Stick Horse Cowgirls

Someone close to me once gathered her two precious children around for a morning devotional and Bible study.  Such a beautiful perfect-family picture.  Her seven-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter were interested, earnest, and in good humor as they started. The lesson was about turning to God for assistance in cleaning up our lives.  Mom spoke to the kids about bad habits and how prayer can enlist the help of God and focus us on our efforts to break them.  “ Think about something you’d like help with this morning.  If you want to share it, fine.  If you are not comfortable with sharing, that’s fine, too.  We all have things in our lives we’d like to change and we need help to do it.  I’ll start .” Mom shared with her kids that she had gained a little weight and that she knew the reason was poor eating habits.  “ I need help from you and from God so I can remember to make good choices in my diet.  I need to learn to eat heal...

In my heyday, long past,  “text” was a noun.  In this 21st century world, “text” has become a verb: If you want to send someone a “text message” from your phone, you “text” him.  People have wrecks while texting in their car.  So, we see the English language expanding to fit our lifestyle. I have grown to like text messaging, but only in a limited sense.   I am definitely not hooked on it, as some seem to be.   I probably send or receive a text message once or twice in an average week.  They are extremely useful in situations (court, for example) where answering the phone is impossible but you need to send or receive information.  Usually the message will be something like “ Witness is running late—she’ll be there in five minutes .”  I find text messages useful but not particularly personal nor a primary means of communication. And then there is the “tweet,” which is no longer simply a description of bird talk.  No, tho...

You can tell when I get time to sit down and read my favorite magazines.  The last post was spawned from an article in Psychology Today .  This one comes from an article in a special issue of Discover Magazine , “The Brain,” Fall 2010 issue.  The article: The Internet Makes Deep Thought Difficult, if Not Impossible, by Nicolas Carr. Uh-Oh I love the internet.  I love blogging.  I love trivia and searching through the web for interesting things ranging from the scientific to gossip.  I love it as a research tool.  I now have my I-Pad to keep me well-connected wherever I go.  I mean, here I am sitting in front of the computer at this very moment.  I do it day in and day out.  My work requires it.  Thankfully, my computer work is largely “composing,” drafting documents about which I have to do a whole lotta thinking.  That may be the one saving grace I have, given what I am about to say. Mr. Carr has a lot to say about th...

The October 2010 issue of Psychology Today has an article by  Hara Marano  that has set me thinking.  Let me first say that I am an offender, here.  Let me get stressed, and I’ve been apt to send someone midday for a burger and fries, knowing full well that this is the wrong thing to do.  But this article, for some reason, has hit home to me.  I think that, if I haven’t yet turned the corner away from fast food, at least I am turning…it’s all a process. The article contains the usual bad nutritional  news about fast food.  We all know this: fast food just isn’t good for us.  The article points out that almost all fast food is laced with high-fructose corn syrup (even in fish patties and buns) and that it leads to obesity, clogged arteries, heart attack and high blood sugars.  So, if we know all this, why do we eat it?  Well, for one thing, becaus e it is “fast,” just as the name says.  We’ve stopped expecting to pack lunches...

I am a wee bit worried about myself.  I’m thinking I might have a lazy streak, and it might be sizeable.  That is not a good thing, I realize.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I work very, very hard.  I am busy as a bee from sunup to sundown.  I have so many balls in the air each work day that keeping them each from crashing to the ground is a constant struggle.  No, I’m not lazy about my profession, and when I come home, I am usually very tired, which gives me great justification for what I am about to say…. What I am lazy about is most things physical.  I don’t want to exercise (and there’s little time, for it given my work schedule—see? Justified!) And I don’t want to clean my house!  I am thinking of hiring a housekeeper to come in every other week or so, but I am going to have to clean the house and put away the clutter before anyone will take this job. I was out to dinner with my good friends from next door, midlife country girl .  They...

My brain gets a workout each and every day; my body, well, not so much.  I have always loathed physical exercise.  I don’t mind long walks—although they take too much time, of which I am alarmingly short.  I love horseback riding but, alas, no longer have horses (that time thing, again).  I know that I need regular exercise. To that end, I fixed up my little screened porch off my bedroom with a treadmill (MIL’s—traded for my stationary bike) and even put cable television out there to keep my mind occupied while I walked.  This was in June.  Do you think I’ve been out there?  Even once?  No.  I am utterly incapable of being in charge of my own exercise regime.  That’s where my son comes in.  He has cracked the whip at me once again.  Yesterday I went back to the YMCA after work.  It had been long months—too long—since I had been there.  Son was determined.  He called at the office to remind me.  So I trud...

At the end of a pressure-cooker day, I come home sometimes and “veg- out.”  It is as if my brain has to go from the very serious, almost acrobatic performance, to complete rest.  Usually this is in the form of television.  Sometimes I rest my brain with the news just whirrrrring in the background as white noise.  I just kind of check in and out mentally to see the headlines.  At other times I turn the tube to “brain candy,” which would be embarrassing for anyone to catch me watching.  Thinking about all this started me thinking about my “guilty pleasures” of all kinds;  you know, the kind of things that you’re not especially proud of—the kind of things that just don’t measure up to your fantastic intellect or your careful diet or whatever other benchmarks you set for yourself. So, I thought I’d share a few of mine in hopes that you would, also, spill beans on yourself. First, there’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey.”  Yes, I’m blushing as ...

Do you ever say “bad words?”  I admit it, I occasionally lapse.  But, then, I run with a rough crowd—lawyers.  We hear it all and see it all.  Sometimes, try as we might, we pick some of that up. There are times, I must admit, when a “bad word” is the only thing that seems to fit.  My son told a story recently that just illustrates it: Three of his friends (fine, church-going, Christian friends—none of them known to swear) were playing basketball at the local Y.  One of them took a flying fall and grabbed his leg, yelling “ X@#&#!! ” ( very bad word).  The two other guys rushed over, “shsshing” him and saying, “ Don’t say that!  There are kids around !” Then they looked down at the leg he was holding to see his foot dan gling, his ankle clearly broken.  Simultaneously, they both let out a “ X#$%#@!!”   (same very bad word). The manager of the gym came running over,  “ Guys !” he scolded.  “You will HAVE to tone it...