Congratulations to the New Couple and my Condolences to the Groom

Or maybe should I tell Mr. Mezvinsky 'May the force be with you'. Oy gevalt, while most of us find our mothers-in-law intimidating, imagine having Hillary Rodham Clinton as a  MIL.    I would love to witness that Thanksgiving Dinner. Picture Hillary taking a very deliberate yet ladylike bite of some turkey, white meat of course, and... oh, wait, no... imagine her deftly disemboweling a snail (escargot anybody) and ever so casually ask her nervous son-in law when exactly his father was released from jail. Picture it? You got it? Makes your Thanksgiving dinner seem almost relaxed now, huh?

Don't get me wrong, we all have skeletons in our closets. But only one lucky man can call himself  son-in-law to Hillary Rodham Clinton. I am convinced she took private lessons from Margaret Thatcher.  It takes a courageous man, and a man truly in love to deal with this new family.

I wish them, as I would really any newlywed couple, all the very best, I am sure the gifts were great, the food fabulous and may the weather co-operate on their honeymoon. And, most of all may you be one of the statistically few whose marriage lasts a life time.  Take the good and the bad. Accept your imperfection so that you may also accept your partner's. Make sure you have some good friends you can call when your partner drives you crazy and you want someone to talk you out of murder by frying pan, ice-pick, snowshovel or any other violent means. And what's more, in their case, may you be wise enough to know who you can trust not to run to the tabloids with it.

Famous Birthdays - Beatrix Potter

Chances are, when you were little, someone read to you the Tales of Peter Rabbit amongst other Beatrix Potter books. But how much do you know about the author?


Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866 in South Kensington England. She was the only daughter of heirs to a cotton fortune and lived a quiet and solitary childhood. As was customary among monied society back then she was primarily cared for by a nurse or nanny. Little Beatrix would kiss her parents goodnight and see them perhaps in the morning. But the majority of the time was spent attended by the hired help. When Beatrix turned 6 her mother had another child. Beatrix's little brother was called Bertram. They were homeschooled and raised together by nannies and governesses. When Bertram was old enough he left for boarding school as was customary then while Beatrix remained behind to continue her education with a succession of various governesses. The children would go on long summer vacations, usually to Scotland where she discovered her deep love for nature. Beatrix and Bertram Potter loved to sketch and draw what they observed. Beatrix never lost her love for nature and loved making up stories about the animals she observed. When she was 27 she sent one such illustrated stories to the sick child of one of her former governesses. The story was about four little bunnies. Can you guess the names? They were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and of course the unforgettable Peter. That illustrated story was such a great success that she decided to have it privately published. It was published as The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1900. Two years later is was published commercially by the Frederick Warne & Company followed by 22 additional books over the next 20 years. The books were small, designed to be held by little hands and featured an easy to understand prose.

Beatrix became engaged to Norman Warne (the son of one of her publishers) in 1905 despite parental opposition. After his sudden death a few months later, Beatrix found herself spending much of her time alone at Hill Top, a small farm in an English Village. She married William Heelis in 1913 and spent the last 30 years of her life breeding Herdwick Sheep and illustrating and writing her books. Upon her death on December 22, 1943 she bequeathed the farm to the National Trust. The farm is still as it was when she lived in it.

Sources: Wikipedia and

http://www.peterrabbit.com/potters-world.asp (a lovely site)

Playing with Google Maps and feeling a pang of longing. / Sehnsucht nach Deutschland

Missy and I love maps. We love playing with them and exploring. And therefore we love, no, adore Google maps. Especially the feature that lets you see satellite images, photos and explore. Would you like to visit Venice? Or maybe Paris. How about a trip through Athens. Or maybe something off the beaten path. Oh, no money, honey? Well, go to the library, grab some travelogues and sit by your computer and pull up the streetviews of these cities. We did just that and more. I visited the town I grew up in. It's called Wahlwies. Well, we moved a lot and that was a town where I lived for almost 8½ years.

Anyway, I found a number of pictures that brought back so many memories but the two I wanted to post and share are these. The first one is the view as I used to see it from my bedroom window. Or Kinderzimmer Fenster. Of course the trees have grown a lot but this was it. It was beautiful no matter what time of the year. The second picture is of an area at the local stream similar to one where my friend Cordula (still lives there) and I spent hours playing. The creek is called 'Die Aach' which isn't saying much because there are countless streams in Germany called 'Aach'.

Of course this all brought back my postcard memories of Germany. I call them the postcard memories because they deal with the beauty and happiness of childhood and carefree living rather than the reality of being an adult with responsibilities. But one thing is for sure, Germany, like much of Europe enjoys a slower life quite unlike the American production and achievement driven lifestyle. So when I see pictures of this town and other surrounding towns I enjoy memories of riding my bicycle with my friends to Güttingen to swim in the ponds. Or to Orsingen to enjoy the chlorinated pleasures of the municipal swimming pool.  It brings back memories of my school (Pestalozzi Waldorf Schule Wahlwies) and the yearly Bazaar which we all so enjoyed and loved. It brings back memories of carefree days hiking with my friends or alone in the woods behind our house.

What brings back your picture postcard memories and to where do they belong?

In response to Eva's question as to the clear images I am posting part of a a screenshot of  google maps.

