My rain guage shows we got 9/10 of an inch. It seemed like more. That brings the total up to about 3 1/2 inches since January. There's a chance we may get more. I hope it was enough to help bring the level of the aquifer up. A lot of water was flowing down our street due to so many paved areas uphill, but what happens to it? Most of it gathers in creek beds (that's where the water on our street was heading), joins rivers and flows out to the sea. There should be a way to slow down the flow and let it sink in. And there is. Bamburger Ranch has done a lot of hands on research in that area. By clearing out 'cedar' trees and planting native grasses, etc. on overgrazed dry land, creeks flowed that hadn't flowed for 50 or more years. Read about it when you have a few minutes, and go visit if you ever get the chance. Glad you enjoyed our happy/silly pictures :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Bamberger Ranch ... read the first linked article on the site at least ...

Well, from my 45 years of experience being single, there are several "marriage waves" that a person can ride. One is the high school one. Virtually everyone in high school is single and so lots of people meet and pair up then. After that comes the college wave, ditto. Then comes the first years out of college/career establishment phase. A lot of people who meet during this time meet as they are both starting out work. This phase is a little more difficult, because some careers are going to take a lot of time and energy to establish. There are issues that can arise in a woman's life at each of those stages that makes it hard for her to ride the wave to matrimony. After that, the pickings get slim, because a large proportion of the people in your age/social marriage class have gotten married. I think there is a fourth wave, the divorce wave starting in the 40's, and then finally a widowed wave. I'm not sure which wave you rode Mary, but after 35, things get really difficult on the dating scene, no way to sugar coat it. Men who want and are able to accomodate committed relationships tend to get into them by the time they reach 35 or so. Notice I said TEND, this is just a generalization and there are exceptions. And therein lies the challenge, you are looking for the exception in the haystack. They are there, but you have to root around, which is an emotionally trying and time consuming process. If your friends are really serious about the hunt for a good relationship, they will have to do some rather "unpleasant" marketing of themselves, and they will need all the support they can get from you. You are the perfect one to give it, since you're not the "competition." My best friends have been absolute gems this year supporting me trying to find someone decent to date and have a relationship with. It is just unbelievably hard but I won't go on and on about it here because that isn't the subject of this post. I just wanted to tell you Mary that your friends are lucky that they have you. I would have curled up and died long ago had it not been for my wonderful friends. BTW, a book that I have been using to assist me is called "How to Find a Husband After 35, Using What I Learned in Harvard Business School." It is one of the most "out there" books you will ever find on the subject of dating, but I don't mind it so much, you don't have to agree with everything the author writes about. Basically the author's premise is that you can use the same guerilla marketing techniques someone might use to get a new project or business going to get a marriage going. Having worked in a situation where I reviewed lots of resumes, interviewed and hired lots of people, I can say that I do believe that the two processes are similar. I've had to market myself in order to get a job, and I've used my techniques to help friends get jobs. So tell your friends if they can get a job, they can get a man, and if they can make a good "hire" they can choose the right partner. That approach sounds cold and calculating, and to some exent it is, but the book also has lots of suggestions on how to reach out to your friends and neighbors to assist them in your "quest" which for me has actually been kind of spiritually uplifting. My friends now all know I am looking to get married and they are being very supportive. Another book I found helpful that I picked up in the bargin book bin was "The Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments" and it is written by a rabbi who used the spiritual guides of the Ten Commandments as starting points for a series of essays on male/female relationships. See, that book really isn't about "dating" as much as relationships, but which would sell better, "The DATING Secrets of the Ten Commandments" or "The RELATIONSHIP Secrets of the Ten Commandments." One is a racy anomaly, one sounds preachy. It's all about marketing! :-) Anyway, the rabbi doesn't take himself too seriously, there are a lot of funny bits in the book with some of the serious ideas. It is a little on the schmaltzy side, a little overdone, but there are a few pearls in there.

Renovation Sanity Recipe: 100 lbs of HUMOR, 50 lbs of SELF DEPRECATION (to ignite more humor) 20 cups of EXAGGERATION his helps the humor to be funny to others. a tablespoon of BAD TEMPER. I know it is easy to dumb all the bad temper in but use no more than a teaspoon with loved ones. I speak from doing this recipe BAD TEMPER almost ruined my reno. Too much can burn the entire recipe. 4 cups of MAKE IT EASY for yourself. Dinners out, easy meals, visit friends for dinner stop the hunger. Hungry people can be mean!!! 200 lbs of FANTASY, imagination or creative dreaming This helps to bond the other ingredients into a visual plan) Dream about what it will look like with your eyes closed while sitting in bed. Dream before bed and when you wake. 50 lbs of GW Kitchens. This is the place to find encouragement. Ecouragement is a huge ingredient often over looked. You can dump in 1000 lbs. It will only help. 100 lbs of BE GOOD TO YOU. This is hard to find. You might have to shop around or look high and love. You might need to visit Sephora for perfume, a new lipstick or maybe a kitchen store to buy a trinket. Bubble baths if you have running water, a nice walk, yoga, medidate, hug your dog, paint your toenails, take a nap, put your feet up... Keep looking you will find BE GOOD TO YOU. It comes in various shapes and sizes. 1 adult BEVERAGE to easy those vicious moments and put a smile on your face. Okay maybe three but more than 3 and you might find the reno gets worked on and things are not measured correctly. A handful of MUSIC. Whatever makes you smile Dave Matthews, B52s, Blk Eyed peas, Outkast, Rollingstones, Taylor Swift... Doesn't matter just so long as you play some. Music truly soothes my beast side. 100 SMILES a day Even if you have to force them. Especially to children who are sort of lost in the dust a smile helps them see you are not the mean reno lady. 1000 lbs of PATIENCE. I know this to is truly hard to come by. And for me this was the most expensive part of my reno recipe. I found myself running out of it all the time. I lost patience even after I got some. It would disappear when I saw the dent in the wall, the range sticking out too far, the floor restaind for the 3rd time, the unbalanced shelves, the cabinets, the refrig, the wires getting stuck, the .....AHHHH I had better stop or I'll run out of the patience I just got. Don't want to looooose it. Anyway, You are not alone. Maybe this recipe can help you. ~boxerpups

Mom was a good cook. (Aren't all Moms good cooks?) We lived on a small farm during final days of the Depression and through WW2. She made many meals from scratch. During the early '40s, she baked much of our bread, and cornbread, too. Fruit cobblers were popular, made with blackberries, peaches, or apples. For breakfast, it was fried meat, biscuits, gravy, and fruit jelly. The butter was home made. All her cooking was done on a wood burning stove except for a couple of years, we had kerosene kitchen stove for cooking and canning. That was ditched because it was too dangerous to have in the house. There was potential for the gravity fed kerosene to flood and spill out. If this happened while a burner was lighted, a fire would soon follow and our house would be gone. That appliance was moved out of the house. If we had a "summer kitchen", it could have gone in there. (Summer kitchens did burn down on occasion. and that was the reason for having a small cheap shack separate from the house for a summer kitchen. It also kept the cooking heat out of the house during hot weather. Mom learned her trade from her mother who had been born in Missouri during the Civil War. After that war, the family moved to Arkansas for about 15 years and then on to the new State of Oklahoma in 1909. Fish from local streams was part of their diet as was for our's during the warm months. Mother loved to catch a 'mess' of fish in the afternoon and prepare those for the evening meal. In those times, we did not have refrigeration, but that mattered not since Mom's policy was to use only fresh caught fish. At present, when I view the stream we fished, I find that it has become too polluted to employ the practices we once did.