I’ve never been great at maintaining my cars. I don’t live near my dad, I’m not longer married, and my brother-in-law is too busy – so I end up doing my best to try and do it on my own. I have no problem with keeping my cars clean and tidy. I keep them washed and polished and covered with car wax. I clean the leather inside and the carpets. I could keep a website like Lane’s Professional Car Products in business indefinitely.

I was driving two weeks ago with my daughter, one of my fiends and three of my friend’s children in my van out to pick Strawberries. She commented on how well I kept my car and that she wished she had the motivation to keep her car running so well. I looked at her from the corner of my eyes. “Listen to this,” I said. I allowed the car to decelerate to about 25 and everything LURCHED.

“Something is wrong with my transmission,” I said. “My car LOOKS good, but I can’t seem to remember to get the thing into the shop to have that looked at before the whole thing falls apart. Do you STLL wish you took car of your cars the way I take car of mine?”

I grinned at her.

I really do need to remember to call the mechanic in the morning.

My street is odd. One side (mine) is officially in the county, the other side is in the city. Small issues make it evident. When there was a drainage problem in the intersection, city and county employees quite literally stood and bickered about who was responsible to fix it. There are street signs on the corner in my yard and the yard across the street, but they have totally different signs – one is standard green, the other is blue with one of the local flowers printed on it. Across the street, they have city sewer access, we do not. If I want to join the local community center, it will cost me 20-times as much to pay the annual fees.

The list goes on.

Now, one of the good differences about not being in the city limits is that I have more clout when I tell people I do not want solicitors at my door. All I have to do is put a sign up that says ”No Soliciting” and anyone who ignores it and still knocks on my door to try and sell new windows, or magazines, or to try and give me term life insurance quotes, is actually breaking the law. Those who live in the city do not have the same protection.

We’ve been told we can get neighbors to sign a petition is we want to be included within eh city limits. I suppose that has its pros and its cons.

I am not a coffee drink. Well, I should be clearer. I am not a coffee drinker anymore. I love coffee. I adore coffee. I have been drinking it since I was six, because my pediatrician told my mom it would help my asthma.

I think it was about 2000 that I decided to go off of daily caffeine. I took myself off coffee at the office and put away my coffee press at home. It was a painful process, but I did it mostly so that I would be able to user caffeine when I had a migraine headache. That little headache tip does not really work if your body is used to regular caffeine.

This morning I was craving iced coffee, so I made a bog glass and because I am not used to caffeine on a daily basis now, I am flying just a little bit. I am trying to use it to my advantage: laundry, blogging, other website upkeep, sorting through my daughter’s old clothes. But, my mind is a tad unorganized due to the additional stimulants. So, I’m just flitting around doing a little of this and a little of that. It’s not terribly effective.

Ideally, I just need to go out in the backyard and burn off some energy on the mini trampoline or by pulling a couple of hundred weeds from the flower beds.

I have not had a home church in quite a while now. I was raised in the Anderson Church of God and I found a great local church that is part of that group. I introduced my ex to it while we were still married and I got moderately involved. He got vaguely involved. Despite the fact that getting him to attend was like pulling teeth while we were married, he all of the sudden decided he wants to go there and he takes his girlfriend with him. In my opinion, it is a power issue and since I don’t play those games I just decided I would find another church.

The church where my daughter goes to school right now is a good option. I enjoy the pastor and his sermons; the congregation is relatively small and a very good mix of races, incomes and ages. They seem to be quite a tight knit group, even going on cruises together about once a year. I’m trying to motivate myself to go more often. After being very involved in my last church and still having great friendships there, it is a tiny bit intimidating to conceptualize breaking into a new group and starting over with relationships and involvement. For me, it is slow going. Plus, I am seeing that a single mom gets pigeonholed in a church environment. I was immediately introduced to the other single moms, as though I would be unable to relate to the married women. That is a concept I will need to get used to, I suppose.

I was married longer than Paul McCartney and Heather Mills were married, but because Florida has a law about alimony and marriages less than 7 years, I got nothing. In fact, I am not even living in the house we still own together. I do get child support, but that is to benefit my daughter – not to ensure that I am able to maintain the lifestyle I had before the divorce. I was proud to be able to stay home with my daughter, as I believe children with a parent at home are better adjusted. I am forced, however, to be a working single mom.

