Surviving the end of the year.

Texas Tornado: 

I apologize for the size of the photos.  I haven't figured out how to resize them on my phone. 

 

 

Friday, Christmas Day was a beautiful and warm 72 degrees.   We went to my mother's in Rockwall, Texas.  We laughed about the daisies blooming in her yard.  

Saturday was rainy and nobody thought much of it until that evening.  My husband, step-daughter, and I had settled in to watch Star Wars New Hope when suddenly our phones started going crazy with tornado warnings.   I grew up in Indiana and we lived through tons of tornado warnings, so even when I stepped outside and heard the sirens going off in Princeton, I wasn't worried.  I didn't really ever worry about me but we started getting pictures on Facebook of tornadoes near my mom's so I texted her and my brother to make sure all was ok.  Thank God it was ok, for us.  It was not ok for thousands of others as tornadoes rocked North Texas.   At least 11 people died Saturday night including a 3 day old baby and a 1 year old baby.  The tragedy and devastating effect of the tornados hit about 8 miles from my house, about 3 miles from my mom's and demolished lives in the town where my brother is a police officer.  

I want to note that I took all these photos from my car as I drove to pick up some extra boxes of flooring.  I did not go anywhere that emergency personal were and stayed out of the way.  I didn't stop and look.  I wasn't getting in the way because there are still people unaccounted for and there is work to be done, as you can see.   The total chaos tornados is horrible and sad.  Yet, time after time, I have seen Texans support one another and I have seen interviews of survivors who show such strength and faith.  Mother Nature was unkind.  In fact, the tornadoes were followed by floods the next day.  Oh and it's cold now too. Texas weather has been very bipolar in the last few days and yet, Texans survived! People will cleanup and rebuild.   Everyone who survived feels blessed and in awe of the God and nature.  

Home work: 

Realizing how close we came to being a victim of this tornado made everything hard a little easier this week.  In fact, we started pulling up carpet in our family room so we could lay new floors Sunday.  

If you have never pulled up carpet, let me tell you it is nasty.   There is so much dirt and sand under the pad.  I have done it in 2 homes now and I can safely say that when we do refinish the hardwoods that lay under the rest of the house, we will be paying someone to do the job.  

(Sadie felt the need to make sure we were doing it right.) 

The new flooring went down like a big pain in the ass!  Because this is the room people use to go in and out from the pool and because the dog door is there as is the washer and dryer,  I wanted water resistant flooring but I also wanted something rustic feeling.   This is the family room but it's where my husband's deer trophies (things you learn to live with when you love someone) and a lot of his dad's antique fishing stuff hang.   

We spent 2 days laying this floor.  Halfway through I went to lumber liquidators to pick up a few extra boxes and ask what in the world we were doing wrong.  This stuff just wasn't going in easily.  That's when I got the trick that changes the ballgame.   A rubber mallet tapped gently on the corner made this stuff so much better.   By the time it was finished we were sore, exhausted (as you can see above) and my hands had so many scrapes on them they hurt to move.  Still, we have a house and we have life and we can still do home improvement stuff.  That's where I kept my focus.  Now I just have to find the right paint for this room and finish it! 

(Ries quality controlled the final product) 

Grandma Lorraine's Chipperoo Cookies

I brought a plate to work and they went fast! 

Kitchen Sink chipperoos 

I have a confession to make, 

I am not a fan of oatmeal cookies and as much as I love cooking, I am about baked out this Christmas!  

My husband however loves oatmeal cookies. This recipe is a cookie I created based on something my husband's grandmother use to make.  He would tell me about these oatmeal cookies that were almost a meal in and of themselves.  He loved them and I love him so I set out to figure out a basic recipe that would be just like Grandma Irene use to make.  He swears I nailed it!  Grandma called them Chipperoos but since we don't have her recipe and there is everything but the Kitchen Sink in these suckers, I am calling them Kitchen sink chipperoos. 

Since I am still on the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie, I am sharing Grandma's Kitchen Sink Chipperoos with you.  

Warning:  it is a dense cookie with lots of nuts, seeds, chips, and raisins so it is very filling.  One cookie goes a long way.  

Preheat oven to 350 

2 sticks butter 

3 eggs

1 cup peanut butter 

1 tablespoon pure vanilla 

2 cups flour 

3 cups old fashioned oats 

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder 

1 cup brown sugar packed (light or dark.  I used 1/2 cup of each.) 

