Does it seem to you like we just finished observing Memorial Day? School is back in session, to the relief of 99.9% of all parents, unless of course, that parent teaches school.  Before we know it Thanksgiving will be here along with the cold wind, snow and stuffed turkeys.

While thinking about the holidays something struck me as a little off about the upcoming Labor Day holiday. Is it just my opinion or do we celebrate it in an odd way?

For instance, on Thanksgiving we give thanks; on Christmas we honor the Birth of Christ; on Valentines Day we send out valentines; etc. But on Labor Day, the holiday that was meant to honor the working man and woman, we celebrate it by not working. I’m sorry but that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Of course I’m not complaining. Nobody enjoys not working more than I do. I’m merely pointing out the oxymoron.

There is some controversy on who actually started the Labor Day holiday. Records show that a man named Peter J. McGuire who was a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor was the first to suggest a day to honor all workers. Other records show that Matthew McGuire who was a machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York proposed the holiday. However, it could have come about by the first wildcat strike where the workers simply walked off the job and declared it a holiday, and yes I made that last part up.

But whatever the origin of the first Labor Day, it has been celebrated for over 100 years by workers not working on that day.

Congress made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894. I’m guessing they wanted to stay home and watch the opening college football games on ESPN.

The first Monday in September is set aside as a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country, the most painful contribution being in the form of federal income taxes.

The first proposal of the holiday set the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day which included street parades, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.

Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday, as well as a great emphasis on fashion rules. As most of us know, Labor Day marks the last day of the year that we should wear white. However there are those daring men and women who flout this age old tradition, completely at their own fashion peril. People like Colonel Sanders, scientists in their little white lab coats, and other people like myself who rate the importance of fashion rules on the same level with plastic wrap.

And of course, here in south, it wouldn’t be Labor Day, or any other holiday without fireworks. The Boomsday Festival, one of the biggest fireworks displays in the Southeastern United States, has been held annually on Labor Day since 1986 in Knoxville, Tennessee. The festival attracts over 350,000 spectators. 2010 marks its 23rd annual Boomsday event. What good Southerner worth his salt wouldn’t want to see the “smoke on the water”, the spectacular “waterfall” and other fireworks displays, all choreographed to patriotic and contemporary music.

And what could be more fun on the last holiday weekend of the summer than being in the midst of 350,000 screaming people, listening to loud music and watching gunpowder explode?

No matter how you celebrate the holiday, I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Labor Day Weekend.

Often, when Ryan isn’t here she likes to lie on my computer tower and watch me type. And she loves to hide and watch us look for her. She can find the tiniest cubbyhole where she curls up and waits quietly while she watches us search for her. I know she is laughing at us. In the photo below, I had looked for her for about five minutes, all over the house, and all that time she was in one of the little cubbyholes in Wayne’s desk. She just looked at me like: “Go Away!” when I finally spied her.

We still haven’t introduced her to the dogs yet. I’m too afraid they’ll hurt one another. However, they have spied her sitting in the window, but when we let them in, we put Miss Kitty in the bedroom and shut the door. Don’t judge me; I’m just trying to prevent a war.

P.S. Thanks to all of you who visited Rosie at her blog,  Smokey Mountain Breakdown  and left your condolences on the recent loss of her beloved cocker spaniel, Fat Buddy. Your kindness will never be forgotten.

Often, when someone loses a beloved pet, we just shrug it off and think ‘it was just an animal’. But as all pet owners know, losing them is like losing a member of the family.

I have a friend who just lost a friend — one that she has had for the past fourteen years. She is sad and I can sympathize with her. I have been where she is, several times before. I’m sure many of you have if you’ve ever owned a pet that was your constant companion.

I cried when I read the tribute she posted on her blog to Fat Buddy. Over the years she has posted lots of stories about him and those of us who read her blog feel that we know him too.

Rosie’s blog is titled Smokey Mountain Breakdown and if you have a moment, please drop by and leave her a comment in memory of Fat Buddy. I’m sure it will make her feel a little less alone in her grief. That’s the only sad thing about having bloggy friends — we can’t be there in person to give them a hug and offer our help. We can only give them our words. But sometimes, that’s enough.

Do you actually feel this is the kind of reporting that will win you a Pulitzer? Although it does raise a few questions, they are the same ones we ask ourselves all the time.

For instance, I will never understand why young beautiful girls would rather date “bad boys” — boys who pose nude for Playgirl, and knock up teenage girls.  I think a lot of young girls actually enjoy driving their mother crazy. Worrying her to the point where she runs for vice-president, believes she can see Russia from her back yard, and uses made-up words like refudiate, on Twitter.

The media is all abuzz over Bristol Palin and her off again, on again, off again engagement to her baby daddy Levi  Johnston.  I am sorry that he was such a douche, and that he waited until they got reengaged before he told her that he had another kid with another teenage girl, but gee whiz. Is this news?

