"Hoppy" Easter!

I had to rethink my Easter outfit this year, due to my broke toe.

I always wear an Easter hat, a tradition my grandmother Clara instilled in me, many years ago. Because I can't wear heels, I couldn't wear the outfilt I had first planned, my white Calvin Klein suit with a great white hat my mother had given me. The heels that I usually wear with it were much too high to wear just one and the blue, surgical bootie was very conspicuous.

Luckily, I had something that looked great, could be worn with flats and had a hat to match.

This broken toe thing also brings a whole new meaning to the term "Hoppy" Easter!

Does Anyone Remember What Easter's About

It is Easter-eve and I'm sitting, wondering if people remember what Easter is about.

It started last week, when I searched my local multi-department super store for the chocolate crosses I traditionally buy my children.

I have always supported the Easter Bunny, but with a spiritual twist. I have always tried to make sure that my children got some of the same basket fare their friends did, but wanted to make sure they remembered the true meaning of the holiday. Their Easter baskets were always filled with candy and little goodies but a large chocolate cross was always the centerpiece.

This year, my local multi-department super store had a large aisle filled with many tasty morsels, chocolate of every description...except the chocolate crosses. They had a rather bizarre assortment of chocolate non-Easter animals, including an owl, a squirrel and, of all things, a hedgehog. I turned to my best-friend and frequent shopping companion, Cyn, and said "What's up with this? The Easter Squirrel?"

After checking five more stores, there was not a chocolate cross to be found. As a matter of fact, in some places there was little or nothing that reflected the true meaning of the season. Bunnies, lambs, ducks and even a frog or two. As I reluctantly purchased chocolate bunnies at the last store, the clerk also commented on the fact that she hadn't seen anything either.

"It's really sad how commercial everything is becoming."

I guess this is part of The Change.

I am lucky. My children are old enough to remember why we celebrate Easter, without their usual chocolate reminder. They have their own personal relationships with our Savior. They have the benefit of two Christian parents, who will take them to church on Resurection Sunday to celebrate the true Easter gift...the gift of Eternal Life.

Happy 15th Birthday Kit-Kat!

Where does the time go? My "baby" is 15 today!

(Kit-Kat being inducted into the National Beta Club March 12th)

Hope you have a great day sweetheart!
Thank you for letting me be your mom.

An Example To Follow

When I get "called home," this is the way I want to go out!

Harriet Richardson Ames, completed the last item on her "bucket list" the day before she died. She recieved her college diploma.

Makes me take a new look at my own bucket list.

Guess I better get started..

~EnJoy

Be Prepared isn't just for the Boy Scouts any more.

An item on my home page caught my eye today.

"Rise of the Preppers" was a Newsweek article on the rise of modern-day survivalists in our country. Which lead me to the website

http://thesurvivalmom.com/

I really don't see anything wrong with being prepared for things. Preparation reduces panic in an emergency situation. But the article made these prepared folks seem like an oddity.

Now I'm an Alabama girl, born and raised. Something you need to know about Alabama girls: We hunt, fish, garden, and then "can" what we grow.

I am not really patient enough for hunting and fishing, but could if I reallt needed to. I don't do well with the thought of taking a life of any kind (unless it's a snake)but I know that the Lord put animals on this earth for man's use, and that includes food. Fish are easier to think about because they seem a little disconnected. But either way, the cleaning and preparing of animals for consumption is gross.I'm sort of squeemish, so I leave those activities to my men-folk, who seem to enjoy it quite a bit. Gardening is easy enough. You put seeds in the ground and the Lord does the rest.

"Canning" is when you take the things you've grown in your garden and preserve them for later. I've watched my grandmother can pickles,tomatoes and fruit my whole life. It was an all day event when I was a kid and she made what should have been tedious work look like fun. I only know how to pickle, but I can read instructions, and since the basics are the same, I'm certain I could figure out how to do the rest.

The words to Hank Williams Jr.'s "Country Boys Can Survive" are now running through my head.

After looking over Survival Mom's website, I came across a nifty little device that seems both practical and economical: the Sun Oven.

https://www.sunoven.com/index.php

Granted, one would have to be home all day long and be able to fend away the neighborhood critters, but this seems like a pretty neat little contraption. Sort of a primative slow cooker. My father-in-law likes things like this. I thought I'd introduce it to him and see what he thinks. Of course, he's also the type that would try to figure out how to build one himself and save the $300.

I consider myself a "prepper" of sorts. I hang on to everything. Having grandparents raised during the Great Depression who had a great influence on my life, I learned that anything "with use left in it" was not to be discarded. When disaster strikes, I will be the crazy old lady with the garage full of useful old stuff to make radios and spaceships out of.

Technology is great, but we also need to remember how to do things the old fashioned way. Nearly daily someone makes the "what did we do before we had..." comment. Computers, cell phones, DVR, X-Box, microwaves,calculators and such are all nice, useful tools, but are they really necessary? I am certain I would probably perish should air conditioning disapear, but I do think that there are times when a little old fashioned know-how would be beneficial. People don't know how to count change back to you any more for goodness sakes. They just hand you what the computer says, in a wad with a smirk. That's a real pet peeve of mine...my kids may end up in fast food, but by jingo they will know how to count change!