1 cup chocolate chips 

1 cup butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips

1/2 cup white chocolate chips 

1/2 cup peanuts chopped 

1/2 cup sunflower seeds 

3/4 cup raisins 

Cream butter, sugar, and PB 

Add eggs and vanilla 

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, oats in separate bowl.  Add to wet ingredients.  

Mix in chips, Raisins and nuts 

Form into 1/4 cups balls and squish into disks.  Place 2 inches apart on parchment covered cookie sheet. Bake for 14-16 minutes.  (In my oven 15 is perfect.)
You can eliminate some of the add in's if you really don't like something but the nuts, raisins, and sunflower seeds are what make these cookies feel like a meal.  

Merry Christmas to you all.  May Santa bring you lots of happies. 

Things I can not live without.

Confession time:

I started writing this blog on the 17th.  I had all these great ideas for things I couldn't live without.  Alas, I woke up that morning to a sick chicken.   I thought she actually died in my arms, she seemed so sick.  Now, for those of you who do not have experience with chickens, and I am assuming this is  most of you, I have to admit, chickens are what you might consider a little bit of the drama queens of the bird world.   They are easy prey because whenever anything goes wrong with them, they flop down and seem dead.   Problem is, it makes it really hard sometimes to figure out if they are okay, in shock, or dying of some incurable chicken illness.   SIGH!

Patches suffering with Scrambled Egg beak!

Okay, so that is Patches and she has Fowl Pox.  No, not the scrambled eggs on her beak.  That is her poor table manners.  They are, in her case, little black spots all over her comb and waddle (That is the red stuff) and basically it is Chicken Pox for...well, chickens.   After her very dramatic attempted death, I brought her in the house and she acted just about dead for 30 hours.  So much so that Hubs was about to put her out of her misery, so to speak.  I convinced him to go hunting and because I was suffering from some hideous bug that was most likely really a terrible migraine headache that had me pretty much thinking wishing I were dying.  Anyway, I stayed home and by Saturday morning, after I had begun hand feeding and watering the chicken, she made a great turn around.  Now here is the bad news, Fowl Pox is highly contagious and I don't know if I isolated her soon enough.  I have 33 other chickens to worry about.  She has to stay isolated for at least 10 days which means, she is going to be celebrating Christmas with us.  So obviously from the scrambled eggs all over her beak, she has managed to feed and water herself again, thank goodness!  I mean it was like I had a baby with wings to spoon feed.  Seriously. I am too old for this.  So yep, in the middle of baking Christmas cookies I have to stop to burp the chicken.


Okay, without further chicken stories, here are the things I can't don't want to live without.

Kindle Paper White 

Kindle:

I was dead set against this.  I liked books.  I liked the smell of books.  I like the feel of paper.  But, something happened.   I got married and couldn't really read in bed without waking up the snore master husband.   Hubs is funny and sweet but he does not like to be awakened.  In fact, he becomes down right grumpy when forced awake.   If he wakes up normally, on his own, he is pretty much Susie Sunshine but if you wake him it is Oscar the Grouch.  I love my reader.  I have previously done most of my reading on my iPad mini and the thing I prefer about the Kindle is the size.  It is just so much easier to hold in one hand.   

To go right along with my Kindle is my Amazon Prime account.  First they ship for free.  Next they give me access to movies and music.  Finally, they give me books.  I mean, what isn't great about that.  The kiddo likes to read too, so much so in fact we got her a Kindle Fire for Christmas but that's a secret.   Anyway, it became clear to me early on (read when she stole my full sized iPad and started begging me for books) that I needed to get Kindle Unlimited for the books alone.  So, yes, I am an Amazon junkie.  

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iPhone/iPad:

Much like the Kindle, I resisted having a cell phone until 2000.  Can you believe that?  I felt like nobody needed to reach me so much that they couldn't reach me at either work or home.  Like anyone gives out their work phone numbers anymore.  Like anyone has home phone numbers anymore.  Anyway, my first iPhone was a refurbished bust.  What that experience taught me was never buy refurbished stuff but I digress.   I moved on to an Android phone and I was happy enough until I got my iPhone 5.   I loved that phone.  It was so good to me.  Then I upgraded to an iPhone 6 and now I am awaiting anxiously the iPhone 7 and all the rumored Apple goodness.   Somewhere in there I got my first iPad then my iPad mini and I officially became an Apple person.  

So yes, I love my modern toys.  I don't need them to survive but I don't really want to survive as much without them, now that they have spoiled me.   

