Month: August 2015

The Top 10 Reasons Trick or Treating is Better than Sex

Top 10 Reasons Trick or Treating is Better Than Sex:

10) You are guaranteed to get a little something in the sack.

9) If you get tired, you can wait ten minutes and go at it again.

8) The uglier you look, the easier it is to get some.

7) You don’t have to compliment the person who gives you some.

6) It’s ok when the person you’re with fantasizes that you’re someone else, because you are.

5) Forty years from now you’ll still enjoy candy.

4)If you don’t like what you get, you can always go next door.

3) It doesn’t matter if the kids hear you moaning & groaning.

2) A lot less “morning after” guilt.

YOU CAN DO THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD!

Fifty Dollars Worth of Camper

th3EKZ50VW bus 2See this great old school bus.  It is so much nicer than the one Daddy acquired for the unbelievable sum of fifty dollars. He purchased it from his brother-in-law, who’d gotten stuck with it as payment body work.  Daddy was ahead of his time In acquiring this Tiny House.  Mother was furious.  Fifty dollars would have bought more than two week’s supply of groceries.  Though he gave Mother no end of grief about her extravagant spending at the grocery store, he wasn’t short-sighted and saw the great potential in this bus-camper.  It would be a wonderful shelter when he and his buddies went deer hunting, and oh yes, the family could use it for camping, too!  Now our camper wasn’t nearly so nice as the one pictured above.  It had been partially hand-painted bright silver and lacked a motor. The good news was, we could finish it up any color we liked and motors take up a lot of unnecessary space better used for storage.  In that special storage area, items were stored in boxes on one deep shelf or in  boxes on the floor beneath the shelf.  While the rest of us were out fishing, swimming, or just running wild in general, Mother drug boxes out and dug through them for dishes, pots and pans, and food, all this with two babies in diapers.  She complained about her back constantly.  What a whiner!

.nice inside

See how comfortable and well-appointed the camper pictured above is.  Ours was nothing like this.  There was no refrigerator, lighting, water, bathroom, hard-wood floors, or Benjamin Franklin wood burning stove.  There was, however, an ancient gas range Daddy hooked to a propane bottle.  It had two functioning burners and a defunct oven.  That was okay, since Mother insisted it had a propane leak and she was scared to use it longer than it took to heat a can of beans or cook eggs.  She cooked with all the windows open and made Daddy cut the fuel off every time she got through.  In fact, it did have a propane leak in the line, but that’s a story for another day.

Two full-size bunk beds filled the rear of the camper.  Two sets of old army bunks were stacked along either side.  Of course, we fought over the top bunks.  The lower bunks served as seating.  A lantern and flash lights served when light was needed.

It was perfect.  I remember one wonderful camping trip when Daddy pulled it to a creek bank.  We swam, fished, swatted mosquitoes, cooked outdoors, only going in to sleep, so exhausted we hardly moved till morning.  Mother got up several times every night to spray to camper with bug killer and spray the covers and any exposed skin with mosquito repellent.  We scratched bug bites and poison ivy for days after we got home.

That was our only family camping trip.  Daddy used it a time or two for hunting, then gave it up as too much trouble.  It had a couple of other incarnations as a home for a farm laborer who confirmed the stove fuel line leak before it descended so far down the social scale it ended life as a junk shed on Daddy’s farm.

To me, that camper was worth every cent!

Laughter the best medicine – Diet food fails, Forgetfulness and Finish what you start!

Dewin Nefol’s Joke

To leave you with a smile… an acquaintance was present at the local church the other Sunday morning on a bright and sunny day, and had opportunity to chat with the clergyman who remarked on the number of new faces in the congregation. Unsure of who was who, he asked my friend, ‘Was that Fanny Green sitting in the front pew?’ To which my friend cheekily replied, ‘No vicar, it was just the way light was shining through the stained glass window’ :D

Evening Chuckle

A friend of mine recently visited Vermont from his home in Boston.
He had rented a rustic cabin, far from any people, deep in the North Country, hoping to get “away from it all”.
Sure nuff, after a long Autumn and early and snowy Winter had set in, Christmas approached; my friend began to long for some human contact.
Then across the frozen lake in front of him, a lone snowmobile approached. Slowly and surely it came closer till at last it stopped in front of him, and a lone bearded rider dismounted.
“Howdy, you interested in goin’ to a party?”
Without waiting for a reply he went on:
“Goin’ to have some good music”
“That’s great”
“Going to be lots of good food;”
“All right, I could use some home cooking”
“ there is goin’ to be some drinkin’, and there is goin’ to be some swearin’ ”,.
“No problem.”
“and there is goin’ to be some fightin.”
“Oh that’s okay”, said my friend, “I can just stay in the background”.
“And there is goiin’ to be some sex”.
My friend laughed. “Say, when is this party going to be anyway?”
“Its tonight” said the stranger.
“Well, I’d like to come so I better get dressed”
“Naw, no need to” smiled the stranger, “it ‘ill just be the two of us.”

