Sad News: My mom passed away

I'm sad to say that my mom passed away on the 23rd of this month. So for the time being I won't be around much. There's so much to do right now but my family is with me.

My mom came over to my house on the 22nd for my daughter's birthday and she seemed fine. 8pm on the 24th my mom's PCA (Personal Care Attendant) called me and told me she hadn't seen my mom that day and asked if she might have gone for the weekend with one of my brother's or was picked up for a doctors appointment. I said no to both and told her I was going to call the police to have them break into her apartment and do a welfare check.

The police got there and called maintenance to let them in and called me back and informed me that they found my mother had passed away in her sleep in her own bed. The cororner told me that it looked like she got ready for bed, turned the tv on in her room and laid down and passed away that night.

It came as a shock to all of us because I had just seen her 2 days before and while she had numerous health problems, she was doing fine.

My brothers and I went and made the arrangements at the funeral home yesterday and her funeral is going to be on the 30th.

I'll be back in a week or two.


Mary

Happy Birthday to My Daughter

Tomorrow June 22nd is my daughter's 20th birthday. Where has the time gone?

This is a recent picture of my daughter and my brother at his wedding reception. I love this picture. I cannot believe she is already 20 years old, oh how the time fly's.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there.

Sad News about L.A. Banks

I sometimes struggle with a post here on my blog, but there are days that something just hits me square in the face and I know I have to pass the information on. Like the other day I was reading the posts on my favorite blogs and read a post on on Obfuscation of Reality about how L.A. Banks is battling an illness and loads of people are helping with her medical bills by way of auctions.

If you would like to see one of these auctions you can click here.


Sometimes you see something just needs to be shared with others and this is one of those times. I have read a lot of her books and this is really sad. It's sad when it happens to anyone but when it's someone you feel you know through her books, it hit harder.

The Red Star World Wear Scam

I recently saw a gift card in my Outside magazine, for $500 worth of free merchandise from Redstarworldwear.com

I looked over their site and soon realized that this merchandise which is mostly sunglasses and watches was not going to be free with this gift card. There is a 'service' [shipping and handling fee] of 9% per item. That's right 9% per item! So if I bought $500 worth of sunglasses from the site I would be paying about $50 just for shipping and handling. Don't waste your money on sunglasses that you could buy for $10 on the street or someplace else and get ripped off by shipping and handling fee's that cost you more than the glasses are actually worth.

If someone wants to offer you a free product, the shipping and handling will be free to. Or at the very least the 'gift card' they are supposedly giving you will also pay for the shipping and handling....which this one does NOT!

Bottom line...It's not free. Save your money and go to the drug store and buy a pair of sun glasses you can try on beforehand and make sure you like them. Don't get scammed by sites that are going to over charge you on the shipping and handling fee's for things that wouldn't never cost as much as they are charging.

My week In Pictures...

I've been busy doing all sorts of things, among them has been taking pictures or finding pictures in my many, many photo albums and scanning them to post on Fb so I could share them with my family that has no idea I still had them. Hey, I'm not called the picture keeper for nothing!

I've got all the pictures from my mom and dad that they had when they were little and I have all the families pictures that have been taken at all the family functions ect. I have about 20 very large photo albums and 4 large scrapbooks that I myself made.

I really love taking pictures and having the old pictures of my family and I. I even have pictures of really old cars and pictures of my grandpa when he was a kid. Not too long ago I went through the old pictures that my dad gave me years ago and had him tell me who some of the people were in the photos. I found I had a picture of my dad's grandparents. How cool is that?

So this is what I have been doing this week...



This is a picture I took of my String Doll that my daughter gave me. I wrote an article about string Dolls and should have it published in 2 weeks after the editor approves it.


Here's a picture of my rats that my daughter took. One of my rats, Hades is laying on his back and the other rats are snuggling with him.


This is a picture of my brother Billy and I. I was 16 at the time so it must have been in 1986..can you believe that? Oh how time flys. My brother didn't even know I still had this picture until I uploaded it to FB.


Here's a picture of the boys cage right after I had cleaned it. They messed it up right afterwards. They love to snuggle into those baby blankets.


and this is a picture of my childhood best friends kittens, back in 1984. That cats face is just priceless...He was yawning and made that face...LOL

Now I like Powdered incense...lol

I asked a friend of mine what in the world I was doing wrong with the charcoal briquettes and the powdered incense. It turns out that I was not lighting the charcoal briquette long enough for it to catch fire and get red hot, which would keep the fire inside it going and burn the powdered incense on it.

I finally get it now and have had it working just fine. Sometimes I just need to have some patience..lol

I do not like powdered incense

I recently bought some more powdered incense, the same kind that I had with my Wicca box and because it smelled good I wanted more and some charcoal incense burners. So I bought the charcoal briquettes and the incense and quickly found out that the little charcoal briquettes don't burn worth a shit. I put sand in the bottom of the brass burner I have, then lit the charcoal briquette and let it get hot, then put about 1/2 a teaspoon of incense on it and it smoked for about a minute and then stopped, I knocked the ash off the top and put more incense on and it didn't burn because the charcoal wasn't still hot. Maybe I need better briquettes.

I always seem to be writing something these days

I just finished writing another article for Associated Content from Yahoo! and now have another article published on my profile. I would probably write more but I run out of ideas really fast most days.


I really don't know how some of my author friends do it. I know authors of books that write several books a year! That would be a lot of work and quite frankly, I get tired of writing when I know I have to do it because it's work. That seems to take most of the fun out of it for me.

But thankfully I can write on my own time and get the articles I want to write out there for people to read, and it surprises me each month when I see just how many thousands of people click on my articles to read them.

But when I'm not writing articles I'm writing emails, notes, IM's, FB updates, blog updates, grocery lists, entering blog contests, reviews, and let's not forget all the wonderful paperwork for things like school, the government when it's needed, checks needing to be filled out, and the never ending list of books I want to get and put in my wish list.

The amount of writing and note taking I do seems to be never ending, good thing I have lots of paper and post it notes. lol