The Median Sib

This is from a post on Demoncratic Underground. (Oops! Misspelled the D-word, but it fits, so I’ll leave it). From someone with the name “TallahasseeGrannie.” Incredible!

(Speaking of Osama Bin Laden and the recent videotape) - and how it was probably a fake orchestrated by President Bush to swing public opinion his way)

Actually, I don’t think he ever existed. I think he is a muppet. But if he IS real and IS willing to stop in Iraq and Afghanistan, that would be good news. Not that I want attacks here, but we can absorb them a lot lot better than those poor people. If it is real (and I hear you about the orchestrated element) it seems rather promising? Or am I drinking the Kool-aid. I really like the orange flavor.

Yes, you are drinking the Kool-Aid that the whole Demoncratic party - liberal wing is serving.
If it weren’t so dangerous, it would be humorous. Oh sure, Bin Laden will stop in Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything he has said up to this point was a lie. He really doesn’t want to kill Americans. Forget 9-11. Absorb that. Forget the beheadings. Absorb those. He’s offering up an olive branch - Can’t we all just get along?

Larry at Blame Bush! has come through again with this gem:

Bush continues to deny that he has done anything wrong and insists that he will only eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of people who are “a threat to national security”. But that could describe just about any liberal Democrat in Congress.

Don’t you just love it?

My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has one of the best posts I’ve read lately. I agree with every single word of it, and after watching and hearing all the dangerous idiocy from the left lately, I’m getting to the point of feeling as strongly.

The day before Christmas my daughter was baking an apple cake as she chatted with 4 1/2-year old Sweet Stuff. She was telling Sweet Stuff about the real meaning of Christmas and how it isn’t just about Santa Claus and giving and receiving gifts. It is Jesus’ birthday. Sweet Stuff immediately made a connection - the cake my daughter was making was obviously Jesus’ birthday cake. Realizing how well that fit in with what she’d been talking about, Larisa agreed - of course the cake was Jesus’ birthday cake. That’s when Sweet Stuff carried the conversation to a new level.

“Jesus was at Megan’s birthday party the other day, and he told me he liked orange sprinkles. So we need to put orange sprinkles on his birthday cake,” she said matter-of-factly.

My daughter looked at Sweet Stuff. “Jesus was at Megan’s birthday party?”

“Yes, and he told me he wanted orange sprinkles on his birthday cake.”

Not one to question a child’s chat with Jesus, my daughter complied. So orange sprinkles were scattered across the cream cheese frosting. The next morning, my daughter decided to have a slice of apple cake for breakfast.

Sweet Stuff came into the kitchen. Shocked, she asked, “ARE YOU EATING GOD’S CAKE?”

“Yes,” my daughter replied, hastening to explain, “It’s all right with God.” That satisfied Sweet Stuff, and the issue was resolved.

Now our family recipe for apple cake with cream cheese frosting has a new name. It is simply “God’s Cake.”

GOD’S CAKE
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups oil
3 eggs
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup nuts, chopped finely
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3 cups apples, peeled and chopped finely

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans. Combine sugar, eggs, oil and vanilla. Beat well. Add mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in the apples and nuts. Pour in cake pans and bake for 30 minutes. You can also make the cake in a bundt pan and bake for an hour. However, the icing is what makes it so good, and the icing covers less cake if you use a bundt pan.

CREAM CHEESE ICING FOR GOD’S CAKE
8 oz. cream cheese
1 stick butter
1 cup finely chopped nuts
2 tsp. vanilla
1 pound box powdered sugar
orange sprinkles

Let cream cheese and butter soften. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar a little at a time and mix well. Add nuts. When cake is cool, ice each layer and stack. Scatter orange sprinkles over the top. Yummy!

If you happen to use the recipe, let me know how it turns out - and I hope you enjoy God’s Cake!

After we finished walking all over the 90 acres with a metal detector (found one cap pistol, two knives, two complete horseshoes, two pieces of a horseshoe, and several pieces of wire and chain), I told PawPaw I’d run by the grocery store to get some steaks to grill for dinner. I walked into Kroger and didn’t see any shopping carts.

I looked around and saw an elderly man coming in from the parking lot to return his shopping cart. I met him at the door and told him I’d take the cart. People have done that for me before, and I always appreciated the few seconds they saved me. However, instead of turning around and going back to the parking lot, he continued inside the store. That’s when it hit me — he had gone to the parking lot to get a shopping cart, and was on his way inside to do his shopping, and I had commandeered his cart!

“Here!” I called to him as he walked away from me into the store, “I thought you were returning the cart. You can have it back.” He didn’t turn around - he just waved his hand and kept going - probably thinking I was a rude and pushy lady who stole shopping carts from defenseless little old men for kicks.

So now I’m an official Kroger cart-napper.

I received the following in an email. Go ahead and thank me now because I took the “email this to all your friends . . .” portion out of it. You’re welcome.

