Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
What are U doing today?
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What are U doing today? (Ongoing thread)
Nina wrote: "... Hope it was happy."Nina, we had a great weekend. The whole family was here to help celebrate our 52nd Anniversary. (I had said "51st" elsewhere here, but apparently I had lost count. )
Some stayed only one night, but the grands and their parents were here for 3 nights. We had some real quality time together. Played cards and games.
I do so enjoy seeing the family all together, especially sitting around the dining room table talking, during and after meals. We had some good laughs. Hated to see them leave.
Jim, thumbs up on the robins! The poor worms had better look out! :)
Joy, for safe pet snacks, a friend of mine answered. She runs a pet site, http://www.PetsWeekly.comHi Jim,
There are some really safe ones despite all the news. I do my best to only handle reviews of treats "made in USA" with ingredients that are naturally sourced in USA. Here are a few options for you: (in most cases, if you tell them PetsWeekly sent you or you put that in the coupon code, you can usually receive up to 10% off):
Tasmans Natural Pet: allnatural bison chew treats (rawhide) - http://www.naturesbestrawhide.com
Salmon Paws: Alaskan salmon manufactured in Canada and US http://www.salmon paws.com
Spoil Me Rotten dog biscuits: handmade biscuits in cute designs, naturally sourced. http://www.smrbiscuits.com
Canidae: I think their whole line is manufactured here in US and Canada http://www.Canidae.com
Zukes: all-natural, great reputation, but i haven't tried personally http://www.zukes.com
Stella & Chewys: try the Canine Kisses (our favorites): http://www.stellaandchewys.com
FullPetential: their site is down, so I don't know whats going on there, but its a great product. Http://www.fullpetential.com
The recalls have been going on for awhile. Pretty scary stuff. But I hope these help!
Stacy
Joy H. wrote: "Thanks, Jim. I've put in a request for the audio version at our library. Sometimes I use audio books (especially documentaries) as a sleep-aid. :) I doubt I'll fall asleep during this one. :) "Well, if you do fall asleep, I think your dreams should be interesting. Depending on where you are in the book, they might be nightmares. What some people have done to have or enhance their sex life is truly scary.
;-)
About the dog treats I use, called "Chicken Nibbles" ( http://www.petguys.com/-727348881010.... ), the reason I like them is that each one is smaller than a nickel. They are small, round discs of pure chicken. Because they are so small, they don't have a large number of calories. Therefore my dog can enjoy a little treat quite often during the day. I've never seen a dog turn away from this treat. Even when they aren't feeling well, they will eat a Chicken Nibble. Too bad they are made in China.I don't know of any American dog treat like this.
Is it possible that the negative rumor is being spread by American dog food producers?
Jim wrote: "Joy H. wrote: "... Well, if you do fall asleep, I think your dreams should be interesting. ..."I'll let you know. LOL
Erin got cleared to teach!!! The FBI finally decided she's not a threat & she can actually start student teaching. They've said they'll allow her to graduate with the rest of her class, but she's going to have to work a month after the rest of them. Now housing is going to be a problem, but they're hoping their landlord will extend the lease a month for them.
Joy, I have no idea on the dog treats. If the dogs aren't getting sick, I guess there isn't any problem. There have been several cases of dogs getting sick & it was traced back to contaminated dog treats. No one knows how wide the problem is spread or bad it is.
Well I am doing today one of the things I like the most in life: sitting at a bar with a cappuccino and writing.
Congratulations to Erin! Sorry she was delayed over something so ridiculous, and hope the housing thing falls into place quickly.Electricity is restored on the Bluefield College campus, so it's back to work for me, later today. All vacations have to come to an end. :-)
Jim wrote: "Erin got cleared to teach!!! The FBI finally decided she's not a threat & she can actually start student teaching. They've said they'll allow her to graduate with the rest of her class, but she's..."Good luck to Erin, Jim! What grades/subjects will she be teaching? I taught in elementary school years ago. I have NYS teacher certification. IMO, teaching is getting harder all the time.