Heather Mills, on the other hand, is receiving at least 16.5 million pounds in a lump sum settlement. There could actually be more involved, but the courts in the United Kingdom are wise and keep divorce details private. I wish that were the case in the United States. Do you want to know how I found out my ex had filed? I got a letter from an attorney offering her services. Classy, huh? She had gleaned the information from public records. I should have reported her sorry carcass.

All in all, Mills is getting a pretty good payday for the relatively few years she was subjected to sex with an old guy, you know? I can hear you all now – but it is Paul McCartney! How can you say that? All I know is that he is my dad’s age and Mills is only a couple of years older than me. A 25 year age difference means she was sleeping with an old guy, in my opinion, and I find that icky –for lack of a better word.

I guess I should have married a rock star. Sounds like a pretty good payoff.

In a world where it sure looks like we are headed toward chaos at a 100 miles an hour, people are looking for the things in their life that make them see peace, calm, and assuredness. Of course, that means different things for different people, but I think we are all looking for our own road to a less hectic life. There are quite literally hundreds of self help methods out and about, and some of them are quite successful on a large scale. One of the more popular self-help philosophies today is The Sedona Method.

One of the premises of the Sedona Method can be seen in Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth; Awaking to Your Life’s True Purpose. He talks about “ego consciousness” and being able to see the things in our lives that are causing us to manifest limitations. He suggests that many of the limitations in our lives are merely illusions anyhow, though we tend to live as though they were real. A New Earth advocates turning away from our old patterns of thinking to see the potential that really stands in front of us.

Of course, I cannot explain the entire philosophy in a small blog article, but you can order a free DVD or CD and see for yourself. As I said, in a world of chaos, we need to find that thing that gives us peace. Changing the way we think is one massive first step.

It’s time to lose an hour of sleep this weekend. Daylight Savings Time is upon us and thanks to the new laws in the United States regarding the issue, we have a longer period of time throughout the years where the evening daylight is extended. I rather wish we would just leave it like this all year around, as I love the extra light in the evenings.

So, remember to set your clocks ahead by one hour as of 2 a.m. Sunday.

Standard time will return on November 2.

Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas do not observe American Daylight Savings Time. I never did understand the thing with Arizona. It makes it hard to do business with those people when you have to remember that they do not switch with the rest of us.

My niece will be 16 next month and wants to get a job. She was telling me that it is hard to find a job in her neighborhood. Most of the kids end up working at Publix or waiting tables somewhere. When I was in college, I worked at JC Penney, but she says the mall jobs are harder to get for kids her age nowadays.

I love it when a company gives young people the opportunity to have a job. Around here, you can find a Publix at every major intersection. Most of them are crawling with employees that look to be in high school. Generally, they are enthusiastic and pleasant to be around. Today, though, as I was in the store to pick up milk and strawberries; I had to endure a lengthy conversation between my cashier and the bag boy about rear spoilers. It slowed down my transaction and I was bored nearly to tears. Aside from social blunder like jawing in front of the customers, I love seeing the young working responsible jobs.

Back to my niece. I think she said she is interested in working at Target. I’ve heard great things from everyone I have ever known who worked there. If I were 16 again and had it all to do over, I would get a job in a bookstore, but that’s just me.

Tonight will be the last time you will be able to see a total lunar eclipse until December 20, 2010. You’ll also be able to see Saturn and the bright star Regulus on either side of scene. If your skies are clear, you should be able to see the eclipse for about an hour from both North and South America. The eclipse will begin at 10 p.m. on the East Coast

Those of you in Europe and Africa can see it high in the sky before dawn Thursday.

A total lunar eclipse happens when the full moon crosses Earth’s shadow and is blocked from the sun’s rays.

I usually avoid situations where I go to friends for business issues. If I have a friend with a store, I might try and patronize that store if I like the product, but for the most part I have had a bad track record with mixing friendships and business.

I mostly have small examples. I have one friend who is a hairdresser. Her clientele is loyal and she works at a high priced salon. Nonetheless, she had never done a good job on my hair cuts or color. I have given her repeated opportunities and I have never been happy. And, when I have had my hair cut by someone else, she notices and is hurt.

