Spoiled Children

How to spoil a schnauzer! I could write a "short book" on this topic. As I fed my two girls tonight I pondered this thought. How in the world did I get to this point, I wondered. Here I sat in the middle of the kitchen floor between two schnauzers, one who was eagerly eating her food and the other being fed with my fingers. The finger-fed girl is the baby and most often just walks away from her food. Sometimes I can persuade her to eat it later in the day. Lately, not at all. Now I have been told and I have read that you should just leave them alone, take up their food, and allow them to get hungry. The supposition is that they will learn to eat when it is offered. Ha ha! They just don't know Miss Kami. Sometimes she doesn't eat for days --- unless I finger feed her and then she eats just a little.

My girls are Lebanon, Tennessee girls. The breeder they came from uses Flint River food. This is the first time I have had any luck with feeding them this food long term. My Sassy quit eating it and refused; by the time I got Piper, Sassy had diet issues. Eventually I had to put her on a special diet so I fed Piper the same diet (as Sassy) pretty much. Now that Sassy is in Schnauzer Heaven I have been able to successfully put Piper back on Flint River and keep Kami on the same diet ---when she eats.

But this is the rest of the story. Through my experiences with Sassy Jane I learned lots about feeding doggies. I had always thought it was bad to give them human food. I learned that there are many dog owners who feed raw. There are some vets who feed raw. I belong to a group on Yahoo these days who feed raw and believe in holistic methods. The person who is admin of this group teaches at a university in Texas (PhD.) and knows everything you can think to ask about nutrition for animals. When Sassy was so, so sick I often went to her with my diet questions to help me work through her problems. Her name is Lew Olsen. Through this group I have learned lots. Through my own vets I have learned a bunch.

You see Sassy had chronic pancreatitis. When she had attacks they would almost kill her. The only way I could get her "innards" back in sync was to put her on a diet of rice and chicken. This would stop the pancreatitis and it stops diarrhea. The chicken has to be without fat or skin so I used canned chicken packed in water. My vet told me as she got better she could also have ground beef if I cooked it until it changed colors, drained it and rolled it between paper towels.

When I first got Kami Sassy was dying. Her diet was chicken and rice. So Piper and Kami got Flint River kibble with chicken or ground beef on top. Sassy has been gone six months now and these other two that are left are ----s p o i l e d !!! They expect chicken or ground beef on top of their 1/3 cup of kibble each meal!

Now that I have written this (I think) I have figured out how they got spoiled and I know who did it. They have no idea that they are being treated like princesses in a humanoid home!! I wonder if they know how lucky they are??

Belly Buttons Foolishness!!

Would you believe there is a study going on over on the NC State University campus on belly buttons??? Well, just relax and I will tell you about it!

What a hoot, that I should read of this when I have always had questions about bb's! But wait a minute before you become too judgmental, my only question had to do with innies and outies! I learned that there are more innies than outies and that you can have plastic surgery to alter the appearance of your bb if you are not satisfied with your original product! Such enlightening information -- gotta love it, huh?

So the study that is being done at NC State is called the Belly Button Biodiversity Project and is actually a study of what germs / bacteria inhabit belly buttons!! The results seem to indicate that staphylococcus and streptococcus are the big two that live in that little cave!! But those two guys are for the most part considered "friendly" there.

So why did they choose belly buttons as the location for this study of body bacteria??? First because the bb does not secrete anything and people just tend to leave their bb alone. For the most part people do not scrub their bb's like they do their face or exfoliate them . Actually the study seemed to be done under an umbrella of what bacteria actually grow on the body among some trillion that can be found. I think the study says we have some 100 trillion microbes and about 10 trillion cells on our bods!

So what belly buttons facts did I learn from this study?? Some I have already mentioned:

• you have no control over the kind you get BUT


• you can have the shape changed with surgery


• innies dominate


• belly button shape can change -- as with pregnancy


• there seems to be an ideal shape (innies seem preferred)but the ideal shape has some other characteristics


• some people seem more prone to bb lint (men)


• belly button meet soap...just wash it with soap and


• pause before you pierce (infections) I guess your bb isn't located in the best place for piercings though some folks don't seem to care......

