Important Medical Statistics

Not making any good guy vs bad guy judgements, but check this out:

Doctors
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.1%.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.

Now think about this: Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.00188%.
Statistics courtesy of FBI

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'

FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

[Out of concern for the public at large, I withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!]

Worm Mucking with my boys

Apparently there is a certain procedure involved in collecting night crawlers for fishing. I got the call this morning that the water would be turned on around 4pm. We told Michael when he got home, but he wasn't up for the challenge. The boys called my dad, but weren't having much luck with him, either. So I made the mistake of saying, "So it's up to Mom??" They scooped that one up!! They found me a pair of boots and a headlamp and were going to help me set my alarm. That was where I drew the line. I'm sorry, but a few worms at 9:30 is better than no worms at all. So we went out there and found that, sure enough, there would be a few early worms. (Yeah, that was bad.) So I learned that those little suckers are incredibly fast!! You don't just pick them up!! You come close and they scoot down their holes faster than you can get your finger curled around them!! You really have to do a palm grab, hold tight, and PULL!! Michael said that's really the midnight difference. If we had waited a bit longer, more of them would be completely out of their holes and not as easily able to flash down them.

Well, my boys are pretty proud of old Mom! I kept up pretty well and they think I got as many as they did. Better than nothing, anyway!

Lessons Learned

Well, everyone learns at a different rate, but I believe my kids may have leapt ahead today. Chores have been slipping a bit in urgency and this morning we found a very messy kitchen and a dishwasher that hadn't been run. Remembering back to the lessons of his mother, Michael had them completely unload the dishwasher and wash everything by hand. Apparently, when he and his brother were little, they didn't clean their dishes very well and their mom unloaded all the cupboards and made them rewash everything. The kids were reminded several times throughout this recollection that they had no dishwasher to help! There was plenty of time for reminiscing during this procedure!

This was certainly a time of life lessons. We'll see the outcome in the future!

Mother's Day

I've been telling the kids for weeks what I wanted for Mother's Day. Just a simple finch feeder and black thistle seed... NOT mix! I only wanted the simple finch feeder because the thistle seed is so expensive. Well, I was pretty sure they had it, but the only problem was that their dad didn't ask for their assistance!! He stopped by Walmart after work and picked up a couple movies. Now I really do love movies, but I was really looking forward to that finch feeder. So when the kids handed me the movies, I yelled, "Oh, cool!! A finch feeder!!" Well everyone was laughing at me and trying to get me to go outside and holler for Patrick, the cat. What I found was the biggest finch feeder I've ever seen! It's a bit more of a 5 star hotel with a casino! It's even pulling the pole over! He has a really good point, though. I usually go through 2 or 3 feeders a summer, and spend a lot of time repairing them. This one has metal stands, heavy duty walls and a wire hanger. I'm really excited that this one might last a couple windstorms! Patrick is just enjoying the birds it brings around. I think he's calling it the Bait Bar!

"Ya just have to save the whales, don't ya??"

Well, it's not like I mean to, but I just can't walk away from someone or some animal in trouble. This time it was a dog stuck in a culvert and Matthew was just as upset as I was. We actually had a field trip that we needed to get to, but we just couldn't walk away. We tried to coax the dog out, but we could tell which way he was facing and that he wasn't going to get out that way. We went to the gas station to see what kind of help we could find. We got a shovel and a hoe to try to clear out some of the mud that was making the tube smaller, but some farmers showed up and could tell he was way too far back for that to work. They tried several different things, but finally decided to go get their bobcat and dig it out. They suggested that I call a good welder who might be able to cut the culvert open. I was trying to avoid that call. We went back to the gas station for some coffee while I tried to work up the courage to call my dad. By the time I found my courage, he was already there and calling me. That's when he started in on the whales... which, I'd like to say, I have never embarked on a project to save whales. Never. I asked if we could get a cougar once, but never a whale.

Anyhoo... these three poor farmers, who were already rained out and bored, showed up with the bobcat. I was feeling pretty bad at this point. This was looking more like a stray that we were pouring so much time and energy into saving, but it was hard to think about what else to do. You can walk away and let it die and stink up the place for a month or two, along with plugging up a culvert that is supposed to drain water. You can shoot the animal so it doesn't suffer, but that doesn't change the stink and plugged culvert. Or you can go along with the farmers who are well into the project that I never asked them to do and was very careful NOT to guilt them into it. They were the ones who called my dad, too, so why he said he's sending ME the bill is beyond me.

They got the dirt moved and the culvert exposed, then recalculated where they thought the dog was. Dad started cutting about 2-3 feet behind him, but it was noisy, smoky and scary and the dog managed to move a couple more feet away. They got it open and got in to see him and decided that no one could reach him, so they took Daddy home to fetch one of his leghold snares, a lot like an animal handler's pole. Patrick got it on the dog's back feet enough to pull him within reach, then pulled him out. The poor guy was exhausted and took a little water and just enjoyed the fresh air. They moved him over to solid ground where the kids and I tried to encourage him a bit while Dad welded the culvert back together and Patrick buried it again. The dog was up and walking around a bit when we were getting ready to leave, but he just couldn't get up and over the railroad tracks. Dad and Sam carried him over the tracks and he headed home, so we're hoping this story is over. Now I have an awful lot of cookies to bake to thank everyone!!

Happy Birthday Mallory!!