Sleep time

Okay, seriously, I can't live without my dogs but I am only including them because my chicken got top billing and the dogs get so jealous when they aren't included.  I mean, don't they look jealous?  They are actually alive, I promise, even though in this photo they look like they have been smothered by pillows and blankets.  They like to burrow and prefer sleeping under something, pillows, blankets, my legs, hub's back, our bed, our pillows on our bed.  You name it and they will sleep under it.

Also on the list of things I can't live without but not pictured:

Super hubs.  I can actually live without him for a few days and sometimes I want to live without him for a few days.   Still, when he is gone a few days hunting, I am super glad he is home and I usually do something stupid to spoil him like, make him enchiladas or what he calls Norwegian Tacos. (It's a long story and no they didn't create tacos in Norway, to my knowledge.)  What can I say, I have grown accustom to him constantly talking my ear off. 

Some form of transportation, currently my Ram pickup.   Why?  Because I don't own a horse and buggy.  

Emergency Wine.   Really, the emergency could be forcing me to watch the nightly news and listen to Donald Trump and his latest hate quest of the moment.  Seriously, who doesn't he hate and who doesn't need wine after listening to him?  

Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips.  Okay, I really need to learn to live without these things but I just can't.   Nestle is just not good enough for me anymore.   These things are the bomb.   

Things I am living without that I wish I wasn't:

Ah, you speak to me you beautiful mixer you!

I am dying for a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.   I have been price comparing them and debating on the sky blue (left), cherry red, or the silver (not pictured).  I even found the best price imaginable on them at Sam's.   I still walked away without one.  I want it.  I need it.  I mean, my little, crappy, one blade falls out whenever I try to use it now, 20 year old hand mixer has done it's time and it's time is now up.   Still, I can't force myself to pick one up and put it in my buggy to checkout.

Okay, honestly this need didn't become apparent to me until I started Christmas baking.  I mean, mashed potatoes not withstanding, cookie dough is incredibly stiff at times, especially if you are like me, and forget to get the butter out early to soften.   Anyway, the other day making Chocolate Chip Cookies (I capitalize this because I am so annoyed that I can't come up with a really amazing recipe and yes, I have tried a ton of the "the best chocolate chip cookie ever" pins and none of them really rock my world or my Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips) I realized that the hand mixer was about to just clunk out and therefore I ended up finishing the cookies by hand.   I felt like at any moment my husband was going to come in from milking the cows with two pails of fresh milk, I was going to have to go collect the laundry from the line after hand washing it in a tub, and there was going to be a pig to slaughter for dinner as soon as we got the wood burning fire going in the stove and/or the fire pit.   However, reality struck and I knew it wasn't 1845 so I could just go buy a new mixer...someday.  

So long story short, if anyone wants to donate a cherry red Kitchen Aid stand mixer to me, shoot who am I kidding, if you want to donate one, I don't care what color it is, I will make you the perfect chocolate chip cookies, as soon as I find the right recipe.   (How hard can it be?  We know there needs to be butter, eggs, flour, brown and white sugar, vanilla, baking soda, salt and Ghirardelli chocolate chips. It has to be easier than I am making it!)

Love is....

Love is wearing your wedding jewelry to work just because it makes you smile.  

Nobody could ever find her here...

Love is laughing at your dog who thinks this is hiding.

country charm

Love is making a Christmas wreath that shouts him not you.

Love is him putting up with my obsession to get the tree right.  Something that I work on until Christmas Eve.  Seriously, this was a week ago.  I forgot the ribbon so the whole thing has been redone since this picture.

Love is looking up recipes that remind you of cookies your grandmother use to make because some of the recipes are lost in time.

Love is cooking porkchops a food you really don't like much because he does. 

Love is him lighting candles for you on a random weeknight just because.

LOVE

Love is your mom bringing you back this from her trip to Indiana.  (Out of fairness I should state that I have a ton of Texas Ranger ornaments and three or four Texas Longhorn ornaments on the tree.)

Love is a baby, who came down to save us all from ourselves.  Love is a man who sacrificed his life so that we could have eternal life.  Love is not perfect but it do any fail.  

Marriage: Welcome to Fantasy Island!

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Marriage isn't easy but it is damn funny.  Newsflash: Men and Women are different!  I know, everyone knows that but until you actually live with someone you don't really know it.   When I was single...well, okay here is what I thought marriage was, ready?