She was just like every other teenage girl in America. Is this something that the media should swarm all over, like a bunch of killer bees? It’s the same old story — just a different girl.

Down through the ages, parents have warned their daughters against dating “bad boys”. Young pretty girls who could probably date any one of the nice boys in their class: like the math whiz with the gianormous glasses; or the science geek with the Einstein hair; or perhaps the school Chess Champion. But noooo!  They choose to date the vampire, or the reform school graduate, who probably received his varsity letter for outstanding achievement in auto theft or grand larceny.

This kind of thing happens every day and I’m sorry but it doesn’t equal headline news.

Chelsea Clinton’s wedding is another bit of news that is not real news.  The look on my face right now is the look of me not caring. I couldn’t care less about the wedding or the after-party. For three days prior to the wedding the media swarmed around the former First Family, reporting on everything from who was planning to attend the wedding, to the kind of clothes the family wore each time they left the hotel. I really didn’t care that former president, Bill Clinton, greeted the media the day before the wedding dressed in blue jeans and a casual shirt. Nothing he could wear would be newsworthy now — not after he wore Monica Lewinsky around the oval office.

Another thing I don’t care about is Lindsy Lohan’s jail time and that the judge ordered her to attend rehab. We have a lot of drunks and addicts in our town. I pass people on the street every day who should be in rehab. I’ve even worked with a few of them, but it has never been considered news.

And today the headlines read, Interview: Woods’ ex-wife went ‘through hell’. Well, honey, a lot of us have. Suck it up and get over it. Life does go on. I “went through hell” three times, but it didn’t make headlines. And my exes were even worse skuzzbags than Tiger Woods…if that were possible I mean.  Don’t make me demand equal coverage.

And don’t even get me started on Kate and her eight or the baby-spewing octomom.

So In closing, Media People, please go find some real news and report it. Frankly I’m tired of all this fluff.

Thank you,
A disinterested reader

This week the theme for Theme Thursday is the word equal. If you have time hop over to the website and see what others have to say about equal.

Did you know that dogs can now have plastic surgery? According to a news article I read in a Seattle newspaper, written by Mei-Ling Hopgood of Cox News Service, a Veterinarian Edgado Brito who lives in Brazil has been performing plastic surgery on pets for some time now. Surgery like tightening up the jaw line, enhancing the eyelashes with botox injections, straightening bent or protruding ears, and all types of procedures that basically beautify the pet. According to the article, “Brito says animal health is his top concern, but beauty also is important to the animal’s well-being. Brito said that if the owner thinks the dog is attractive, the relationship is better.”

Now as a dog lover myself I feel that our dogs deserve the very best treatment we can give them, but I am going to go out on a limb here and say that most dogs don’t care what they look like. I don’t think they worry too much about wrinkles and a sagging jawline. At least I’ve never seen Shadow stand before a mirror and cry. Neither has Sheeba and she’s a girl dog.

And not only can dogs have their faces lifted, their tummies tucked and their eyelids paralysed with poison botox injections, they can even get braces to straighten their teeth and give them that lovely Colgate smile that all dogs obviously long for. If you search the Internet for Veterinary Dentistry, you’ll find hundreds of websites that offer lists of Pet Orthodontists and lists of products to freshen your dog’s breath and make their teeth whiter.

But the biggest shocker of all was the vast number of websites I found that sell designer clothing for dogs, such as doggie T-shirts, doggie dresses, doggie hats and even doggie coats. Well duh! Doesn’t a dog come with a coat already? Mine did. Anyway the latest fashion trend is the reversible doggie fur coat. (I’m hoping here that the coat is made out of some kind of synthetic fur and not real animal fur…like…maybe cat fur. Wouldn’t the poor dog chase himself until he fell over if you put something like that on him? ) Incidentally a little pink denim ‘doggie dress’ sells for a mere $45.00 and a reversible fur coat sells for around $65.00.

People what is wrong with this picture!? When did we start humiliating our dogs this way by dressing them in people clothes that make them look ridiculous? And the doggie clothes cost more than a child’s wardrobe for an entire school year. When did we start buying braces for our dog’s teeth and having their faces and bodies remodeled?

Things like this make me want to turn over in my grave…if I was dead, I mean. Has the world gone crazy? Wait, don’t answer that. I’m just happy that the original Lassie isn’t around to see this. But then, who knows? Perhaps Lassie might like dressing up like Paris Hilton.

Cute dogs wearing clothes in China
See more comedy videos.

Well heck yeah!

On Thursday night, I was at my computer when my router-DSL-box-thingy — whatever it’s called — suddenly went from all green lights to one red light and I could no longer access the internet.

I unplugged the box and waited the required minute then plugged it back in — this is supposed to reset the service — but this time it didn’t. I tried the reset button located in the back of the box. This didn’t work either. I checked all the terminals, checked that the phone was still working — I have my DSL service through the phone company — the phone still had service.

