Marco!

credit: Just Mike, Twitter

Laughing is good. There are a lot of funny people in the world. I saw someone pose the question on Twitter the other day, “Would you rather be smart or be funny?” A lot of people responded that most funny people tend to be quite smart. “Funny” itself is kind of a cute, funny word.

I pick up our youngest child, our daughter, from her university today. After a small bout of homesickness, she came out of her shell and took her first summer session at college by storm. My one son exclaimed that his sister had done more activities this summer at college, than he had done there in all four years. Funny.

Our daughter will be home for a couple of weeks, before she heads back to school for fall session. I am excited and aware. Once a child leaves home they never come back quite the same. And this is not a bad thing. It’s fun to see the facets of your children that are glistening new aspects of themselves, which only occur when they leave the nest and really explore things on their own, with a blossoming adult outlook. This is when your relationship with your children starts to evolve into a mutual, adult relationship, and this is when we parents and children start to explore each other’s personalities, experiences, perspectives on a more level ground. We get to know each other more as “people” versus rigid, hierarchical roles. I honestly enjoy this shift. It’s surprising, interesting, and a growing moment for both of you.

As has been the case with all four of our children, I think that our daughter is most excited to reunite with our dogs. They never disappoint. Dogs never hold back their exuberant feelings of love and excitement.

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

Colorful Friday

Merry Friday! Pictures, Photos, and Images for Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest,  and Twitter

The holidays are upon us. Around these parts, the Christmas decorations in people’s yards seem to have gone up extra early, many even before Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if this is people wanting to fast forward everything to the end of 2020, or people just being in dire need of extra cheer. My guess is that it is a little bit of a mix of both things. Anyway, we’ll be putting our decorations up this weekend, which is on par with our typical schedule every year (creatures of habit, I suppose). Happy Friday, friends!!! My regular readers know that Fridays are devoted to “the stuff” in life. On Friday, I discuss three favorite things, or websites, or books, or beauty products, etc. that have made my life more interesting and fun. Welcome to Favorite Things Friday!! Please check out previous Friday listings for more of my favorites and please add your favorites to my Comments section. Here are my favorites for today:

Nature Made CholestOff – I have given blood three times this year. This is more often than most years, truthfully, because I have been monitoring my coronavirus antibodies, but still, giving blood is a good thing to do for yourself and for others, for a myriad of reasons. While I have been disappointed, after each session with my antibody results (negative so far), more alarmingly, my cholesterol readings were a tad scary, from my first two results, from giving blood. I am always loathe to recommend supplements to anyone. Of course, you should always discuss supplements with your doctor before taking them. That being said, I have been taking this supplement for the last few months, without changing my eating habits too much. I was happy to see that my cholesterol reading was the lowest that it has been this year, after this last session of giving blood. And that was from blood given a few days after our Thanksgiving feast. (butter, sausage stuffing, turkey, gravy – in other words, “Cholestafest!”)

Zuke’s Mini Naturals – It turns out (as per our dog trainer) that we have been way too generous with our giant dog treats for minimum good behavior from our fur friends. We have a lot of lessons to teach our canine trio, and we don’t want them to get fat in the process. Zuke’s treats have 3 calories each and those little crumbs must pack a lot of flavor, because our dogs are willing to do their “whole bag of tricks” for one little morsel. I order my bags of Zuke’s on Amazon.

Marco Polo app – This is a fun app. I didn’t think I would like it, but a teacher friend was raving about it, and I am a curious person. Basically, it is an app that allows you to send out recorded video messages to each other, without having to be available at the same time. I don’t like being on video. I don’t like watching videos. (I’m always looking for the written transcript.) Yet, I still had a lot of fun with this yesterday. I sent my friend a few videos of me, all masked up, in the hair salon. She was patient with my learning curve, and like the excellent teacher who she is, she encouraged my effort and told me that she was proud of me. (I hope that she saw that I was beaming under my mask)

Have a wonderful, comforting, restful, hopeful, brightly lit weekend, my friends!!!!