Marriage when I was single( or as I like to call it "Fantasy Island" because I had no damn clue!):

I would have a bad day at work, come home, get a hug from my husband and a foot rub. He would tell me everything was going to be okay, really all I want to hear ever.  We would have a glass of wine, a salad, and some yummy pasta and curl up on the sofa and watch TV.   We would do the dishes together, go to bed and spoon all night long.  The next morning he would take out the trash (something I can't stand doing) and we would happily go off to work after kissing each other goodbye, blissfully thinking how lucky we were to have each other and always have someone who has the other person's back. 

Reality:

His day is just as shitty as mine or worse.  He drinks beer not wine so we never share a glass of anything but water.   He hates my pasta.  The man has the strongest hands on the planet earth and no clue how strong they are so the minute he starts "rubbing" my feet, I yell out in pain.  He thinks this is just him, releasing the tension.  I on the other hand, want the kind of foot rub I can only get by paying some little old woman at a spa to give me. Spooning? Are  you kidding.  I am always cold and he is always hot.  I sleep on the wrong side of the bed to spoon him and see the TV and his body is always sore from years of lifting AC units in and out of vans and onto buildings.  The man can't just sit and watch TV.  He can't be quiet and he can't stop worrying.  He worries at least as much as I do.   We do actually kiss each other goodbye in the morning but that is about the only thing that actually is the same as my fantasy marriage.  

Obviously my marriage is mine but here are some funny things I found out about living with someone that I had no idea about before I got married and no, having a roommate is not the same thing unless you all share a bed and that isn't a roommate, that is a significant other. 

1. When he is awake the world is awake:

I don't know how or why but my husband's insomnia has become mine and it doesn't work in reverse half as often for some reason. He doesn't mean to wake me...okay, sometimes I am pretty sure he does.  My friend Katie told me before I got married to enjoy my last nights in bed alone because I would miss them.   It isn't that sharing a bed is hard, if you have a King size bed, it is that there are 20 things that you do in the middle of the night that wake each other up...unless drugs are involved.   Every time he gets up to get a midnight (2 AM) snack or whenever I have to potty. (Just an aside here, he is way grumpier when I awaken him by mistake than I am!)  The other night when the police and EMS were out in front of our house because of the accident next door, I had just nodded back off (after the dogs woke me up)  when he woke up for a snack and came running in to tell me....the police and EMS were outside.  "Yes, dear I know", I mumbled sleepily and then ended up getting up to show him the truck that careened into the building.  

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2. Opposites really do attract and it screws up my cooking.
He is salty and I am sweet and I am not just talking about our personalities.   He loves his food super salty and I am kind of sensitive to salt.  Meanwhile, I like things like Sesame Chicken and a little bit of sugar in my pasta sauce to cut the acidity of tomatoes.  He can not stand sweet and meat.  This has meant that I have had to learn to not add sugar to my pasta sauce (it just isn't as good) and he has had to learn to put half the salt when he cooks and add more later.  SIGH, if only I had married a sweet man! 

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3. It will never be quiet again.
My goodness how I long for a weekend curled up in bed without 30 things to do so I can surf Lifetime Christmas movies, watch HGTV, and read a book.   My husband on the other hand lives by the idle hands is the work of the devil philosophy of life so he makes work where there isn't might not be any.   Plus, try reading a book while he is watching TV and you get the non-stop "Look, no just look!"...at the play of a football game I don't care about or some news on CNN or God forbid, someone being torn limb from limb on The Bastard Executioner, a show he is torn up about being cancelled or someone being shot on Fargo, a show I am despondent over being renewed.

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4. Your way isn't necessarily right or wrong.
We do things differently.   Hubs, by the nature of his work, is a start a project and work until it is done kind of person.  I am, on the other hand, by the nature of mine, a start a project and work until I can let it sit for a minute to start another.  I have to be able to fly by the seat of my pants in my work and have 5 fires to put out at one time.  I can't concentrate unless I am thinking about 7 things at once.  We don't process things the same and we don't approach them that way but we both get them done, I just may not finish them as quickly as he likes or the way he would.  :)

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5. Laugh it off.
 He's stupid and I'm crazy but we can laugh it off 99% of the time and it just doesn't matter.   I told him this morning that I love him because he always makes me laugh. That isn't far from the truth.  I am way too serious and not half as fun as he is.  He is the life of the party, any party.  I tend to be a little shy around people I don't know but I am a sarcastic witch too.  We compliment each other but drive each other crazy.  Laughing at him is the easiest way to diffuse my temper and he knows it. 

