Parenting Job Description!

PARENT

POSITION: Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Long term, team players needed, for challenging Permanent work in an often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call. Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities! Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

EXPECTATIONS/RESPONSIBILITIES:

The rest of your life. Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5. Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf. Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets, stuck zippers, And third grade math. Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects. Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks. Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next. Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product. Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT; PROMOTION:

None. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE:

None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis..

WAGES AND COMPENSATION:

Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent. When you die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS:

While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love, and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right..

Forward this on to all the PARENTS you know, in appreciation for everything they do on a daily basis, letting them know t hey are appreciated for the fabulous job they do ... o r forward with love to anyone thinking of applying for the job.

** AND A FOOTNOTE?

THERE IS NO RETIREMENT -- EVER!!! **

If you are fortunate enough you will become grandparents

There Are Uses for Dogs in the House

Dogs serve many purposes. They protect us, love us unconditionally and do stupid things that make us laugh.

They have a lot of faults. They stink things up, rub up against the wall and leave marks that have to be scrubbed off, drool on the carpet, nudge the back of the newspaper when you are trying to read it and much, much more.

Tonight I found another good reason to put up with all the aggravation they cause though.

If you drop a raw egg on the floor and have to go across the kitchen to get some paper towels, wet them and come back to clean it up. By the time you get back to the refrigerator to clean up the egg, the dogs have already cleaned it up for you. Shell and all.

They'll stand there licking their lips with innocent looks on their faces and believe they have tricked you into believing they didn't lick up the egg. You will semi-scold them but secretly be happy they licked it all up.

They do have their uses.

A Better Way to Find a Date

I know a lot of people who are turning to the internet to find companionships and dates. I think more and more people are doing that because of the difficulty in finding the 'right' person while working and/or going to school full time. There are a lot of dating sites out there, so how do you know which is the best for you?

Primedatingsites.com is a great site for sorting out where to go on the internet to find the right guy (or girl) for you. It is a singles dating site that reviews other dating sites on the web. That way you just have to go to one place to get a good idea of what the other sites have to offer you. They have reviews of sites like eHarmony, Perfect Match and Chemistry.com

If you are looking for a prime date, you might want to start at Primedatingsites.com.

A Marine and His Iraqi Dog

Major Brian Dennis was serving in Iraq when a local dog took up with him. The dog's ears had been cut off when it was a pup so Major Dennis named him Nub. Nub came around for months and obviously liked hanging out with the Marines. One day Major Dennis found a deep puncture wound on Nub. It had been inflicted on Nub with a screwdriver. Dennis and the other Marines nursed Nub back to health. No wonder Nubs loves his Marines and was willing to do whatever he had to do to find them when their unit was relocated .....

Major Brian Dennis, while serving in Iraq, found a dog who had his ears cut off as a pup and named the little guy nubs.

Over a period of months, the animal came around, befriending Dennis and his fellow Marines. During one visit, Dennis found Nubs with a deep puncture wound on his left side. He later learned the injury was inflicted by a screwdriver. He helped nurse the dog back to health.

The time came, however, for Dennis' unit to relocate 70 miles from Nubs' home fort. Keeping nubs was against the rules so he had to leave the dog behind. As always, Nubs sprinted alongside the Hummers as they pulled away for what Dennis assumed was the last time he would see the dog.

Two days later, Nubs wandered inexplicably in below-freezing conditions into Dennis' new camp, shocking the Marine unit. "I won't even address the gauntlet he had to run of dog packs, wolves, and God knows what else to get here," Dennis wrote. "When he arrived he looked like he'd just been through a war zone."

Nubs' miraculous journey forced the Marine's hand, and Dennis and his fellow Marines unanimously decided to keep the animal, building a doghouse at the camp. When two military police officers told Dennis the dog could not stay at the camp, he decided the only way to properly keep the animal was to get it to the United States.

After raising money and setting up a home with a friend back in the states, Nubs will arrive in the US this weekend.

Read the rest of the story here.

