If you were offered the chance to spend a week here,
would you go?
A sweet little throwback …
11 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Remember the story about my grandfather last week, and the fact that he and my grandmother raised nine children? (Link below.) Here’s a photo of their eldest and youngest, just two of their six sons. This is my Uncle Bob, home on leave, holding his baby brother Roger, probably around 1944.
https://playingfortimeblog.com/2014/12/04/a-fairytale-for-throwback-thursday/
Just in time …
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
… for the annual “War on Christmas,” a handy flow chart from Christian blogger Rachel Held Evans, who writes “The whole story of Advent is the story of how God can’t be kept out. God is present. God is with us. God shows up—not with a parade but with the whimper of a baby, not among the powerful but among the marginalized, not to the demanding but to the humble. From Advent to Easter, the story of Jesus should teach us that God doesn’t need a mention in our pledge or on our money or over the loudspeaker at the mall to be present, and when we fight like spoiled children to ‘keep’ God in those things, we are fighting for idols. We’re chasing wind.”
Whatever your take on all of that, or mine, she also says, “For a long, long time Christianity was dominant in the United States and represented the civic religion of the country. But America is about the people who are here now, and that is a much more diverse group. And that’s good! It is time to stop insisting that everything revolves around us. Instead, let’s join the wider circle of the many traditions that make up our country. Besides, any Christian knows that Christmas is not about displays in shopping malls, or capitols, or schools, it is about a spiritual event that we honor most in our families and our homes.”
99 Percent Of Facebook In 99 Words
08 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in Humor, Re-blogging
Yup, pretty much. A perceptive assessment from “List of X.”
If you have spent more than a few minutes on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of Facebook posts are actually very similar in nature. In fact, you could probably rephrase most of Facebook posts as one of the updates below, thus summarizing 99% of entire Facebook in fewer than 100 words.
View original post 128 more words
What scares you?
08 Dec 2014 5 Comments
Not BOOGA-BOOGA pants-crapping scared, where your skin crinkles up and makes little screeching noises with sparklers on the ends. More like what are you AFRAID of … that fundamental sense of dread that a cog will drop into a random sprocket somewhere and life will change. Fear of loss is a keen motivator — what else drives us with that same force?
But what if life changed and you lived through it? And what if that happened over and over ’til you realized how brave you were and then you just started doing things and saying things you didn’t know you could do and say? What if people didn’t get any of that at all and you didn’t care? What if you just started kicking ass, including your own, and life really did change and you wouldn’t change it back if you had the chance? WHAT IF? Not the question I want to be asking myself when I’m gearing up for the choir eternal. What if I’d done all those things I knew I could do? What if I’d let myself be who I knew I was? And to quote Captain Obvious, what if I’d just been nicer? Regret, let’s not go there.
Holy balls, I’ve survived too long to let fear force me back into the box, and by now he’s like an old friend anyway, sort of. You know, keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your powder dry.
“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.” ~Dawna Markova
Friday fun on a Saturday …
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
A young guy from North Dakota moves to Florida and goes to a big “everything under one roof” department store looking for a job.
The manager says, “Do you have any sales experience?”
The kid says, “Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in North Dakota.”
The manager’s unsure, but he likes the kid and figures he’ll give him a shot, so he gives him the job. “You start tomorrow. I’ll come down after we close and see how you did.”
His first day on the job is rough, but he gets through it. After the store is locked up, the manager comes down to the sales floor to check on how the kid did on his first day. “How many customers bought something from you today?”
The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, “One.”
The manager replies, “Just one?!!? Our employees average 20 to 30 customer-sales a day. That will have to change and fast if you want to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida. One sale a day might have been acceptable in North Dakota, but you’re not on the farm anymore, son.”
The kid takes his beating, but continues to look at his shoes. The manager feels kind of bad for chewing him out on his first day, so he asks half sarcastically, “So, how much was your one sale for?”
The kid looks up at his manager and says “$101,237.65.”
The manager, astonished, says, “$101,237.65?!? WTF did you sell?”
The kid says, “Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then, I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then, I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat. We went down to the boat department, and I sold him a twin-engine ChrisCraft. Then he said he didn’t think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that 4×4 Expedition.”
The manager says “A guy came in here to buy a fish hook, and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?”
The kid says, “No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, ‘Dude, your weekend’s shot, you should go fishing.'”
A Fairytale for Throwback Thursday
04 Dec 2014 6 Comments
Once upon a time, there lived a handsome young man of steel who told a little white lie about his age, joined the Army at seventeen, fought at the front during The War to End All Wars on many fields of battle, came home intact in mind and body, swept a lovely fifteen-year-old store clerk off her feet, married her straightaway, and started a dynasty. Thus reads the CliffsNotes version, you may thank me after the test.
But before that, a lot of other things happened.
And while those things were happening, the young man was growing steely because clearly he had good genes plus a step-father who was certifiably unhinged. When the lad in our tale was less than twelve years old, his step-dad took him to the barren plains of eastern Colorado to “prove up a claim” and homestead it, worked him like a dog, left him there and went home to Kansas. But not before taking a pot-shot at him off the porch that put a hole through his hat and knocked him flat in the hard Colorado dirt.
The boy lived out there in that little shack by himself, with the heat and the wind and the wildlife, until somebody came for him. Whatever steel he wasn’t born with must have crawled into his bones in those months, and it never left him. I know this because he was my grandfather and I know he never lost his metal, his discipline, or his looks. He and my grandmother raised six sons and three daughters, all worth knowing in their own right. Grandpa knew how to do everything and Grandma knew the rest, so there was always food on the table and a good roof on a house full of voices laughing, crying, arguing, singing, talking, yelling, but mostly laughing. Smart funny people, this dynasty.
It’s my favorite fairytale to slip into on cold gray days because it’s all true. And a thing to love is that with everything Grandpa survived in his years, he never got smelly and mean-spirited and old on the inside. He and my grandmother both figured out how to stay alive and BE alive and how to pass that on. Pretty cool.
If I’m lyin’ I’m flyin’ …
03 Dec 2014 6 Comments
My grandma, who had to tolerate me a lot since I lived within rock-throwing distance and never knew when to go home, used to tell me that I was as happy as if I had good sense. That is, when she wasn’t accusing me of lacking the sense God gave a goose. Clearly she noticed a certain deficit in the reasoning department. Time and experience have predictably sharpened my perceptions, but if I have to base my mood on whatever life’s currently dishing out, I’m done. Hey, I KNOW things suck, generally speaking. I’m perfectly aware we’re all headed to hell in a disintegrating hand basket at warp speed. You know the drill: our atmosphere is imploding, our ground water’s drying up, our oceans are gunked up with plastic and sewage and a sick radioactive glow, the whole planet’s at war in one way or another, and disease and pestilence stalk the land. But I can’t shake the feeling that life is good, gosh darn it, all indications to the contrary. What can I say, things just have a way of working out, and it’s always too early to give up. To quote the great Lucimar Santos de Lima (it’s okay, even Wikipedia can’t find him), “It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic, you can always cry later.”
Making a list …
02 Dec 2014 2 Comments
So Tuesday around here is evolving into a day for thankfulness and dancing, but will one day a week be enough? I think not! And on that note, I hope you’re making only HAPPY LISTS this winter.
Playing for Time 
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