The slow pace of life and small friend groups brought on by the pandemic have turned me into a bit of a bore (not that I mind); never in my life have I watched so many movies.
Being a lover of people’s stories made it practically impossible for me to resist purchasing Elon Musk’s biography.
Sometimes you just buy something you really love and want to share the good news with friends and neighbors. Well, that is how I feel about my new wrist weights.
Lying face down, nude, with my eyes closed, the masseuse said, “I invite you to relax, concentrate on your breathing, live in the moment, and love yourself.
As my modesty fell away, I floated away.
This past flag season, which is the second quarter of every year, it seems everybody in America was looking to represent themselves with a flag.
I know, I know, I know, enough about the new sober Grady. I promise I will stop sharing his good news soon, because later this month I have some exciting news to share with everyone. I can’t wait! Stay tuned.
About Grady, one more time:
For a man who reads but never posts on Facebook, I was curious (later shocked) when my husband kept asking me, on our anniversary day, “Have you seen Facebook today?”
At first, I thought it was just the flag business that was seeing unprecedented sales. But, after noticing all the bare shelves in other retail stores and after asking around, I realized that this phenomenon is all over the place. People are shopping and spending their eating-at-home savings and newfound stimulus money like crazy.
When I first started Flag and Banner, I waitressed at Sir Loin’s Inn to supplement my income. I was young and my boss at the restaurant, Mr. Aaron Ross, was a business mentor, of sorts. One day, I asked, “What’s it like to be the boss?” I’ll never forget what he said because it’s proved true over and over again. He said, “Being the boss is doing all the things you can’t pay other people to do.”
A year or so ago, I lost a close friend to an illness that, if caught, could have been cured thanks to early detection.
I’ve long been a believer in the power of saying “Yes.” So, that’s what I did when my neighbor walked by my house recently, on a beautiful, crisp morning, and asked me if his son, Nick Shoulders, could perform on the steps of my big front porch.
What did you do on your birthday? I mean your *real* birthday; the day you were born. I imagine you popped out crying, then fell asleep, and suckled all the rest of the week.
Dogs are great but that doesn’t mean everyone should have one, especially young people whose lives are in flux.
That is why, when son Jack came home from a dog walk in the woods with friends and announced he was thinking of adopting a dog he just met, I was vehemently opposed.
As the shipping boxes began to pile up by the recycle bin, so, too, did my guilt. How many trees had to die in the fulfillment of my consumerism? Shipping a single item per box with all its packing waste is not exactly earth friendly, but I rationalized that I was saving on fuel and reducing air pollution. It seems that, in all of life, there is a trade-off.
My current Netflix binge-watch, with some never-seen-before footage, is Greatest Events of WWII. While I watched this mini-series, I thought of my dad; a young man who fought in this war and was shot down and lived 2 years in Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp.
My neighborhood is full of grown children that are home from college and elsewhere, sheltering in place and strolling in the sunshine with their parents. Who would have thought that in January, when I was renovating the carriage house in my backyard, that it would soon be occupied by son Jack, forced to move home from college because of a world-wide pandemic?
Good news has happened again for our non-profit, Friends Of Dreamland (FOD). Shortly after the coronavirus outbreak, while we were all still trying to get our footing and wondering what was going to happen to our world and our jobs, Friends of Dreamland got some great news.
A couple of things: I have never used the word “devoid” so much in my life. The streets are devoid of cars, the buses are devoid of passengers, and churches devoid of parishioners. And another thing: I have not cooked this much since the kids started graduating from high school in 2006.
This week on my radio show, Up In Your Business, the returning guest from Arkansas’s Small Business Administration, State Director Edward Haddock, went over the new programs currently rolling out for small businesses. Having applied for both the Economic Injury Disaster Loan and the Paycheck Protection Program Grant, I felt it was important for me to share my experience with my listeners and demystify the process for my business peers. Here is what I learned:
To bring a little levity to the workplace, everyone was given a yard stick to play with and carry around as a reminder to stay 6 feet apart. It’s been really fun! The yardsticks have become swords, light sabers, microphones, walking sticks and more. But social-distancing and remembering to stay 6 feet apart after-hours is not as easy.
The 2008 recession was not that long ago. Drawing from the experiences learned, we know small businesses were slow to recover, but not as slow as the unemployment rate (which rose to 10%) … Having been laid off from jobs in my youth, I remember the head game it plays on you.
Though it was only last week, it seems like a lifetime ago that Mayor Frank Scott’s secretary called and, most apologetically, canceled the mayor’s guest appearance on Wednesday’s live broadcast of Up In Your Business, saying a COVID-19 case had just been reported in Arkansas and Governor Asa Hutchinson had called an emergency coronavirus task-force meeting.
My granddaughter, Evelyn, used the words “uncanny valley” when I mentioned taking her and her little brother, Marshall, to see the new Jim Carrey fantasy/sci-fi movie, Sonic The Hedgehog.
I took my first plane ride in 1967. Because few seats were occupied, it seemed a luxurious and expensive adventure, afforded by few. My frightened 12-year-old mind will be forever imprinted with the glamour of seeing a pretty stewardess, propped up on an armrest chatting up the businessmen on board, who were smoking cigarettes (each seat had a built in ashtray) and sipping highballs in the middle of day. It was like a Frank Sinatra movie.
Let’s Lent! By that, I mean everyone can participate in the Christian tradition of Lent that began this past Tuesday, known as Mardi Gras (or Shrove Tuesday). You don’t have to be an Anglican Christian to observe a Lenten practice for 40 days. I have Baptist friends and evangelical friends that also enjoy the season of self-improvement.