BUPA Health Portal and Product Site

Blogging is great in so many ways, but it hasn't done my figure a bit of good. I'm sitting too much so I'm having to take control of the situation and set aside time every day to work out so that I can stay in shape. I'm also studying up on health related issues at the BUPA website.

I like the BUPA site because it has a wealth of information about health related issues. There are literally hundreds of articles covering every imaginable illness or health issue that you might be interested in learning more about.

They also offer a wide range of health care products that can be bought on line. They offer every thing from vitamins to Blood Pressure Monitors to TENS Machines and every thing in between. I'm interested in their exercise aids, such as exercise balls and exercise mats.

Children See, Children Do

This powerful and thought provoking video was produced by an Australian children’s rights organization to bring attention to the role modeling adults provide for children. It really does make you stop and think about your behavior. Its certainly something to think about.

Worrying About Identity Theft

There's been a lot of talk lately about identity theft. Sometimes I worry that I take my security about that too much for granted. I have never had a problem with it personally, so I don't think about it unless something is brought to my attention.

Recently, we have been getting bills for someone who doesn't live here. There are enough of them that I finally understood that someone was using our address to get credit cards and then spending to the limits on the cards. I sat down one afternoon and called all of the companies involved to let them know that they were being scammed and this person didn't live here. The bills stopped for a while. What has been interesting to me is now I'm getting credit offers in the same name as that person. In other words, the computers are spitting out credit offers for this person that had reneged on the bills she had run up a couple of years ago.

That whole situation got me to thinking about how easy someone can use someone else's name, address and identifying information to get credit. It would be a real problem if this person had actually used more than just our address. I went looking on the internet for information about identity theft and found some really good and informative articles at CreditLoan.

CreditLoan has a ton of information on a wide variety of financial issues. They cover issues on getting credit, fixing bad credit, mortgages, debt consolidation, bankruptcy, personal loans and much more.

I found their information on mortgages informative. I like to keep up with whether or not its a good time to refinance my mortgage, whether or not the costs of refinancing are worth the lower interest rate and the like.

That is only one small part of the information that is available at the website. They have articles, information and resources about Bankruptcy, bad credit loans, auto loans, debt consolidation and just about every other type loan you can think of.

CreditLoan offers information on loan calculations and how to get a free credit report.

Its always good to stay informed and this website certainly helps you find the resources you need to stay informed regarding your finances.

A Certain Level of Insanitiy Can be a Good Thing

20 Ways to Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.

2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label it 'In'.

5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.

6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write ' For Smuggling Diamonds'.

7. Finish All Your sentences with 'In Accordance With The Prophecy'.

8. Don't use any punctuation.

9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.

10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.

11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is 'To Go'

12. Sing Along At The Opera.

13. Go To A Poetry Recital. And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme?

14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area and Play tropical Sounds All Day.

15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In the Mood.

16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.

17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream 'I Won! I Won!'

18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling 'Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!'

19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, 'Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go.'

20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity ... pass this along ...

Ever Wonder What the Big Blogs Make Blogging?

BusinessWeek exposes some of the blogging success stories out there. It is proof positive that our mutual obsession with blogging can actually turn into decent income if we are so inclined.

Eric Nakagawa, a software developer in Hawaii, posted a single photo of a fat, smiling cat he found on the Internet, with the caption, "I can has cheezburger?" in January, 2007, at a Web site he created. It was supposed to be a joke. Soon after he posted a few more images in the same vein: cute cats with funny captions written in a silly, invented hybrid of Internet shorthand and baby-talk. Then he turned the site into a blog, so that visitors could comment on the postings. What happened after that would have been hard for anyone to predict.

"We just thought, O.K., they're funny,"Nakagawa says. "Suddenly we started getting hits. I was like, where are these coming from?"

I had no idea that blog just started in January! Their hits doubled each month and at this point is getting 500,000 hits per day! Those hits translate into income, if from nothing else than the ads on the site.