The story and thought are good ones, however, and I think there’s an important message here:

Now for my “keeper” story: I was in the grocery store this afternoon buying some last minute items for the dinner I fixed for some in-town and out-of-town family. I heard someone call my name, turned around and saw a woman I had known in the church singles group a few years ago. She had been married for 29 years, divorced, was active in the singles group for a few years and then met Charles, and she married him. They’ve been happily married for almost six years now. As we caught up with what has been happening to each other in the two years since we last saw each other, I told her that I was single…again - that the second marriage had been a mistake from the beginning and only lasted a year. As she was offering sympathy, I assured her that it was okay. Then I told her that my first husband and I were getting back together. He and I were married for 28 years when we divorced 8 years ago. Her next remark was one I’ll always remember. With a wistful look in her eye, she said,

I found this cartoon over at Dr. Sanity - and loved it! Figured I’d pass it along to you here. (Dr. Sanity has some recipes - yes RECIPES!! - to share along with the cartoon. I copied those, too.)

I was watching TV, and they’ve started all the year-in-review shows. I decided to write my personal year-in-review. However, I can’t remember much from early in the year…maybe nothing spectacular happened during the winter and early spring. So here are the highlights of 2005 for me:

(1) January: I started riding mountain bikes with PawPaw - great exercise and fun, but decided I could only handle it in cool weather - the helmet does horrible things to one’s hair after sweating in it. So when June got here, I had to stop until the fall.

(2) May: I finished my first year as a reading specialist - great job - and and now I’m happily in my second year out of a regular classroom.

(3) June: I babysat Sunshine and Sweet Stuff for a full week while their parents went to the beach with friends. Wonderful and exhausting at the same time. There is absolutely not a time as tender as being with children first thing in the morning when they’re sleepy-eyed and sweet and cuddly.

(4) July: PawPaw and I went to Alaska. I LOVED Alaska. We saw moose, grizzlies, caribou and Dall sheep in the wild. Enjoyed it so much, we’ve already scheduled another trip next September.

(5) July (continued): On the trip to Alaska I went fishing and caught a salmon. We wore waders and fished in the middle of a river. Catching a salmon is something I’ve always wanted to do. I caught my salmon the evening before we went home. That meant that I released it after I caught it. PawPaw had caught one earlier in the week, and we got the cook at the lodge where we stayed to cook it. It was delicious, and it fed about 16 people!

(6) July (still continued): We biked for 24 miles along some of the most incredible scenery in Denali park in Alaska. We had seen a grizzly bear with two cubs earlier along the route, and to say I was a LITTLE apprehensive would be an understatement.

(7) September: I started The Median Sib. Blogging has been both fun and therapeutic. PawPaw and Stinkeroo both can’t figure out WHAT I get out of blogging. It makes no sense to them.

(8) October: I went camping by myself. It was great - except for the “by myself” part. However, I proved a point by going alone - I am woman, hear me roar and all that . Afterwards I went camping several times with PawPaw, and that was definitely a better way to enjoy the world of camping.

(9) November: After numerous stops and starts throughout the year, PawPaw and I got back together - for good.

(10) December: I did NO Christmas decorating for the first time ever. PawPaw put up my Christmas tree, and then he, Sweet Stuff and Sunshine decorated it. That was it. Nothing else. Zilch. I won’t do that again. I enjoy having a Christmas-y house too much.

I’ll almost definitely come up with other outstanding events for the year as I think about it more. For now, though, that’s it.

Home again! It’s Monday night, and I’m back home and blogging again. I had a wonderful Christmas weekend with lots of visiting and fun. Highlights include:

Friday dinner with the children and grandkids - watching the little ones open their gifts and seeing their excitement.

Eating dinner today at my mother’s with 48 family members! All seven of us siblings were there! Then doing the gift exchange - one person at time. It took forever, but it was so much fun! Two regrets: I didn’t get a picture of the 7 of us together with our mother, and I wasn’t able to stay very long.

Taking a hike yesterday on PawPaw’s country property in the cold afternoon with occasional drizzly rain - very refreshing!

Holding my niece who is ten months old and having her smile at me.

Driving around town with PawPaw’s mother, brother, sister-in-law last night to look at the Christmas decorations.

Flying home tonight with PawPaw in his small plane — flying above the clouds and seeing a spectacular sunset that everyone below couldn’t see because of the cloud cover. Then going from 6,000 ft to 4,000 ft as we neared Nashville which put us right in the clouds - rather spooky flying 150 mph and not able to see anything…just trusting the instruments.

Now I am looking forward to tomorrow when I’ll get to visit Sweet Stuff and Sunshine and have them show me all the goodies that Santa Claus brought them.

You are invited to join the MONTHLY MARATHON blogroll. It is a group of people who promise to walk or run a marathon each month - not all at once but one or two miles at a time - to equal 26.2 miles each month. A 30-minute moderately-paced walk five days a week will MORE than do it.

