School Days

“Career OVER. I’ve made my mark. I’m done. We were lining up for lunch. A student gives me a hug. I immediately start joking. Are you looking for an A?! Do you want a candy bar?! She looks up at me and says: You’re the reason I come to school.” (credit: @joypcoffee, Twitter)

Teachers, you are amazing. I am friends with many excellent teachers. And I can still call out the teachers by name who made a big difference in my own life and of course, I can also call out by name the teachers who made a huge difference in the lives of our four children. Teachers, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The kids in our area started school this week. It feels surreal. This will be the first time in over two decades that I won’t belong to a PTA, or have to go on a scavenger hunt to find an odd colored folder with a specific amount of pockets that doesn’t exist.

Our youngest child, our daughter, started college this summer. She is home for a couple of weeks before she heads back to her university for the fall session. She was horrified when were in a store the other day and the clerk asked her if she was doing back-to-school shopping. “I’m in college,” she declared, loud and proud, for everyone around to hear. At what age does the shift occur when we no longer want to be noticed for being older and more mature? I can’t even remember. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for me. I did feel slightly delighted (and a little embarrassed) when I was purchasing BOGO iced animal crackers and the clerk asked me if these were for school snacks. “My kids are all grown,” I admitted. “These are mature woman sneaky snacks for when sugar cravings hit.” She nodded in full understanding.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Kick It, Cookieless Friday

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Happy Friday!! TGIF!!! I love Fridays. I am so happy to be here at a Friday this week. Thank you for being so loving and supportive and understanding, readers. It’s been a tough week for me, but we are here, at the light at the end of the tunnel: Friday. On Favorite Things Friday, I usually try to keep it light, and I discuss products, or websites, or songs, or books, etc. that make my life fun. I strongly encourage you to add your favorites in my Comments section. Please also check out previous Friday blog posts for more good stuff to try!

Here are today’s favorites:

Cell Phone Kickstand – This is an awesome little gadget to stick on the back of your phone or phone case (as long as it is a flat phone case). I have noticed that I have gotten sore wrists from holding my phone too long. This is a quick and easy tool to safely position and hold your phone at so many different angles (lengthwise and widthwise!) And when you don’t need to use it, it folds right back into a simple silver bar at the end of your phone case. I got mine for $11 from Amazon. I think that I will consider this a standard necessary phone accessory from here on out! Treat yourself to this useful, and inexpensive gadget.

Cookieless Cookies – This is my new favorite dessert. I made it up recently, all by myself. Essentially Cookieless Cookies are a giant bowl of chocolate chips mixed up with chopped up walnuts. My current Cookieless Cookie holds butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips and Ghirardelli chocolate chips, with a dash of the walnuts, of course. (tough weeks call for a higher ratio of chips to walnuts) I figure that a Cookieless Cookie is “healthier” than eating cookies because it doesn’t have any extra butter or sugar. I also like to think of Cookieless Cookies as a form of trail mix without the icky raisins, and with a guarantee of always getting some chocolate chips when you throw a handful of it into your mouth. Happy Trails! Happy “Baking”! It doesn’t take long to mix up, nor does it require an oven – my kind of cooking.

Favorite Picture of the Week

My middle son was driving up the East Coast of Florida earlier this week, and he sent us this picture of what he saw. It is not a UFO. It’s not ET going home. It is the Space X shuttle being launched. How cool is this? What amazing and interesting times we live in!

Bonus favorite: I saw this quote earlier this week on Twitter:

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” – Uncle Duke

I think that this goes both ways. We often think that what we do or what we don’t do, doesn’t really matter, but it does. It’s the individual snowflakes that create an avalanche, but it’s also the individual water droplets that make up a beautiful lake. What we do, good or bad, kind or unkind, thoughtful or thoughtless, does make a difference. It always does. Have a great weekend! Be a good flake!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Cookie!

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I, myself, have never met a cookie that I didn’t like. Yesterday, we ordered sandwiches from this darling little country general store. It was the kind of store you walk into, and you expect to all of the sudden see yourself in braids and a long flocked dress, like Laura Ingalls. The store wrapped your delicious sandwiches in cardboard boxes and hidden underneath the wax paper, which was protecting the intactness of the sandwich, were two little, neatly tucked-in cookies. The cookies weren’t particularly special (we had also purchased several of their homemade mack-daddy pan sized cookies), but to find these little chippers, tucked in their little hiding spot, was such a delightful surprise, it brought a smile to all our faces. Cookies should be in their own food group, a vital daily supply of Vitamin H (as in Happiness). At our sons’ university, there is a cookie delivery service aptly called “Cookie-gasm”. Hey, if the shoe fits . . . . . Truly though, what I sincerely know, with all of my heart, is that every cookie matters.