Franco2 wrote: "Well I am doing today one of the things I like the most in life: sitting at a bar with a cappuccino and writing."Welcome to our group, Franco. How did you find us? Hope to hear more from you. Tell us about yourself.
PS-I don't think we need any dating advice.
Joy, Erin is going to start student teaching as an Ag teacher. I know she's done lesson plans for some horse, fish, wheat & welding stuff. Her mother went over her horse lesson plan & I went over the welding. Neither of us know much about the rest, but it was fun teasing her about the fish.Years ago, I had a bunch of fish tanks, several which I made. One was a 'native' tank that had a wetlands shelf in it. The boys & I spent all summer capturing one of every native fish to put in there, along with crayfish, frogs & bugs. Then one day Erin helped us out by feeding them. Unfortunately, she used a shaker full of pepper to do so. Killed off most everything. She was 3 or 4 at the time. I'm a parent, I NEVER forget!
;-)
Joy H. wrote: "Franco2 wrote: "...PS-I don't think we need any dating advice. "Are you sure? You & Nina have over a century of marriage experience between you. Werner & I are in for another half century or more. That means we probably know absolutely nothing about dating any more & we're glad we don't have to.
;-)
Jim wrote: "Joy, Erin is going to start student teaching as an Ag teacher. I know she's done lesson plans for some horse, fish, wheat & welding stuff. Her mother went over her horse lesson plan & I went over..."Sounds like a very interesting (and very different) field, Jim. At what level will she teach these subjects? They sounds like college level courses.
The "pepper" story is priceless! I can imagine your reaction when all your precious fish died. Poor little fishies! Erin must have felt terrible. Poor kid.
Jim, about dating, as I look back I realize that dating was such an artificial situation for getting to know a person. Couples would go dancing or to the movies or to dinner. If they weren't good conversationalists, there was no way to really get to know each other. Being good at dancing was no criteria for judging a potential life-partner. Eddie and I got to know each other because he took me water-skiing on our first dates. We both enjoyed all the aspects of the sport... the water and boating. That's how we connected.Nowadays, couples meet on the Internet. Quite a few successful relationships have started that way. Sharing thoughts via the written word can be more effective than nervous conversation at a restaurant. I think we can learn a lot about a person by reading what they write in an online discussion group or an email. The downside is that there are people out there who create false pictures of themselves. So it's a risky business.
One way to really get to know a person is by meeting their family and seeing how they interact with their folks. It also establishes a background.
As you said, we're glad we don't have to date anymore, especially nowadays with the free attitude about intimacy. It just seems so lacking in standards. Anything goes. Not my cup of tea.
Our son has young daughters. I'm tempted to have him join the D.A.D.D. Club:
(Click on thumbnail.)
LOL! I've seen the DADD thing before. My daughter posted it for me in Facebook. She said that the following was more my style, though.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjO9kX...
(It's Rodney Atkins singing, "Cleaning this gun".)
Actually, by the time she was 18, she was so expensive & had been so weirdly hormonal for years that I was ready to marry her off to most anyone. A dowry would have been a cheap price to pay!
Erin always said that she was TOO well protected since she had not just me but 2 older brothers who were 5 & 7 years older than her. They might beat on her, but the gods help anyone else who even thought about it. Brandon hung one of her boyfriends upside down off the porch one day while James explained the facts of life to him. Apparently he'd said some things to his buddies which got back to the boys. He never even spoke to Erin again. She was fairly miffed for a while. I didn't officially hear about it until well after it happened, so there wasn't anything I could do about it, of course.
;-)
We had an open door policy (literally, we never locked our doors). Marg always made huge meals because we never knew how many would be around for dinner & left overs never lasted long. Plus we had a fridge full of soda & snacks that any of the kids or their friends were welcome to at any time. I'd get home & find none of my family there, but some teenage butt would be sticking out of the refrigerator - generally one of the boys' friends. You know teenage boys, constantly hungry. So they'd sit & chat. I tended to unofficially hear a lot of things that way. It was well worth the expense. (We still hear from a lot of them & a few call us Mom & Dad since they wound up living with us sometimes for months, one for over a year.)
