When my hubby and I split up and I moved out i brought that spice rack with me, intended to mount it on the wall of my new kitchen. Wouldn’t you know it, all of the kitchen walls were completely filled up with cupboards so there was no space to put that rack on the wall! I did find space for it on the counter, though, beside the stove and there is where it stayed for a good number of years.

Eventually all of the original bottles from the spice rack broke and I could not find replacement bottles that fit, so the little rack got “freecycled” away when I moved again. Now I store my spices in my pantry, and have tried various methods of storing them, but I really have not found a suitable system for the spices. I miss that rack!

When my hubby and I moved into our first house, we were so excited to share our joy with our friends. So we had a big Independence Day party; complete with a pot-luck barbecue and pool party. The guests were completely enamored of our litter of five week old keeshond puppies, which were confined inside their six foot tall chain link kennel run.

One of our guests (which I did not want invited but hubby insisted) decided that he would light a string of black cat firecrackers and throw them into the kennel run. The quick bang-bang-bang and yelp-yelp-yelp brought my hubby and me running quickly to see what in the world was going on. When we saw the inebriated guest laughing at the upset puppies, we asked him to leave the party. Needless to say, feelings were hurt.

The next morning when we went out to feed the puppies, we discovered that someone had removed them from their kennel and put them inside the fenced in pool area. The puppies had all drowned in the pool. My heart was completely broken. Later that day we went to the pool supply store and bought a pool cover for our swimming pool in the hopes that this kind of tragedy never happens again. And I never spoke to that guy that had thrown firecrackers into the puppy pen, as we suspect that he was the one responsible for relocating the puppies. It would have been impossible for the puppies to escape their pen and enter the fenced in pool area on their own.

The entire discussion reminded me of a few years ago when my sister accepted a job out in Los Angeles, and had to find some Los Angeles movers to help her with her relocation process. She told me that she had hired a Los Angeles moving company to do everything that needed to be done – even the packing! I thought that was amazing, I had never heard of a company that will do the packing for you in addition to the transportation! I wonder if the LA movers are the only ones that do that, or if it is a service available around the US and I just live under a rock.

The first time I noticed that type of arrangement was when I saw my mother-in-law was using a mailbox with a padlock on it as a drop box. She had a padlock on the box, and she explained that the office’s courier had a copy of the key so he could pick up and deliver correspondence independently of the US Postal service.

I think that if parents allow their kids to spend their money in that way, they should be ashamed of themselves.  What a waste of money, and what a terrible message to send to the kids – you don’t have to work hard to make it look like you worked hard.  I think it is a form of “cheating” and I don’t like cheaters!

After the kids took off their outerwear, they would go into rooms that were age specific. There was a nursery for the children that were too young to crawl, another room for the toddlers, and several other rooms for the older children. There was even a room for a real kindergarten, taught by real certified teachers. Each room had a row of childrens lockers in it, each one labelled with the name of the individual child.

I think that the individually assigned lockers for kids helped to ensure that there was minimal spreading of germs, and minimal loss of clothing and toys. When Matthew switched from Busy Bee childcare to the after school childcare once he started first grade, the difference in organization was astonishing. There were no baskets or lockers for individual storage of any kind. There WAS, however, a large Lost and Found Box!

My first husband was always worried that someone might steal checks out of our mailbox and we had a post office box for many years because of that. When we first moved here I decided to get a post office box too, for the same reasons, but then it became a real chore having to drive into town to get the mail. When I was working and going into town everyday anyway it was no big deal, but once my trips into town were only once a week or once every two weeks that made a big difference! So we went ahead and put up a rural mailbox, and thankfully so far it has survived. (Knock on wood!)

It reminds me of being in early elementary school, when I would have to hold fat pencils, and was so anxious to be grown up enough for the skinny pencils, but now I guess I’m in my second childhood and like the fat ones!

I flunked every test, even though they were open book take-home tests and I worked on them for hours on end. I can remember thinking that if the IT jobs of the future depended on learning how to program computers, then I was never going to survive out there! I think that the only reason that the professor gave me a passing grade was because I went begging to him not to flunk me and promised him that I would never ever try to get any IT jobs now or in the future. I think I’m in trouble!

I was like a babe in the woods back then; I had no idea how to arrange for a domain or website hosting – in fact I did not even realize that you could buy a domain from one organization and then get your web site hosting from a completely different company! I thought it was a big monopoly, like the telephone company used to be! Slowly I’m learning more about the Internet business, but it sure is a lot more complicated than I could ever imagine it to be. The people who created this stuff are pure genius. Absolute genius.

I used to date a man who loved trains.  I think in the end we broke up because he wanted to spend his every waking moment around/in/on a train, and he was neglecting our relationship just so he could be around trains.  So I think that is another big reason I don’t like trains!  Every time I see one, I am reminded of how I was dumped by the guy I was in love with for a train!

Now that I’m a grown woman, with kids of my own, I find myself trying to think of ways to encourage them to have a healthy attitude about dating. I’ve been coaching my sons on the best way How To Ask A Girl Out without looking like a Pick Up Artist trying to score.  I really feel bad for the guys because they get their hopes up and ask a girl out and then they get turned down, and their egos suffer from the experience. Sometimes I wonder if maybe the age old traditions of arranged marriages might actually BE the best way – there is a whole lot less tension about relationships that way!

After my first marriage ended, I was so reluctant to get back into what is referred to as “the dating game.” Once again I found myself willing that darn telephone to ring, being fearful that if I were to call “him” that it would make it appear that I was too desperate, or too easy. Goodness knows that there were a lot of married men out there trying to get me to hop into the sack with them. That was an odd feeling, so many men dropping by and calling me, trying to get me to agree to a friends with benefits relationship. I really was amazed at how many of these guys really thought that they could run around and cheat on their wives and get away with it.

I found myself thinking about that when I was doing a CBT today at work about the proper storage and disposal of different materials. To be perfectly honest, I never even gave it a second thought about how there might be chemicals at work that would need to be stored in flammable lockers.

When I stop to think about how many liquids and solvents are flammable, I’m amazed that there isn’t some kind of building code that requires every house to have Flammable Cabinets in their garages and pantries!

I wonder how many house fires would be prevented if the homeowners kept their flammable liquids in the proper Flammable Cabinet Storage.

When I was a teenager, my parents refused to let me go to college to pursue the degree that I wanted to go after. They said that it was more important for my brothers to get their college degrees, and that they expected me to go to secretarial school to become a secretary and then fall in love with (and marry) the wealthy boss of the company that I would be working at.

The school counselors were of absolutely no assistance whatsover in helping me to look for any kind of financial aid information; saying that if my parents did not want me to go to college then there really was nothing that I could do about it. (This was back in the dark ages of the 1970′s when women were still second class citizens.)

Well, let me tell you women out there – the times have changed drastically! Finding grants and scholarships have become very easy with the use of the Internet. I swear that I was born before my time, because now it is so simple to find grants for just about any subject. My youngest son was given several grants for engineers so he could pursue his engineering degree, and I’m helping my niece look for physical therapy student grants so she can pursue a career in physical therapy.

I have to admit, that I am very jealous of the opportunities these young people have that I never had.