How do you manage screen time for yourself?
Managing screen time is a non-issue for me. I budget my time like money. Needs come first, then wants. The internet is a tool for my use, not my taskmaster.
Screen Time
Author: lbeth1950
Grandma
I am reposting my first ever WordPress blog post
iI miss my Grandma. She was perfect, mostly because she acted like she didn’t notice my bad behavior, knowing my mom take care of it. I was sure she loved me best of all her grandchildren, unaware all the grand kids felt hat way. She made the best teacakes, told the best stories, and always smelled of Johnson’s Baby Powder. Patiently, she’d let me brush her waist-length gray hair, and attempt to twist into a heavy bun, never complaining that I pulled, before finally turning it into a perfect bun and securing it with only one heavy bone pin herself with a quick flip of her wrist, once I gave it up for hopeless.
Every afternoon after lunch and her “stories” Grandma hung her cotton print housedress on a line stretched across a corner of her bedroom, let her hair down, slipped off her shoes and knee-high stockings, put her gold-rimmed spectacles carefully on the bedside table, and lie down for a nap. Continue reading
Common Sense and the Camper (Part 2)
https://atomic-temporary-73629786.wpcomstaging.com/2015/11/18/common-sense-and-the-camper/
One of the great benefits of my parent’s cross-country camping trip was that they had the opportunity to share their cab-over camper for three weeks with two hormone-ridden teenage girls. For some reason, they’d taken leave of their senses and forced my sixteen-year-old sister Marilyn to accompany them, though she could have stayed with either me or Phyllis, either of whom were as married and dull as Mother and Daddy ever thought of being. They sweetened the pot by letting her friend Rhonda who became every bit as unpleasant as Marilyn after a few snug hours together.
In the way of teenagers everywhere, the girls snored snugly in their bunks all day as the camper passed the glorious sites of the Americas. As a result, both were wide-awake and ready to go when they stopped to make camp every evening. At an RV camp in Las Vegas, two young ladies who looked to have complicated social situations dawdled about the office as they checked in. Before, I go on with this story, you need to know, my dad was a no-nonsense “I ain’t worried if you like me. I’m your Daddy” kind of guy. He didn’t put up with any nonsense. He pointed out that RV Camp Girls looked trampy. Though Marilyn and Rhonda didn’t even talk to them, they got a nice lecture just in case they’d ever thought of dressing or acting “like them trashy gals,” a term he often used make a point and make his girls’ blood boil.
They made camp and cooked supper outdoors. About ten o’clock as their evening drew to a close Daddy told his disgusted girls it was about time to turn out the lights and settle in for the night. After a long day of napping, naturally, they dawdled. After a couple of warnings, just as the lights went out, there was a knock at the camper door. He opened it to find the two young lovelies they’d seen at the office earlier in the day. One of them was obviously pregnant below her brief halter-top.
“Can your girls go out for a while? We’ve got dates for them?” they asked, invitingly.
Behind him, Mother and the big-eyed girls waited for him to explode into a vitriolic diatribe at their request. Instead, he replied as calmly as if he had been at a tea-party and asked if he wanted “one lump or two.”
“Well, I guess not, but thanks for inviting them. We have to leave pretty early in the morning.”
Pigs flew and Hell froze over.
Anointing
John and Mary had been married ten years and had no children. As a last resort, they called at their minister’s home one evening.
“We’ve been praying for a baby for so long. We thought perhaps if we were anointed with oil, God might send us a child,” they told the minister.
“Well, it might work,” answered the minister, “but I left my anointing oil at the church. I’ll just bless this Three in One Oil. It should work as well.”
Nine months later, he stopped in to visit the couple, hearing the wife was at the hospital, delivering her baby. “Congratulations, John. I see the Lord has blessed you.”
“Yes,” said John. “Mary just had triplets. That Three in One Oil worked just fine. I am glad you didn’t use WD-40.”
Note: This photo is of unknown triplets in a family album. I wish it had been labeled.
The Power of a Like
Please read and encourage this writer. We have all been new. Thanks.
Life with a TBI and now a stroke has made me look at my dull life through s different set of lenses. I have written 20+ posts and gotten like three “…
The Power of a Like
Time
Do you need time?
No. I don’t have to try to squeeze too much into a day anymore, something to be grateful for. When my children were little, I got up at 5:00 am and cooked a hot breakfast while I dressed for work. I usually folded a load of clothes and put another in the washer. My daughter always wanted grits and eggs so that involved some cooking.
At 5:00, I handed off to Bud. He got the kids up, made sure they were dressed in clothes we’d put out the night before, and on the bus..
Upon arriving home, I put clothes in the dryer and another in the washer, then started dinner while Bud and I tag-teamed on homework, dinner, and baths. We usually shared family time till bedtime while I entertained myself loading the dishwasher or folding a load of clothes.
By 9:00, we were usually grateful to settle down to a cup of tea or coffee and a little evening relaxation. Of course, I put on a load of laundry on the way to bed.
No one knows what they are signing on for when starting a family. I am grateful for my family then and now. Time is relative.
Cartoons
Common Sense and the Camper
Daddy had come into some money, so he immediately set to thinking what he had to spend it on. That was the way he thought. If you had money, you had to buy something. He finally settled on three things: a big Ford Truck, the biggest cab-over camper it could carry and a fine Ford tractor. The total of these items was three times his windfall, but that was the way he did things. Angered at the amount he’d spent, Mother ordered six pair of slacks and matching blouses from Montgomery-Ward. He raged at her extravagance. That was also the way they did things.
Anyway, back to the truck and camper. They set off on the typical American road trip. Daddy quickly found the big camper, though rated for that truck, was really too big and made the truck hard to handle. Even passing eighteen wheelers buffeted it about on the interstate. Imagine the challenge it presented on narrow mountain passes. Once, when they decided to go to Pike’s Peak, he unloaded it and left it in the RV camp, not wanting to deal with the excitement.
After they’d been travelling long enough that the refuse tank on the camper had reached near capacity, he pulled up to a dumping station in a national park to empty it. Never one to read directions, he knew he could figure out how it worked on his own, relying on his “common sense.”
He flipped a switch, and “Voila!” The tank emptied on the pad at the dumping station, its contents, solid and liquid, streamed across the busy road. Mother puttered nearby and noticed what he’d done, but didn’t get the big picture. “Why did you dump it here? Is it supposed to go here?”
Meanwhile, passing cars zipped through the refuse, flinging tissue and other unpleasant souvenirs up to await the nearest carwash! Daddy was in a panic, trying to get Mother to hush and get in the truck so they could flee the scene before his ghastly error was caught by a ranger. Mother nattered on, trying to figure out why he’d dumped the tank there, until she realized he was about to leave without her. All’s well that ends well. They managed to get away Scott-free as Mother dug out the instruction book and Daddy fumed.
Lovely Trip
I have to catch up with all my WordPress friends. We visited Mountain View, Arkansas for a few days. We stayed at a rustic cabin on the shores of Syllamore Creek.
We did absolutely no touristy things, only leaving the cabin once to buy groceries. We spent one afternoon watching buzzards glide on the updrafts from the creek up the cliff. Their ability to glide indefinitely was something to see. They seemed to exert no energy. They were still circling when the heavy rain ran us from our rockers on the back porch. The rain pounding on the tin cabin roof was relaxing.
Note the mansion on the bluff above the creek. Though we were at the cabin three nights, they never invited us up for coffee.
Nutsrok 