Last Clue

Thanks Amy and Bridgette for your guesses. Amy - you had a good guess with it starting with Sc - and Bridgette you had an 8 letter word which is also close.

I'll give you three clues actually.

#1 It has 9 letters
#2 It starts with Sc
#3 It is NOT plural

Ask your class again Bridgette - good job! :)

I'll tell you tomorrow if you haven't already guessed it!

A Clue

Good guess Amy! But not correct - but honestly, a VERY good guess!

Here's a clue: It starts with the letter S.

Keep guessing my friends - it's pretty cool when you find out what it is. :)

A Trivia Quiz

Saturday morning we had breakfast at "Morning Watch" and as you walk in the door, there is a large chalk board that has the day's specials etc. They also had the morning quiz listed and here was the question:
WHAT IS THE LONGEST SINGLE SYLLABLE WORD?

So, I asked the waiter if he knew the answer and he said that he did. Through the entire breakfast I tried to think of the answer. Toward the end of my last cup of coffee, I asked for a clue. Finally, as we were leaving, I had to ask for the answer. I came very close to coming up with the answer, but fell short.

See if you can come up with it - and if I don't have any answers by tomorrow, I will start giving you clues.

There is one rule - you have to think of this on your own. No googling - no dictionaries - no spell checks - nothing like that. Just use your brain. :)

I'll be waiting for your answers! Have a good week!

Mr. Peabody and the Way Back Machine

Jay reminded me today that I was going to post a "Way Back Machine" every Friday. Well, I'm 2 weeks late and today is Saturday, but I'm going to post one now. Thanks for the reminder!

I was remembering cleaning out my mother's house several years ago after I had moved her into a nursing home. You will notice that I didn't say "when she moved into a nursing home." I had to move her - it was an ugly scene and I wouldn't wish that kind of episode on anybody. That being said, she is comfortable there now. She will occasionally bring up to me the fact that I made lots of money from the sale of her house. Another reminder that she is unaware of things going on around her.

You have to appreciate the fact that people who grew up during the depression learned the "value" of things. It's widely known that they rarely throw things away as an adult and my mother was no exception. If I threw away one bottle of glue, I threw away 9 bottles of glue while cleaning out her house. She had rolls and rolls of paper towels. And fabric? Don't get me started. She could have easily opened her own shop.

But I would say one of the areas that I enjoyed cleaning out the most was her den. There was my dad's area (about 1/8 of the room) where he did his drawing and "figuring" as he called it. My father was a carpenter and this was where he drew up plans and figured estimates for people. It was fun to touch the papers and tools he used for his business. Everything was in a neat place and it really reflected his personality.

The rest of the room belonged to mom - and honestly, it reflected her personality as well. Her sewing machine was in there and inside of it housed any color of thread you could want - and not just one spool of each color either. You never know when you'll run out of a color and need one waiting in the wings. She also had a round metal box full of buttons. She bought buttons on cards - and it wouldn't have mattered what she was making, she was ready. That thing was FULL! She had several half-completed projects laying around and lots of patterns in a file drawer. She really was a good seamstress and used to sew quite a bit.

Her desk contained all the equipment she needed for bookkeeping for my father's business. She had a box of yellow sharpened pencils - and I exagerate not when I say there were probably 80 pencils in that box. She also had a huge assortment of pens - and little tablets. I never really had looked through those drawers before, so finding all of these was like opening a treasure box.

One of the things I found was an autograph of Jimmy Durante. If you haven't ever heard of him, google him. He's gone now of course - and I truly cannot remember where she saw him to get his autograph, but I remember she was always very proud that she had it. She also had Jim Nabor's autograph. You know him - Gomer Pyle. Again - google it. :) It's funny to me that this woman from small town USA had two pretty significant autographs.

The prize I found in that room was a photo album with metal covers that belonged to my dad. It had many, many photographs from when he was in the Phillipines in the Air Force. I had never known this album existed before and it made me so sad that it had been there all this time. My father rarely talked about his time in the Phillipines and this would have been a perfect "vehicle" for me to use to get him to talk. As I look through the pictures now, I have no idea who the other men really are. He has some of them labeled with first names, but to hear the stories behind them would have been the best. I wonder why this was stuffed away and forgotten? I'm guessing they didn't think I would be interested in it.

All in all - that room was horendous to go through - but at the same time, probably reflected both of their personalities very well. When it was all cleaned out, it of course made me sad. Not only had a put everything in boxes or in the dumpster, but I had erased a portion of two lives. I did keep the autographs though - who could resist showing off Jimmy Durante?

An orchid in winter

I have a beautiful orchid that was blooming when I got it. I have babied this plant along for quite some time now and finally it has bloomed again. It has to have just the right amount of sunlight and it wants orchid food in it's just-so right amount of water (room temp please).



I just wanted to share how pretty it is - the flowers are just lovely! It sits in the den which really is the chilliest room in the house, especially during the day when we're gone and the heat is down. So far, I guess it doesn't mind.

Anyway - no big news - just wanted to share my orchid with everyone! Have a great Thursday!

A shower with a mind of its own

I want to discuss my shower. More accurately, I want to discuss water pressure.

The water pressure in our apartment has never been tremendous. Sometimes, it is a trickle. Other times it's not so bad, but it has never been great.

The thing that's odd and the thing that annoys me is that it is not a continuous water pressure. I know what you're thinking - "You dork - when somebody else turns on the fawcet in the sink, of course your water pressure is going to change." Well, I know that and this isn't the case at all. I can be the only one in the apartment and be in the shower, and all of a sudden there is barely any water at all. Not a great thing when you have soap in your hair. Then, after a minute or so, the water pressure returns.

Other nearby apartments water usage doesn't affect us - we're separately controlled - so that isn't it. I just truly am stumped. And - it really only seems to happen in the shower. We have great pressure in the sinks and in the tub - and it stays constant there too.

I could always say something to the apartment office - but I just hate to walk in and say......well, my water pressure comes and goes. They would just shake their heads at me and tell me to either 1) live with it or 2)that somebody else was using water at the same time I was showering.

I really have no explanation. I just know that it isn't all that great to take a shower under a trickle of water.

Does this blog post go anywhere.... not really. Just venting. Thanks for reading! :)

An evening as a pirate

Tonite, the women's group at our church hosted a "Friendship Dinner". Each hostess had a table of 8 guests and could choose a theme for their table. Carol's table was so cute - the theme was Candy Land - and she had big game pieces and everything. The whole table was the game board.



As it turned out, nearly ever other table went for a more elegant theme. Here is the table that won the prize for the evening. It was Miss Edna's table and it was a Thanksgiving table - absolutely beautiful!



The table I hosted had a Pirate theme.



Here is Jay and I - in our pirate "outfits". We had so much fun and had lots of comments about our costumes.


It was just a nice evening and we met a lot of new people to the church.