worried about her getting into the path of cars. As mr. kenju returned to our car, she got in the back seat of her car again and shut the door. I wondered if I should ask her if everything was okay - but I said nothing and drove off. What would you have done? Do you think I should have asked her if she was waiting for someone or tried to find out where her driver was?

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Last week, after I complained about the slow-as-molasses machine that is my computer, I got advice from some of you helpful people. Most of it had already been done, but then I realized that it had been a while since I upgraded my adware program. So I downloaded an upgrade and ran the program. It took over an hour, but it found a Trojan - to be specific - Trojan.WOW.mo (whatever that means). Since I got rid of that, the computer has run a little better, but not much. When my BIL was here, I told him of our possible thoughts of adding memory. He advised against it in a computer that is rapidly approaching six years old. We have another computer that isn't used very often, so I may switch to that one. The problem is that there are many files on this one that would need to be transferred to the other one, and I am sort of clueless on how to do that. Plus I wonder if we transfer all the files, wouldn't that make the other computer have overloaded memory too?

Sleep eludes me. (When I first typed that, it said "Speel edules me.")

I'm so tired, but I cannot get to sleep. I worked 9 1/2 hours today; helping to deliver and set-up 2 weddings, one of which was an hour away. It was "blue blazes" hot today, and I was (as always) perpetually thirsty. I drank 2 small diet cokes, 1 bottle of water, 1 large caffeine-free diet coke and 3 (count 'em) 3 glasses of iced tea at lunch time. I made the remark that I would be lucky to go to sleep by 3am. Little did I know how very prophetic that statement would be. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut - no drinking of anything but water and no prophesies of the self-fulfilling type!

I was going to post all the photos from the wedding, but they are not cooperating. Perhaps tomorrow they will. I have a rather confusing system for doing my photos. I download (or is it upload ?) them to the computer, and then I open Picasa, the photo program I prefer. Picasa automatically picks up the photos and then I can crop, lighten, etc. to my heart's content. But I don't like to post directly from Picasa, so I email the enhanced photos to myself, and then copy them to my hard drive again. I am having trouble doing that part tonight; I keep getting a message saying that they cannot find the file (which is total crap - but how do I tell the computer that?) I know it is crap because I have been doing my photos that way for at least 3 years now. Why it suddenly decided that I couldn't do it that way, I don't know, but I don't much like it.

When I got home last night at 7:20 pm, I was too exhausted to get on the computer (believe it or not). I ate the pizza that my sweet daughter bought for me and got into my recliner to relax. We watched a series of shows on Discovery about our planet, (fascinating stuff there about the composition of the core of the earth!) and I dozed a little during the 3 hours I was lying there. But only a little, and I wasn't really asleep - just barely above the threshold of consciousness. Near 11pm, I got up and got ready for bed (after doing email, etc.) and I read for 30 minutes and turned out the light. One hour later, I was still lying there trying to doze off - but no such luck. So I gave up and got on the computer again. It's 3:36 a.m. I'm gonna need a really good nap tomorrow!!

A Weekend Lament +

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to everyone who is, or ever wanted to be a Mother!

<><><><><><>

I worked all day Friday; leaving my house at 8:15am and not returning until almost 7:00pm. I work on my feet 99% of the time. The only time I sit down is during the 5-10 minutes it takes to eat my lunch. I tell you this not to elicit sympathy, but just as a matter of fact. It is what it is. In this business, as in many others, if you don't accept and make yourself available for the work as it comes, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to take your place - and I am determined not to lose my spot if I can help it. I enjoy it too much.

I think I've broken the code on how to keep myself from getting completely exhausted - if I drink one (but only one) diet C*ke per day - that amount of caffeine is enough to keep me going (along with my arthritis med and Tylen*l). On Wednesday, I only worked 4 1/2 hours, but I was so tired when I left the other shop that I could have cried. Contrast that with Thursday, having worked 6 1/2 hours (but with the benefit of caffeine) I felt almost perky.

