Message from the "Muser"

Thanks for coming back!! Be sure to read my Shoutbox to see my messages about updates...or choose a month to read any new posts. There's a problem with the auto-pagination so I'm not sure you'll see all the posts for a given month. But I think you can choose them by name.

And happy reading!!

Friday Funnies

While I still have several fairly important past dates to chronicle, record, and, in general, chat about (including several pretty important birthdays), I couldn't resist posting this little slide show I made of some funny photos I took of Ethan. And, yes, he is a partial-personification for the word: active; hence, the various parts of his I managed to photograph.

Enjoy a glimpse of toddlerdom at our house (Note: Count the number of smiles versus frowns. We're very blessed!) as witnessed in the space of 10 minutes.

I (Anti-Heart) Social Networking...

It's a funny thing...cyberspace.

I've been a traveller in it all the way since its early days...back in the days of text only. Gasp! (My daughter did!) NO pictures. At all.

Remember those days? With "gophers" and other such oddities?

I remember sitting in my dorm room and managing to somehow "surf" into the Oxford University Library. I was so excited I sent a message to whomever it was that was named in the contact box. I felt like I'd flown over there and could actually see and smell the books (all in my head, of course).

The other day, I was explaining to my children how the Internet isn't really all that old. Well, not in its current form, anyway. And it's continually exploding with exciting new features. They were amazed. It wasn't always around? Really?

Nope.

But idlegrass.

Online social networking isn't all that old either. In the early days of the Internet, chatrooms were all the rage. With a username you could go into the same ones (if you were lucky to find them again) every day or explore others. It was fun, but it was also a clique-maker. An early and easy way to find yourself on the outside looking in -- but this time with people you didn't really know...at all.

Hmm...

Fast-forward about 15 years.

Now you have Twitter...and it's everywhere.

I joined Twitter about a year after it started.

...

And I couldn't really figure it all out. What was its purpose? I had a terrible time trying to boil down my thoughts into 140 characters. 140? Really? (It gets easier with practice I learned.)

The newness gone, I just stopped using it.

Then came Facebook...and it's everywhere, as well.

Again, I was left wondering why? What was the purpose? But I was sucked into it and suddenly I reconnected to friends I hadn't seen or heard from in decades.

Once.

It seems that it's not necessarily, or actually, a new-friend maker...or an old-friend reconnecter. (Well, not for everyone, anyway. It seems you have to be in the right "crowd," so to speak. Some friends seem to have endless chats with their friends. Idlegrass again.) In fact, I would venture to say I talk less with/to some friends now than I ever did. It's almost like they've "seen" me online so they don't need to chat with me anymore.

Hmm...

In fairness, I've probably fallen into the same trap and talk to/e-mail friends a whole lot less now, too.

So what to do?

I wanted to just quit both worlds (easier said than done, I found out). I felt so discouraged. But I decided to stay on and do an experiment to see if it would get any better.

I returned to Twitter, following a several-year hiatus, and found it was still who you were/who you knew.  I tried to connect with people, comment on their tweets, tweet my interest in their daily happenings.

My last personal tweet after a year or more of trying was: "Always on the outside of the window, looking in, nose pressed on the glass, watching the fun.... With that, I'll bid Twitterland goodbye...."

The only one who tweeted back was my then-12-year-old daughter, saying how sad she was for me.

Nothing from anyone else. Not even the crickets.

Sigh.

I guess it was a social-networking-experiment-gone-wrong? Or maybe it worked? It showed me that some people have it; others just don't.

Oh, well.  I've never been much of a social butterfly anyway....maybe more of a moth with friends?

*wink-grin*

...to be continued...

Sands of Time

There's a cliched saying about the "sands of time," though I can't really remember the exact wording at this moment.

The meaning is there, though.

"Sands of time"...meaning time is hard to actually hold onto.

I've lamented many times on here that time is flying by. The kids grow at an amazingly-fast pace and I am having a hard time keeping up.  I cannot even keep up with myself at the moment.

When I was a kid, I remember trying to pick up sand.  I would grab a handful and try to carry it to wherever I was building something, and by the time I got there it was almost all gone. I'd open up my fingers and only a few grains were left.  It was frustrating and inspiring at the same time. I would try to think of ways that I could hold it that would enable me to get it -- or most of it -- to the spot where I needed it.  Nothing worked.

Of course, all I needed was a bucket.  But either I was too young to think about that, or I didn't have one handy.

That's how it feels with kids, sometimes.

The harder I try to hold onto them, the faster they seem to grow and pull away.  And as they pull away, so I pull away.  The faster time goes by -- the less of it I'm actually experiencing.

I watch my daughter -- nearly a teen -- going off to different events, functions, activities...and I long for the day when she was a baby in my arms, depending only on me and her daddy.

Summer is flying by -- like all the other months of the year -- and with the end of it comes a new beginning for Emily and me.  She hits her "teens" and I hit my 40s.

Odd, really.

But just numbers.

Numbers that are like those granules of sand that fell through my grubby childlike fingers all those years ago. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't keep them there.....

Tempus Fugit...

..."time flees," literally.

The fact that it is now nearing the end of August, and my last blog post on here was...July (and now I'm backdating my updates)?

Yikes.

So I guess it's safe to say that time flees...flies...speeds by...

And sometimes we keep up (perhaps we're wearing a jet-pack?), and sometimes we're carried along by its currents.

Whatever the case, it's not to be stopped.

I remember learning that Latin phrase in 9th grade. It seemed a very foreign phrase/concept to me then since time crawled...time drifted. At times, it seemed to move a little bit faster, but mostly it was just slow.

Upcoming birthday? Tick-tock. Christmas vacation? Tiiiick-toooock. End of school? Tiiiiiiickkkk-tooooockkkk. Yawn.

Looking back on it, I long for some of those dreamy, ponderous moments of idleness. If only to catch my breath...and a few extra "Zzzzz"s.

But...sigh.

Now it's my children's turns to feel like the hour and minute hands on the clock dawdle -- play games with each other -- seemingly in no hurry.

Hmm...how time changes as we get older, huh?

Camp Woohoohaha! 2010

Join in our family's fun through photos from our third annual "Camp Woohoohaha!" (Click here and here to read about the previous two years.)

Always a good time for ALL!