“They” (whoever they are) say that it takes twenty eight days for a behavior to become a habit. I have never heard a statistic on how many days it takes to break a habit, but I fear that it is much fewer than twenty eight. Since school started only two and half weeks ago, I have broken many of the good habits that I established over the summer. I have surprised myself with the things that I have let slip…
It is hard to believe that summer has passed and another school year has begun. Back in May, I had all these plans for the three months of summer break. I was going to clean out my closet, weed out things in the kitchen cabinets, garden, and read the books that I collected in a mountainous stack during school last year. My closet is still a mess. No, in all fairness, it has been upgraded to a disaster. This is…
It is easy to become overwhelmed by all the big things that happen in life. Sometimes though it is the smallest of things that gives us the ability to look at life from a slightly different perspective and maybe even cause us to pause and smile. Such was the case this morning. This flower poked its head up from amidst the gravel along the driveway. It was all alone but seemed perfectly happy to stand tall and greet the new…
It is show time again. Quite a bit goes on in the arts community in Denton. For the performing groups, this means being creative when it comes to finding adequate rehearsal space. Several local venues have been gracious in allowing us to use their facilities. Tonight we were in a new place, our local senior citizens’ center. When we moved to Denton back in the eighties, all of the Chamber of Commerce information about Denton touted it as a great…
Life is full of those weird moments when you wonder what the heck is going on – like when a friend calls on the phone at just the moment you were thinking about them, or you find $20 in the washing machine as you are whining about no money for that cafe mocha from Starbucks, or the perfect song plays while your ipod is on shuffle, or there is a snow day at school on the only day that you…
Every parent has experienced at least one of those moments when their child says something that makes you think what the heck is wrong with that kid. Did I do something to damage this kid’s psyche so badly that she feels that these things are normal? The bizarreness of such things is multiplied logarithmically when the kid is a math nerd masquerading as a drama queen. Or is it a drama queen masquerading as a math nerd? Honestly, this really…
Sometimes the stars in the heavens align and there are strange intersections of thoughts and images. So was the case this morning. Here is the background. My younger child has been in Cozumel, Mexico for nearly a week on a mission trip with our church’s youth group. Most such trips are geared towards humanitarian aid. This one, however, is focused on environmental issues. They have cleaned up beaches, helped build for the local SPCA and, the highlight of the trip,…
I went to Austin Friday afternoon for a meeting that started this morning. Austin has some wonderful restaurants and bookstores so a little extra time in our capital city is aways enjoyable. Austin is also known for having the largest urban bat colony. At dusk, millions of bats emerge from under the bridge in the middle of the city creating a black cloud on the skyline. I have seen the bats fly several times before so I decided that this…
Not long ago I was knitting with a relatively new friend (we have known each other since January) and I made some comment about my house being covered in dog and cat hair. She stiffened her back and said, “I didn’t know that you have a cat. All you ever talk about is the dogs.” The truth is that I have three cats (only two dogs) and the dogs do get more air time. This speaks well for the cats….
After the surgery on my arm last week, I was sent home with a list of instructions, some of which pertained to the day of the surgery and others were more long term. Some of their suggestions were: Rest as much as possible in the first 24 hours Don’t make any important decisions in the first 24 hours after having anaesthesia Don’t get the wound wet for 10 days Don’t lift anything over ten pounds for ten days (until the…