This has been around a while, but...........

An English professor wrote the words,
"Woman without her man is nothing" on the blackboard and directed his students to punctuate it correctly.
The men wrote: "Woman, without her man, is nothing."
The women wrote: "Woman: Without her, man is nothing."

Ways to Scroll in Explorer 6:
First of all, you can press the Page Up and Page Down keys. You can press the Spacebar to scroll down and Shift + Spacebar to scroll up. You can use the Up and Down arrows in your keyboard's number pad, and you can also right-click in the scroll bar and choose from one of the options offered in the resulting pop-up menu.

Yup.
Shit happens.
You can just let it sit on you.
Let it pile up all around you.
Wallow in it.
But then life ALWAYS stinks.
OR
You can do soemthing about it.
You can get away from it.
Or get it away from you.
And although you understand that it can stink
It doesn't.

My brother must enjoy the smell of shit because his life stinks. He whines and complains about his dysfunctional upbringing and now all of his problems (he is 53) are because of his horrible childhood.
Whaaa
Whaaa
Whaaa
He has become a self fullfilling prophecy.
Now HIS family is "dysfunctional".
Oh the turns that life takes.
Irony.

Hectic, busy, exhausting.
Good to see family and old friends.
Still lots of loose ends to take care of, including a final trip to AZ before 10/31 to take care of all of my moms personal belongings.
We must also make a trip to the east coast to my parents favorite lighthouse to throw their ashes into the sea.
I fear the worst is yet to come.
Be good to yourselves and those that you love.

An old proverb: Our purpose on this Earth is to help others. If you cannot help others, at least do no harm.

6 weeks ago we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl, the 4th generation in our family. With that birth came the promise of life continuing and renewed.
Soon after the birth of my granddaughter, I flew for the second time in 6 weeks, to Arizona where my elderly mom has lived for the past 23 years. This time I convinced her to return to "home" with me, as her health has been rapidly declining in the past year. That was an emotional and exhausting trip for both of us. It was heartbreaking but I had to leave all of her worldly possessions behind (with the exception of the pale blue ribbon wrapped stack of letters written by my father, sent from the European warfront in WWII, to his future bride waiting at home and praying for his safe return) and just get her on the plane and back to our home town. She had agreed to moving into a lovely senior apartment so we were all very happy and busy getting her the things she needed to feel right at home. She had lost so much weight that I was purchasing her new clothes, I was trying to find just the right down coat in preparation for the cold winter ahead. I had two new pair of shoes for her and my three year old granddaughter had colored a picture of a dog and named him BINGO "so BINGO could live with GG" (great-grandma). I was looking forward to some good times with my mom, ice cream cones, rides on old country dirt roads, laughs, birthday parties, and holidays. She would have been 81 in September and lived a very full life. She was very arthritic, getting some senility, was very worn out, and ready to leave the boundaries of this Earth. I am honored that she chose me to take care of her in her last days and her death was exactly the way she had wanted it. The room was quiet, no lights, just the sun setting in the west sky, no tubes, no monitors, three of her children sitting with her holding her hand, talking to her and among ourselves, ever so often stopping to just gaze and reflect at our mother as she lay so quietly, so frail, so weak, so tired out. We told her that it was "OK" for her to go, that her job was complete, that we would "take it from here". Those last few hours she was free of pain, she was surrounded with love and then she very very peacefully drifted off. I am sure that Mom is happily reunited with Dad and my sister and that she rode that beautiful sunset into the most peaceful, happy, loving, and final home.

Birth and death are the tides of life and I have had both the high tide and the low tide these past 6 weeks.