The Saga Of Toilet Paper

The Saga Of Toilet Paper
Scientist have done some remarkable things
Discoveries, inventions and such
But when it comes to toilet paper
They haven’t done very much.
The progress they’ve made through all these years
Is enough to boggle the mind
But certainly they have failed the test
To take care of the human behind.
Oh I have tried them all you see.
The soft, the strong, and three ply .
All the ones I see on T.V
Mama bear and her cute little guy!
Scientists put a man on the moon.
I‘m sure you know this is true.
But have you found any toilet paper
Where your finger doesn’t come through?
Stand up and protest, it’s time that we do,
Or why not start a petition?
It’s time those inventors took pity on us
To alter the way we position.

Author
Blanche Yerves
8/20/10

Bad Daughter, Good Daughter

A ninety year older lady blacks out and falls to the floor. She lives alone so there is no one there to assist her. When she regains consciousness, she uses all the strength she can muster and finally pulls herself up. When she is feeling better, she calls her daughter. She is taken to the hospital for evaluation. The results show she is not drinking enough water and is dehydrated. She was given instruction and told to drink more water, which she has been doing. That was a year ago. Now she is a year older, still living alone and has perhaps forgotten about drinking water more often and the hot weather has arrived. She has since been signed up with a first alert company and has a monitor she wears around her neck at all times. She again passes out in her bathroom and when she come to, she is a bit disoriented, but has enough presence of mind to push her alert button. This time she cannot get up by herself. The alert company calls her daughter, who does not come, but instead sends her husband. The lady has a split lip, a bruised nose and a big bruise on her arm. The husband can not get her up from the floor and has to call in a neighbor to assist him in getting her up. He remarks that maybe she has not been drinking enough water. He makes sure she is in possession of her faculties by now before leaving, but no one takes her to emergency. They assume what the problem is. This all happened around noon time. I find out that the daughter has not called her mother to see how she is until the following day. Since the lady was upset her daughter was very unresponsive to her in a time of need, she asked why she had not come with her husband when she fell. Her explanation was that she had company from out of town and could not leave. Please picture this.... your ninety one year old mother has fallen, laying on the floor, not able to get up. You do not know her condition, or if she is badly hurt or not, or if she needs medical attention, but you have company so you can't go find out, but your husband does not need to stay and visit so send him. It is only your mother and she did this last year also, so it probably is nothing. You do not have time to call later in the day, but she will be O.K. until you can call tomorrow. What kind of a daughter does this? What kind of company do you have that does not insist you go find out about your mom. What kind of people are all of you any way?
Now here is another story that is in such sharp contrast it will make you feel that not all children are so insensitive. This mother had three children. She lost one son some years ago and more recently another son from a car accident, leaving only one daughter. Both she and her husband are in poor health, both physically and mentally. The daughter lives 105 miles away, which takes her about two hours to get there. She has a full time job plus her own home to take care of. She also has to handle her parents financial situation, see that they get back and forth to doctor appointments, deal with Realtors, con artist on the telephone, and seek help from caring relatives and friends who can do small errands for her when she is unable to get there. She is in the process of getting their house sold and moving them to her town where she can better look after them. She spends most of her week-ends with them, helping them with whatever their needs. She has arranged for a cleaning lady, a relative to drive them for groceries, and she takes time out to write checks and pay all their bills. She talks daily to them on the phone. More recently she is taking time off from work (leaving after her shift ends tonight)to go stay with her parents while her mom undergoes surgery. She leaves her own household to care for them. Her father just recently showed signs of senility which she now has to face and find out what the future looks like since her mother is not able to take full care of her husband. The only child of two aging parents trying to run two households 105 miles apart, and doing such an amazing job, gives heart that some children love their parents more than others.
The first daughter not wanting so much responsibility,says, "My mom had her day, and now it is my turn." The second daughter says, "My day will come in due time."

I Was Just Thinking!