Like pretty much the rest of us, the 'big money blogs' started their blogs as a hobby and saw them grow into big income. BusinessWeek refers to them as accidental entrepreneurs. Here are some examples of what the 'big money blogs' are making ...

BoingBoing is the big boy of blogs (no surprise there), with 22 million page views from 2.6 million unique visitors PER DAY! (I have a way to go to reach those numbers! LOL) Income is estimated at over $1 million per year.

I Can Has Cheezburger? (mentioned above) averages $5,600 in monthly income.

ShoeMoney can buy a lot of shoes with the money he's making on his blog. Actually, ShoeMoney is the brainchild of Jeremy Schoemaker and brings in 20,000 unique visitors per day translating into a $12,000 per month income. Schoemaker has other internet businesses such as auctionads. He says he works online about 30 minutes a day. I want me one of those checks he's holding up!!

Overheard in New York has 6 million page views per month and an estimated $8,100 monthly revenue.

Kottke.org limits ads on his site intentionally preferring to focus on good service to a smaller group of readers. He earns $5,300 per month with one ad on his site.

TalkingPointsMemo gets $45,000 per month.

Perez Hilton gets $110,000 per month.

Gothamist generates about 7 million page views per month with an income of between $50,000 and $60,000 per month.

TechCrunch earns $200,000 per month.

Go Fug Yourself was a site started by two friends for the sole purpose of mocking celebrity fashion. They are now mocking the celebs full time with $6,420 in monthly income.

Mashable has 4 million page views per month and generates $116,000 per month.

Problogger doesn't disclose details of his income, but claims over 6 figures per year. So we know its over $100,000 per year. I'm betting that's an extremely low estimate.

Michelle Malkin and Hot Air has over 220,000 hits per day. She claims her blog and vblog (Hot Air) operate at a slight loss due to the necessity for high end servers to handle traffic surges. She says her income is primarily through her print media articles. Hmmm ...... Okay. Although, I admit I've only recently been seeing more ads on her blog.

Well, if that doesn't give you some encouragement to keep doing what your doing, I don't know what will. I do believe that the main factor in having a successful blog (however you define success) is that you enjoy it and you write about what you are interested in and know.

Happy blogging!

Joan Van Ark’s HOLY COW Plastic Surgery

Joan Van Ark of Knots Landing fame has made a mess of trying to look 20 when she is, in fact, 64 years old. This is proof positive that any benefits from cosmetic surgery can be taken too far. Aside from the fact she looks like a skeleton, she also looks like a cadaver. Her painted on eyebrows, too heavy eye make-up and caked-on make-up is off-set by a complete lack of lipstick. Did they bring her to this event straight from the morgue?

Hey, none of us LIKE getting older, but we do. Having some wrinkles and sagging can't look any worse than THIS!

Elvis Quote

How Was Your Cereal This Morning?

Enjoy :)

How to Make a Celebrity

Created by Aviary. I don't think she's that gorgeous - but its cool to watch it being done .....

Doll Face

Videos by Andrew Huang | More VMIX videos
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Doll Face by Andrew Huang.

I Got Some More Pictures From My Son's Wedding

I've managed to get my hands on a few more pictures from my son's wedding last December. The pictures I posted before are here. The photographer is my daughter-in-law's sister's boyfriend (there has to be an easier way of saying that!). His website is CB_PIC_ART. I think he did a fantastic job with the photos. He took over 400 (if I didn't misunderstood them since they were talking in German combined with broken English). I want to see them all, but I'm so far away I'm having to take them as I can get them!

They were married at the Schloss Thiergarten. It was built in 1725 as the hunting lodge for Margrave Friedrich. When we took a tour of the Plassenburg castle, which was built in 1135 for Bishop Otto of Bamberg, we learned that at some point the line of the Hohenzollern family that had inhabited the castle for generations ended. Therefore, another branch of the family that had control the area around Berlin sent a cousin down to take control of Plassenburg castle and all the surrounding fiefdom. That was Margrave Friedrich and his wife Wilhelmine who was a sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia.

