2 Easts and Keep up with the Neighbor

A new-ish subdivision in town must have celebrated too hard before they put up their street signs on the corner of 470 East and 460 East. (Just keep going east, you can't miss it!)

Oh, and if your neighbor has an old door leaning against the corner of their front porch...

Then you'd better get one, too. (You never know when someone's going to step on your porch that you don't want in your house, and with an extra door, you can hope that they'll be fooled into thinking the dummy door is the entrance...or if you refuse to answer, perhaps they'll go next door to try your neighbor's dummy door!) 

Perhaps old doors on the porch are the new giant metal stars that people used to (and some still do) have hanging on their homes. What is your favorite thing to hang on your house? 

My dog is a Felon

 

My dog is a felon. I found her in dog jail after a wild night on Snow College Campus. (She left the yard after my boys, who were nice enough to let her out of her run to play with her, came back into the house for a few minutes. JAILBREAK!) The kind dog pound guy said he got a call from some college girls at 1:30 a.m. to come and get this party crasher. Do you think I should have sprung her?

Flying Kites

Today I planned to post pictures of my own personal experiment of the effect of emotions on water and rice, but the photo downloads were NOT cooperating, and I got called in to substitute this morning. Just believe me that they all pretty much look the same after a week, so until I figure it out, you get the joy of kites!

This is Bob's kite flying style:

Taking a look from the side, I think he might have something there!:

Michael stayed on his feet...

And managed not to step on his dad:

 

And here's a kite-flying tree! (It's the kite that got away, but later the tree spit it out, so we could pick the kite up off the ground.) It was some unexpected fun!

 

When was the last time you flew a kite? What else do you like to do on a windy day?

Aw, look who Rachel put in THE GIFT OF ANGELS!

Not only is Rachel Ann Nunes' book "THE GIFT OF ANGELS" f*ree, but it's got a real character in it... a character who is tall, blonde, eccentric, and named... wait for it... (drum roll)... Shirley!

(And, yes, she said I was dancing around in the back of her mind as she wrote the character, emphasis on "character!" I'll bet I was doing the hokey-pokey!)

Click on the bee-you-ti-ful book cover below to get your fre*e ebook copy, this EASTER WEEKEND ONLY!

Now go and have a good day, a happy day, a reading day!

AND if you want to see photos and what participants said about WRITE HERE IN EPHRAIM 2014, CLICK HERE!

Does Water React to Emotions? A 4-week test.

I saw a video about Dr. Emoto's experiment with how emotions affect water, evidenced by crystals formed when water was told different things from "I hate you" to "I love you."

(See it here)

For people who don't have access to the equipment necessary to take pictures of crystallizing water, some people used boiled rice, sometimes covered with water, sometimes not, to see the results of messages written or spoken to it. The images I saw were fascinating. Here is only one example:

Since I don't know this guy or anyone else who did similar experiments, I decided to do the rice experiment myself.

In case my video doesn't cooperate (see "Bees in Trees" two blogs below), I've got six plastic water bottles here, labeled "Please go away," "I hate you, devil water and rice," "You're beautiful," "You're so funny! You make me laugh," and "I love you no matter what." (I've since added another one labeled "Retard" after I heard someone say that to someone else.) 

I will let you know what happens, even if I have to take still pictures.

Funny Campaign Poster!

It's election time! There are several very clever posters in the halls at the local high school, but this one made me laugh! 

 Are you laughing, too? 

Bees in Trees!

(I don't know why these videos aren't working properly! If anyone knows how I can fix them, then please let me know!)

When I went outside yesterday, I heard what sounded like a motor humming faintly overhead. When I got beneath our black willow tree and looked up, I saw BEES! (I like bees... they seem cheerful and busy.)

In this first short video, you should be able to hear the humming bee sound in between my crackly footsteps (sorry about that) and our chickens' squawks.

I'm including the second even shorter video because it shows the bees closeup, even though there's some kind of talk going on in a man's voice that must have been playing on my phone, but I don't remember it while filming! (Maybe it's a voice from above...translating bee talk? What do you think?)

 

Shirley's got Expo antlers and a chimpanzee lip!

In the spirit of the Sportsman's Outdoor Expo last month, my son Bron thought he could improve my appearance by giving me some antlers. (I dunno... it's kind of a good look for me!)

 Now here I am without the "antlers" and without such harsh lighting. One of my high school classmates saw this photo and asked, "When are you going to age?"  

Look at the first picture again! See the wrinkles? My face might be aging, but my heart never will.

It's kind of funny how the things that are happening to us seem so much bigger than they do to anyone outside of us. For example, when I took the photo of my fat upper lip after my recent oral surgery below, I felt that the swelling made me look like a chimpanzee. 

 

Yet when I took an "after" picture of my lip feeling back to normal, I can see why people told me that I didn't look any different. It just felt like a huge difference inside.

What good does it do to focus on what we feel if it's not even apparent? The best strategy I can think of from this experience is to look outward at what needs to be done, what's next, the goal in front of you.