Aging is not a state of the mind; it is a stage of the body. When we are young we think we are invincible and can do anything we set our minds to. That is almost true, although our judgment is not always right because our inability to control our impulses has not yet fully developed. Young people have no fear and therefore are sometimes a danger to themselves. Now when you are older and the brain still says you can do anything you set your mind to, the body steps in and lays reality on you. The body is like any piece of machinery. It wears out. “Oh, I can do that”, you say, and then when you attempt it, the old body says, ”I guess you can’t.” It is a very frustrating thing to want to do something and you can’t. You get down and it is harder to get back up, you want to run around the block, but you are panting and wheezing before you have gone very far, You find that whatever you attempt, either your legs, or your arms, or your back, or your eyes, or your breathing is not cooperating with you. So, whether you are young or you are old, your body is in control of you, and your mind is just fooling you into thinking it is not. You had best listen to your body if you want to stick around for a while. Thinking you are younger than you are can be detrimental to your health!

Beware Big Company Lies!

In July 2004, I was preparing dinner at my kitchen counter in front of my kitchen window. On the left side of my counter I had placed my electric frying pan and was preparing to cook a chicken dinner. I had purchased a package of McCormick Country Chicken sauce mix, which you must follow the directions on the package to be successful. In stirring the mixture I guess I was a little too vigorous doing so because some of the sauce spattered up onto my kitchen curtains. I did not think too much about it, but did wipe off what I could at the time and thought if it stained I could wash them later. That is the only thing I was preparing at that particular place. This is important to remember. After a while, I happened to glance up at my curtains and the color was bleached out where the sauce had landed. I am not kidding you!! The chicken sauce bleached my curtains. I had just purchased them a few weeks before and had paid $35.00 for them on sale. What would you have done? I did what I thought was the right thing to do and contacted the McCormick company. I told the lady, who was the one answering my call, about my problem and she practically told me I was nuts, but if I would be so kind as to send the empty package to her they would run a test on it to see if there was anything that they deemed responsible. Well, that was a dumb thing to do as there went my evidence, but I had already mailed it before I had given it some thought. My recourse was to high tail it to the grocery store to get another package and test it on another piece of colored material. It was only a day or two between times, but SURPRISE!! It had been pulled off the shelf. I immediately went to three other stores to find there was none on their shelves either. All other McCormick sauces were there, but not the Country Herb Chicken Sauce. All of them had been pulled from the shelves. What would you think? Of course they contacted me and said they had ran a lot of tests and found nothing to be wrong, and I must have spilled something else on my curtains besides the chicken sauce. Remember, I told you there was nothing else I was preparing in that space. The purpose of this blog is to tell you to NEVER be stupid like I was and get rid of your evidence that would prove your case. I was not asking for a huge settlement from them. I only wanted back the $35.00 I had spent on my curtains, which I had to replace myself. I am on a fixed income and extras like that, are sometimes an extravagance. Be wiser than me my friend. I am adding the letter I sent to the McCormick Company so you can see I was not trying to get more than what was coming to me. That was in 2004 and it still bugs me that a large company like that, can be so deceitful, untrustworthy, and irresponsible. O.K. Cheap too!
July 7,2004
Attention Jodi Davis:
McCormick & Co.
211 Shilling Circle
Hunt Valley, Maryland 21031
Dear Ms. Davis;
Enclosed please find the Country Herb Chicken sauce blend empty packet that you requested. If you need the portion of the curtain that was damaged, I will be happy to send it along also. I appreciate all the help you are giving me on this. I realize it is not an earth-shaking incident, but it is stressful for me when I have to replace something at my own expense, which is not my fault. Again thank you for any future helps you might give me.
Sincerely,

A Hunting We Will Go...Or Not!

