WHAT THE FRACK?.......

My hubby, Roger, is sick with respiratory stuff again. He's been sick off and on since December. Went all the way to pneumonia in early January. He thought he was over it and got it again. Got shots twice from the doctor and finally got rid of it. Now...he has it again. So, off to the doctor to get another shot and another prescription this morning. There was a surprising aspect to the doctor's diagnosis this morning. Based on questions he's been asking his patients who have come in for respiratory problems for the last several months, he's getting 100% "yes" answers when he asks them if they live within a mile or so of a natural gas well! We live on the Barnett Shale and there is natural gas in there that is very, very abundant. Everywhere we look, there are gas wells going up, coming down, going back up. They are noisy, ugly, and now, apparently, bad for our health. The "fracking" of the wells that is done when they are drilling deep into the ground is one of the things that apparently allows all kinds of possible toxic pollution into our air and water and ground. This can cause respiratory problems, including an increase in asthma, and all sorts of other health problems. And in doing some research on this......the EPA puts no environmental controls on oil and gas exploration and production. Can you believe that? If you want to read a very interesting report on this, go to www.nrdc.org/policy and look for the Drilling Down report. In the meantime, we will have to deal with all of this, plus all of the big semi-trucks tearing up our roads and giving us ample opportunity to ruin tires in the foot-deep chuckholes they make and creating more dust for us to breathe in, not to mention practically forcing us off the road every time we meet one while driving. Aw.....progress! Just "sick" of it!!!

Three Ringy-Dingy.....

Okay, so I hit the publish post button too soon after Two Ringy-Dingy. I'm new at this, can you tell?
I've worked for this company for 21 years and the largest amount of my time has been spent answering phones. I have been hung up on more times than I can count when I tell the caller the person they want to speak with is not in. I have been cussed at and cussed out. I've had crank callers who really think it's fun to play with the name of this company which could be pronounced exactly as the F-bomb word. On the good side of the coin, I received a customer service call from someone I knew growing up in a small town in Nebraska. That was way cool! But...the calls that really annoy me are the cold calls coming in to the executives that go way beyond the pale. For example, yesterday a cold call came in for our CFO who is out of the office until June 1st. Instead of just saying they would contact him later, the person on the other end of the phone says, "oh, that's a long time to be out of the office". So, now you know they are wanting to know why he's out of the office for that long, etc. After about 5 seconds of total silence from me, I asked if there was anything else I could do for them and the person gave an embarassed little chuckle and said "no" and immediately hung up. Fact is, the CFO had major surgery yesterday morning. If the call had come from someone we do business with and have known for awhile, I MIGHT have told them, but a perfect stranger....I don't think so. I get this all the time. Our President is out of the office for an indefinite amount of time as he is running our factory in another state at present. When I tell callers he is out indefinitely, I get questions like "is he ill?", "oh, he's no longer with the company?", "boy, it must be nice to take that long of a vacation". They make assumptions that are not necessary, and they get no answer from me. If I want them to know, I'll tell them outright. In the meantime, take my answer for what it's worth and call again some other time. Four Ringy-Dingy.......

One Ringy-Dingy..Two Ringy-Dingy.......

"THOSE" E-MAILS

You know the ones.....the dreaded "forwards"! Now, I will admit that I have sent these out myself. And I have enjoyed getting some of the ones I've been getting. I do like a lot of them. But then there are those "let's make this person feel so guilty about not forwarding this e-mail that she will do it to save herself from the throes of......well, whatever". That's just not right! First of all, I'm a mother....I have all the guilt I can bear, thank you very much! 45 years of guilt is a lot to carry around without adding more. So, forgive me...I'm not forwarding those e-mails. Nope, not doin' it! And, more often than not, I'm not reading very many of them anymore, either. I've seen most of them. The black "X" at the top of the screen is almost worn out from deleting the 10th copy of the same e-mail I got 4 years ago that said if I didn't foward it, I would surely be the scourge of all mankind. What I really enjoy the most are e-mails that tell me about what's going on in the lives of the people who send them. If they have time to send me a "forward", they have time to type "we are fine, hope you are, too". That's all I need to hear if they don't have time to say more. At least, I then know they are still on the planet and haven't been abducted by aliens or locked in the basement forced to watch old Game Show reruns. On second thought, the reruns probably are more appealing than some of the "guilt-laden" e-mails. On third thought, how do I know the aliens aren't the ones pretending to be someone I know and sending out the e-mails?

GIRLFRIENDS

Girlfriends are one of the treasures of life. We make friends all the time throughout the years. Not all of them become "girlfriends", but some do and it is comforting to know they are there for you even if you don't see them very often. Remember all the girlfriends you had in high school and how after you graduated, everyone went their own way and some you never heard from again? We thought we would be friends like that forever, but then the realization hits you that you haven't heard from them for a long time, and, gee, what kind of friendship is that? It's happened to all of us. My family moved away from the town in Kansas where I grew up when I was in the middle of my Junior year in high school. I had to leave my girlfriends there and never bonded with anyone the way I had with them when I went to my new school. Over the years after high school, I saw my Kansas girlfriends a handful of times, but it wasn't until the last 8 years or so that we have all connected again and I see them at least once a year. There are 3 of them and two of them live within a few miles of each other so we take turns staying overnight with those two. You know the best thing about staying the night with old friends? You can get up and go to breakfast without combing your hair or putting your makeup on. They don't care....they're just glad to see you. And another thing, their husbands all like you and the girls like your husband. We all married good and altho the guys probably would never admit it out loud, THEY married good, too. On a recent trip, all 4 couples were sitting around talking and the conversation got around to all our health problems, medications, etc. One of the girls mentioned that someone said years ago that we would never sit around and talk about those things like our parents did. Yet, there we were...doing just that. Maybe friendships should adopt the HIPA regulation system that says we can't let others know what's wrong with us or what we're taking for it. Naw!!! That's what friends are for, to see you through your miseries and give you courage and comfort and, yes, sympathy for what you're going through. I can talk to my girlfriends about anything and vice-versa. And we all know, what we say won't go any further than that friend's ear. That's my girlfriends and I cherish all of them. Thanks for your friendship and love, Suzi, Rosalee and Rosemarie. You are truly treasures to me.

First Post

Well, this is my first post as a blogger. What to talk about.....hmmmm? How about lightning? How can something so beautiful be so scary and sometimes deadly. We had a big, bad storm at our house last night. Winds of 70 mph and lots of rain. The thunder and lightning was awesome! Until.....a bolt of lightning struck about 2 feet or less from our house. Son, Tony, came running out of his room like he'd been shot out of a rocket and husband, Roger, and I were thinking the same thing....what the heck was that?!! No damage, but that was just too close for comfort.