Ok, I missed it by a couple minutes! It was her birthday today (yesterday) and she is as close as I'm comfortable with being to the teen years! Since there's nothing I can do about that, I may as well become one with it. We're pretty far behind, so her birthday picture may not be up very soon!

She didn't really get much ON her birthday because her daddy took her to the Toby Mac concert the other night, but she really had a great time!

This weekend she's enjoying the ladies' retreat at the church. I have a wedding cake and that would normally involve her, but these aren't stacked, so I'm going to try to get along without her. Maybe Grandma Rose is available.

Onward...

Happy Birthday Matthew!

Only slightly better than last year's birthday. Matthew was so sick last year that even his new drum set showing up only slightly perked him up. This year's birthday found him dragging his feet all day through his homework, groaning that one shouldn't have to do school on his birthday. As much as all kids might agree, I'm quite sure it just can't work that way!

Anyhoo... Happy Birthday Matman!!

Anita knows...

So when it comes to everything about me, Anita understands. She says most problems don't start until somewhere around age 40, so I should be good for another several years since I'm a perpetual 29. But ... she knows...

It's kinda funny, too, that her show was on Valentine's Day. Michael got tickets and tried to make all this a really nice surprise for me. The only problem with that is that "nice" and "surprise" hardly ever go together for me. Especially when it involves huge crowds of people. Well, this was at a church that was very familiar to me, so the anxieties were somewhat under control. But anyway, he really wanted to surprise me with this little date night, but I just wasn't going along with it. I made him tell me and he did. He said he got tickets for US to go. I said, "Well... good for ME..." Never thought men would go see Anita by choice! I didn't want to say much because it was a plan that he put together all by himself, so there are points to be had there. Through the course of time, he decided that my mom and I just might have a better time at this show than he and I would have. I politely agreed. So anyhoo... there we were and it was a really great time. But I was really surprised by the number of men who braved all the estrogen and escorted their wives there! You go guys!! I still stand by her famous phrase, "It's a girl thing!!"

Primary Focus

The Primary Focus kids came by our church Sunday night. They are favorites of my kids, so we came to see them, but they only did the grown-up program, not the kids' one. We got to talk to them afterwards and found that they were going to be at a nearby school the next day, so we thought that was a great day for a field trip!! We took Grandma with us and went to see them. We were a little early, so we got to spend quite a bit of time getting to know all of them. Two of the girls were homeschooled, too, so we had fun talking with them. They were doing two performances, so we stayed for both!

I was wrong...

I guess Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo saw the problem with the gopher and the shadow and devised a new plan, however it didn't involve making a groundhog braver or a shadow less frightening:

Khuntami, a 16-year-old male that has been with the Henry Doorly Zoo since he was a cub, exited his living quarters and went into an exhibit holding two boxes of identical meat -- one box labeled spring and one labeled winter.

Zoo officials said that whichever box he chose would determine the forecast for Nebraska.

Khuntami paced between the two choices before pawing at the snow-colored box, an unpopular choice. A crowd moaned as he licked his lips and prepared to devour Winter.

"We'll see if this translates to the rest of the country," said zoo director Dr. Lee Simmons. "Or, we'll see if he's wrong."

We'll have to come up with something else for next winter. Until then I guess we just keep freezing our b-b-b-b-beaks off.

Darn Gopher

Why is it we leave such a crucial decision to such a funny creature? If someone is so skittish that he's terrified of his own shadow, why don't we pick an animal with a little more gusto? Now I'm not offering any of my beloved critters, no, no, neither are they the epitome of strength or courage. Well now, that's not completely true... Patrick might just take a chunk out of his shadow, but seriously, we should be more prepared for this. February 2, no matter what the forecast, always seems to be the most beautiful day of the year. We could be watching that horrific mountain snowstorm come in from the Rockies barreling on toward Chicago, but guaranteed at midnight it will break up. Of course he's going to see his shadow. Let's get a rhino or an elk or something more accustomed to a frightening shadow. Give us all a fighting chance.

I guess I didn't actually see or find out how the whole shadow revealing went. I usually just wake up to a gorgeous day and get discouraged from the git go.

Oh, well. I guess it's pretty cool if your birthday is February 2. You're pretty much guaranteed a nice day! Happy Birthday Uncle Denny!!

A slow beginning...

And yet, I'm already behind!! Business came to a screeching halt, which freed me up to do some other things. I've jumped back into some school with the kids and discovered Mallory was up to Earthquakes and Volcanoes in her Science book. I had some lapbooking supplies purchased from In The Hands of a Child and briefly showed them to Michael and he was good with it, so I started printing them off. He's now in there cutting things out for her! I think they're going to have a lot of fun! I know I love the stuff! By the way, this new Safety Law coming up may drastically injure a lot of small businesses, so this is one company trying to sell off some extra inventory at some super great discounts. Be sure to check out their site, In the Hands of a Child, and get started! If you've never done a lapbook, this is really the place to go. They have a freebie on the site that you can download as an ebook and get started. Your only necessary supplies are a file folder, colored paper, and some scissors, glue stick, maybe some brads.... stuff you'll have on hand!!

Anyway, I've also been catching up on our website, practically pampered. It's been fun updating that and really being able to wrap my head around it. We're also adding a couple new webstores and such, so it truly is keeping me busy. It's just that our outgoing packages have gone from 15-20 a day before Christmas to now about 3-5 a day. Can make ya nervous!! Ok, back to work. Everyone else has gone back to school.