Personally, I truly was amused by this study, I must admit!! But as I mentioned it was a part of an effort to study the kinds of bacteria found on the body.
Now don't you really feel uplifted and enlightened from having read my blog today???
Ah...you...OK, sour puss!!

MY MOM of the Year

Sunday is Mother's Day. Because I never had children of my very, very own I have never had an appreciation for this day except to honor my very own Mother. Of course, I, like the majority of children think my mom is the world's greatest mom. And she was, of course.

I am the third of her five children but I am the oldest to survive. She lost her first baby at some point about two-thirds through her pregnancy. I had a brother born prematurely next. He was named, George William, and lived less than four hours. About one year and eight months later I was born. I guess all of that activity was enough to make my parents very tired because I was an only child for six years before my brother was born. My sister came along five years and ten months after my brother's birth.

Now back to what made my Mom the greatest. For the majority of her years our Mom was a stay-at-home mom. We all enjoyed coming home, smelling dinner being prepared and having her always there to greet us and being glad that we were home. Today that is more difficult for moms but it is a pleasant memory as a part of our lives. Our Mom loved to cook, loved to sew, and loved her home. Even to the day she died she was always interested in up-to-date styles in clothing, furniture, and accessories.

My Mom was never one of those parents who could not wait for their children to go back to school after the summer break. She always looked forward to having us at home.

She pushed us to do our very best but never set expectations above our ability to fulfill. She provided for each of us the opportunity to take private piano lessons if we wanted. We also had the opportunity to participate in high school band if we wanted. Some of us did better than others.

Our Mom was also the community beautician. On most Fridays and Saturdays she had a full compliment of ladies coming and going to get their hair "set." Up they would come, get the waves and curls placed just so. In a few hours, back they would come for their comb-out. It was a regular parade but they all looked very good for church on Sunday!


Our Mother could be caught on fall days making fried apple pies or a big pot of apple butter. Some days she had made loaves of home made bread or a big batch of those cupcakes she called yum-yums. She loved to cook during holidays and made such a variety of scrumptious breads at Christmas time. We had lived in a community of Hungarian / Slovakian immigrants for some years and the ladies taught my Mom to make their kind of bread. Mom also made huge pots of cabbage rolls sometimes and chili at other times. She taught us to eat greens whether we liked them or not. Unfortunately, she never got me to like eggs or milk. Finally our family doctor told her to just leave me alone and hopefully one day I would come back to those foods. I never did -- I will eat them if you make me but never ask for them or eat them voluntarily.

Our Mom had rheumatic fever when she was in first grade. She told us that she was having trouble with her legs and walking. One day as she and the other children in her family and community walked home from school her legs just wouldn't work. The other kids ran ahead and brought her father back. He carried her home. That was her last day of first grade. When she recovered she had to learn to walk again.
Her life was not easy. Her father was killed in an accident at his work when she was eight and my grandmother was expecting her fifth baby. Years after that were very tough for all of them and Mom often had to help with the children while her mother worked to earn a living.

So I nominate my Mom for Mom of the Year. Lola Craft Lemon -- Mom of the Year in my world.

Keith Hamilton.....NC State Grad

Hey, does anybody else out there remember Keith Hamilton when he was a student at NC State University. The following is an article from BYU Today on him and about his new book. I know I am not the only old person around. I do remember....and I am old....

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• A Matter of Faith

A Matter of Faith

Keith N. Hamilton (JD ’86) had no idea his life was about to change profoundly on a muggy North Carolina afternoon in 1980.

He believed he had reached the pinnacle of life as a black male college student at North Carolina State University. Hamilton was a popular DJ who had parlayed that success into doing private dances and occasional club gigs. His fraternity had a strong campus presence, and with only a couple of classes required for graduation, he anticipated a fun-filled senior year.

But sometime during the afternoon of Aug. 7, two young men in white shirts, dark slacks, and ties knocked on his door. Hamilton, seeing them sweltering in the scorching sun, invited them in for ice water. When he learned they were missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was surprised, declaring he did not think Mormons were recruiting blacks. After he was advised otherwise, he said, “Well, whenever you’re in the neighborhood, stop by.” That was all the encouragement they needed, and the missionaries—now frequent visitors—challenged Hamilton to get an answer about the gospel. His prayers led to his testimony and changed his life. In a little more than two weeks from hearing about the Church, Hamilton became a faithful Latter-day Saint.

