In The Beginning...

Okay, so I'm not quite as old as Eve, but  I'm getting there. To launch myself into the 21st Century, however, the Blog seems to be the newest way to express myself so here I am.

If you don't know me, I'm a Christian; a wife to Dennis, (for fifty years now); a mom to Josh, and Jake; a mother-in-law to long-suffering Jerilyn and Robyn; a grandma to David, sixteen; Hayley, fifteen, Emily, and Miranda, both twelve And apparently a narcissist, or else why would I be attempting to write about myself, my thoughts, my doings, and my ideas on how you should run your life?

I will tell you a true story which I hope will  influence my thinking, if not yours:

Some years ago we drove to St. Louis to celebrate Thanksgiving with my sister's family and within a few hours the oven was on fire.  Now, at our house we were used to this, but my sister had a gas stove so we decided to treat the occasion a little differently this time in case things should escalate.  The smoke alarm was going off but none of the teen-agers got out of bed since they had heard all that before. They didn't get up until they heard someone yell "Call 911". My (former---and you will see why) brother-in-law came running in wearing only a kimono and tried to beat out the fire by flapping a towel at it (and unwittingly his kimono---not a pretty sight). Finally, he said "Would a fire extinguisher help? There's one in the back room," and someone located the gas line outside and turned it off but by then the fire engines were blazing (so to speak) into the neighborhood.  We were told to wait outside.

As you may imagine, this was all a little nerve-racking, but as I paced up & down the sidewalk, suddenly I spotted my nephew's miniature dachshund, Hogan, just inside the open front door. Heroically springing into action, I ran in, grabbed the dog and ran back out to continue pacing, hugging him to my chest. He seemed to be quite nervous too. He kept jerking his head in an odd little way so I just held him tighter and tried to comfort him as I paced. Alas, what I didn't know was that there was an underground electric fence to keep him in the yard and I was walking back & forth across it giving him a jolt of electricity each time I crossed the line. Poor Hogan!

And the moral of the story is:  Even though I may think I am giving you wonderful advice and that you would be much better off if you just did things my way, there may be things about your life I don't know so please bear with me.  I'm an old wife, you know.