Everyday Heroes — No comments
08
Feb 10

Your daughter is welcome over for laundry anytime she wants to reduce her carbon footprint!

The following is an e-mail I received in respose to posting my 1930’s laundry column. Mary Kay is an Atlanta friend from way back. We met at Peachtree Road Methodist when we had no babies; we were just babes ourselves.

MK kids lawra

 

 

 

 

Mary Kay and Charlie Jackson left the States for Ghana with their two boys a few years ago. Mary Kay uses her engineering background (she specialized in water waste treatment plants) to help those she serves in Ghana obtain clean water to drink, cook and do with whatever we take clean water for granted.

Her blog…http://www.jacksons-in-ghana.blogspot.com/  

Take it away Mary Kay…

“OK, Charlie and I are totally cracking up over your laundry day blog – you could research 1930s laundry practices or 2010 in Ghana! 

We personally don’t make our own soap, but my NGO trains women on how to make it to sell for extra family income.  We use shea butter, palm oil and commercial caustic, rather than lye from wood ash, but it is still basically the same – and a hot messy process! 

Laundry day- we have a washing machine that works – sometimes.  If the power is on.  And if the water is flowing.  

Then everything gets hung out on the line.  The first couple of times, I had the romantic memories of being a small child and helping my mom hang the laundry.  I love the sound of snapping out the sheets to get them straight before hanging.  And the smell and feel of the fresh, damp laundry.  Playing hide-and-seek among all the sheets.  But, after the laundry all gets re-soaked in the sudden afternoon downpour that you didn’t see coming…  Or your whites turn a dingy grey because of all the smoke and dust in the air… Well, maybe a dryer would be nice. 

Then comes the ironing – not because we really care about being neatly pressed, though everything is cotton and needs to be ironed.  But there is a lovely mango fly that lays its eggs in cotton clothing.  Then once the clothing is put on, your body heat hatches the eggs and the larvae will burrow under your skin to live and grow, until they come popping out like in Alien.  Fortunately, the heat from ironing will kill the eggs, so everything gets ironed – even your underwear.

The only thing I can say is, “Thank goodness labor is cheap here and I don’t have to do the laundry!”  It is basically half to two-thirds of our housekeeper’s job to keep up with our laundry.  The remainder of her time is spent in mopping the house every day to keep the dust under control.

So tell your daughter she is welcome to come visit and do laundry at our house anytime she wants to reduce her carbon footprint! 

Thanks for the day brightener! 

Mary Kay

Mary Kay Jackson

Serving Christ in Ghana with

The Mission Society

Columns / Latest Newspaper Column — 2 comments
05
Feb 10

“It was brutal, all day and all hand washable. I’m not making this up.”

“Let’s get rid of these.” My daughter pointed to our washer and dryer. My first thought — how quickly can this be accomplished? Continue reading →

Thought for the Day — 7 comments
02
Feb 10

Groundhog Day 2010. Madison, Georgia.

A picture paints a thousand words.

Groundhog Day 2010 ~

Lovely.

Lovely.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This was this morning heading home after depositing my fighting children at school.
 
 
 
A more artistic interpretation.

A more artistic interpretation.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here’s what it looks like out my window this very moment.
 
Through the screen that has no use because I can’t pry the window open after a hundred years worth of layering paint glommed on there.
 
 
Hmm.

Hmm.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wow. I never noticed that screen before. Great. Now that is all I am going to see when I space out while trying think of SOMETHING to put on paper. A screen.
And I was worried about seeing nothing but gray and rain.
 
Now I’ve got gray, rain and this hideous screen that I never even noticed till I took that silly picture. I’ve got to talk to my groundhog about this. Who didn’t see his shadow. How on earth could he through 12 billion stories of cumulus, nimbus, stratus pressing down on us all?
 
Thank God.
 
Not about all the air pressure, but that the groundhog did not see his shadow and winter will be out of here by tomorrow.
 