“I wasn’t taken in by a couple of missionaries,” he says. “They were true messengers, and I found a truth that resonated and guides my life. Yet I know my experience is unique to me. I mean, how many members of the Church were black boys growing up the Deep South during the Jim Crow era? My grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister. I saw the unfolding of the Civil Rights movement. This wasn’t really an easy path.”

Comfortable and faithful with the doctrine, Hamilton’s assimilation into the culture of the faith was challenging. “LDS culture, like any other specific culture, has its own unique vernacular, composed of completely uncommon words: Patriarchal Blessings, Quorums of the Seventy, and the Relief Society. And what had I ever heard about Adam-ondi-Ahman. Deseret, and people named Amulek and Moriancumer?”

“I also wondered how people would respond to me, he says. “I wanted people to recognize that I’m a person of worth and not avoid me because my skin didn’t look like theirs or I was from another part of the country in a completely different world,” he says. “It’s a good thing I’m outgoing and don’t accept being overlooked.”

After graduating from college, Hamilton planned to enroll in the J. Reuben Clark Law School. His bishop intervened, however, suggesting a mission, and Hamilton served in Puerto Rico. He then entered law school as BYU’s first black student and embarked on a career that has included the military, work at the BYU Alumni Association, serving on the Utah parole board, and teaching classes at BYU’s law school.

While Hamilton says the Church’s background on blacks and the priesthood has never bothered him, a few experiences he had in the late 1980s while serving first as counselor then as bishop of the San Francisco Bay Ward motivated him to research the historical relationship between blacks and the Church to help those for whom the black issue is a stumbling block. Hamilton’s research became so extensive, he realized he had enough material for a book. After 20 years of research and two years of full-time writing, the result is Last Laborer, Thoughts and Reflections of a Black Mormon. The first half of the book is his autobiography, and second is what Hamilton calls a “doctrimonial” text where he shares his personal story of faith, testimony, trial and triumph.

Among the reviewers of Hamilton’s book is Edward L. Kimball, retired BYU law professor, who wrote, “Beyond telling a fascinating story of his life and conversion, Keith Hamilton illuminates what it means to be black and Mormon . . . This is a careful, thoughtful book.”

“I just hope people feel the song of my soul and my testimony about God’s plan,” Hamilton says.

Reading To Our Children

Do you read to your children on a regular basis? Do you have a set time to read to them? And do you take advantage of available moments to read to them?

Do you realize what an important practice reading to your child can be??

I can't really think of a better practice to develop with our children than reading to them. Whether they are small enough to hold on our laps and cuddle or whether we just want to relax in some other way as we read, it is a habit that will pay dividends for both the child and the parent for an eternity. The first thing(s) to develop are so obvious -- those feelings of security, belonging, trust, and an emotional closeness to the parent. Time spent together develops bonds that not much can penetrate and will be cherished by both.

However, it is important to remember not to force reading on your child. Let them set the pace if you meet resistance. If, in the beginning, the child just wants to flip through pages bear with it and make progress with them as you can.

The educational benefits of modeling reading for your child as you read and discuss stories are HUGE. Your child learns that print tells the story, that pictures illustrate the story, the difference between a letter and a word, how to turn the page to advance the story, where the title is located, to distinguish the front of the book from the back, that a book has an author and a publisher, and to observe what is happening in the pictures and that you read from left to right. Those are just some of the simple beginning concepts and by no means is it comprehensive. And further it makes no difference if they prefer to read the same books over and over.

As time progresses and your child grows and develops other concepts are learned through reading. You will see problem solving skills developing as you discuss the stories and you will note your child pick up the concept that behaviors have consequences. It is important to discuss what you read to help with understanding / comprehension. Your child will pick up decoding skills from you by just listening and develop an appreciation of literature and a love of books.

Reading together teaches valuable lessons in a very subtle way. Later you will find yourself saying as you teach your child something entirely different, "do you remember in that story we read......".

I have only touched the tip of the "reading iceberg" of reasons to develop this practice but I hope I have at least gotten your attention.