Thoughts on lawn mowing

I think that this will probably be my final blog entry for this semester. I might do one more, but I don't know yet. I am sitting here, typing this, thinking about what I want to say and listening to the lawn mower. It is not a self-propelled one, and my husband is out in the front yard, pushing the mower through grass that is not terribly high, but it still looks like he is putting a lot of effort into shoving the mower through the grass.

That is the one chore that I ask him to do around the house. I do everything except take out the garbage (and I do that sometimes, if necessary) and mow the lawn. The garbage is supposed to be dealt with by my son, but that doesn't always happen, sometimes we get busy, sometimes he is sick, sometimes we both forget about it. When those things happen, either I step in and do it, or on the occassions when we both forget, it just doesn't get done. But mowing the lawn, now that is a bit harder to forget. If you forget to mow the lawn, the grass gets really tall and the neighbors complain and call the city on you, and they come out and give you a nasty notice and seven days to cut it or they take you to court and fine you. If you forget to take out the garbage, yes you kitchen might start to smell, but no one is going to take you to court for it and fine you.

But, there are some similarities between un-dealt-with garbage and unmown grass. They both keep growing whether you deal with them or not. They both get higher and higher until finally, they both get fuzzy and kind of shaggy looking. They both also blow around in the breeze if there is enough of them.

If you let grass grow long enough, it becomes a wonderful hiding place for vermin. Garbage acts much the same way. Vermin like large piles of trash. One major difference, though. Your grass won't start smelling wretched if it gets two feet high. A garbage pile will harbor the most awful smells. Vegetable garbage and grass clippings both make good compost, however, and compost heaps can smell pretty fragrant, so I guess that rotting grass is in fact similar to rotting garbage in the smell category.

Good divorce?

There is a new kind of divorce that is gaining popularity. It really seems to be a viable alternative to the typical knock-down drag-out divorces that most of us are accustomed to. It is where people actually sit down and talk. And listen. And then try to work out what is going to be the best solution for everybody involved. There is no yelling, no screaming, no arguing. It's all very civil. It's called "collaborative divorce".

In a collaborative divorce, the parties involved must seek out an attorney that is specially trained to handle this type of case. Often, the divorcing couple is introduced to not only lawyers, but also financial planners and other professionals as needed to help them take stock of themselves and their assets, and to help them figure out how they can live after the divorce.

Persons going through a collaborative divorce typically never appear in court. There is no need for that as everything is worked out between the parties, and there is no need to go in front of a judge and duke it out. Collaborative divorce is easier on everyone involved, both financially and emotionally, and it is based on respect, both for each other and for yourselves. Many people who have started the process of a collaborative divorce hating each other have come out the other side of the divorce as close friends, still involved in each others lives, and both still very much involved in their children's lives. If a divorce can be a good thing, the collaborative divorce comes closest to a positive divorce as anything I have ever seen.

Woo-hoo

Today was the Beltane celebration at our church. We belong to an earth-based Pagan themed UU group. We meet every Sunday afternoon, but we really go all out to celebrate our high holidays, about every eight weeks or so. This holiday was extra-special for me because my best friend and her daughter were able to be here with us. I had not seen them for a while, so it was good to see her, and her new tattoo. I'm always excited to see new tattoos and hear the stories behind them.

Today, in honor of Beltane, we had a maypole (of course! What is a May celebration without a maypole?!) and after the dancing of the maypole, we had a potluck dinner. We always have a potluck dinner after the rituals on our high holidays. We have a very diverse group of people that attend our rituals, so we have a very wide variety of foods at the potlucks. Desserts are of course the most popular and the most plentiful. There are vegan dishes, vegetarian dishes, and "regular" dishes with meat in them. It's always fun to see what people bring. Tonight we had the most wonderful home-made feta and goat cheese balls. Wow, they were great! I like feta! And, it seems that I like goat cheese, too. :-) I am mostly a vegetarian, so I was very happy to find there were mostly vegeterian dishes tonight.

Since I last posted here, my family has gotten a dog. He is half husky and half german sheppard (we think anyway. We are not completely certain about the german sheppard part. He looks a lot like a wolf.) He is about 80 pounds right now, and the top of his head comes to my hip when we are standing side by side. I am 5'9" tall, if that gives you any indication of how high the dogs head comes. He is a beautiful dog and really smart. I am not normally a big dog person, but he is a really neat dog. He likes to play this stomping game. First he will stomp his front feet at me and then he wants me to stomp back at him. When I do, he takes off running around the yard like a maniac, barking joyously the entire time. The one bad thing that I have found so far is that his claws are extremely sharp, and he is not shy about using them. That and he drools...

Ok, this is probably going to sound a lot like an advert for a product here, and in a way, I suppose it is. Feel free to read along, or not.