After all this, I gave up and called Technical Service and they immediately confirmed the problem. My router-DSL-box-thingy wasn’t working.

Tech service informed me that I would need to order a new box from the phone company and that it would take up to four business days for it to arrive via UPS. Since it was the weekend, that meant that my Internet service would be down until I received the new router-box-thingy around Wednesday or Thursday.

A whole week without being able to access the Internet. I didn’t know if I’d survive or not, but I sighed, sucked it up and waited.

Day one wasn’t too bad. I busied myself with other things like cleaning the house a little more thoroughly as opposed to the lick and promise I usually give it. I cleaned cobwebs and mopped under the refrigerator and cleaned behind the couch. I quickly became bored with cleaning and decided to read.

On day two, I read a book by Dave Barry which made me laugh out loud, but then it made me sad because it reminded me of some of my favorite funny blogs and I wondered what great posts I was missing. I went to bed early and slept and dreamed that my Internet friends had all deserted me, and that no one had sent an email or commented on my blog.

I woke up crying on day three. I decided to go shopping for some personal items that I needed, like hair color and underwear. Wayne needed to buy some arrows for his bow so he could get in a little archery practice before deer season opens next month so we went to Wal-Mart. This made me sad because I saw a few people who would have looked great on the www.peopleofwalmart.com web site.

Day four dawned grey and gloomy. I sat by the window for hours staring at the empty road, wishing for the UPS truck to come. I told Wayne that this made me sad and he threw a box of tissue at me and told me to chug on over to Mamby Pamby Land and see if I could find some self confidence. Then he called me a ‘jack wagon” and a “cry baby”. Or that might have been coming from the TV. At this point I was having a hard time distinguishing between reality and imagination.

The morning of day five, I was sure that my box would come. I sat beside the window and suddenly a brown UPS vehicle came into view. It slowly drove past my house. I ran outside and what followed was like the sad closing scene from the old 1953 Western film “Shane,” where Joey runs after Shane as he rides away, and shouts, “Shane, come back! Shane!” Only I was chasing the UPS truck instead of a man on a horse.

I threw myself face-down on the bed and cried. I knew I just had be able to log in to my blog soon. I began to worry that it might burn down or that someone might break in and trash it. Oh my Gosh! Did I remember to unplug the iron? And I think I left the coffee pot on…

Wayne woke me a couple hours later and handed me a box. “The UPS guy left this on the back porch. I think it’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

I grabbed the package, ripped it open, flew to my office, plugged it in and suddenly I had green lights — and Internet service! I’ll write a blog post soon. Right now I’m too busy dancing a jig.

*

Mother and Son

The child is like clay
in the palm of our hand;
we shape him and mold him
the best that we can.

We chip and we chisel,
we smooth out the rough,
and yet we still wonder
if we’ve done well enough.

By the time we have finished,
the man is full grown;
we have reached our objective:
he is now on his own

to make his own choices,
to choose his own fate.
He is master of the masterpiece
we strove to create.

This week the theme for Theme Thursday is the word “Palm”.  Drop by the website and read what the others have to say about the word palm.  Happy Theme Thursday everyone.

According to the Teen Choice Awards which were held in Universal City, CA on Sunday, Aug. 8 — vampires rule. The “Twilight Saga” dominated last Sunday’s ceremony with 12 wins, including choice fantasy movie and villain, while “The Vampire Diaries” raked in seven awards at the taped ceremony, which aired Monday night on Fox. Besides the bazillion cougars twilight moms who are falling all over themselves over both the books and the movies, and totally embarrassing their kids, the Twilight Saga is reported to have a huge teenage following as well.

Actually, vampire shows have been popular to some extent for a long time.  And I will confess that I loved the TV series “Angel,” but that was only because of David Boreanaz.  But lately it seems that vampire novels, vampire-based TV shows and movies about vampires have basically taken over the entertainment sector. In fact, vampires are becoming worse than detectives and doctors at hogging the airwaves.

I blame Stephenie Meyer for all this. She shouldn’t have written the Twilight book series in the first place. What business did she have, writing all those bestsellers and becoming one of the hottest authors of our time, plus getting all famous and filthy rich off the movie rights… According to her biography, she claims the idea for Twilight, the first book of the series, came to her in a dream. Pffft! And she’s a Mormon, for God’s sake!

Don’t you roll your eyes at me! I am not jealous. Okay, maybe I am a little jealous. Okay, a lot jealous. Fine. It makes me want to punch something. I’ve had lots of interesting dreams before and I could totally be a Mormon.

Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah, the book series…

That’s what  revived the vampire craze. Then the books were followed by movies based on the  books.  This spawned a deluge of new TV shows like: The Gates, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and on and on…

Give us a break already.

