Hmmm

The fact that there is actually a need for this kind of thing is disturbing....How to Behave Professionally on Social Media

Awesome Teachers

I didn't have teachers like this in highschool. This is so cute. Watch as other students race by and never give it away or even acknowledge it is happening.

Teachers Dancing

My Party

Vacation ended with a thud. No, I didn't have barrels of fun. I enjoyed the canoe trip. I enjoyed seeing members of my family, including a new great niece and nephew. I visited Jerry's brother and sister on the way home.

It was nice to see them but Jerry's brother was so like him that it was a dagger to the heart. I thought I was going to die. I fell apart, embarrassingly so, and I've felt out of sync ever since Thursday, as if I've been thrown back in time. For two hours afterward I was simply unable to stand up and went to bed at the hotel, leaving Mike outside. Even today I'm barely able to function and I've had a migraine since Saturday.

Jerry's niece came home with us and is staying for a bit with Becca and Dave. I invited Becca and Kim to lunch yesterday because I thought it might make me feel better. I was going insane alone here in the house. Becca invited me to lunch today but called later and said she and Sarah would go to church this morning with me instead because she and Dave were fighting about something and so she couldn't invite me over today for lunch after all.

So, for the most part, I've spent yet another Mother's Day alone. Only Mike went to church with me and I took us to lunch. He's in the house but you'd never know it for the most part. He means well but conversations require concentration unless it is about t.v. or movies, we don't really talk a lot. The church did present a rose to every mother so I got a flower. No wake up smiles, no calls, no gifts, no cards, and oh... my youngest called late (probably after he got out of bed around 2 p.m.) to say he "didn't get the memo that today was Mother's Day and Happy Mother's Day." Odd, since his FB wall mentioned it yesterday. I'm a bit lower on the scale of importance than FB. There are people who think they have been in contact with me just because they do graffiti on virtual walls. You haven't.

I've learned since Jerry died that my worth for some is measured solely in dollars and cents...mine and how generous I am with it.

I go back to work tomorrow. To the real world, or at least what passes as real for me. Where people honestly don't care about me.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. . .you cry on yours when it happens to you.

No Place

I am sitting at the dinning table at my sister, Roselynn's house listening to the sounds of women in the kitchen. My niece, Kayla and my aunt are preparing side dishes, my granddaughter laughing and running through the house playing with her great uncle that she calls her Poppy. My brother-in-law just headed outside to start the grill. Mike, Dave and Becca are here chatting with various relatives. My six-month-old great nephew sits in his swing smiling at me and making cooing noises. 

Over all the laughing and talking, the smell of food cooking drifts through the house and twines around the sounds of family. I realize that no matter where you are when you are surrounded by the people you love you are home. I don't have a particular love for Florida or any particular place on earth. What I do have is the same longing for home that all of us have and that it is not a specific geographical location.

Crowds are not cozy or comforting, no matter where they are. One can't really relax in a crowded stadium or restaurant. Even among a dozen friends it is possible to feel isolated and homesick. Yet, there is always a kind of peace when one is surrounded by a dozen relatives, even it everyone is talking at once. It is a paradox. 

I will spend this week with people I've known all my life and will find more calm in the riot of their living than I would in a day in a lounge chair with a good book. The sounds of laughing and loud talking and the crowded room we sit in will bring more contentment than winning the lottery. 

As Dorothy once said, "There is no place like home." 

13 Investigates: IRS tax loophole

13 Investigates: IRS tax loophole: Eyewitness News shows a massive tax loophole that provides billions of dollars in tax credits to undocumented workers and, in many cases, people who have never set foot in the United States.