Glad to Have My Dad

Tomorrow is Father’s Day and Monday is not only WV Day, but my father’s birthday as well.  Good reasons to remember how lucky I am to have such a wonderful father.

Oh, I didn’t always consider myself to be lucky.  You see, my father was a policeman and that sometimes made for difficult moments growing up.  For example, isn’t it every teenager’s dream to have a police car pick you up at school?

But I remember some cool stuff about being the daughter of a police officer.  When I was little, dad would take me to the firing range and when everyone was done shooting, I got to walk around the grounds with an empty coffee can and pick up all the spent shells.  I bet not very many girls had a collection like that.

When I was done, we would go to A&W Drive-in and have a hotdog.  They would bring our lunch out to the car and hang the tray from the driver’s window.  How cool is that?

And what girl can forget her father walking her down the aisle on her wedding day.  Well my dad did that too…….TWICE! (I spared him the trip on wedding three) 

Hopefully we were all daddy’s little girl. He was and hopefully still is wrapped around our little finger. Not to take advantage of…more just for the comfort of knowing he is there.

~Violette DeSantis

Happy Father’s Day!

Oh Deer II

Well, I received enough feedback from “Oh Deer” that I thought a follow-up was warranted. 

To begin with, I have to apologize for implying that hunters with guns blazing for deer would descend on our cities.  I got a response to my facebook telling me that urban deer hunting would only be for BOW HUNTING.  My reply…….”Okay, that sure makes me feel better.”

My boss told me that a local elementary school did a project on the overpopulation of deer in the city.  It was their task to come up with ways to solve the problem.  One solution they came up with was to round up the deer and bring them to our area parks.

I don’t know if that will work.  The walking trail at the park is crowded enough as is without adding deer to the picture.

A second solution was to put the deer on boats and take them all to Blennerhassett Island.

Then we could bring in the hunters with their bows and the tourists and call it “Extreme Vacationing”!

I have a better idea….let’s leave them alone.  I mean as long as they can obey the traffic laws who are they hurting?

Oh Deer!

Well, I thought I’d heard everything, but I was proven wrong this morning.  I was driving to a meeting in Charleston and listening to the radio and the news came on.  It seems that legislation is underway to legalize urban deer hunting in my area.  URBAN deer hunting!!  I know that we have deer within the city limits, but what is worse….a few deer roaming the streets or a bunch of armed men in camo shooting up the town?

And what kind of camo would one wear in the city?  Perhaps a brick pattern?

This one might work in a city park….

Just think about it…..Men could hunt on their way to work..

 

But what are us non-hunting, innocent, don’t-want-to-be-shot citizens going to wear?

Come on people….deer need a place to live too!

(O)bit by (O)bit

I know death is not the best topic for a blog, but I was very intrigued by a conversation I heard at work today and had to share it.  One of my co-workers plays a game everyday when he reads the obituaries.  He counts the number of people older than him and the number of people younger than him and finds the difference.  If there are, say, two more people older than younger, then he is +2.  But if there are two more people younger than older, then he is -2.  Well, of course I ran to my office and looked up the local obituaries on my computer.  I am happy to say I am +10 today!

On the other hand, my co-worker was only a +2.  He’s right there on the edge.

Speaking of my co-worker……he may be my new boss in the future.  My current boss is retiring at the end of the month and co-worker is going to apply for the position.  He had four people write recommendation letters for him.  He said they were so good that even if he doesn’t get the job, he has four nice obituaries he can use in the future!

The Mulch Mystery

Every year I mulch my flower beds with 10 gazillion cubic feet of mulch!  Where does it go from one summer to the next?  It has to go somewhere or else I would have a mountain of mulch in front of my house!

I lay the stuff on thick every summer, yet the next summer it is gone.  Do you think someone from Lowe’s sneaks in my yard every night and hauls some away?  They do miss me when I don’t visit them on a weekly basis.  I mean look at the messages they send me……

I’m still trying to figure out the “together” part, because I sure didn’t see them spreading mulch with me this afternoon!

I did TWO trips to Lowe’s today because my “Cruck” just couldn’t handle more than five gazillion cubic feet of mulch in one trip.

But, at the end of the day, there is nothing better than freshly mulched flower beds.

Yes, I know, I need a life.

 

Throw Like a Girl

Yesterday I went to my grandson’s baseball game.  It was the last game of the regular season.  The team they were playing was pretty good thanks in part to their first and third basewomen.  Yes, they had two girls on the team and they were infielders!

I commented on how talented the little girls were and my son said, “Yeah, they don’t even throw like a girl'”  THROW LIKE A GIRL?  I’ve heard that expression before, mainly aimed at boys who are a bit challenged in the athletic department.  My question is WHY we say it?  I mean if a woman fixes a nice meal do we say to her “Wow, you don’t cook like a man?”

