EEEEEK!!!!

Last night I had been out with my girls and the rest of the Bruce female relatives enjoying dinner and the Women's Conference. After the event was over, I returned home, opened my garage door and pulled in. I grabbed my purse, opened my door, exited, took a step backwards to check the back seat and that's when I screeched. EEEEEEK! Only two inches from my foot was a SNAKE. I leaped from that spot in the garage to the step into the house in just a couple steps, alerting my Keri and Michelle of the impending danger.
Upon closer inspection (I hope you have a visual of three adult women slowly walking along the side of the car to see if the snake was moving), we discovered that the said snake was indeed... dead. Evidently I had run over the slippery little thing when I pulled out of the garage some five hours earlier. How did the thing get in my garage? Did he not know that at least half the people in my family have an extreme dislike for snakes? Oh, and the snake was only about a foot long, but a snake nonetheless.


Thanks to Michelle for providing the picture. She is always so prepared.

Technilogically Challenged!

I'm venting! Can I just say how much I hate being challenged in the photo/computer area? Why is it that my children can download pictures and send them to Costco or Walmart to be printed and I just don't get it. I have been trying for over an hour to get some downloaded pictures of Larry and I off to Costco. For some reason, I just can't figure out where the pictures are that I supposedly downloaded to my desktop. I could have driven clear across town and inserted my flash drive into the machine and had them printed in this amount of time. Oh, maybe not. I DID take the flash drive into Costco a couple days ago and the pictures wouldn't show up on the screen. All my pictures from Scandinavia were there but not the ones I need to get prints of. Hmmmm. I don't feel any smarter about computers and getting pictures printed having vented than I did five minutes ago. I guess I'll turn the computer off and do something that I know I can do.

Who says I don't have compassion?

Recently Larry and I have spent a good amount of time talking and joking about compassion, and maybe my lack of it. I wonder how much compassion a person should have. Is there some kind of a “compassionometer” that we need to be living up to? I understand that I tend not to show compassion as much as many people, especially if compassion is measured by flowery verbage. Don’t get me wrong. I can tear up with the best of them when I hear a story that tugs at my heartstrings. (In fact, for about 35 years my eyes were moist more than they were dry.) I fear I have taught my daughters through my example in this area of non-compassion. I know some of my sons-in-law complain about their respective wives not showing a high level of compassion. Just this week Larry stubbed his toe before he went to work. He hobbled to the sofa, sat there while vocally reaffirming how much pain he was in. Finally he motioned to me with his hand and said, “Come here and give me a hug. I need some compassion.” You guessed it, I just stood there watching him try and figure out what to do with the pain. In my head I was probably thinking something like this: “Well, get your shoes and socks on. You’ll be late for work. And besides, I need to start my WiiFit exercising.” Or maybe, "If you had had your shoes and socks on this wouldn't have happened." In other words, buck up and deal with it. I hope those who know me well do see the compassion and sympathy that I show. And just for the record, Larry tells me I am very compassionate. But we have sure had some good laughs over this topic.