The Glass is Half-Full

     I drive a mini van. That is probably not a surprise seeing as I'm an overly involved mother of three. It's almost required - I mean imagine a farmer primarily driving a Smart Car or a Mini Cooper. Those vehicles would not be up to the jobs the farmer would need done, right? Now imagine an overly involved mother of three primarily driving a smart car or a mini - they're not up to the jobs I have needed done.  I have been the car pool mom, field-trip mom, camp transportation mom, shuttle to-and-fro mom and assorted other 'moms' that required seating for seven. My van (or vans since I've had more than one) have held passengers singing songs by Pete Seeger, Barney, Raffi, Hilary Duff, 98 Degrees and many others. The van has seen Chinese fire drills, games of 20 questions, whispered secrets, giggles and many other games or sounds of children. Lately, all of that has changed - the songs are usually by bands I don't know with lyrics I don't occasio

I stopped blogging for awhile. I know some might think that I was being lazy, or overly-involved in some community or school venture or in the middle of some really good books or projects. While all of those are true, that's not the main reason. I stopped because it felt strange to be somewhere and have someone refer to something I wrote. It was like they knew a secret about me (though secrets are not usually published on the Web) that I hadn't shared with them. Though in reality I had shared because I wrote it on the blog.  Truth be told, I don't know who reads this - I have a smattering of followers but a lot more readers. Blogger lets me see how many page views for each posting and I can even tell the referral site. The most I have had for any post was 152 and I've had readers from as far away as New Zealand (thank you Gretchen) and Alaska. Most readers are referred through Facebook. I know that if I were more diligent, I could market the crap out of the blog and

It's a great image isn't it? Picture it - a mother bear, overheated and sweating, growling bearing her teeth while swatting at what ever comes in her way. It may not be the image I want related to me most times, but recently it's one that seems to fit! Someone messed with my cub and I am one pissed off Momma Bear!! I have had to take a chill pill - in this case a few deep breaths and a couple hours mulling over how to respond. Because I didn't want the person I would be swatting at to go on the defensive. I just wanted him to go down!!!  I'll let you know the result.             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For a totally different picture of this Momma Bear, one of her cubs is about to leave the den. She's been through this before when her oldest cub left the den for the woods at Wabash, so she has been fooling herself into thinking that the second cub would be easier. Hell no! Many times lately this Momma Bear has had to retreat to her private den to