AAsk Auntie Linda, August 24, 2015

Auntie Linda

Dear Auntie Linda, My husband and I are just barely squeaking by.  We have three children under four.  I would love to be a stay-at-home mother, but it’s out of the question.  We need every penny to put food on the table.  My parents are retired and babysit for us, but I have to pay them fifty dollars a week, fifty dollars we desperately need.  Since they are both home anyway, it looks like they could do it for free, knowing how we are struggling just to keep food on the table and pay the rent.  I have had to pay them late a time or two and Mom asked me about the money.  Doesn’t this seem kind of cold?  Broke and worried

Dear Broke,  It is amazing that you pay fifty dollars a week for your parents to babysit three children under four.  Maybe you should look around for a better deal, then come back and kiss the ground your parents walk on.  That fifty dollars a week probably doesn’t cover what the children eat or the ibuprofen or aspirin your folks take at the end of the day.  Auntie Linda

Dear Auntie Linda,  I hate my mother’s mean little dog.  She won’t come to visit without bringing that darn beast.  It snaps and snarls at the children.  We’ve never had a dog in the house.  It rankles me that she favors it over the children.  It drags its bottom on the carpet and I have to clean the carpet before I can let the baby down.  This angers and disgusts both me and my husband.  It is a real issue.  What in the world do I do? Love Mama, Not the Dog

Dear Love Mama,  Surely Mama has noticed that her little dog is less than welcome.  Perhaps she can confine it to her room. That bottom dragging indicates the dog likely has impacted anal glands, an unpleasant and uncomfortable situation for Fido and the carpet owner, not to mention, dragging even a healthy bottom on the carpet where a baby will be crawling is disgusting.  Unless Mama is demented, she ought to be able to understand the dog doesn’t need the run of your house or the freedom to terrorize children. What if the children hurt the dog?  She needs to protect it.  However, dementia is always a possibility.  Auntie Linda

Not Far From the Tree

imageI recently asked my son if he’d pick me up in the airport upon a return flight if I came into Dallas instead of Shreveport, since  I’d been fortunate enough to find a forty-seven dollar ticket.  Thinking what a good son he was, since I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, I happily purchased the cheap ticket, telling him I’d email him the gate and time details later, knowing he’d already agreed to the date.  A few days later, completely out of the blue, I got this text.  “Mom, we are at the airport.  Which gate is it?”

I was horrified.  Dallas is two and a half hours from Shreveport.  Surely I hadn’t somehow given him the wrong date.  I tried to return his text.  No reply.  After a few minutes I got him by phone.  He was laughing hysterically, enjoying my panic.  Of course, he was just tricking me.

Realizing I owed him, I decided to send him this horrible picture, hoping he’d be repulsed.  He certainly deserved it. Instead, I got a return email, asking me if they made matching pants so me, him, and his grandmother could get a matching set.

My apologies to the artist.

Skinny

Insights from my friend at Vanbytheriver

vanbytheriver's avatarvanbytheriver

Skinny Shaming.

It might be hard to imagine today, but it was a reality of the 1950’s and early 1960’s;glamour evident in every magazine, newspaper and television screen.

Standards of beauty involved curves. An iconic Marilyn Monroe stood at 5 ft. 5 in. and fluctuated between 125 and 140 lbs., reputed to be a size 16.

The ethic of my eastern European heritage dictated that a plump wife was a sign of a man’s good fortune. My grandmother and mother fell into line.

By anyone’s standards, they were overweight. Fat was not the exception, it was the norm; particularly in women who’d born children.

We children were quite different. We were rail-thin. I was, by far, the worst.

Somewhere around age 7, I just stopped eating. Today, they would call it a disorder, maybe even anorexia. I was grossly underweight, severely anemic, depressed over family trauma.

Me. Age 8 .

View original post 374 more words

Fat

Reblogged from Vanbytheriver

vanbytheriver's avatarvanbytheriver

It’s the word no one likes to use. Except for my 3 year old daughter.

At a family gathering, she walked up to my mother in law with a few simple words.

“Grandma, you’re fat.” She responded quickly. “Yes, and you’re skinny.”

End of discussion.

No judgment. No euphemisms. No excuses.

There might have been 20 adults that were present for that interchange. I sat mortified in the corner, wondering about the right time to have sensitivity training for a toddler.

She was right, of course. No one in the room had much to say. I took my MIL aside and apologized. She smiled nervously and changed the subject.

My own mother was fat. She died years before my children arrived. I wonder what her reaction would have been to the same candor ?

We watched her lifelong struggle with weight. She married “Jack Sprat”, gave birth to 6 thin…

View original post 249 more words