I think there may even be vampire questions on our college SATs in the future.

Perhaps questions like:

“Two vampires are at the train station. One vampire boards train A and the other vampire boards train B. Both trains leave the station at exactly 10:30. Which vampire brushed his teeth that morning?”

Of course the answer is “neither”.  Have you ever witnessed a vampire brushing his teeth in any of these shows? Ever seen them use mouthwash or floss their fangs?

Being immortal is no excuse for poor oral hygiene.  Just wait until they get a cavity in one of those fangs, then they’ll bloody-well wish they’d paid more attention to the four out of five dentists who are always recommending stuff.

Actually now that I think of it, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one of them take a shower either. They just hang around in the dark all the time wearing black leather jackets or overcoats, waiting for the sun to set so they can go out for a bite.

And speaking of going out for a bite, it’s almost noon and I can’t wait to read another chapter of “Breaking Dawn” — the last book in the Twilight Series — while I eat my lunch. Yeah, I know. I’m a hypocrite.

What’s in a name

Names are good. I like names. Without them we wouldn’t know when someone was talking to us, or for that matter, when they were talking about us. If everyone shared the same name, it would be impossible to spread a rumor about a person. We’d find ourselves on both sides of the gossip fence at the same time.

If we all had the same name, how would we comprehend the news reports? How would we know which politician was lying to us or having an affair or mismanaging our government funds…well, actually we could probably just close our eyes and pick one, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make here.

What I’m trying to say is, names can often be confusing. Like the names of restaurants for example. Say you went out to dinner on Saturday evening to TGI Friday’s Restaurant. And suppose you ate a Sundae for dessert. You go back to work on Monday morning and your co-worker friend asks you about your weekend.

FRIEND: “Where did you have dinner Saturday?”
YOU: “Friday’s.”
FRIEND: “No, Saturday!”
YOU: “Yeah. Friday’s! You’ve gotta try their Sundaes.”
FRIEND: “Neener, neener, neeener. You’re stupid and I’m not talking to you any more!”

And the names of food. This can be confusing as well. You can have Kentucky Fried Chicken in New Jersey, A new York Strip Steak in Idaho, Philadelphia Cream Cheese in Texas, and a Chicago Style pizza in, of all places, Chicago.

I’m almost inclined to believe that the entire English language is messed up. You can drive through the bank window, but you can’t drive through a parked car. (unless you have loads of auto insurance and a good reason). You can stand for what you believe in and still remain seated, you can fall asleep while lying down, and you can lie while standing up.

Then there’s that thing with the escalator and elevator. Our dictionary tells us that the words: elevate and escalate mean “to rise, to go up, to ascend toward the top”. So, why do we still call them elevators and escalators when they’re going down? I’m sorry but that’s just wrong.

And what about that time when you needed to get your hair done, or when you needed to see a dentist or a doctor on short notice? The receptionist looked at you all hateful like and said, “I’m sorry we can’t accept walk ins.” Then you wondered if you should have crawled into the office, or perhaps slithered in on your belly like the earth worm she is making you feel like.

And who ever started referring to Pepsi and Coke products as ‘soft drinks’? I dropped a case of Mountain dew on my foot the other day and believe me there was nothing soft about it.

And what about all these eponymous diseases, like Lou Gehrig’s disease, Hartnup’s disease, Mortimer’s disease, all named for the patients who first got the disease. Or Addison’s disease named for Thomas Addison, the British physician who invented the light bulb…(no wait that was Thomas Edison) Anyway, I’m sure it was not a life long dream of these people to grow up and become a disease.

So, in the immortal words of Juliet, “A rose by any other name would probably be a weed,” or some such nonsense.

I’ve been away from my blog for a few days and when I checked out the comments today, I discovered over six hundred comments in the spam folder.

Before I delete the spam messages I always check to make sure that they are indeed spam. I love getting comments on my blog and the last thing I would ever want to do is to delete a real one from a potential blogger friend or follower. I have the blog set to hold all the messages (from first-time commenters only) for moderation. After the first comment is approved by me, any additional comments from that ip address are posted to the blog immediately.

While checking through the comments that needed to be moderated, I came across the following message that even though it was spam, it struck me as so hilarious I just had to share it with the rest of you.

male-sexual-styles.com
mattcut90@gmail.com
67.159.23.59 2010/08/05 at 4:31 am
I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia penis enlargement and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forum! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. penis enlargement They’re coming back now. vimax Please send help! nitip penis enlargement mattcut90@gmail.com  vimax   http:// www.I removed the link to their website]

Approve | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | Spam | Trash

So, am I supposed to categorize this coment as spam or a subliminal message? Maybe I should send an email to this person and ask them.  But then again, I don’t know if I want to mess around with the Russian Mafia.

And I certainly don’t need an enlarged penis. Or another fruitcake.