Well since Theresa stopped by my blog again, I feel like I need to write something.

Today is Mom’s birthday. My sister and I took her out to dinner last night. My sweet niece and nephew came along. She showed us her newly minted driver’s license…she looks exactly like her mother in the picture! When the ladies at the license bureau asked her how much she weighed, she said she didn’t know. So they looked at her and typed in 95 pounds. When she weighed herself later, they were off by 5 pounds.

Only two more weeks and I will be relieved of Idol Watching duty. I wonder if David Cook likes older women? I sure hope he wins.

Are they ever going to have a Middle Aged Idol? I might try out. Mom always said I couldn’t sing, but at karaoke, some people tell me I have a good voice. Most people do not encourage bad singers to keep on singing, so either Mom was wrong, or these people are tone deaf. If I ever win the lottery, I’m taking private singing lessons.

If I win enough money, I could host Middle Aged Idol. Of course by then, I might be Elder Idol.

It it’s late, and I’m tired. I’ll think of something tomorrow. Maybe American Idol will inspire me!

I haven’t written anything since Sunday….four days ago. Too tired to write anything after working all day. Started something two days ago, but didn’t finish it.

I’m yawning now. Gotta figure out what I’m going to eat for dinner. Stop by again.

I’m going to cut the grass. Unless it rains before I get dressed. First time this season. So that means drag out the old lawnmower, see if I have any gas, see if it will start without too much cursing.

The grass is sufficiently high now….. the neighbors have had plenty of time to talk about it.  That’s what’s great about the suburbs.  They are wondering if I’m ever going to cut the grass…I’m wondering why that door across the street is now green. Seems to be a bit bright for the house. Are they selling it? Or is someone FINALLY moving in? Maybe while I’m outside, I’ll find out.

It’s cool enough outside I won’t pass out from the heat…that will be next week.

Can’t wait to get out there!!!

On the way to work I pass several gas stations. When I’m getting close to needing gas, I try to guess which one is going to be cheapest. It varies. Most of the time, I wait too long and the price goes up, or I don’t buy from the cheapest one and I am forced to buy from the higher one as I’m now running on empty.

I noticed gas often goes up on Wednesday. The gas station by my house was cheapest yesterday, but I was too tired to stop. So I bought the same price gas this morning at the same station…..and for once… I beat the increase. It was 16 cents higher by the end of the day. Even though I only needed about 5 gallons to fill up, so the total savings was less than dollar….it was like winning a round for a change.

You go girl! Reporters and political “experts” keep asking Hillary when she’s going to drop out. Why the heck should she???? Look at Pennsylvania.

Asking her to drop out before the convention is the same as declaring a winner on election day as soon as the polls close on the East Coast. What about the rest of the voters? Don’t they count?

I don’t care if Hillary Clinton loses the rest of the presidential primaries…she should hang in there until the convention. No regrets.

What do you tell your kids when their baseball team keeps losing? Or when they struggle with math? Or when your homely daughter or geeky son is having trouble socially?

You tell them:

Hang in there!

Go for it!

Don’t listen to what everybody else says!

Do what you want to do. Be your own person.

You can be anybody you want to be.

Give it a try.

Don’t lose sight of your goals.

Hillary has wanted this for a long time. This is her big chance. Keep the faith. You won in Pennsylvania!!!

Sometimes two centuries collide. Twenty-first century laws and technology are clashing with a religious sect in Eldorado, Texas where the women wear 19th century style dresses.

Texas government officials are investigating allegations of sexual abuse of the female children at the Yearn for Zion Ranch. They are looking for evidence that young girls are forced to marry men who practice polygamy in the name of faith.

The mothers have been appearing on the news wearing solid colored, long prairie-style dresses. They grow their hair long, then artfully pin it up on their head. In television interviews, the women sound like zombies trained to keep the group’s secrets. Now the zombie men are coming out to meet the cameras, and they are just as evasive, talking in circles when asked if young child brides are marrying grown men. (Bring ‘em young, so to speak.)

This religious sect is described as an offshoot of the Mormon church.

Joseph Smith created the Church of Jesus Christ Later-Day Saints from a book he wrote based on what he said were a couple of encounters with some visions in the woods and a couple of gold tablets he found. Smith’s book re-located the Garden of Eden to Missouri, wove in some other Biblical references, and anointed the Native American Indians as God’s chosen people….ie, he said they were descendants of some Israelites who had moved to America in 600 B.C.

Along the way, Smith added “group marriage” to his religious teachings….group as in many wives for one man. Another church prophet, Brigham Young, reportedly resisted the idea of polygamy at first, but came to embrace it….and his 20 wives.

Some people didn’t like Smith and his new religion. In 1844, he was murdered. In 1847 Young and his followers moved west to get away from some unfriendly neighbors they met in a couple of towns in Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. Young settled in Utah and others ended up California. The more conservative members of Young’s group of Mormons stayed in the Midwest.

With his practice of polygamy, I guess this makes Brigham Young and the Mormons early West Coast liberals. Young was eventually the governor of the Utah territory.

So you see, the Texas group and the Mormon church in its various versions are distant cousins. A “cult once-removed” so to speak.

There are a few differences between Smith and Young and today’s news-making polygamist leader of the Texas sect, Warren Jeffs. Smith and Young didn’t have income tax laws to take advantage of and their children didn’t collect government aid, as has been alleged with regards to Jeffs. Jeffs is currently in jail as an accomplice to rape for forcing an underage girl to marry.