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6. Learn to appreciate 'man humor':
Seriously, I have no idea what it is about men and passing gas but they not only make a hobby out of it, they can spend hours laughing at each other doing it.   My friend Rachel said to me what she really loves about her new husband is that he can bond with her son over guy things like farting, something she can't really share.  Why? Because ladies, we simply don't have the fart funny gene.  We don't get it, and that's just fine by me.  Until my husband came into my life, I had never seen a farting contest, something I would happily forgo smelling ever again.  Men amuse themselves and their friends with bodily functions.  The one thing I have learned from camping with my husband and his friends is that nothing is off limits with men and bodily functions except talking sex and your spouse.  Poop stories abound. They will talk about sex only with their friends if the woman means nothing.  Oh, but they think we talk about it with our friends, ALL the time.  Like we get together at On The Boarder, order a margarita, and then start comparing notes about our husband's prowess in the bedroom.  (This is the male version of Fantasy Island, BTW, a bunch of women sitting around a table talking about how great they all are in bed!).  I laugh.  Honestly men, if we do talk about you, we are way more likely to be laughing at stupid things you do than how great you are in bed.  I mean, you are all fantastic in bed so that conversation would get really boring fast.  Now the stupid stuff...that is funny shit!

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7. Women are not the only ones who nag.

This is true.  My husband can nag about the leftovers we both forgot to throw away, the fact that we are wasting food (a lot less now that the chickens will eat just about anything still edible in the fridge and I compost most of the rest). His latest nag is my bedside nightstand.  He says I am playing JANGA.  I am going to clean it this weekend, without him knowing, because the man really won't stop teasing me until I do.   I also need to organize my cloths again.  I am kind of a shove everything in the closet kind of girl.  When I can't find 3 pair of pants, I clean and reorganize.  It has been 2 months so I have to do it because, I can't find my pants!   The worst nagging I get is my driving.  It isn't that my driving is that bad, it is that he thinks his is so much better.  He drives a lot for a living so he hates driving on the weekends, meaning I get the honor of doing most of it and listening to him tell me how to do it right.  Never mind the fact that I drive 5 days a week, 60 miles a day, without his help.  He is there to order, nag,  support me when he is the passenger and oh, how I love it. (Why hasn't someone invented a sarcasm font?  Seriously, someone needs to create a font called "sarcasm" so we can just use it when we are being a smart ass!)

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8. TV changes:

This is one of the sorriest facts of a marriage.  I am forced, stuck enjoying a larger variety of football games I couldn't care less about and some TV shows that are just too man like for words.  He is learning to put up with Notre Dame football and HGTV...okay he really isn't learning to put up with my HGTV habit, I just watch when he isn't around, but he knows the shows are taped and I will watch.  The other night after 3 hours of CNN and all the terrorism stories had become more than either of us could handle, he looked at me and said "Find anything to watch, even your stupid decorating shows.  I can't take anything more."  CNN is our go to channel and I never watched the news before my husband.  I have it on now all the time.  I don't know why.   It is depressing but I can't stop learning the stuff and laughing at all the stupid things Donald Trump says...or the fact that there are people actually voting for that idiot, but that is another blog...that I won't write.  

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9. Divide and clean:

I am lucky that my husband actually does so much around the house...and I know it.  He does the laundry about 95% of the time.  He helps with the dishes a lot and he takes out almost all of the trash. If I really want him to cook, he will and he does all the grilling.   On the other hand, he hasn't met the broom or vacuum in 2 years.  I doubt a toilet would get scrubbed ever, without me.  It amazes me how nobody but me can see the fingerprints covering the fridge, dishwasher and oven door and the microwave cabinet and doors to the laundry room would absolutely never be closed if I went missing. Still, if you can find a man willing to help and you are not afraid to get on the back of the riding lawnmower and cut the 1.2 acres yourself once in a while, you will do okay.   

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10.  You tune into one another in ways, that are not normal.

He knows when I am about to start my cycle before I do.  Apparently, I get migraines right around that time of the month.  I never figured it out but he nailed it right away.   I know what is hurting on him and the sore spots to rub on his back like magic.  I don't know how I know or why, or maybe it is just because of the physical nature of his work, everything is sore, but I always hit the spots that are the most sore.  It is like some weird connection you have with your dog or your spouse.  You know how you can tell your dog just isn't feeling good even though they can't talk?  They aren't acting right.  Exactly the same with your spouse.