The caffeine keeps me going, but it also prevents my going to sleep at the usual time - which is always late anyway - I'm such a nightowl. But if I can manage 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep, that's all I need. Friday night, I nodded off about 10pm while channel surfing between HGTV and Animal Planet, (since Monk went off, Friday night is such a wasteland on TV) and I woke up around 11:15pm. After checking email and FB, I got into bed and opened my book. I turned out my light at 1:20am - later than usual, but attributable to the caffeine. I have a kind of love/hate relationship with it. At 4:50 am, mr. kenju woke me up to tell me that there were fire engines and paramedics in the cul-de-sac, and he thought one of the houses around here might be on fire. I jumped up to see what seemed like hundreds of red lights flashing, and the lights were on at my closest neighbor's house. She had been in the hospital for the last 4-5 days and came home either Thursday evening or Friday morning. I suspected that the commotion was related to her medical issues.

Against my advice, mr. kenju called the neighbor's house to see what the trouble was and found out that she had to be taken back to the hospital. I didn't think it was a good idea to call someone in the very midst of a medical emergency - but he did. He also thought it was a good time (at 5:00 am, mind you) to berate me because the numbers on our mailbox are too small.

The upshot of all this is to tell you that I never went back to sleep. So, with less than 5 hours of shut-eye, I went to work with Mel Day at 10am. Most of the floral design work was complete, and all we had do was pack and deliver the flowers for four weddings, all of which were in different sections of our county (Raleigh, Cary, Apex and Wake Forest). The only time I sat down was when we were in the delivery vans.

We got through it all with flying colors - no slip-ups - no harried phone calls from nervous brides and no getting lost (all except for the bad directions to a church in Apex, NC), and thank C*ke and caffeine, no exhaustion until it was all over. But maybe, just maybe, some of our success could be due to the shiny penny I found in a hotel parking lot that morning, just as we exited the van at our first delivery of the day. It was heads-up!!




Thanks to Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By for the link about night owls.

(Photos from the weekend weddings will be posted Monday.)

Biiiiiig Lips and Other Musings

(I stole this photo from g*ogle images)

Jacklyn Zeman gets my nomination for the 2008 Lisa Rinna Award for the Biggest Collagen Lips on TV!! Good Lord, woman. You've been on General Hospital since time immemorial so no one expects you to look like a teenager anymore.

The photos in the link show her a few years ago. I was watching the show yesterday and it seemed as if she could barely talk for trying to navigate around those big, floppy lips. Why some women think this is a good thing to do is beyond me. I've seldom seen a collagen application that appeared normal-looking afterward. Of course, I might have seen some and not realized it, but most of them stand out like a sore thumb - and are just about as attractive!

*********

When you want to open your deck or patio umbrella for the first time of the year, don't just stick your hand in there all willy-nilly without checking first (like I did). A wasp stung my finger today and it hurts! :-/ It could easily have been a brown recluse or some other spider, so I was really stupid not to check it first. After the shock of the sting wore off, I got my trusty can of R*id for flying insects and squirted it up into the bottom of the umbrella (and ran back into the house as fast as my feet could move me)! I did that three times, and I saw 3-4 wasps fly out of there, and a larva or two fell out onto the table. After a while, Mr. Kenju and I took the umbrella out of the table, laid it on the deck and opened it slowly by hand. It was clear of wasps, and I quickly knocked the nest off the pole. That will be the last time I stick my hand in something without knowing for certain what I will find.....LOL

*********

Bo Diddley died yesterday. I wish he knew how much pleasure I got from his music over the years. He played a club in Norfolk, VA back in the mid 60's, and I got to see him live! It was great! Rest in Peace, Bo!

Project Green (Take One) ~ and a Lament!

New growth; the promise of spring. Go to Anna's to see others in the project.

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Of all the stupid times not to have my camera with me!! Tonight we were in a restaurant downtown, with 3 friends. I was facing the windows and suddenly I looked up and there was the most exquisite rainbow I have ever seen. It was very wide and very bright and we could see the full bow. As I realized my camera was at home, I wanted to slap myself across the face. I did take a photo of it with my phone, but I don't have the thingy that lets you upload from the phone to the computer.

Since Mark and Anna are doing the "Looking Through Project", I was devastated to realize that I had missed a perfect opportunity. Lesson learned: I will carry my camera at all times!