Grumpiness

I ran into Mr. Grumpy today. He didn't have a very good reason for being grumpy... which is partly why that crusty attitude is considered grumpy! "Is that fun?" I wonder. "Do you get anything you want from being Mr. Nasty?" I can't imagine anything positive coming out of being grumpy.

... Yet... I suppose it's a natural emotion, like being happy for no reason at all. I suppose it's fair that the people who see the glass as half empty would generally settle into grumpiness. ? So where does thankfulness come into play? Only when we feel like being thankful?

There is always, always, always something to be thankful about! There's no such thing as a glass half empty! We should be thankful there's anything in it at all. Or be thankful we have a glass. Eh? See the point? To say it's half empty would be to expect more. That's where we're wrong.

So, Mr. Grumpy, Change your ways!! I've no tolerance for that crusty attitude!!!

Yesturyear

I remember when I was a young girl, my grandmother would give my sister and me a thick stalk of rhubarb. We'd sit on the wooden steps of the back porch and dip the rhubarb in our personal little bowl of sugar. Yes, sugar. It was so sweet and tart-- it was so rememberable!

I also remember her hot and cold water was plumbed from the down stairs to the upstairs via two pipes in the kitchen. Whenever possible I'd climb the two pipes until I could touch the ceiling... but that's another story.

The simple pleasures of yesturyear... the squeazing a snapdragon and making it talk; playing hop-scotch on the sidewalk with chalk-drawn squares; kids teaching kids to ride a two wheeled bicycle with no training wheels; catching salamanders; keeping turtles for pets until they ran away in the grass; living slower and with less rules and less gadgets... I think it was grand!

I've supplied my children with plenty of chalk and they've made pictures and hop-scotch boards; we let our son teach our daughter to ride her bike without training wheels (took three tries!); we've caught salamanders; we've made real lemonaide from lemons, sugar and water, and today my girls will try rhubard and sugar. ... their own bowl of sugar...