the grass is always greener…

75% of U.S. adults live within an hour’s drive of their parents.   (this is true for me, as my parents live next door, which is alternately good and bad)

Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader

In the summertime, when the weather is fine, you can stretch right up and touch the sky.  Ah, the best time of the year!

On average, the Statue of Liberty's fingernails weigh 100 lbs. apiece.

Uncle John's Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom Reader

At 3:15 this morning, the phone rang.  This is never good.   Last night, she was in Wilmington with a good friend.  They were leaving for Greensboro around midnight.  She wanted to come on home from the friend's house to go yardsale-ing with her aunt & I; we were planning to leave at 6:30.  I told her that it was her decision, but that I would prefer she stay in Greensboro overnight.  Obviously, my preference and her decision differed greatly.

She left her friend's house at 3, and called me at 3:15.  In that 15 minutes, she nodded off, ran a stop-sign, and jumped a ditch.  She woke up when she hit the ground, mashed the brakes, and slid about 300 feet through a wet yard, before a tree stopped her.  

There is nothing more unsettling than receiving a call in the middle of the night, with your child crying on the other end.  But thanks be to God that it was my child on the other end of that call, and not the highway patrol.  Thanks be to God that she walked away from that accident with bruises, and that she didn't have someone with her.

Thanks be to God that my baby's okay.

I was looking for some trivia in Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader, and I came across this little tidbit:  Henry Ford allegedly bankrolled the Nazis in the early 1920's.  Apparently, without Ford's help, the party might have perished.  This just seemed a little far-fetched to me, like an urban legend, but what do I know? So, I googled it, and        I think it might be true.  I don't know what to think. 

My niece, M has that childish sense that says pink goes with pink, and stripes with stripes.  Well, you can't argue with that philosophy, can you?

Starfish don't have brains.  (Geez, any Spongebob fan could tell you that!)

Uncle John's Third Bathroom Reader

So, I'm reading the e-headlines this afternoon, and I come across a couple of good ones; first: "Police warn of male flasher on beaches of Rye".  Apparently, there is a guy, about 55, with a chubby belly and gray chest hair, exposing himself on the beaches of Rye, NH.  Reports say that he masks his face with underwear.  Eww!  I hope he brings clean ones along, and doesn't use the ones he just took off his backside!  Read more here.

Then: "Drunk lawnmower driver arrested".  This guy was arrested as he drove his mower home from a store about a mile from his house.   I think his driving on the sidewalk is probably what made the police suspicious.  You can read it all about it here.

In a single year, over 200,000 pounds of barnacles collect on the bottom of a steamship.

Uncle John's Third Bathroom Reader

Today is a sad day in our house.  Our dog passed away this morning.  There is obviously sadness.  There is always grief when something like this happens.  Then, I have guilt, because I was growing frustrated with his jumping and chewing.  I had been trying to find someone who would give him a good home, something that it appears we failed to do.