"It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have."

"My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first, as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son's move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party's parliamentary election campaign.

I didn't choose this life. It chose me." Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) (Written on September 1, 2007, and published on The Huffington Post)

She was born the month before Randy.

Her son entered his freshman year in college at the same time James did.

Say what you will - and I don't pretend to understand all the underlying political implications - but she was one hell of a woman to make the choice to return to Pakistan, knowing that in all likelihood she would not survive.

And With Thy Heart As Offering

Seems to me that all too often we make things more complicated than they need to be. Maybe we could try to realize that even if someone sees things in a different way than we do...we're still looking at the same thing.

This is Tennessee Ernie Ford, singing "Some Children See Him." This was a live broadcast of The Ford Show, on December 25, 1958. The little boy in his lap is Jon Provost, who played Timmy in the old Lassie series. Look for Lassie herself sleeping among the other children. Click here if the video doesn't load.

How wonderful this is! Merry Christmas!!

Samantha...New!

Meet the newest addition to the Reed family! She is Samantha Gorgeous Reed, and we found her at the Animal Shelter yesterday. Her Samantha name came from Will Smith's dog in "I Am Legend," which James saw on Saturday, and Gorgeous is what Amanda has called her from the beginning. We call her Sam, or Sammie. She was an owner surrender, meaning that she was brought in by her previous owners, who told the shelter that the husband has heart trouble, and they couldn't take care of her any longer.

She's about two years old, and has obviously been cared for. She is housebroken (although I'm still a little jumpy about that), and she understands "NO". This is SUCH a good thing.

She apparently is accustomed to sleeping on the bed. When Randy and I went to bed last night, after making a nice little pallet for her on the floor - where she immediately laid down, causing us to prematurely think we were home free - we turned out the light, she waited about a two-count, then hopped right up on to the bed, laid down...and stayed there until about 6:30 this morning.

She is just so mellow. Seems really happy to be here, becomes very concerned when someone leaves the room, already is attached to Randy, but is quite fond of the rest of us, too. Hangs out with James in his room, watching movies. Tries to climb up on Amanda to get closer to her face for kisses. She has slept quite a bit, and while I attribute some of that to being exhausted from her whole adoption ordeal, it appears that she'd just as soon hang out in the house with us as sniff around the back yard.

She is not Cinnamon, and while we really didn't want her to be, it looks like she's a really good fit for us. It was just one of those meant to be kind of things - the kids are home, Randy will be here for a couple of weeks, and we were all really missing having a dog around. She arrived at the shelter on Friday, and we found her on Monday.

Sammie will be a really great dog for all of us. She has landed in a really good place, and we are just happy as clams to have her here!

Neither bare, nor naked, nor even ladies

Okay, so it's a bootlegged video of a live performance, and not a particularly good one at that...but a really FABULOUS rendition of a couple of my favorite Christmas songs. It's Barenaked Ladies featuring Sarah MacLachlan.

A MUCH better studio version is available on iTunes (without the video) from the album "Barenaked for the Holidays."



UPDATE: If the video doesn't work, try copying and pasting this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unLYrtx8aKA

Cause and Effect

Our tenants have moved out of Brandyn, and the guy tells Randy "you probably want to have the air conditioner checked. It runs all the time, and our power bills have been real high." We thought that to be odd, as we had replaced the whole unit, inside and out, about 9 months ago.

So in our normal cleaning up process, we changed the filters. Here's a picture of the ones we took out. Hm-m-m...

Acronym of the Day

WOMBAT:

Waste of money, brains, and time. As in: The trip to Denver was not a total WOMBAT, because the new commercials are pretty cool, but Erik Weihenmayer and Buzzword Bingo were really the only other highlights to be found."