As far as the Internet dating thing goes, I've known quite a few people who met that way. It's tough though. At my last job I had to watch where people went on the Internet & I found my boss' boss kept going to porn sites, so we had to have a chat about that. Turns out he was using a dating service & the girls he kept meeting weren't real, just trolls for porn sites. I had teach him how to weed through them properly. That was a lot of fun.
No, I'm glad I don't need to date any more. Who'd have me? I don't like to go any where. I have everything I want at home.
Yes, as Jim indicated, my dating skills would be pretty rusty, and I'm also heartily glad not to have to do that any more! Joy, I agree about written communication being a much better way of getting to know another person than, say, six months of making nervous small talk in face-to-face dating situations; I've said the same thing many times. Two people who are serious about learning about each other can really share a lot in letters (or, today, e-mails). Of course, as noted above, the down side of that is that predators and phonies can create false images of themselves, for bad purposes; that's why it's best to pick your pen pals from sites or clubs that require references from third parties in order to join.
How long have you & Barb been married now, Werner? Nina?
Jim, I never had a daughter to worry about but I can understand the feelings of the father in the YouTube song you linked to. Nowadays I've started to worry about my granddaughters! :)There's an old saying: "When you have a son, you worry. But when you have a daughter you pray."
I'm surprised that I can't find that saying on the Internet.
Werner wrote: "... it's best to pick your pen pals from sites or clubs that require references from third parties in order to join. ..."Werner, that's a very good idea! I'll mention it to my daughter-in-law so she can pass on the advice to my Grands when the time is right. I'm pretty sure she's a watchful mother. I hope so anyway. It's not easy being parents these days.
What we need are teachers; glad she is coming on board. Good luck to her.
Jim, Barb and I got married on Sept. 5, 1980. So it's been about 31 and 1/2 years for us; and we still hold hands when we're walking together. (I don't think that's especially remarkable, but people tell me that it is. :-) )Joy, I had only daughters (three); so when they were in their dating years, I prayed a lot! (Still do, for the youngest.) Fortunately, my granddaughter's only two, so it's early days for her. :-) But I know that time will be coming. (Sometimes I suspect that my grandsons might grow up to require industrial-strength prayer, too!) No, it's not easy being a parent or grandparent these days, but the kids are well worth it.
My husband and I have been married for sixty four years and we were more often than not in separate places I have saved many of his letters; remember when people wrote to one another? They are a treasure to me and I think will be to our children and on down the line. He also drew cartoons on the envelope and inside. such fun to read. Probably why I married him.
Wow! 176 years of marriage between the four of us. I do remember letters & still write them occasionally. Well, type. I rarely write anything but notes to myself & have trouble reading them.
;-)
Oh, I forgot to mention but it was in the mid 60's yesterday & I heard peepers for the first time. That's really early for them.
Joy H. wrote: "Jim wrote: "... For a real eye-opener on just how backward we are when it comes to sex, read Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach. ... My review is here: http://www.goodreads..."I envy you, Joy, I would love to have my family all with us but they are truly scattered around the globe. Let me tell you one grandson was born in MA; one in Managua Nicaragra, One in Santa Domingo, two in Mexico, one grandson and two granddaughters in France, one granddaughter in Germany, three grandsons in CA and one grandson and granddaughter in KS. I still have a granddaughter in Africa and one in Vietnam; the latter one is a teacher.Little bit of family history.
Nina wrote: "... I would love to have my family all with us but they are truly scattered around the globe. ..."Nina, your list of the overseas birthplaces of your grands is amazing. Tell me, what sort of situations took your children overseas?
Regarding having the entire immediate family together in one place for the holidays, yes I've been lucky in that respect, partly because Eddie and I are willing to be the hosts. :) However, having your kids living near you is no guarantee. My sister's kids all live within minutes of her house but there are so many of them that gatherings for more than a few hours are difficult. She has 8 kids and around 25 grands. That's almost 45 people including wives.