When I first married my husband, Bob, he wanted me to go wherever he went. That meant I must accompany him on his hunting trip to Reno. I was not required to carry a gun (whew!) or expected to shoot anything. I do not think I could have done that anyhow because of my love of animals. I was not too happy knowing he loved to hunt, but knowing he came from a family who lived on a farm, and his father taught his boys to hunt, I knew it would be hard at this point to get him to not love the sport. Anyway, off we went to Reno. My first challenge in this adventure, was to get up a very steep hill, because that was where the deer would probably be.I started climbing behind him, but was not doing too good or making too much headway. "Grab a hold of me" was my instructions from Bob. "Grab a hold how?" was my thought. I needed my hands to grab a hold of this huge mound I was trying to get up. I decided on linking my fingers into the backside of his jeans. Great idea. He scrambled up that hill like he was born to it, and I was pulled along like I was flying. No sooner did we land on top than I hear "bang, bang, zing, zing!" "Hit the ground," Bob says. "Get down and stay down!" I see a pretty doe leaping fast across the hills. She was scared to death and running for her life. I knew then, I did not like this. When everything was finally quiet, Bob tells me some hunters are crazy and shoot at anything that is moving. They do not wait to see if it has horns or not, or if it is human. How sad! We scoured the hills, or at least Bob did. I hunkered down by a tree and waited for him to do his thing and come back to get me. He returned empty handed. (Thank you Lord).
We went back down the hill, I slid most of the way, and were about to cross this field where Bob thought there might be something. The green growth was quite high and Bob went ahead of me and told me to be careful and just step where he stepped. So I did. At least I thought I was doing that. I watched his footsteps fall and stepped where I thought his foot had been. He was doing just fine and must have had eyes of an eagle because nothing happened to him, while I stepped and oops! My foot went deep into the ground and up to my knee in water. I was cold, tired, nearly shot at, and wet! I wanted to go home, and so we did. I never wanted to go hunting again. However, I did. It was a scary adventure as well and it ended my hunting days forever. Bob took the boys on an outing only once and Brent fell into a creek carrying the rifle over his head, and Cary was more interested in finding fossils and old skeletons of animals. Bob went back to hunting with his buddies and let us happily stay at home, warm and cozy!

Where's The Fire?

Bob held some sort of office in the local lumberman’s union. It was one of those offices where your fellow workers vote you in to air all their grievances, which they do not want to do themselves. Anyway it made him feel good to be the one chosen. It was not an office for the union itself. Still, it was important, as he got to sit in on all the meetings and speak for his guys. This one time there was to be a meeting held in the state capital of Sacramento, California. Wives were also invited and all their expenses paid. Also an overnight stay in a very nice hotel and a dinner for all those invited. We also got to glimpse a couple of celebrities walking through the lobby. Marsha Wallace is one name that comes to mind. She was on the Bob Newhart show. All in all it was a very nice hotel where one should behave themselves and act like any human being would be expected to act. Well, my Bob was certainly a human being and most of the time he acted like he was supposed to do, but he had an awful curiosity wanting to know just how things worked, or if signs he saw, really meant what they said. He therefore had an uncontrollable urge to test them out. You know the kind of people I am talking about. They are the ones that have to touch something that says, “Wet paint. Do not touch!” or a sign that says, “Closed for the day.” That person has to try the doorknob. Things like that. Well here we are in this nice hotel, and after checking into our room, we were ready to go down to the lobby. Waiting for the elevator to come and take us down, Bob spots the little glass enclosed handle that says, “Pull only in case of fire!” He says, “I wonder what would happen if I pulled that?” I tell him, “DON”T YOU DARE! Everyone would think there was a fire and panic would reign. Behave yourself and curb your curiosity.” That was it for a while. Everything was fine until the next day when I opted to stay in the room, while Bob was to attend a meeting. I had forgotten about his questioning me the day before so I was not expecting what happened next. Suddenly, I heard the fire alarm go off and warnings being announced over a loud speaker. I opened the door to see Bob running down the hall towards our room, looking like a scared little boy child, running to the safety of mama! I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him inside. “What have you done?” I asked him. He sheepishly said, “I wanted to see what would happen, but did not expect this.” “What in the world DID you expect?” I questioned. I got a shrug. There was a lot of commotion outside in the hall, but we waited quietly until all the sound was gone and then I escorted him down to the lobby and pointed him toward his meeting place. People were talking about someone having set off the alarm, but we acted innocent as we possibly could. He always arrived early to appointments, so he was not late for his meeting. I do not think this experience stopped his curiosity, but it slowed it down for a while. My Bob was a sweet, gentle, loving person, but had a flaw in this one part of his personality. Curiosity just got the better of him. However it had one good thing about it. It kept me on my toes!