Well, Friedrich and Wilhelmine thought they'd come to the end of the earth in this, what was then, remote 'country' place. Even though its one of the largest, if not the largest, castles in Germany (I can't remember), they didn't like staying there. They were city people after all. To make matters worse, they didn't particularly like each other. So Wilhelmine spent a lot of time in nearby Bayreuth and spent an enormous amount of money building some of the most ornate and beautiful buildings in the Franconia (now Bavaria). She had the Bayreuth Opera House built. We were allowed to spend about $20 per person to spend about five minutes in the opera house while we were there. It is spectacular, even though very expensive for a walk through. Wagner played there but thought it was too small for his music.

Another of the properties Wilhelmine built was the Schloss Thiergarten (Schloss is German for Castle. I *think* Thiergarten is 'the garden' - so that would be the Castle of the Garden (or since they word things backward from us it would be 'The Garden Castle') - if you speak German please don't make fun of me!). We were told in our tour of Schloss Plassenburg that Schloss Thiergarten was built as a hunting lodge for Wilhelmine's husband, the Margrave Friedrich. I imagine she liked having him busy doing his thing there so she could do her thing in some of the residences she had built in Bayreuth.

Now. That HAS to be more than you wanted to know about that little hunting lodge castle. So on with the pictures ....

Michi was having a good time .....

Fingerpaint

How cool is this photo? I have a whole set of finger painting art similar to this. I'll upload them from time to time just because they are cool.

Darling Daughter and Her New Dog

My Darling Daughter has gotten herself a new dog. AS IF she needs another thing to worry about. I admit though, she seems to really be enjoying it and the dog certainly seems happier than its probably ever been in its entire life! She has spoiled this dog. Its pathetic ....

See what I mean? That's the little creature sleeping on my daughters bed as though she's human. My daughter sends me these pictures via her cell phone and pretty much insist that I oohhh and ahhh over the dog. I'm surprised she doesn't have it in a car seat! LOL

Celtic Woman - Mo Ghile Mear

Celtic Woman performing Mo Ghile Mear (A New Journey) live at Slane Castle, Ireland 2006.

The singers are: Hayley Westenra, Chloë Agnew, Órla Fallon, Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, Lisa Kelly and Mairead Nesbi.

Enjoy .....

Random Thoughts on Marital Bliss

My Beloved Curmudgeon and I have a reasonably happy marriage. Most of the time we get along well, enjoy the same things, have basically the same views (I'm not quite as hard-core as he is), think the same things are funny and have the same cynical outlook on life.

In between those times we tolerate each other as best we can.

The content times last longer now than the 'why am I putting up with this?' times. There have been times, over the years, that it was the other way around. Maybe as time has gone by we've both mellowed out a little and gotten a little more accepting of each other's eccentricities.

I have learned a few things along the way about marriage. So I'll pass along a few of my little pearls of wisdom ... (Lucky whoever is reading this!)

From the beginning I noticed that he and I are at approximately the same level of sloppiness. We are pretty much equals in the amount of messiness we can stand.

As I was piddlin' around the house this weekend, straightening and cleaning I was struck with that reality once again.

We both work more than full time in demanding, stressful jobs. Neither of us feel like cleaning and scrubbing when we get home. So I do most of my cleaning on the weekend. But I can't avoid the fact that in the last few years that my housekeeping has definitely gone downhill.

I should hire someone, but I have to get the house clean enough to hire someone to clean (g). So I still do it myself.

Whenever I start cleaning, he gets up and empties the trashcans. It doesn't matter how much is in the trashcans, it can be one single piece of paper. But he'll go around the house emptying all the trash cans. Equal labor???

I think he feels he should be doing something since I'm cleaning.

So for today's little pearl of wisdom:One of the keys to marital bliss is compatibility in the amount of slovenliness that is acceptable to both parties in the relationship.

goede nacht

My Life and Feminism

I've spent my entire adult professional life competing with men in the work place. I've had a lot of successes and a few disappointments. Over the years I learned the truth and adjusted myself to the business world accordingly as best I could.