I have another friend who sells insurance. I made the mistake of telling him I was interested in a life insurance policy that would benefit my daughter if something happens to me. Now, instead of nice social visits at his home, dinner with my family and his family is always interrupted by him trying to hand me a llife insurance quote. I feel like I can never just go to his home for a relaxing visit. I have to be poised and ready to deal with his hard sell.

I’m not even going to start on the neighbor who harangued me about joining her pyramid scheme travel company. I never, ever felt like we could just sit and talk. She was constantly focused on recruiting new people and it permeated our time together.

I’ve never gone into business with a fined. That might be a different issue. I can see starting a small business with someone I already know and trust, as long as we had the terms set before we even started.

…or, Picasso lovers beware.

A Wesley Chapel man, Ethem Ulge, was arrested by Tampa police on felony charges of scheming to defraud, as well as other charges. Apparently, the guy had listed art pieces on eBay that he claimed were by Pablo Picasso and another by Marc Chagall.

The arrest came after police here got a tip from law enforcement officials in New Jersey. Ulge is currently out on bail.

Believe it or not, when I did a search engine query on Picasso fakes on eBay, I came up with a handful of sites that actually coach people, in great detail, on how to obtain cheap art and pass it off as something by a famous artist on eBay. There is apparently a massive market for this kind of stuff. Whoda thunkit?

I do not usually forward e-mails or post previously published stories in my blog, but this week my father forwarded me an e-mail that made me push back my computer chair, lean back, and have a long chuckle. So, without further fanfare, I give you The Dolls.

A man and woman had been married for more than 60 years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover.

In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife’s bedside.

She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000.

He asked her about the contents. “When we were to be married,” she said, ” my grandmother told me, the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll.”

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with happiness.

“Honey,” he said, “that explains the doll, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?”

“Oh,” she said, “that’s the money I made from selling the dolls.”

A Prayer…….
Dear Lord, I pray for Wisdom to understand my man;
Love to forgive him;
And Patience for his moods;
Because Lord, if I pray for Strength,
I’ll beat him to death,
Because I don’t know how to crochet.

That would be today. Today is expected to be the busiest postal day of the year and somehow I managed to make sure I am right in the thick of it. I waited until this weekend to ready my Christmas cards. I picked up my photo prints yesterday and made my cards out last night. And, they are now sitting in a stack on the couch in the living room. All I need are stamps and if I cannot find them at the supermarket, I will be plunged headlong into the lines at the local post office. Oh, misery. I loathe standing that close to other people for too long. I always seem to end up in line in front of the person with no concept of personal space, or the person who bumps your bag and steps on the heel of your shoe repeatedly.

I’ve got packages to send to West Virginia and Georgia this year, but due to the fact that it took so long to get the entire family together for Christmas portraits, our photos will not even be available until December 20, so I suppose we can count on things going out at the last possible minute when it comes to the actual gifts. I have no idea what happened to the Me that used to get my Christmas cards out the day after Thanksgiving and have all of my packages sent by the first week of December. I think that happy-go-lucky girl is long gone.

And, if it is a slow news day we can all look forward to coming home to watch the evening news that will be packed full of stories about reporters who went to the post office at Tampa International Airport to interview the poor souls standing in line there.

I need a tip about a good online address book and date reminder system. I am sitting here doing my Christmas cards and as I go though my address book I am realizing how many of the addresses are old. I just never updated a lot of my information. I probably stuck envelopes and sticky notes somewhere with the plan to do updates, but who knows where they might be now?

I have also been unable to remember birthdays. I need a system that will send me reminders for birthdays as well. It needs to be free, not send me spam, or share my info with advetisors. Anyone have any sugestions?

I think I mentioned that last weekend I finally braved my storage unit. I was looking of my design samples so I can talk to a guy about a magazine he wants to publish. If all works out the way I would love it to, I would be able to pick up some work designing it and writing for it.

Anyway, I took out a few bins of clothing. One was absolutely stuffed with old sexy lingerie. I have no idea why I am saving it. Most of it has a memory or two attached and there is no good reason to hang onto it. A good bit of it never ever got worn. That is because buying it is half the fun – or, having someone else buy it for you.

With that philosophy firmly in mind, I called a friend who is about the size I was when I bought most of it and I am dropping it by her house next week. She has only been married about a year and I am assuming she swill get a lot of good wear of it of the pieces. God knows I have no use for it at this time in my life.