Up On The Roof Top

Christmas 2009 is over, but I have a Christmas story that is lingering in my mind. It is a memory that makes me smile, and I would like to think you are going to enjoy it also. I am not exactly sure what year it was, but it seems to me that it was in 1959. It really is not that important to the story except for the age of my son who was a major player in the story. I believe he was thirteen years old at the time. He was (and still is) a creator of things. His imagination always works over time to create great pieces of art. This thirteen-year-old boy had decided he wanted to put a rocket on the roof with Santa riding it skyward. That period of time was rocket and space oriented, and what better way to send Santa off on his trip than by the way of a flying rocket ship? First off he had to make a rocket, and his mind was working hard on that image. The body he found in the garage in the form of an old garbage can. There was a hole in the bottom, which two pieces of stove pipe that he found, fit perfectly after some shoving and pushing. These became the exhausts. He now needed a nose cone. My husband worked in a lumberyard and we had a fireplace so it was easy to find lumber lying around in the garage. Three pieces of plywood worked fine when made into a triangle and nailed together, they formed a nose cone. From the back of the exhaust there had to be some fire to get it up into the air. That took a bit of thinking. However it was Christmas time and there were all sorts of things to hang for decorations, so these little pieces of wire covered with red paper and glittery stuff were just the right thing to work on a rocket. Actually they were for making Christmas arrangements for your holiday table. Wow! They really worked well on a rocket also. Paintbrushes came out to make it look more authentic and real. The next step was to get it up on the roof. With a little team effort from all of us, up it went. My husband became as enthused with the project as our son and so wires and rope and whatever was needed, put the rocket in place. Next the main character, which was Santa, had to be created and put into place. Everyone’s closet was raided and clothes were borrowed for good old Saint Nick to be created. A red pair of my slacks, a hooded sweat shirt from someone else, and a lot of old clothes and whatever we could find to stuff into the pants and sweat shirt to give Santa a shape. Voila! Santa came to life. A molded plastic Santa facemask went into the hood to complete the jolly old fellow. Now he had to be mounted on the rocket. Once there and positioned, he was supposed to be upright and ready to take off, but NO! The nice old guy just slumped down like a stack of old clothes in a laundry basket. This was not working at all. Someone had to go down off the roof and find Santa a backbone. A nice long stick and some twine worked well and he finally was sitting up straight. All that was left to do was to put a spotlight on him so he could be seen ready for his takeoff. That being done, everyone was delighted with the efforts and the neighbors were even agreeable that Santa looked pretty good. There he sat “up on the house top,” for a few days anyway, until one day came when the wind decided he should take a tumble. A girlfriend was visiting me at the time and we were the only ones available to get Santa back up where he belonged. No problem! We were very capable women and what could be so hard about doing that? Out came the ladder, on went our jackets, and up we went to rescue the old boy! It actually was not that hard although it took us a while, but much to our dismay, it started to rain. Not to be deterred we continued our rescue attempt until we were satisfied he would remain upright from now on. Finished, we were ready to descend to safer ground. One big problem arose which we had not anticipated. Going up the ladder was easy. Going down the ladder, not so easy. Neither she nor I felt safe enough to turn ourselves around, make our feet find the rungs, and back down the ladder. We were both scared to death. These two brave women who knew no fear, and felt confident in fixing the problem, were stuck on the roof with the rain pouring down. Hours later, we were still sitting there, drenched to the skin, when my husband came home from his work place, to see two women sitting on the roof top in the rain. It was not easy explaining it to him, but what a sweetheart he was to climb up, give encouragement and direction, to help us down. Still scared, we put our trust in him, and one foot at a time he directed our feet to the first rung and then the next. Feeling solid and firm footing after the second foot went onto a rung, the rest was a snap and the trip down the ladder was fast. A big hug to our savior was natural and tears came easy after our rescue. Tired and cold we quickly went into the house for comfort and repairs to ourselves. Our son was discouraged from getting any more great ideas for rooftops, and we have since encouraged him to give his ideas to a strong firm footing on the ground. That he has done and even got a mention in our local newspaper when he covered our entire house with Santa’s palace. To this day, he is still creating things, but it has been directed now to the creation of miniatures, and he holds an office in the National Association Of Miniature Enthusiasts.