Honestly, marriage is funny.  My husband is my absolute best friend.  If I could tell my single self or anyone else who isn't married one bit of advice it would be "Marry your best friend. The person that makes you laugh when you want to cry.  The person who tells you fart jokes to try and make the ugly stuff disappear.  When you find the person you can love and hate all at the same time and still not want to leave, that is the person you marry."   They may not be the best looking person you ever dated and they may not live the life of your fantasy.  They may not have that dream of seeing a baseball game in every major league park the way you do or going to spring training.   That's okay. Those things aren't half as important as being able to laugh at each other and everyone else you know too.  That is what makes life fun.

Taking driving seriously!

Tragic!

We live on a county road that is fairly well traveled and highly dangerous.   The speed limit is 45 MPH and the road is curvy and dark.  People speed down this road at speeds well in excess of the posted limit.  When I drive 45 MPH I am usually holding up traffic.  I don't care.   In the 14 months that we have lived in our amazing home, there have been 3 accidents right in front of our house.  The first accident took out our mailbox.  The second accident took out my two neighbor's boxes.  Last night I woke up to a terrible accident about 11:30 PM.  The aftermath you can see above.  The traffic on the road is the only drawback to what is otherwise, an amazing home, beautiful piece of land, and lovely neighborhood.  The total disregard so many people have for other people is clear every single day as I watch people drive like maniacs down this road. 

This building above was converted from a BBQ joint to an office complex.  The owners spent months redoing everything from electrical, doors, windows, and the exterior of the building itself.  A lot of time and money was put into this place to make it a nice little quiet office complex.    Last night a very large SUV lost control and crashed into the building.   Now, as far as I could tell, the driver was okay.  I could see from my living room the EMS tending to him and checking him for head injury.  I am assuming that he was taken to the hospital for testing and Blood Alcohol Levels tests to determine if he was drunk or just careless.  

Here are the facts, there are several young children who live in our neighborhood.  They play in their front yards.  They climb trees.  They have lemonade stands.  They are kids.   The way people drive down the county road with blatant disregard for other people's property and lives is insane.  Just for me to get my mail from my mailbox takes timing and a lot of effort on my part not to get hit.  The day our mailbox was struck, I had been at the box no more than 30 seconds before.   Had I left my house just a minute later, I would have been struck by the truck that took out my mailbox.  The person who did the damage left without even a glance back.  I was on my way to check on them to make sure they were not injured when they peeled out and took off.   Over a $20 mailbox!  

Now, I have a unique perspective as I have been an auto claims adjuster or manager for 18 years in the state of Texas.  I know what a moment of distraction can do.  I have seen the injuries and deaths that result.   I have had the displeasure of talking to the survivors and the family of deceased.   

I am asking everyone to think for just a moment about the fact that you are traveling at high rates of speed in a 2000 pound vehicle that is a killing machine if you are not paying attention.  Put your phones down.   Leave your radio alone.  Slow down.  Do not get behind the wheel if you have had one too many.  Do it for yourself but more importantly, do it for your family who do not deserve to bury you.  It is the holidays and people are going to make bad decisions if they do not take a step back and consider the consequences.   Nobody wants to bury a loved one during the holidays.   

My neighbor, who works from home, told me this morning, that she sees cars go out of control into the parking lot that is in front of the building above, all the time.   We both talked about the big trees that are guarding our front yards and the guardian angels that have kept her 10 year old and my 12 year old from getting struck and killed on this road.   We are both grateful that there was nobody in the office complex at 11 o'clock last night to be injured.   Blesses what the thoughts that ran through my mind, that of my husband, and my neighbor.  Blessed because we have not paid the price for someone else's carelessness. 

All I am asking is for everyone to think before you drive.  Just think.  Be aware of your surroundings and be safe.   Lives are at stake every single time you get in the car.   Don't be stupid.  Don't take risks that just are not worth it.  

Always Remember

I don't have a lot to expand on this.  My grandfather was a medic in the pacific theater and he was convinced until the day he died that nobody cares anymore about World War II and remembering.  

I was and am convinced that those who understand history repeats itself will always care about the past and those who are thankful that the Nazis did not win (which should be everyone) will never forget.  

Given the tragic events in this country and others recently, I am even more convinced that we should always remember where we came from.  We should never forget the fight, drive, blood, sweat, tears, principals, ideals, and dreams this country was founded upon.  

Finally, we should always remember we are ONE nation under GOD.