Here’s what I would like to know. Why does everybody - including the kids — in this group need a cell phone? The girls are running around in outdated garb on a guarded compound, living what looks like a communal life, where the kids are safe from drugs and bad people are supposedly locked out….. yet each kid apparently has a cell phone. What ring tone do you think they download? Home on the Range? Buffalo Gals (Won’t you come out tonight?)

Here’s another observation. Texas officials are running DNA tests on 400 or so kids to determine who their fathers are. A pretty major undertaking. One of the ladies being interviewed explained there is confusion with the kids many last names because some of the women “went with one man to another.” Interesting. Apparently “divorce,” or at least changing spouses/partners is also a part of this group’s behavior.

It’s ironic that we hear of cases of rapes going unsolved because law enforcement officials don’t always have enough funds to test crime samples for DNA evidence. We also hear stories of innocent men and women being released from jail after several years when a DNA test is finally administered after much wrangling in the courts and with the help of persistent attorneys.

I do think these kids should be tested. I also hope if the women are collecting government assistance, that the state of Texas applies its child support laws to the fathers of these children and seizes their assets to pay for their support and counseling.

I received a “Dear Mirna” letter in the mail today. Apparently Mirna and I applied for the same job at a local college. I guess she didn’t get the job either.

Wonder what her letter said? Dear “next name.”

Part of the job included using the database. I would think that mail merge might also come into play at some point in time. Obviously. the person currently mail merging the job applicant reject letters could use a little help with this skill.

The last time I applied to this same college…..the envelope was hand addressed!!! And somebody else’s “education and experience appear to more closely fit the position.”

I’m tempted to send it back to the person who signed the letter. But I would have to leave my name on there in order to make my point. What do you think?

A friend of mine recently received a letter from this same college….minus a verb in the opening sentence. It was inviting her to enroll in the Honors College.

During the interview discussion about my experience with databases….I told them about my friend’s letter, as she had just received it a few days before. I mentioned that perhaps this community college might want to look at how they are currently utilizing the information in their massive database. I told them I thought they might want to consider whether it was a good use of their resources to send recruitment letters to students with Bachelor’s degrees and 20 years professional experience — who merely were taking one class. On top of that, she works at a very prestigious university. All of this information is on her application to take this one little class.

Organizations of all sizes talk about quality, attention to detail, etc. A lot of times, it’s just that…a lot of talk.

This morning’s early morning earthquake woke me up. It sounded like really heavy, weird hail running up and down my gutters.  The windows were rattling as it shook me out of deep sleep. I thought, “What the heck is that?” I didn’t think about it being an earthquake….it didn’t register “earthquake” on my sleepy brain.

I fell back asleep.

When I woke up again two hours later, I was feeling really groggy, but forced myself to switch on the TV.

Earthquake!!!!!!!! 5.2 . ….So that’s what that was…..in the Illinois Basin-Ozark Dome region.

Will there be aftershocks? I hope I am awake.

Yesterday I got my first whiff of fresh cut grass. It really smelled good after such a long, long winter. And, I wasn’t the one doing the work. Heck, it wasn’t even my backyard.

The Domestic Goddess frequently writes about her backyard, so I have stolen her idea and I’m writing about my own backyard. Apparently we have something in common as when it rains, we both have puddles in our backyards. This spring it’s been more like a swamp in mine.

Backyard experts will tell you that every fall you’re supposed to rake and bag up the leaves that fall in your yard. “If you don’t rake them up, you won’t have grass next year.” Yea, yea, yea….I could be so lucky as to not have to cut grass when it’s 103 degrees in the shade.

Some years I actually to go out about the second weekend in November and mulch the leaves with the mower and bag up the leftover leaf crumbles that don’t quite blend into the grass. And that’s it. A couple of hours and I’ve had my fill of yardwork for the year. I’d rather shovel snow in the winter than cut grass in the humidity.

Other years, I wait too long and the first snow or heavy rain comes along in November, and woops!!! ….. it’s too late to touch the leaves. Oh, well. I don’t loose any sleep over it.

I know people who will work in the yard in the middle of January if we have just one somewhat nice day. Not me. Yard work doesn’t begin until after April 15th. So today I’ peaked out my kitchen window to see how soon I need to start cutting and yes, there are still SOME leaves left from last fall… but for the most part….it’s all GREEN with grass that is already getting tall. Must have been all that great rain we’ve had.

No, I did not touch the leaves last fall. And yes, I have grass.

Reminds me of the second summer in this house when I had an aging evergreen tree removed from the front yard. The lower branches were resting on the grass, it had two trunks, leaned over to the side, etc. I was told my an arborist to either take the tree down or leave it alone….that it really shouldn’t be trimmed.

Since the tree was so shabby looking, I had it cut down in the fall. The old guy across the street promptly came over to let me know that I would never have grass growing in the 12 foot diameter of brown dirt left behind because it was an evergreen, blah, blah, blah. Somebody else in the neighborhood (or somewhere on the planet) took down an evergreen two decades before and still had a bare lawn, yada, yada, yada.

I guess I was supposed to freak out or something. I smiled and said I wasn’t too worried about it. “Less grass to cut next summer.”

The following spring, I barely scratched the surface of the dry ground with a rake and threw out some Scott’s PatchMaster seed, fertilizer, mulch mix….so now I had a great big BLUE spot in my front yard. Then I watered the big blue spot more or less according to the package directions.

Before I knew it, the Big Brown Bare Spot was just a memory. I had grass. And plenty of it.

Ha, ha, ha.

Maybe I should call myself the Green Goddess….but I think that’s a salad dressing.

For more backyard fun, check out http://thedomesticgoddess.wordpress.com/