Old Friends

Isn’t it great when out of the blue, you hear from a friend that you have wanted to talk with but never made the call? I feel bad, embarrassed and so happy all at once!



Bad because I didn’t take the time to call them when I was thinking of them.


Embarrassed because I didn’t take the time to call them when I was thinking of them.


So Happy because they didn’t put it off calling any longer and they were thinking of me too!
 We remember that she introduced me to funnel cake and that I drag her to every waterfall on the planet! We are great travel partners and seem to be on the same waking and sleeping schedule. We talk about all our memories of how we met and what we have been doing in the last few months…soon, we realize that we are still talking to our dearest friend although many, many years have gone by since we first met.


We talk about bad perms, our hairstyles over the years, how important fashionable clothes were when we were teen-agers and first entering the working world, how comfort over fashion wins every time with shoes now, and how crazy our lives were when our kids lived at home. But mostly, we talk about how precious our friendship is and how it remains one of the top ten beautiful things in our lives.


As always, we vow not to let so much time pass before we talk again…but we always do. Thankfully, we are in fairly good health and don’t give a thought about the other person not being there.


After we have talked for hours, we say silly things like, “don’t be a stranger” when we are not strangers at all. We are so much a part of each other’s lives in so many ways, even though we live 1600 miles away from each other. We tend to pick right up where we left off the last time we talked without missing a beat!


I, for one, believe true friendship aids tremendously to the quality of my life. Don’t let another day go by thinking of someone and not calling them…they are probably thinking of you too.

Good Advice is Not Always Good Advice

Have you ever gotten words of wisdom, integrated them into your life, and then discovered that they were counter-productive to your goals and dreams?







We all mean well in giving advice, but seldom know others well enough to give them good advice. Good advice is based on conventional wisdom. It takes into account what has worked fairly successfully for some but that doesn’t mean it will work for you. The advice may have merit, but is it right for you?






If you solicit advice, you are sure to get a ton of it! It can kill your dreams quickly if you don’t listen to, and more importantly, understand what has happened in the person’s past that molded their way of thinking.






You see, there are people that view the world as a scary place and others that view the world full of opportunities and joy. That is not to say that every day is joyful, but that those joyful people tend to lean towards the “fun” part instead of the “fearful” part of life and see it through eyes of understanding instead of eyes of control.






For me, I believe the only thing we really have in life that cannot be taken away is our knowledge. I believe I have good advice to give but truly, the advice I would give is good for me and not many others. I choose to give encouragement instead.






One thing for sure is that if you can’t hear advice with a critical ear, you shouldn’t ask for it! You have a responsibility to hear the advice and take it, hear it and take portions of it, or hear it and be critical about whether you believe the advice is good for you and your situation. You can also disregard the advice altogether.






Good advice can be deadly to your dreams. Your responsibility is to view all advice with the awareness that it is your dream and your decision.  Every dream involves risk.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide or the Dummies Book series?

Have you ever read these books? Do you feel like you must really be dumb when you don’t get what they are trying to explain? I do. I have read many of them and am fairly well educated and I still get confused on how to do the things that they are trying to explain.



Take for instance the SEO Idiot’s book I just read. It talks about activating Google analytics; you sign up then are given instructions to cut & paste a given code to paste into your website code…I don’t do code and haven’t the faintest idea where to find it for my website. The instructions say “this code must be inserted into the underlying HTML of each page you want to track”…I am happy to do that but again, don’t do code, so where is the underlying HTML code for my website?



After some searching on the internet, taking with two friends and my mother, I finally find it! Then you are to place the code they have given you in the body text section of the section of your page. The body text section of the section of your page? What the heck does that mean? There is nothing in the HTML code that says </body>…I put it in the search box…it comes up with nothing.



Maybe, they should start from the beginning and tell us where the underlying HTML code is before they have us cut and paste something into it that may or may not work. After hours of searching for an answer, I realized I was dealing with something beyond my education, understanding or comprehension. I lost my motivation to track the traffic on my website. Where is the IT person when you need them?



Silly me, what did I expect from a company named GOOGLE? Or a book with “ Idiot’s” in the title?

Pet Ownership

Statistics show us that about 60 percent of American households have at least one pet. That’s the majority. That leaves 40 percent of people who don’t have a Fido or Fofo living in their home.


Are the 40 percent, the smart ones? I believe we are. We get to sleep without hearing the whimpering of a pet that has been called by nature to empty their bladder. We sleep without worry of being awakened by a pet. We may worry about a burglar breaking in… but our pet waking us up, NEVER!
Some of us avoid pets due to allergies. I agree that wheezing and sneezing are not a good way to live and taking allergy medicine to have a pet seems well…just a little crazy.
 

People that don’t own pets get to walk bare foot in their homes without having to pick pet hair out from between their toes; they get to wear black pants without worrying about pet hair on them; they don’t trip and twist their ankles because they were trying to avoid a pet; they never have to smell that sickening aroma of pet food, wet or dry; they never have to worry about someone staring at them while they eat (unless they are in public); they still live plenty long without pets and parts of their lives are not spent yelling at an animal that doesn’t understand English; they don’t have surprises on the carpet when they have been gone longer than a pet bladder can hold it; they fill their purses with wallets and money, not doo-doo bags and pet treats; and the best reason is they don’t have to clean up large piles of poop in a public place!

Many pet owners will disagree and say that they get so much unconditional love from their pets; it makes up for all the “icky” stuff. I say, you are fooling yourselves: there is no unconditional love in the animal or human world and pets only love you because you feed them…stop feeding them and see if they hang around very long!

 

It’s okay to keep hanging on to those thoughts and PLEASE keep telling yourself that when Fofo poops on the carpet; or gets you up in the wee hours of the morning for a nature call; better yet, hang on to the unconditional love crap when you are smelling and scraping huge piles of dog poop off the grass at a nature park to carry home.

I will be the one staring, pointing and snickering at you. I still believe I am the SMART, no-pet owner!