Why did a son disown his Mother at his birthday party

I have a story to tell. A mother invited her son (who will be 33 years old tomorrow), his wife and their two children, ages 1 and 4, to dinner. It was a special dinner to celebrate his upcoming birthday. She slaved in the kitchen all day making a special dinner of baked pork chops, mashed potatoes, fresh corn on the cob, and tomatoes that she had raised in her own garden. The children were put to bed by their mother in the bedrooms that the grandmother had carefully set up for them. At this time a conversation was ensuing downstairs in the living room between the mother and her son. She asked him to look something up on his Blackberry. He shouted upstairs to his wife, "Get the children, we are leaving." What had the mother done to deserved this treatment?

The answer to this question is: She insulted his Google Android by calling it a Blackberry. So mothers around the world take note. There are certain things that are sacred and you had better know what they are.

Happy Birthday Son! :)

Pig Roast 2010 - Part One

The Pig Roast was a couple weeks ago. The last of the tables, paper plates and games have been put away. I decided to post pictures of just the pig roasting saga in this post. Pictures of the people attending will be the next post.

This is the "Pig in a Blanket". That is a bit of a play on words since "Pig in a Blanket" is a small hot dog rolled in a batter and baked. But this pig was rolled in ice, then plastic, and then in blankets so he stayed really cool all night.

The roaster is being prepared and moved close to the house. This took place at about 7:00 am. Helpers at this point did not include Andrew since he had a good excuse. He had arrived after midnight and needed his rest so he could preform his duties later in the day.

We learned in the past to get the coals hot while putting the pig on the spit. The trick here was to use compressed air to get it going.

Here we have men from three states up at the crack of dawn. Jonathan came from Pennsylvania, Harry from Illinois and of course Gerry from Ohio.

The cutting crew doing their thing. Hungry guests are standing around patiently waiting.

Ladies Luncheon

Today I had a planning meeting with officers and committee chairs of the Cloverleaf Women's Club of which I am President for the next two years. I decided to invite the ten women over for lunch and have the meeting at my house. I made a salad (recipe was on Epicourious) of greens, cooked chicken, peaches, caramelized onions and purchased poppy seed dressing. It was a success. We planned most of the scheduled meetings for the year. Our big fundraiser will be in December. We are planning a Holiday House tour. The next challenge is to find five or six people who are willing to have strangers walk through their house. I did not find any volunteer to chair the committee so have to give some thought as to how to handle that situation.

As an aside, it was great planning to have them here because it forced me to get the house cleaned, which would have been necessary by next weekend, which is the Annual Pig Roast/Pot Luck. We have only 100 reservations this year. Last year 140 came, but I did not keep good records as to how many did not RSVP and just showed up. This year I have this information recorded on an Spread Sheet. So next year I may not invite people who did not RSVP at all this year.

Needless to say, the next week will be a busy one. I am excited about seeing everyone who is coming.

Show and Tell

Today there is some kind of "show and tell" at Invacare. G decided to ride the KLR motorcycle that he rode on the Continental Divide ride and to Moab this year. We have a small digital picture frame that Shawn and Stacey gave us years ago. So we put about 200 pictures from these two trips on the picture frame. G then rigged up a car battery with an inverter so show the pictures since the event will be outside in the parking lot. He tried to make the KLR look somewhat like it did on the trip. He put extra tires on the sides and duffel bags on top.

My week

On Sunday Gerry flew to Oshkosh Wisconsin for the EAA Air show. It is now called AirVenture. It is a week long event with up to 800,000 people attending and 12,000 airplanes. A neighbor has a small plane and asked him to go along. The flight is about two hours. Many years ago he flew his ultralight from Kankakee, Illinois to Oshkosh with a group of other ultralights. He spends the days looking at planes, attending seminars and watching the daily air show. As an aside, I think my son in law would love this event. We will get him there some day.

So what do I do when he is gone for several days? I went on a Garden Walk with a friend where we toured 8 gardens and got lots of ideas for landscaping.

One evening I went to a picnic with biker friends. Here is a picture of the bikes, not the friends.

I also mow the lawn, trim, weed in the garden and flower beds. Today I washed the windows and screens on one side of the house.

Invitations are ready to go

I have just spent two days getting the invitations out for our annual Pig Roast/Pot Luck (third annual). This year I am trying to organized and to be able to use the lists for next year. I put all 115 people on an excel spread sheet and put together a group to email the 80 of the 115 who have given me their email addresses. The others will be hand delivered or sent by snail mail. I went through all of our lists from the last two years so that I would not skip anyone who was previously invited and especially those who did come. For those of you who are more computer savvy that I am, this probably would not have taken that long. I have to remind myself that I do better on the computer that a lot of my peers.

It is August 21, so you will probably hear a few moans and groans between now and then.

Involved in my community

Gerry and I joined a local organization, Ruritans. Yesterday I worked at their flea market serving food. This is a service, good will community organization. It is a great way to meet people in the area, many who have lived here their entire life. I had been talking with one man for a while when a young Amish man walked by. I spoke with him about the Corn Hole game he had been playing. The man I had been talking with asked if I knew the Amish man. When I said no, he made a comment about me as a "lady" talking with someone I did not know, like he thought it was not safe. I should have told him of the homes I went into as a Social Worker. And those were people who were not happy to have me there. Interesting.

The only thing I bought were 3 pints of fresh raspberries from an Amish vendor. At $2 a pint it was a good deal.

Gerry is spending 3 days at a motorcycle race, swap meet. He actually took three bikes to try to sell them. Those of you who know him, realize what a historical moment this is. You also know it is one down and how many more to go?