As some of you know, I suffer from ecxema. My hands are covered with it (and often are dry, scaly, itchy, cracked and bleeding) and my right elbow is normally an awful, scaly, itchy mass of disgustingness.

Several weeks ago, I was directed toward a place that was offering free samples of their product, Skin MD Natural Shielding Lotion, to bloggers. We were to use the product then write an honest review of it in our blogs. Well, having tried everything else under the sun (and some things under the moon, too) I figured it couldn't hurt and I requested a sample. Just a few short days later, a small package arrived on my front porch. Let me say that I was expecting a sample. You know, a handful of those little foil packets that you open and after the first use, it dries out and you can't use it anymore. Well, there were some of those in there, but there was also a 4 fl. oz. bottle of the stuff. I was already pleasantly surprised.

I quickly scanned the back of the bottle and it said to use a small amount of the lotion initially every 2-8 hours until moisture level in skin improves and then every 12 to 24 hours after that. I immediately started out by squirting a big gob on the back of my hand and rubbing it in. I had dispensed enough for both hands and both of my elbows. They are right--a little goes a long way! I admit to being skeptical about the lotion as I was rubbing it into my hands. It is very thin and I didn't think that something that insubstantial could possibly work. It absorbs very quickly and is not greasy at all.

After a few days of use, I started to notice a little bit of a white residue on my hands a few minutes after applying the lotion, but after a few more days, that went away. After a couple of weeks of using the lotion, my hands had completely stopped itching and they were no longer cracked and bleeding. Another week or so and most of the redness was gone, too and my hands looked almost normal for the first time in literally years. I have continued to use the lotion twice a day (except for an experiment that I am still regretting and will mention later).

Now, my elbow has been another story. It was really bad. I mean really bad. So bad that children and many adults shied away from it and even my MD was slightly grossed out by it. I have used the lotion on my elbow just as religiously as on my hands but for a long time I noticed no changes.

After several weeks, finally the redness started going away on my elbow. The next thing that happened was that some of the larger scaley areas were going away and now, many weeks into using the lotion, the elbow now just looks extremely dry. It is slowly getting better, like I mentioned earlier, it was really bad. I used Eucerin, Cetaphil, olive oil, vitamin E, sweet almond oil, jojoba, shea and cocoa butters, Jergins Extra Dry Skin lotion and I don't know how many other things and none of them have even come close to doing what this lotion has done for my elbow (or my hands either). I am sold on this stuff and I am looking forward to the time when my elbow looks as good as my hands do. I am confident that it will get there eventually. My only regret is that I did not take before photos to show what my skin looked like before.

Ok, now for my experiment. I stopped using the lotion on my hands for about 3 days because the weather had warmed up some and I wanted to see what would happen. Well, I found out. The ecxema returned even worse than it had been before. My hands itched so bad I couldn't help scratching them, and unfortunately scratched them raw in a few places. My knuckles split and bled and the backs of my hands cracked open and bled in many places. I have been using the lotion again for a few days now and the itchiness is gone, but the extreme dryness is still there. I know it will take about another week for that to clear up again. And then a few days more for all the scabs to go away again.

I forgot to mention that the scent of this lotion is very light, almost not detectable by my allergy-ridden nose, but it is not a girly scent at all.

http://www.skinmdnatural.com/

My goofy kid

Here is an updated photo of my son. He will be 10 in July. His hair has been trimmed, but not cut since he was 5 years old. It comes down past his waist now. I'm telling you, nothing gets a mother yelled at quite as much as having a long-haired son. :-)

Life is like a cliffhanger...

It's not that I stopped posting, just that I posted a bunch of stuff and then went back through and deleted all the posts. I left a few, but they are all older. Since I posted last, I finished my AA degree. Yay! I also enrolled in a local University which I have come to regret having done. I will have to explain that some other time. I am going to post a link here for anyone who cares. It's to my other blog. My "real" blog, where I have friends and other blogs that I subscribe to, I put all of my "serious" postings there now and I update it fairly regularly. Over there you can read the entries on my friends page and find out just how whacked I really am. :-) (Trust me, I'm pretty strange!)

loraca.livejournal.com should get you there. Be warned, I am a Pagan and so are most of my friends, so some of the content of my own posts there and the posts of my friends may be offensive to some people. If you are not one of those people, then please feel free to check it out.

Here is some stuff that I wrote in another blog posting that was closed to everyone but my friends. I wanted to post it here, too, though.

I am uncertain what to write. I had many thoughts a few minutes ago, but now I am drawing a blank. For anyone who doesn’t know and who actually cares, I am a student at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. I am technically a junior there, but there are some mix-ups with my transcripts, so the admissions office claims that I am only a sophomore. They are smokin’ crack in the bus station bathroom is what they are doing. I probably will not be returning to UMKC in the fall because of all the problems I have had with them. First the admissions problems, and then the financial aid office took away more than half my FA, making me owe the school over a thousand dollars now. Over a thousand dollars that I do not have.