At least that’s what I’m expecting. Any more groundhog reports out there?
Columns — 2 comments
30
Jan 10

Visions of standing on the banks of the Mississippi with the water rising.

Six thousand books needed to be transported. Let’s form a line of book wrestlers from Dog Ear Books old location on Academy Street up two generous city blocks to their new location on South Main Street. Continue reading →

Columns — 5 comments
21
Jan 10

Looking at the New Year, who would you rather be? Brett Favre or Tony Romo?

All celebrating happens in the end zone. Well, it used to before new rules once again try to curb the enthusiasm of jubilant ballplayers. Who doesn’t understand the spontaneous desire to take the moment to propose to a cheerleader? Or lie down to attempt a Snow Angel? A touchdown’s been scored! No one would think of performing this celebratory behavior on their own 5 yard line.

Continue reading →

I love a Parade! / Thought for the Day — 1 comment
20
Jan 10

It’s okay to letgo…

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I once heard a psycologist say that if you think of an object and lock it into your mind, you will start to see it everywhere.

Like clowns.

Say that you decided upon clowns as your object (this would only be if you weren’t deathly afraid of them as I know some of you are). Within the next week, you start noticing the word “clown” written everywhere. It jumps off the page.

Pictures of clowns start appearing all over the place.

Of course, those words and pictures were there all the time, but because of your heightened awareness ~ they are all you see.

I’m going to stop talking about clowns, because I’m home alone and it is starting to get dark and…it’s getting a little creepy thinking about smiling white faces.

                                                                                                                                                                       ~~~

It was a simple tweet that asked a simple question. “What is your word of the year?”

“LET GO” popped into my head.

Problem is that “Let go” is two words and even with Twitter’s 140 character limitation, there wasn’t anyway I could make that phrase into one word.

But I did anyway. I tweeted that my word of 2010 was LETGO. My fellow follower agreed. She said “letgo” as my one word for 2010 worked for her.

Letting go and it’s themes have been appearing everywhere.

A respected businesswoman with whom I am acquainted was struggling with lots of worry about selling her business. She said, “You know, when I just dropped everything and stood back…it all fell into place.”

I ran the Disney Marathon and in writing about the experience the morning after, I had a billion different memories which could have gone a billion different directions. As I started to whittle down from 1000 plus words and kept cutting and cutting, when I looked at what remained…it was letting go. Discarding all the clothing I had packed on myself…not hanging on to things because of fear.

 Weird.

Then last Sunday at church with my extraordinary cool group of woman I share study and coffee with each Sunday, we were talking about sins that keep us from God. One very hip, pulled together chick admitted, “Letting go. I’ve just got to get better about letting go of things.”

I don’t know what LETGO means to you. I’m not sure I know what it means to me, but someone is trying to get that message through my thick skull.

If I had to guess, for me it’s about not worrying as much, trusting a mega-ton more, trying to live a godly life…all the while trying my hardest to do my best…then

Jump. Freefall. Let go.

Today, I was e-mailing back and forth with a writer friend. We probably haven’t communicated in a month and as an afterthought her last email to me had the link to this video, and her words were..”Got a great music video for you. Watch it all the way through! …Jan.”

What is your word…the word that is been following you???

Another weird theme developing in my life. MARCHING BANDS.What the heck is up with that? Don’t know…but I will just letgo and enjoy.

Btw, the band is OK Go and the marching band is Notre Dame’s finest…

 

Writing — 2 comments
17
Jan 10

Writers at the Round Table. Well, it’s kind of round and in the corner.

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Today over lunch I met with my writing group. We haven’t met in quite some time. Starting December I sent around an e-mail saying I missed them…and it took a over a month, but we collected again over lunch.

I pulled up late…as usual. They sat at same table and even though it had been over six months since we met, immediately it was like old times. Except only better.

Roger passed around a letter saying an editor so loved his book, after he made changes she couldn’t wait to pass it around to agents. She wrote of his dialogue (He does have way with dialogue), loving his characters in his flashbacks to Vietnam, on and on. All true. So happy for him because I had read lots of his stuff when we used to meet regularly before life got in the way.