Famous Birthdays - The 'Unsinkable Molly Brown' July 18, 1867

The Unsinkable Molly Brown was born as Margaret Tobin on July 18, 1867.  Born to Irish immigrants she came from humble and hardworking beginnings. Margaret had a sibling Daniel who worked in the mines of Leadville Colorado while she worked in a store. She married James J. Brown in 1886 and moved to a neighboring town where they began a soup kitchen for mining families. Mining companies often paid their workers with a special ‘money’ which was only good at the stores owned by the mining companies themselves. The money was of no value anywhere else. Since people has no where else to go the general stores owned by the mining companies were exorbitantly expensive. That meant that mining family were often very poor and living conditions were quite hard. It was around that time that Molly became involved with the women’s suffrage movement.

The Browns were in Egypt in 1912 when they learned that their grandson had taken ill. Margaret booked her voyage on the ill-fated Titanic to return to America. The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 14, 1912. Molly was able to aid fellow passengers and the French Legion of Honour recognized her later for her efforts to save her fellow passengers. She wasn’t only working to save them from the freezing waters but also after they were rescued and safely onboard of the Carpathia. She spoke several languages and thus was able to assist in recording the names and identities of those saved, the ones lost at sea and offer comforting words to those in despair.

Molly Brown was head of the Titanic Survivors' Committee which supported immigrants who had lost everything in the disaster, and helped to get a memorial erected to the Titanic survivors in Washington, DC. She was not allowed to testify in Congressional hearings about the sinking of the Titanic, because she was a woman; in response to this slight she published her account in newspapers.

You can read a lot more in detail about this remarkable lady on the links provided below and other sites on the Internet. Please make sure to have your parents’ permission before you do so.

http://www.mollybrown.org/

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/westernamerica/p/molly_brown.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Brown

Free Kindle for PC App download at Amazon and FREE BOOKS too!

Here is something droolworthy for all of you avid readers out there. You can go to Amazon.com and download (for free) their Kindle for PC App. It's in it's Beta testing stage so there are some hiccups but it's still a good deal. Now here's the drool worthy part, there are tons of free classic books you can download. I mean the classics baby! We downloaded Jane Austen, Jules Verne, Dickens, Pyle, Kipling and tales such as Arabian Nights, Aesops Fables,  etc etc etc.  I am tickled because I had many of those books on my list for school this year.

Because of the heat my poor husband didn't sleep much and got up at 3:30 AM. He'll be traveling internationally for about 6 weeks and I convinced him to get the iPad and use a Kindle download to get books. We chose the iPad over Kindle because it has other Apps and functions. So as he was surfing Amazon he found this App and free books.

On another bright note. I am having the repair folks come out today and they (very begrudgingly) waved the trip charge when I made it clear I am shopping for the lowest cost.  Yeah! That's $30 bucks saved.  Of course we are likely to have to replace the whole furnace because I am not spending $400 - $500 on a blower for a furnace that needs to be replaced. Grammatically that last sentence is off but I am not going to work on it right now because I haven't had enough coffee yet.  I am sure ya'll understand.

Well, have a productive day!

TTFN

Arrrgh, No air conditioning!

So a few weeks my air conditioner started to leak into my furnace and spill out. We had that fixed on Friday. Now, last night I realized my house was cooking hot. Why? The AC was running. But the blower wasn't distributing the cold air. Oh the pain..... Well, I called two local companies and just to have them come out to our house and diagnose the problem after business hours runs around 190 bucks. Say whaaaaat?  I just paid about $170 on Friday, I am broke! Ramen noodles and boiled eggs for the next few weeks. Just kidding, not that bad, but still bad enough.  Repairing a furnace blower can be costly and we may just have to replace the furnace if the cost is too high because it has other issues. No point in spending $800 - $900 on a blower and then have to replace the whole thing again in a few months. But I don't have that kinda cash just lying around. Hello, consumer confidence is at an 11 month low, give me a boost here.....

Sorry, I know this is so not interesting but I had to vent. At least I can send the kids to a nice cool office if needed and we can even sleep there if the house gets too hot meanwhile. It's 84F right now and it's supposed to go to 89F for the high and 69F for the low. With the high dewpoints we are enjoying not the weather I can leave the windows open at.

Rats!!!

On Gratitude and a Big "Welcome" to my Blog Friends

SAHMinIL, Arby, Eva, and April-May I just wanted to let you guys know WELCOME! Sit down, drop me a line. Visit anytime. Thanks, it means a lot.

I found out today that I have four people now who publicly follow my post. Thank you. It means a lot. What does it mean? It means that my writing can't be that bad, after all, and that perhaps, I am not quite as weird as I sometimes think I am. And I am grateful for all of you out there. I am talking about you homeschool bloggers, those that have posted on my site, those whose blogs I've been visiting quietly and some I've just started visiting. I mean  bloggers like Alasandra's that I've followed for a long time now and my admitted addiction to Arby's Boarding in Bedlam and of course Evas inspiring blog.  April-May, do you have a blog? I tried to see if you had one by clicking on your picture but couldn't find one.  You are all an inspiration and encouragement. Keep posting, SAHMinIL, I hope your daughter is feeling better, Arby your vacation sounds like a challenge on its own, Eva you know I visit all the time and April-May do drop me a line and allow us to visit your blog even if it's new!

Blessings.

Marlis