We already have six people on our blogroll for the 2006 Monthly Marathon. I’ll add you to the blogroll when you join, and I’ll provide you with information for adding the blogroll to your site. Membership has requirements, though. Click on the icon below to go to the Monthly Marathon website. You’ll find more information there.

I hope you’ll join us! It will be a good way to get in some good exercise for 2006, and it will also provide motivation and comraderie with fellow Monthly Marathoners.

I will be leaving shortly for a couple of brief holidays trips — to my mother-in-law’s and later to my mother’s home for family get-togethers. Three full days away from a computer. I should be posting again on Tuesday. In the meantime, I will leave you with some good reading. Please click often on the links below and also the links on the sidebar.

Just read a post by Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity that addresses the question “What is a lady?” And it begs a further question: Do I want to be a feminist or a lady? Are the two mutually exclusive? What do you think?

Dr. Sanity has some definite ideas about The Idiot’s Guide To Victimhood. Check it out. Do you think she’s right?

Angie over at Ficken Chingers (sounds a little dirty, doesn’t it?) asked A Question about why people think being a jerk or a bitch is cool. I’ve noticed this in some blogs.

And over at The Reflective Teacher, there’s a wonderful post about a unique writing exercise. I’ve written about this post before, but I can’t help it. I love it!

Utenzi discusses a Washington Post article on the first appearance of white skin. Fascinating when you think of the historical and current implications of skin color.

If you’re in the mood for some light-hearted entertainment or maybe you need to have some riddles to stump your school-age children, you can visit Daddy’s Roses where Joan has a post of Christmas Riddles.

Click over to Alone On a Limb and read Terry’s Top Ten Christmas Memories. I loved it - probably because several of them are also my favorite Christmas memories.

Those are just a few of the posts I’ve enjoyed reading lately.

Hope all of you who visit THE MEDIAN SIB have a wonderful Christmas - and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back blogging on Tuesday.

The phone rang early this morning. Looking at caller ID, I saw that it was my daughter. However, when I answered, there was no sound from the other side for a few seconds, and then a quiet little voice said, “Grandma Carol, can we come over now?”

“Sweet Stuff, of course you can! Are you sick?” I thought that maybe she wasn’t feeling well, and my daughter wanted to keep her home from daycare. I was wrong. Apparently both Sunshine and Sweet Stuff woke up this morning and wanted to start the Christmas party early. Everyone is coming to my house this evening for our family Christmas dinner and gift exchange. Sweet Stuff and Sunshine wanted to come over and help Grandma Carol NOW!

So they’ve been here all morning. They’ve helped me make an apple pie and some pecan pies. They’ve helped me get the Chicken Cheese Corn Chowder started. All you moms and grandmoms know how “helpful” two-year olds and four-year olds can be. And now they’re using the rhythm instruments to sing Christmas carols! Only a grandmother would enjoy the ringing of bells, shaking of tambourines and mini-cymbals and little voices making up their own Christmas songs… “I will help you with a merry bow…” each word emphasized with ringing bells and cymbals and tambourines.

Sunshine’s latest trick is grabbing her own (or my) boobs and yelling, “BOOBIE! BOOBIE!” We definitely need to channel that energy in another direction!

I am a little sad, though. Sunshine has always refused to call me Grandma Carol. It’s always been simply “Cawol!” She has now started calling me Grandma Carol all the time. Another sign of how fast she is growing.

A full day of Sunshine and Sweet Stuff! Life doesn’t get any better!

Just an hour ago - morning bus duty in the gym. Several children in one of the first grade lines raise their hands. I walk over.

They exclaim, “John said a bad word.”

John is shaking his head, “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes he did!”

“John,” I ask, “What did you say?”

Without hesitation, John replies, “F*ck.”

At first I’m not sure I heard correctly. I ask him to come with me, and I motion the other bus room monitor over. “John,” I say, “Tell Miss Norma what you said.”

“F*ck!” John replies, “but I don’t know what that means!”

“You know it’s not a nice word - even if you don’t know what it means,” Miss Norma replies.

So now I must write up a behavior form for John which he will take home to be signed by his parents. The principal will talk with him. John is already well known by the people in the school who handle behavior issues.

I’m curious - what would you other teachers do in this situation?

For another “F” word post, go HERE.

This week’s Carnival of Education: The Winter Hibernation Edition has just been published. Go there NOW to read great posts in the field of education. My post on the balanced calendar is part of this week’s carnival. Great reading - GO!

This is the photograph from which Beth took the photograph of me for the header. From right to left, there’s Terry (Terry the Terrible Terror as we not-so-affectionately called him at the time), Debi, Daddy, David (the baby), and me. Taken in 1958, that would make me nine years old at the time. Lord, I’m old.

Hmmm now that I think of it…when you list something right to left, is it your right as you face the computer screen, or is it from the right side of the screen as it faces you? I don’t know. If you have the answer, let me know. In the meantime, I won’t lose sleep over it.