If I had that much money laying around, I could afford to turn the furnace up to a decent temperature and not be sitting here right now with finger and toenail beds that are purple because I am so cold. If I had that much money laying around, maybe I could afford to buy a crappy car so that I could go places and do things while my husband is at work and school.

I was actually accepted at Tulane university and given a $25,000 scholarship there, which I stupidly turned down. I decided that I didn’t want to uproot my 9-year-old son again and move him down to New Orleans while I finished my degree. Now, part of me wishes that I would have done that. Tulane is an excellent school to be graduated from. And, had I done that, the last 5 months of my life would have turned out MUCH different. Better? I don’t know about that, but I do know that my life would be different right now. Want to know why?

Sorry, you will have to wait for the next great installment of...

loraca’s great cliffhanger!

The "Castle"

We finally got back over to Sauer Castle to take some pictures and I wanted to post one or two here. It's very cool. Not really a castle in the traditional sense, really just a big red brick mansion, but it's still neat.

I am waiting for my husband and son to get home right now. They should have been back a long time ago and I am starting to get irritated. It's 12:30 in the morning and my son should have been in bed two hours ago.

I have previously mentioned that at the church we go to, my husband met up with one of his old Navy friends, a woman named Kris. They like to play D&D so on Sundays my husband and son go over there and play for a while. They are normally home by 11:00 or so, so our son is only a half hour late getting to bed, which is not so bad, but tonight, they are WAY later than that. I guess I need to call over there and see when they are coming home.

Anyway, I will post this picture and then go call over there and raise hell...

Enjoy the castle.

Enneagrams

I have taken the Enneagram before, but I think it is fun every once in a while to go back and take it again to see if I have changed any. I have been a Type 5 for a LONG time now. Here is the description of a Type 5:


The Observer

your Enneagram type is FIVE.

"I need to understand the world"

Observers have a need for knowledge and are introverted, curious, analytical, and insightful.

How to Get Along with Me:

Be independent, not clingy.
Speak in a straightforward and brief manner.
I need time alone to process my feelings and thoughts.
Remember that If I seem aloof, distant, or arrogant, it may be that I am feeling uncomfortable.
Make me feel welcome, but not too intensely, or I might doubt your sincerity.
If I become irritated when I have to repeat things, it may be because it was such an effort to get my thoughts out in the first place.
don't come on like a bulldozer.
Help me to avoid my pet peeves: big parties, other people's loud music, overdone emotions, and intrusions on my privacy.

What I Like About Being a Five :

standing back and viewing life objectively
coming to a thorough understanding; perceiving causes and effects
my sense of integrity: doing what I think is right and not being influenced by social pressure
not being caught up in material possessions and status
being calm in a crisis

What's Hard About Being a Five:

being slow to put my knowledge and insights out in the world
feeling bad when I act defensive or like a know-it-all
being pressured to be with people when I don't want to be
watching others with better social skills, but less intelligence or technical skill, do better professionally

Fives as Children Often:

spend a lot of time alone reading, making collections, and so on
have a few special friends rather than many
are very bright and curious and do well in school
have independent minds and often question their parents and teachers
watch events from a detached point of view, gathering information
assume a poker face in order not to look afraid
are sensitive; avoid interpersonal conflict
feel intruded upon and controlled and/or ignored and neglected

Fives as Parents:

are often kind, perceptive, and devoted
are sometimes authoritarian and demanding
may expect more intellectual achievement than is developmentally appropriate
may be intolerant of their children expressing strong emotions

Today

I'm tired today, but can't go to bed for another hour and a half or more, which will put it almost 4:00 am in my time zone. Sometimes having my husband working only 3 minutes away from home is a pain! He likes to come home for lunch, which I understand, but I don't always want to be up that late/early.

We had a homeschoolers get together this morning. The kids played games with a parachute, they got wrapped all up in big stretchy-fabric circles and played games in there, they learned about finding things in common with other people, that we are all connected. It was actually pretty neat. The adults just got to watch, but it was still nice to get him out of the house and playing with other kids.

He is having a grand time playing with James, the boy he met at church. They have a lot of fun together, and even when they disagree, they manage to work it out themselves fairly quickly and move on to the next thing. I think that's pretty neat.

After the homeschool party, we had to go to the laundromat and do our laundry. The attendant listens to a christian music station and one of the songs said something about looking into Jesus' big blue eyes and looking at his curly brown hair. Jesus didn't have blue eyes. People seem to have forgotten that Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew. He was not a blue eyed Northern European. He was dark skinned, dark eyed and dark haired. I just think it's kind of funny how people's perceptions cloud what they believe.