I think gender stereotypes are disappearing, but not fast enough for me. 

BTW…..those girls hit the cover off the ball!

The Hostess With the Mostess

I guess every job has those “other duties as assigned”.  Well, one of mine is hosting regional trainings.  I call it the “hostess with the mostess” part of my job.

I don’t like it.

I  have a group coming in for a training this Monday and Tuesday, thus I spent several hours today…..on a SATURDAY…..running around town making catering arrangements and picking up supplies I would need.  Not exactly my idea of a fun weekend activity.

I never know what food to serve these groups.  I mean my idea of breakfast is cold Totino’s pizza or a bologna sandwich with mayo.  Somehow I don’t think either of those would go over well.

So, I figured, who can go wrong with something from Panera Bread?  I was able to order lunch from them for two days, but no luck with breakfast.  They have to have a minimum $100.00 order for them to deliver.  That would be ALOT of bagels for fifteen people!

I turned to Plan B…..get breakfast trays from a grocery store.  I had to go there anyway to buy the rest of my supplies.  But the grocery store only had fruit trays for breakfast.  I settled for the fruit trays along with cheese trays.  Come on…..cheese is good at any meal!

Back to Panera Bread….the minute I walked in the door I was approached by a lady who asked if I was an organ donor.  Recalling all of my past marriages, I said “Sure, I am!”

Then I told her she would be donating HER organs sooner than she planned if she didn’t leave me alone.  You don’t mess with the hostess with the mostess!

Brownies and Bubble Sheets

Every year during the first full week of June, 130 special educators travel to Charleston and take over the Embassy Suites.  Most of us haven’t seen each other in a year so it is always fun to catch up….

Who is pregnant this year?  Who is getting married?  Who is getting a divorce?  I used to always be a given in the last category.

Anyway, our mission this week is to score 2300 test booklets.  We spend eight hours a day transferring student responses onto bubble sheets……an exciting topic for “How I Spent My Summer Vacation!”

Every year we have issues we have to deal with.  There are the people who bubble too lightly, or too dark, or who can’t stay within the lines.

Well, this year we have a new problem…Brownies!

It seems that the new scanner is ultra sensitive.  It will pick up anything….even brownie fingerprints.  And guess what the snack is this afternoon!

My separated friend suggested that someone could stand at the door and lick the chocolate off everyone’s hands as they came in.  Yuck!  I think living alone must be getting to him.  But then again, maybe his wife kept all of these..

Anyway, I guess we will be seeing a lot of this today…

 

Eight Days a Week

That’s how much I feel like I’ve been working lately.

So, I decided to have a little fun tonight.  Apparently, June is my “nostalgia” month.  On the 24th, I am going to see “The Monkees” in concert and tonight……”Beatles Tribute” at the Adelphia in Marietta, Ohio!

Many favorite regional acts will band together and present a wonderful rockin’ evening full of music by the Beatles!  Tonight’s show is a benefit for The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. 

FAAN (The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network) was established in 1991, at a time when information about food allergies was difficult to find.   This year, 2011, marks FAAN’s 20th anniversary in serving the food allergy community. They continue to work diligently to educate the public about the severity of food allergy and provide the food allergy community with tools and programs that it deserves.

Back to the Beatles…..As I posted in a prior blog, I was never a big Beatles fan growing up, but you’d have to be dead not to remember and enjoy their music.  The one song that always stands out in my mind is “Hey Jude”.  It was a guarentee that “Hey Jude” or “Stairway to Heaven” would be the last song played at every junior high dance.  “Hey Jude” was 7 minutes, 11 seconds of sheer joy to teenagers…

 

Might not be too bad for us old folks either……

Don’t Ruffle My Truffle!

Did you know I own a vineyard?

Well, it doesn’t really look like this.  It looks more like this….

Yeah, it’s a Facebook game and I am hooked!  You raise money (in order to buy cool things) by planting and harvesting wine or by visiting your neighbors vineyards and stealing their truffles!

I’ve been playing this game for a couple of weeks and I never really knew exactly what a truffle was……so today I checked it out.

A truffle  is the fruiting body of an underground mushroom.  There are hundreds of species of truffles that are big, but the fruiting body of some  are highly prized as a food.  Edible truffles are held in high esteem in French, Spanish, northern Italian and Greek cooking.

Yuck!

But, don’t despair,  I found another kind of truffle….

Now, that’s the truffle I was thinking about!

As you can imagine, owning a vineyard is a lot of work.  But I never realized how much………It has consumed my life!

I am a “virtual” prisoner to working in my vineyard!

The people at my “other job” don’t understand how much stress I am under to keep my vineyard in working order. 

They told me I should recognize the signs!

But, I am not quite ready to admit to my addiction…Just leave me alone for a while and DON’T