On the other hand, our kids must travel three to five hours to visit us but they stay overnight, sometimes for more than one night. So we get a chance to have quality time together.
No matter which situation one finds oneself in, there are pros and cons. Anyway, we usually don't have any choice and must make the best of things.
Jim wrote: "Oh, I forgot to mention but it was in the mid 60's yesterday & I heard peepers for the first time. That's really early for them."Peepers! I miss that sound in early spring. When we lived full-time near the lake, we heard them loud and clear. Sometimes it was deafening! We were near a small piece of wetland.
Nina wrote: "My husband and I have been married for sixty four years and we were more often than not in separate places I have saved many of his letters; remember when people wrote to one another? They are a tr..."I still have the first 2 postcards Eddie and I wrote to one another after we had just met at a resort in MA. We had discovered that we lived a half hour from each other in NY. We were married 6 months after that. So there wasn't much time for writing letters. Then we had babies. After that there wasn't much time for anything. LOL
Werner wrote: "... Joy, I had only daughters (three); so when they were in their dating years, I prayed a lot! ..."Werner, what a treasure... 3 daughters! We had a different kind of treasure... 4 sons. But I had always wanted a daughter, even though they say they're harder to raise. When I finally got the 2 granddaughters, I went on a spree of buying dolls! What fun that was! I still love dolls.
I don't think girls are any more difficult to raise than boys, just different, but every kid is so different, anyway. Our boys were only 20 months apart, but were completely different personalities from day 1. James was quiet & thoughtful, Brandon was always a wild man. Erin was somewhere in between.Nina, that's a shame you have trouble gathering them all together, but that is the way of it now. Travel is so easy & there is so much to see & do.
Joy, I can't imagine having as big a family as your sister, although a friend of mine is working on it. I think he has 11 or 12 kids now.
It's neat that you & Eddie got married after knowing each other for 6 months. That's how long Marg & I 'dated', before getting married, too. Met in December, married in May with James born in November. We proved out the old saying, "what takes a cow or a countess 9 months, a country girl can do in 7."
;-)
Barb and I actually only knew each other a little over four months before getting married (and, of course, got engaged a bit over a month before that). We both had friends and/or family who were convinced we were rushing heedlessly into a horrible mistake. (But we don't hear that assessment from them any more. :-) )
Jim wrote: "I don't think girls are any more difficult to raise than boys, just different, but every kid is so different, anyway. Our boys were only 20 months apart, but were completely different personalitie..."Jim, I think girls can be more whiny than boys. At least that's what I've been told and what I've observed with my granddaughters.
Yes, each child is different, to be sure. Our first 3 boys sailed through school. We never needed to help them with homework. They did well in college. Our 4th son needed more help with homework. He hated English and English composition (refused to write without help), but was OK with tech subjects. So he went to a tech school after H.S. Now he's a gifted computer whiz. If he had been our first child, I would have thought that raising kids was hard. It was so easy with the first three that I hadn't realized how hard it could be to raise a kid.
They were all good boys, thank goodness. So we were lucky in that respect.
As for the seven-month wonder, nowadays some kids don't even bother getting married! How times change!
Another aspect, sometimes it's the "innocent" young girls who "get into trouble". A big ethical issue is whether parents should "prepare" them or not. When it comes to young girls, I go with the Marine motto: "Be prepared!" We all know that there's no such thing as "abstaining" when the hormones are raging during teen years. What saved me was the scare that the Catholic Church put into its teenagers about "sin". At a retreat for teenagers (with boys and girls sitting in the same church listening), a priest told us that if a boy ever put his tongue in our mouth that we should bite it! LOL That's what I did. He never called me again! LOL True story.
