Fleetingly Carol

Many, many years ago, I met a wonderful lady. She was my mother-in-law's best friend, so when my husband's mother died suddenly in an automobile accident, Aunt Mildred adopted us. You see, Eldest Son had been born only six months earlier and she couldn't stand to think of her friend missing out on all the growing-up that was to be done. Out of a heavy loss came a life-long friendship of an odd sort. I grew up in a city and Aunt Mildred grew up on a farm and lived most of her life in the country. While Old Man loved to eat her biscuits, I preferred to watch in fascination as she worked her magic. She made the best biscuits I ever tasted. She kept a two foot tall tin of all-purpose flour under her kitchen sink. When she wanted biscuits, she would pull the tin out, add some shortening and milk, knead a few minutes, working the dough with just the tips of her fingers. She measured nothing. I asked her one day if she would teach me to make biscuits. She told me she couldn'

Almost a year ago, I wrote about finding my oldest son in a kitchen cabinet. The story began with a disembodied voice. Well, Dear Reader, this son is now over 30! Since that calamity, there have been new technologies to come out that offers twice the fun at half the effort. Older son telephoned me the other night, but when I answered my phone, all I heard was static. After a few minutes of confusion, I finally heard his laughing voice. He apologized for the static; he said it was caused because he called me on his phone that he forgot was still synced with his Bluetooth ear bud which was in a cabinet. So, the static I was hearing was really Older Son ripping everything apart to find his ear bud. So now he has his story of finding Mom in the cabinet! &#169 2011 Carol Phares

When Old Man was Young Man and the kids were younger - when the world was new and all, dinners could sometimes be very, oh, what's the word? tense. Ours was a very nontraditional dinner-time. We ate with one another with no television running in the background for distraction. This, Dear Reader, is ancient history, not even cable or dish networks had been invented, much less the Internet, computers and cell phones. I don't know how families do it these days. Why, I was on that very popular social website (which I can't name because of the Terms of Service on Blogger, the hosting website for this blog. I am not allowed to say their name, or any product name, for that matter). Anyway, here I was reading all the posts by family and friends, when a new one from Son came through. It simply said, "Daughter, get downstairs, dinner is ready." Not 2 seconds later, Daughter posted, "But, Dad, I'm right in the middle of a school project." Her father's res

Do you realize, Dear Reader, that it has been a full year for my blog! I turned a year old Saturday, the first and didn't even realize it. If I had, I would have written something. My first blog from a year ago was very short, but so full of high hopes! This is all there was: This blog is for fleeting thoughts. Perhaps a better name is "Stream-of-Conscience Thoughts". Because that's what it is. Never a dull moment! At least, I hope not. Doesn't that just melt the socks off your nose? I began this blog for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to think funny thoughts. A lot of serious things were going on in my life - still are- and I felt like I needed comic relief. The second reason for this blog is that it is a tool with which I'm honing my writing skills. I have succeeded in the comic relief, but I'm not so sure about improving my writing skills. Time will tell. So, this blog started out being for just me. But, I have some regular readers now, mos

I better hurry up and get the second part of this story written. The second Belly Dancing class is the day after tomorrow. I know I'll have so much more to write about! And, I've been practicing the Hip Snap, the Figure Eight and the Snake Arms all week. At the first class last week, after the warm-up exercises, which included things like reaching for the sky and head wagging, I raised my hand to ask when our sitting break would be, but she didn't see me. She moved right on into the Hip Snap. The Hip Snap? This is the part that Old Man didn't want to see. This is also the part that I observed my first day of watching this class. Imagine 5 women standing side by side, each doing the following: In the proper posture, standing straight, feet below the hips, knees slightly bent, chest up, shoulders back, we were to push the right hip slightly to the right and flex the glute (that's a nice way of saying the butt muscles). Then push the left hip slightly to the left and

I have done it! On a whim, I joined a gym! I am so excited! The first day I was there, I was amazed by all the machinery. Exercising would be easy, considering the machines will do it for you. I flashed back to a commercial on television when I was a little girl, of a well-shaped young lady advertising a weight loss machine. She stood on what looked like a stationary walking machine, except that she was leaning backward into a sling thing that wrapped around her derriere and the sling vibrated back and forth. I suppose the idea was to shake the fat off. I wonder if many of those sold. But, I digress. I didn't see any of those machines in the gym, but there were lots of others, many of them with weights attached. I imagined that they would stretch me thin. The young lady who was showing me around got on each machine and demonstrated how they worked. I imagined completely wrong! These were machines of torture! I asked the young lady if there wasn't anything I could do to &#

It's two o'clock in the morning and Old Man is fussing at me for being up and on the computer. I'd like to know what he's doing up to be fussing. Shouldn't he be in bed? But, he just worries about me. He can't sleep if he thinks I'm having a bad night. So, right now, he's sitting across the room, fingers drumming the arm of the chair because he knows that helps me keep up with the time better. He's just sweet that way. So, I have to tell you just this one thing, dear Reader. I'm on a very famous and ubiquitous social network, along with Old Man, our children, their spouses and their children, my siblings, my aunts, uncles and cousins and everyone I've known since I was five years old. You know the one. Well, whenever one of my family posts a comment on their page, I receive a text message on my cell phone. My cell phone also doubles as my alarm clock, so it stays by my bedside at night. Two hours ago, a text came in when Dear Daughter pos