The Glass is Half-Full

We have a dog treat jar that was given to us 12 years ago by my sister Kerri. When you open it it plays a part of one of two songs, "Who Let the Dogs Out" or "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog". It doesn't play them anymore - I think the batteries of run out and I'm not inclined to replace them. Wonder why? Anyway, the song Hound Dog was on mind last night when Wally, for the first time ever, caught a rabbit.  He ain't no friend of mine. He said he was high class. Well, that was just a lie. The back story is that we got home after a night of theatre and friends in Grand Rapids. (Saw Phantom of the Opera - fabulous staging/set/choreography. Memories of Delaney as Christine!) After six hours in his kennel, we knew Wally would be ready to be set free. And he was - much to the chagrin of the rabbits in the backyard who didn't see him coming. He grabbed at some animal, it yelped and Wally dropped it. He looked at me on the deck, seemingly...

Pardon me while I ramble ... Being a peri-menopausal woman (I lost about half of the readers with that statement!) and one with MS, I have memory issues. So when I saw the commercials for Prevagen, a supplement touted to improve memory, I was motivated to give it a try. Problem was, every time I went to Meijer or Walgreens or Rite Aid, I'd forget to buy it. Or I'd forget to put it on my grocery list, or forget my grocery list or ... you get the picture!  You can't make this stuff up as my friend Patti would say.   Well, the stars aligned and not only did I put it on the list but I also remembered the list and a week ago my Prevagen experiment began. I'll let you know how it goes, if I remember to update you AND if I remember to take it daily!  Its main ingredient is some sea creature or jelly fish, so I'm concerned that if its as effective as the commercials claim that poor sea creature will become extinct because there are a lot of peri-menopausal w...

                          It's time. Peter Pan had to grow up.  For nearly 18 months of his life, Matthew dressed in this costume. In this picture it's new, just out of the box. He picked the costume out of a catalog and when it arrived, two weeks prior to Halloween, he asked daily if today was the day he could finally wear his Peter Pan costume. He didn't like the hat and only wore it on Halloween, but the rest of the costume he wore daily! You read that correctly - DAILY. He wore it to Meijer (for those of you unfamiliar with Meijer, it's a cleaner, friendlier, more 'upscale' version of WalMart), to church, to play dates and preschool ... Heck, he was three and adorable and it worked for him!  (Yes you read that correctly, he even wore it to church on one or two occasions when it seemed arguing with a three year old about not wearing a costume to church was not a battle worth waging. He once mentioned th...

About half-way through yesterday's journey to Michael's commencement from Wayne State Law, the song "Ain't No Stopping Us Now" was on shuffle play in my head. Between silent prayers asking for God's provision to get us to the Detroit Opera House by 4, this little R&B ditty kept me focused. And here's why. First and foremost, there was nothing more important to our clan. Matthew drove up from DePauw to Saugatuck so we could leave by noon. It was our mission to watch our son walk and to be there to help him celebrate. We were going 75 on I96, on schedule and about half-way to Detroit, when John got a call from the Subaru dealership where he'd purchased his new Outback about a month ago. Sitting in the back, listening to the one-sided conversation I knew there was some sort of crisis. My initial thought was it was work-related. Snippets included; "I didn't realize it was urgent", "I'm on my way to my son's graduat...

It doesn't look like much - especially from this distance - but that mini van behind the tow truck was our world for many years.  Our family traveled nearly 180,000 miles and tallied up even more memories within the walls/windows of that Ford Windstar. It took us to Washington D.C., Florida, on countless trips to Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana and St. Louis. And all around this beautiful state of Michigan. It was the vehicle of choice when taking the three not-so-little Piggins on college visits and then hauling their worldly goods to the college they chose from those visits. It was easy to distinguish from every other white mini-van because there were bumper stickers from those colleges and also a couple from their high schools! It took the three not-so-little Piggins to golf matches, baseball and football games, auditions and rehearsals. It has held the golf team and members of the band, honors choir, quiz bowl, youth group and countless other configurations of groups. And ...

In the past couple weeks in Bible Study Fellowship (Bsf), we have been deep into the Book of Revelation, Chapters 21 and 22. In these two chapters, the new heaven comes down to earth and is glorious! Beyond description - even the apostle John's words were sparse for the spectacle he witnessed and that's saying something for this man who wrote and wrote and wrote about what he'd witnessed. He was a simple man who couldn't stop himself from writing about what he saw - and I can relate to that!!! But here he is, seeing heaven coming down to earth - the new earth - and he is so overwhelmed that he can only write 27 descriptive verses. (For you Bible newbies, that isn't much! Heck in the Old Testament there are some chapters with over 100!) I can only imagine (cue the Mercy Me song) what he saw because he gave a sparse description. But it's because the description is sparse that I know with every fiber of my being that it was incredible. Have you ever seen somethin...

I have a few observations from my recent road trip to St. Louis: ~     Billboard advertising , especially along the I94/I80 corridor consists mainly of advertisements for strip clubs, truck stops, casinos, personal injury/bankruptcy attorneys and McDonald's.       The strip clubs are often referred to as 'gentlemen's clubs' and I wonder why because I don't think the men glaring at nearly-naked young women and shoving dollar bills down the dancer's g-strings, are gentlemen. According to Webster's the definition of a gentleman is " a chivalrous, courteous, or honorable man".       And truck stops are at nearly every exit along this corridor- some offer showers. Maybe to shower off after a visit to the 'gentlemen's club'?       Casinos - there  were billboards for three in Northern Indiana, six in the Chicago area and four in Michigan. I'm not very good at math, and used a calculator to check my addition, but that'...