Sometimes it's the fear of Hell that keeps people good. So I'm all for telling kids there's a Hell! LOL
Werner wrote: "Barb and I actually only knew each other a little over four months before getting married (and, of course, got engaged a bit over a month before that). We both had friends and/or family who were c..."Werner, nowadays the kids don't rush into marriage. They just live together. LOL Years ago, the rush was in order to stay "pure". Nowadays, the word "purity" doesn't seem to matter as much.
PS-About "Hell", here's a great quote:===================================================
"The abbe was asked if he believed in hell. He replied:
'Yes, because it is a dogma of the church - but I don't believe anyone is in it.' "
-From The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes by Clifton Fadiman, p. 415, re: Abbe Arthur Mugnier (1853-1944), French divine.
===================================================
Werner, my mother was convinced Marg & I were making a horrible mistake & almost didn't come to our wedding. She was furious & forbid me to get married. When I told her I was telling her, not asking permission, she didn't speak to me for weeks. She knew Marg before I did & liked her, too. They had both worked for the same stable & were friends with the owner. Joy, I don't know about whiny, but Erin was certainly a lot more emotional than the boys. She used to cry at the drop of a hat. I couldn't yell at her at all.
As for the 7 month wonder, it was actually quite a bit less than that because James was over a month premature. Not that Marg & I hadn't anticipated our wedding by nearly all of that 6 months. We were living together within weeks.
;-)
No, neither of us believed that raging teenage hormones could be controlled, especially with the boys. Besides a couple of bald talks about the subject, we supplied a big box of condoms & kept it full, no questions asked.
Erin wasn't nearly the problem since she had two guardians who used to scare off boys before they had a chance to meet Erin, much less date her. They told & sometimes showed any courageous enough to actually ask her out the dire consequences of disrespecting her or the boundaries the boys set. Erin will tell you that she didn't go on a decent date until we moved down here & she got into college.
;-)
Yes, Jim, "emotional" is a better word than "whiny". I notice the emotionality of my granddaughters, especially when they have arguments over silly things. I hate to see them upset.Erin was lucky to have her older brothers. I always wanted an older brother. Had to be satisfied with much older male cousins whom I always enjoyed when I saw them occasionally on holidays. I remember as a kid, crying when one of them went off to the army in the 1940s; we saw him off at the train station in New Rochelle, NY. Below is a pic of him with me, taken in 1999 when I was 65; he must have been in his 70s:
Click on thumbnail.He reminded me of William Holden.
His brother is still living at the age of about 87.
Erin might argue about the 'luck' of having older brothers. Her first words were a sentence, "Brandon, no!". ;-)
I guess we said it a lot & he seemed to delight in tormenting her. James was always nicer to her, but he was to everyone. He's 7 years & 1 day older than she is. Brandon tormented everyone, even though he didn't usually mean it. Really good heart, but no sense of personal space, propriety or anything. Still, it was James that hospitalized his siblings. Young Mr. Edison was a terror that way.
Why "Young Mr. Edison"?
Joy H. wrote: "Why "Young Mr. Edison"?"James was ALWAYS experimenting or fiddling with something. When he was barely walking, he managed to get crayons inside my stereo without breaking them through a hole that was too small. I NEVER figured out how he did it. He wasn't talking yet, but the tuner wouldn't move, so I took it apart & found the string on the tuner hung up with crayons that fit his missing ones.
- He put Erin in the hospital when he was trying to see what was inside an alkaline battery. It squirted under his arm & got her in the eyes. She had to have 2 liters of saline washed through each one.
- Brandon got 3d degree burns on his left forearm & 2d degree burns on his face & forehead when James' attempt at making glass out of sand blew up.
- Brandon broke James' door one day because James wired up his door knob to shock him.
- I caught him making hydrogen out of water in his room.
- He reprogrammed half the memory in his graphing calculator into a cheat sheet for history class. Turned it into a quick lookup database. I let him use it, too. I never liked having to know exact dates for history & figured if he could cheat that creatively, he deserved to try to get away with it. He did. After programming it all in assembly language, he knew the material anyway.