Women's liberation was pretty well entrenched in our workplace psyche when I started my professional career. I remember starting out with the naive assumption that it was a level playing field. I thought if I worked hard I would succeed. I thought hard competent work equaled success in the business world.

Even back then it bothered me that the women's lib movement made the assertion that in order to be taken seriously we had to dress, look and act like a man. Remember the styles of the 1980s? The broad shoulders, the short masculine hair styles, jackets and scarves that looked like neckties? I wore those things to my job. It didn't make any difference. I was still paid less than my male counterparts. I was still hit on by the men at work. Men still patronized me as a cute little thing rather than as a serious colleague. I still had to be twice as tough as a man to be taken seriously and that only succeeded in getting me called a bitch.

The parts that really bothered me were the pay and the fact that men would work games on me, as a female, that they would never consider even trying with a male colleague. It also bothered me that women's lib didn't seem to value femininity. I thought, and still think, that the feminine has a lot to offer and should be valued equally. I don't believe it's necessary that we are all the same in order to be of value to society.

Another thing that feminists did was increase a woman's work load. I've been accused of being a workaholic. When I've heard people say that about me I wonder where that comes from. I never wanted to work as hard as I worked. I thought I had to. I felt guilty if I didn't. Think about it for a minute. If your house is a mess who is blamed for that? The woman. It doesn't matter if she works 60 hours a week and the man in the house works 40 hours a week. It is still her responsibility, in most people's minds, to keep the house and feed the family. In the past, the man was the provider for the family. He still mostly is, but it has changed so that if the family is struggling financially more and more people blame both the man and the woman. If we are honest with ourselves we do see it that way.

The result is that most of us are chronically exhausted and not much good to anyone.

In an odd sort of way, women's lib devalued both the feminine and the masculine. We were supposed to all morph into some kind of androgynous being that none of us really found attractive or wanted to be. Remember Prince? I never have understood what was wrong with appreciating and celebrating the differences. We both bring important characteristics to the table. Ying and Yang, the perfect circle of completion and all that.

When I look at the feminist blogs in the blogosphere I see self-hate and man-hate. I'd be willing to bet the women who write those blogs have not had to compete with men for jobs and respect in the business world. They couldn't make it with that kind of skewed thinking and complete lack of appreciation for the masculine and the feminine.

After all this time it hasn't changed. Human nature is what it is. You can not make a woman into a man or a man into a woman (most of the time!). The question is whether or not we can learn to appreciate what each brings to the table.

A few weeks ago I had a life changing experience. It was one of those things that happens that leaves you feeling like you've been kicked in the stomach and you're not quite sure where the lick came from. This followed on the heels of another experience that already had me thinking about how I had been living my life.

I learned early in my adult life that life is neither easy nor fair. I don't mean that I learned that intellectually, I learned it at a level that I understood it and quit expecting fairness or an easy road. Once I understood that, my life became easier. I quit being so angry when things did not go my way. I was able to look at events in my life more philosophically and objectively which helped me make more rational decisions about the direction I would take things. I was better able to forgive myself for my shortcomings.

Through the years I learned that I had a lot more gumption and courage that I would have ever known I had. I learned I could go toe to toe with pretty much anyone. It's been a long time since I have felt intimidated by anyone in the business world. I learned I was competent, capable and efficient. I learned I could do it. I could compete, even on an uneven playing field.

I learned that life is still not fair or easy. But that's okay.

And now I know that it's okay not to do that anymore. I don't need to. I don't want to. I've spent a certain amount of time immersed in self-pity and anger. But the bouts of self-pity are starting to be further between and of shorter duration. I have spent a lot of time exploring ways to free myself from the brutally political world of business.

I'm starting off in a new direction, a new venture. I don't have to prove anything to women's lib or anyone else anymore.

After all this time, I'm still standing.