Tracy had a crazy, crazy story about her agent (who is no longer her agent). Hate it when that happens. But she is working on another book, vampire romance thing which I read today while on elliptical (first four chapters) and it had me interested…though did question the hero’s (are vampires heroic?) use of “Jesus” and “Christ” as expletives. Are vampires able to do that without poofing away?

Then Kelly, who is a great writer, but stays busy trying to help everyone and everything. I think I made a huge break through today convincing her that she would be aweseome editor, and she needs to get paid doing this stuff.

I gave them the start of a new novel. Roger asked what happened to my old novel…did the protagonist have the affair?

I said that she didn’t have the affair; her husband did. And no, I wasn’t working on her story anymore ~ it wasn’t going anywhere. On second thought, maybe she should have been the one with the affair? Maybe that’s why it was RIP at this point?

No, that isn’t the point. The point is that he even remembered her and her story when I hadn’t thought her in a year. That was cool. (Very cool.) It was wonderful to be with my dear friends again, none of whom I would ever had known if it hadn’t been for this writing thing.

I am so much richer because of that meeting today…

What group in your life have you been missing? What is keeping you from emailing and scheduling a lunch or dinner?

Columns — 8 comments
16
Jan 10

I was heating up. The shirt needed to go.”

Letting go or hanging on.

When committing last July to run the January 2010 Disney marathon, I couldn’t foresee race day temperatures in the 20s with wind chills into the teens. The Weather Channel announced exposed skin warnings and risk of hypothermia. Dressed in so many mixed-match layers, it appeared I was going on a date with the Michelin Man and trying a little too hard to impress. Continue reading →

Puppy Diaries — No comments
13
Jan 10

I couldn’t take it anymore…the Puppy Diaries.

Walking the puppy.

I haven’t been doing much blogging lately.

I haven’t been doing much of anything lately, except…

WALKING THE PUPPY and SEARCHING for the puppy.

Take this morning. Most family was in kitchen and Tebow was with us. Cornered. All accesses blocked.

But someone opened a door and escape. (Very stealthily)

 ”Where’s the puppy?”

 Blank stares. “I don’t knows.”

Mom drops everything to search for the dog. For the dog is going off to POOP!!!

Why doesn’t anyone get this but ME! (alright, no more caps, but that felt better.) Of course, no one else gets it or cares because they aren’t the ones cleaning up puppy bow-bow-el movements.

There so cute...almost sleeping.

There so cute...almost sleeping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While typing this, he bounded in and fell asleep. Our pillows are on the floor, because no bed has been made ~ because I have been searching for that puppy. We have a crate, but I don’t want to stick him in there constantly. I walk by and think a puppy breeding mill spontaneously appeared in our family room.

He was curled up, nice and asleep, till I took this picture.

Am I missing something?

Am I missing something?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Awaking, he went under the bed and now sounds as if he is chewing up who knows what?

Since my life is revolving around this puppy, I am starting the Puppy Diaries — musings on puppy life. It might be of no interest to anyone but me…or anyone who has just irrevocably changed their life with a preschool dog. (See, I keep my promises for I wanted ever so wanted to put irrevocably in bold caps.)

Okay. He settled down again.

No telling what he ripped up under the bed.

No telling what he ripped up under the bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great. There is no way to make the bed without waking him up.

When he wakes up, he will have to go outside, and when he goes outside he will have to have a walk, and when he is going for a walk he will see a squirrel. And when he sees the squirrel.

Hmm. Maybe there is a book in this?

Does anyone have any suggestions to make this less painful??? Anyone, anyone.

Columns — No comments
09
Jan 10

You might have a longer shelf life spending most days on the dark side of the moon.”

Snap. The sound of a champagne flute’s stem separating from its bowl after knocking against the kitchen sink facet. Ruined! Continue reading →

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