That's just a few of the high points. I can't tell you how many blown breakers, fires, exploded things, & minor injuries we had. Seeing him with unburned hair, unstained fingers, & his siblings all hale & unmarked was something of an odd occurrence, though.
Jim, I'm glad that by now your mom has decided your marriage wasn't such a big mistake after all. :-)Barb could probably relate to Erin's experience growing up with older brothers, since she's the youngest of eight kids and her only sister was the oldest. She grew up being tormented and bullied by six boys, so had to be a tough tomboy. She always said if we had sons, she wanted to have the girls first, so they'd be better able to fight back and take care of themselves. :-) (Deborah followed the opposite pattern, with three boys and then the lone girl; so Liliana tends to imitate everything the boys do!) I don't know if boys are necessarily harder to raise than girls, either; I think every kid is an individual.
Before we had kids, Barb and I agreed that she'd do the sex education for the girls, and I'd do it for the boys. That division of labor worked out well for me. :-) But we both did our best to model a healthy, equalitarian marriage based on respect and love; we raised the girls in church, and with an understanding of how we felt about sex and why. Not all of them always made what we considered perfect decisions in dating and marriage; but they all abstained from sex until they were married and all insisted that males treat them with respect, which we're grateful for. (Jim, James and Brandon sound like they really good protectors for their sister; kudos to them both! :-) )
Jim, has James outgrown all those stages? I hope so!
Werner, I LOVE the name Liliana! If we had had a daughter, we planned to call her Lillyann which is a combination of my mother's name (Lilly) and Ed's mother's name (Ann). Alas, we never had the chance. :)
Werner, Mom grudgingly admits that it worked out for us, but says we were lucky. Neither of her marriages worked out, so I tend to ignore her on the subject, anyway. That ticks her off, but we're a bit too much alike in that regard. ;-)
Erin did grow up as something of a tom boy, like Barb. Of course, with Mom & Marg as role models, she had no choice anyway. All the women in Pony Club were similar - tough, self sufficient women who regularly wrestled horses that were 10 times their size.
Luckily, she made a good friend in high school named Kim. The Princess, as we called her, was very nice, but a real girly-girl & taught Erin how to do make up & stuff far better than Margaret could. Also, one of James' girl friends, an adopted daughter of ours who lived with us for a year, taught her a lot of girly stuff. Erin still rarely wears jewelry or makeup, although she tends to more often than Marg who almost never wears either.
--------
Joy, James' girl friend just posted something about one of his experiments on FB the other day, so he hasn't outgrown the tendency. It's his house to blow up now (well, hers too.) so not my problem. Most of his experimentation is now in the field of computer science, virtual & software stuff rather than physical. I think the gods are resting easier in their heavens for that small blessing.
;-)
We started out this morning at 22 degrees before sunrise. Now that the sun is up, we're rising quickly. It's 25 now & supposed to get to the low 50's. I hope so. Marg & I might go to Masterson Station today.http://www.lexingtonky.gov/index.aspx...
It's a 660 acre park in Lexington where we can ride. There is everything there from an outside course* to an indoor sand ring plus trails. It's also a dog & other park, with a Lions Club pavilion, soccer fields & such. Marg wants to see how Cutter does in the sand ring barefoot & it will be a good outing for Chip, let him get used to a place with other people, horses, dogs, & such around.
* An Outside Course is big fields with stationary, built-in jumps in it. There are water, bank, log, & all kinds of jumps.
Jim, Masterson Station looks like a beautiful place. Have a good time. I'm almost jealous. My sister will be visiting us today. We plan to watch the Academy Awards together tonight. She's a real movie buff.
We had a great time. Chip had a great adventure today & got to cross a stream, which he decided he liked a lot. In fact, he wanted to roll in it. Lots of activity around the place & some other horses. We even did some work in a couple of rings. He was super!!!
Sounds like a good time was had by all; including the horses.
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Thanks, Jim. I've put in a request for the audio version at our library. Sometimes I use audio books (especially documentaries) as a sleep-aid. :) I doubt I'll fall asleep during this one. :)