My sister-in-law is rather new with the whole email thing, so she tends to forward everything. I don’t mind for the most part, because some of the things she sends to me are funny. And every once in awhile, we can all use a funny joke. This morning, she sent me the following and I read it and smiled, not because it was a joke, but because it reminded me of all of you. And you’ll see why in a second.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the Mayonnaise Jar… and the Coffee…

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and
empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it
was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.  The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the
jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.  He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cups of coffee from
under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, ” I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - your God, family, your children, your health,
your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your
house, and your car. The sand is everything else — the small stuff.
 
“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spent all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.* Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. There will always
be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

I have my morning coffee and tea with all of my friends in the morning. Whether it’s reading your blogs, your emails, your comments…and it’s a special part of my day. Writing can be extremely solitary because not everyone gets it. Just knowing you all are out there makes things easier. Thank you.

You know it’s going to be a good morning when you awake to the sound of your best friends voice over your answering machine saying: “Just called to see if you missed the bus too…” :holy: But I have a justified reason–mine isn’t nearly as adventurous as hers.

So, for hers it’d be, You know it’s going to be a bad morning when…you come down stairs for the second time in less than a week to find your two and a half year old has once again broken eggs. Only this time, instead of doing it on your easy to clean floors in the kitchen close to the fridge, he’s done it in your living room on carpet. Thankfully he didn’t have the desire to smash them in with his feet like he did previously. She left him briefly to start her Mini Van so she could deposit him and his sister at Day Care and take her oldest to the bus stop. She scooped up a little of the mess before realizing it was time to go, got out to her van and found that she’d locked her only key inside the van. So, full tank of gas, heat blaring on high and no way to get inside. This is when she took the neighbor’s car and called me when she didn’t see me walking.

She takes the younger ones to Day Care, I throw her oldest and my son in the car, take them to school. She takes neighbor to work and calls the police to see if they can come get her out of her predictament. It’s now been an hour since she started her car. It’s nice and toasty in there, too bad no one can get in to enjoy the warmth in this sunny 20 degree day. (At least the Sun is shining. It’s mocking us.)

Police tell her for liability reasons–they were sued–someone actually got killed when the bar got them under the neck–he gives her more reasons when all he could’ve said is: “I’m sorry, we can’t.” He’s wasted fifteen more minutes of gas with his explanations. He tells Beaky to call a lock smith.

Enter Sir Lance A lot.

Beaky has this friend we’ll call Rafe short for Raphael, because I am an romance author and well, Fred might work for other instances but not this one. Although it was a close tie to Billy Joe Bob.

On a chance that Rafe could help her out of this jam, she called him and sure enough it was Rafe to the rescue. He rode here on his trusty Black Steed, his armor shiny, glistening in the sun and snow. His long, flowing mane of black hair billowed underneath his helmet. Unmounting his horse with effortless ease, Rafe, with sword in hand jumped from his horse–[insert record skip sound here] To quote Rafe, “You fell off your chair and hit your head, didn’t you?”

Rafe pulled up in his vehicle, got out of it with wire coat hanger and various screw drivers and said, “You know I can’t guarantee I won’t scratch and dent it.” Beaky said she didn’t care just so long as she could shut off her car that’d been running for over two hours now.

Rafe went to task and used his noggin, because every Knight in Shining Armour has a brain worthy of…well, something. He ended up removing her antenna and using it to push down the passenger side window to unlock the door, without scratching and or denting said Mini Van all within fifteen minutes, start to finish. The crowd of Beaky and I awarded Rafe with a :cheer:, a kiss and an invitation too…okay, Rafe, your turn to “snap back to reality” as Eminem says…

The morale of this story is…we’re all half-cracked and Beaky needs to make a second set of keys because her eggs were truly all in one basket. In the meantime, she just dropped me off from our Chinese lunch and she was enroute to get a safety latch for her fridge so that her son can’t get in although,  he’ll probably end up teaching her how to use the damned thing.

This concludes this edition of Adventures With Beaky, tune in next time when…we don’t even want to go there…

Which stands for Thank God it’s Monday.

Never thought I’d ever say that, but there it is.

Man went back to work [check]

Kids went back to school [check]

Seriously, we have Spring Fever while winter continues to drag on. It’s snowing and it’s once again cold. No sunshine and I need me some serious warm weather and sun–lots of sun. I was so over my family by the end of Friday night.

I tried to play with Word and it said I needed updates. So, I clicked on the link after it crashed–thank God I wasn’t writing anything important and I got a message that says, “Windows Vista does not support…” Apparently Vista only knows how to ask you everything. I am so tired of my screen fading darker and the little box coming up saying it needs my permission to do such and such. The next thing you know, I’ll have to ask it permission to get up and go to the bathroom. Why oh why does Microsoft do this? What was wrong with XP?

Maybe it’s my fault that I didn’t want to have to spend a small fortune on a upgrade to Vista biz AND an upgrade for more Ram. But a system platform that takes up 1 GB of ram just to run scared me. If I knew how to downgrade to XP, I would. In a heart beat.

In other news, my guy brought home “Little Miss Sunshine” and quite frankly if I were Eddie Murphy, I’d have walked out of the Oscar’s too when Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor. Have you seen this movie? Aside from a few funny parts, Alan Arkin won for snorting cocaine and teaching his granddaughter how to dance to a strip-tease for a Little Miss Sunshine pagent. Every other word out of his mouth was the F-word and his advice to his grandson was to have lots and lots of sex with multiple partners. WHY this movie was put up for an Oscar in the first place is beyond me.