Having it too easy also leads to a lack of common sense. Remember all the panic over Y2K? News reports of people stock-piling canned goods for months in case the power should forget how to work. I remember vividly standing on New Year's Eve of 1999, in line at Walmart, with all the other local folks buying bottled water, canned beans, milk, and bread, with just my manual, turn-key can opener. The light-bulbs going off over everyone's heads could have lit the store.

One of my friends once said when the end of the world comes, they wanted to be in Alabama, because everything happens there 20 years late.

We may be behind, but we won't be caught off guard.
"Country Folks Can Survive"

Happy Birthday Sweet 16....

Happy Sixteenth Birthday Ty!

I love you, "Tigger" Thanks for letting me be your mom.

Julie,Julia, and Joy

As I recouperate from the holiday overload, and inevitable carb-coma, I have enjoyed a few relaxing days with family. Nothing is more blissful than not having to be somewhere or doing something, or worrying over something or working on something.These are the times that paper plates and pizza deliveries were made for.


I also enjoy lounging on the couch to watch tv. My husband and I rarely ever get to do this together anymore, as his Saturdays and Sundays are totally consumed with football. I do enjoy a good football game, but one a week is plenty for me. I only care what Auburn does. Not the hubby....he can find a football game/highlight show/coaches corner/ etc... any day of the week and does not care one yardstripe that the rest of the family doesn't want to watch it.


Yes, sadly, I am a football widow.


Despite 2 other tv's in the house, optimum football viewing is apparently done on our living room tv, so lounging on the couch to watch a dvd on the only dvd player in the house, is out of the question on Saturdays and Sundays. He must keep up with EVERY football game played 'round the world, for matters of what, national entertainment security?


And it is not just REAL football either... he also participates in FANTASY football. Yes, that's right, not only am I being completely ignored for real football, but imaginary football as well. I could leave him and he wouldn't notice until February.

Today, I had the rare opportunity, to watch a movie and got to see the new movie Julie & Julia, staring one of the most versatile, talented actors of our time, Meryl Streep. In it, Meryl Streep plays the infamous and incomparable Julia Child on her journey to bring French cuisine into the lives of "servantless Americans," such as writer Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, in post-911 New York.

I absolutely love Meryl Streep and her acting methods. She totally imerses herself in her characters: from clutching a bag of ice before appearing as a dead body, to learning new regional or foreign dialects, dyeing her hair, learning to sing, you name it! Drama, comedy, romance...Really, what can't she do?

Some of my favorite Meryl Streep movie are: Silkwood (saw it in high school on a date, though not really a "date" movie, and the fact that this is a true story scared me half to death). Out of Africa (fell in love with it the first time I saw it...."Ah had a fahm in Ah-fri-cah.." I could watch it right now, and still cry when Denys dies), She Devil (the "I'm taking my life back" scene owns me, tho the German maid storming out saying "Up with this sh*t, I will not put!" is pretty good too.) and of course, The Devil Wears Prada (where she's supposed to be Vogue's ice queen editor Anna Wintor, but makes "Miranda Priestly" more real than the inspiration). Also in TDWP is Stanley Tucci, another extremely versatile actor, that stars along side her in Julie & Julia has her husband, Paul Child.

The movie is set in two different time lines of two true life stories: Julia's arrival in France in 1949, and Julie's move to a tiny apartment over a pizzeria in 2002. It transitions between the two stories beautifully, as screen writer Nora Ephron parallels the two women's lives. I would tell you more about it here, but would not rob you of the opportunity of seeing it for yourself, and that was not really the point of this post.

While watching as Julie's blog reaches near-cult like status, it made me think of this blog.

I love to write. I'm told that I write pretty well. Yes, I would like to publish a novel one day (as listed on my Bucket List) and I wish I could write here more often. I have notebooks full of story ideas and character development, but that is as far as it's ever gotten. Currently my days are filled with customer complaints and orders and the amendment of orders and the tracking of orders and the scheduling of workdays and vacation days and personal time and so on... but really, aren't those just excuses? Julie Powell also tells her husband that she barely has time to write and that she never finishes anything, but she knows why...ADD, as proven by the fact that she's not good at housework (well now that's two things in common!)

And like Julie, I wonder if anyone is reading this. I know I have 2 "followers" to this blog, two of my pageant buddies (thanks y'all) that I think wandered over from my pageant blog. (Over there, I have a grand total of 9, not bad for someone who's never won a title, eh?). So if you are out there reading this, let me know. You don't have to send me stuff like they do in the movie, but a comment every now and again would be nice.

There is hope that one day I may be considered a writer. a dream of mine since I was a kid. Someone once told me that what you send out there into cyberspace, never really gets deleted, so maybe some day, this blog may be entertainment for some.

Coincidently, you can still read Julie's original blog "The Julie/Julia Project" on line despite now being published as a book

http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

Hmmm... guess someone was right!

~EnJoy!