Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Mojave is hot but 'snot as hot as Redhots

When our family lived in Bishop, we went south to Los Angeles one weekend for a visit. On our way, we stopped at at Taco Bell in Mojave. While standing in line, Brad was studying the menu while eating Redhots. He had a few in the palm of his hand when he had to sneeze. Without thinking, he put his hand, with the Redhots up to his face to block the spray of his sneeze. After the sneeze, he sniffed before removing his hand from his nose and face. He got this concerned look on his face and his eyes got great big. He said, "I think I sniffed a redhot up my nose!" He was looking in his wet hand trying to remember how many Redhots were in his hand before he sneezed.
We started laughing and thought he was just joking around. But, his eyes were watering and his nose was beginning to run pink!!!! His nose was stinging like the Dickens and he was getting panicky. He finally figured that he needed to blow it out and was eventually successful in getting it out. However, his nose continued to leak red snot for a little while.

Friday, October 16, 2009

How to avoid the Dole 101

When I was a young mother, I had a problem that cropped up because of the fact that my children didn’t appreciate the benefits they were receiving. We provided them food, shelter, clothing recreation and love. (They knew we loved them most days.) They knew that their father worked long hours to pay for food, shelter, and clothing for them and that I spent long hours washing their clothing, cooking and cleaning up after them. They were asked to keep their rooms tidy and do a few chores when they were old enough.
By and by, I discovered that there were clothes in the hamper that were not dirty. They decided it was easier to throw clean clothes into the hamper than to fold them or hang them up when I asked them to clean up their rooms. So, I decided that I should teach them to wash their own clothing. When the kids were about 12 years old, they were old enough to be taught how to wash clothing. I never got any complaints that they didn’t have clean underwear after that because they knew it was their own problem. They didn’t put clean clothes in the hamper, either. When I saw that they were being very responsible, I would reward them with some assistance in folding and putting the clothes away for them, occasionally
When my children began complaining that we weren’t buying designer clothing that was popular with their age group, we decided on a plan to make their dreams come true. We started giving them a generous allowance so they could purchase their own clothing. They had a tally sheet showing earned cash and we had pay day at the end of the pay period. They got paid for completing their chores and got paid very well for doing extra chores. We even paid them for brushing their teeth just so they’d have enough money for basic clothing. This really worked well. They started taking better care of their own clothing so it would last longer and they started looking at the price tags on clothing they were buying. In short, my kids became happy misers. They shopped the sales racks like pros. They also were dressed more stylishly because I didn’t know what was in style and they did.
There is a principle that is at work here and it is this: When someone is doing their own work and using their own money, they don’t waste. And conversely, when people are using other people’s money and having someone serve them, they are usually wasteful.
It makes you think. When the government starts giving you free this and that….how many resources are we wasting and how many lazy people are we creating. AND how many of us will be getting healthcare that we don’t want instead of shopping around for good deals and getting what we want. And don't forget, nothing is FREE!! SOME HARD WORKING PERSON IS PAYING FOR IT. Beware the nanny state! It will be chaos.