Life explained – sort of

Life – it’s complicated –  the ups and downs can be likened to a Disneyland E ticket ride.  If you were lucky enough to go to Disneyland in the 60’s, 70’s or the early 80’s the tickets were in a coupon book.  The best, fastest and scariest rides required an E ticket.

Life can be as dizzying as the spinning Mad Tea Party,  annoying as Small Small World  or like an E ticket drenching on Splash Mountain.  It’s pretty much the same for all of us.  I like to think of life as one long journey through the magic kingdom, the happiest place on earth.

Amusing Musings are just that, ponderings about the every day journey.  Monty and I are dressed for fun and ready to tackle any of life’s joy rides. Come join us!

Scroll down to see all the Musings.

Our Fourth Quarter

Like the exciting fourth quarter of Super Bowl LVIII our personal quarter is turning out to be one of the best.  We are enjoying a new active lifestyle and it is great being closer to the children and grandchildren.  Like Super Bowl overtime,…

The Dog Ate My . . .

The dog ate my homework.  Everyone knows a kid who has used that excuse.  I’m guessing teachers have heard it so often they just laugh it off.  I have a dog story for you but it does not involve homework. The story unfolded when Monty…

The Wild Things

Our granddaughter, Jordan, invited us to spend the morning at the  Phoenix Zoo where she is a docent.  What a great time, we think of zoos as a place for children and indeed there must have been hundreds of parents pushing every kind of high-tech…

Pet Peeves

Pet Peeves, I have a few, I bet you do too.  Let’s see if any of them match up to move from pet peeve to pain in the tush status. I love pump top lotion bottles, but the problem comes in when the pump no longer does its thing and there…

Bag This

Remember those brown paper grocery bags with the pull up handles?  They worked great, just toss a bunch of stuff in the bag, pull up the sturdy handles and off you go.  Then someone hugged a tree and the world decided we shouldn’t waste…

The House Guest

We have a house guest.  We don’t usually have house guests it’s just Monty, me and Miss Daisy and we are comfortable with that.  It turns out this guest is rather noisy, seems to have a mind of her own and apparently plans to run the…

Hit the Road

When we retired in January of 2002 we decided it might be time to do some traveling instead of camping.  In our mind traveling was totally different from camping.  Although we still used the truck with the camper but instead of parking overlooking…

Jungle Moms

I’m hooked on the Internet when it comes to viewing wild animals, moms and their little ones are the best.   I love all the critters, the giant pandas who frolic in the snow or gently swing in panda hammocks.  They tussle with the little…

Sooner Or Later

We have a water feature on our back patio.  I know you’ve seen the lovely rock waterfalls on the entry to many resorts. Beautiful rock formations, some with perfectly stacked stones and some with random rocks here and there, no doubt…

Orchard Caper

Monty is shopping online, he is looking for a pair of farmer overalls.   Why, you ask, would he need farmer overralls like Mr. Green Jeans? I broached this question and discovered he is getting serious now that he is tending his orchard. …

In The Review Mirror

On March 11, 2022 the moving truck pulled out of Tucson and arrived here in Sun Lakes, 91 miles to the North.  It doesn't seem possible we have been here a year.  We’ve survived a hotter than usual summer although we complained a lot and…

Where I Am From

I’ve never really understood poetry.  I was not exposed to it in an academic setting and I’ve never bothered to try to understand it on my own.  It’s a failing I hope to rectify.  Limericks are the closest I've gotten to poetry.…

Technology - Friend or Foe

Remember Maxwell Smart and his shoe phone?  We’ve come a long way since then. Has it been a vast improvement?  I’m not sure, every time Max picked up his phone he was connected to the party he was calling.  Can we say the same today? …

Daisy's New Year's Resolutions

The best part of being a good dog is getting lots of treats.  I love treats and when I’m a good dog the treats just keep comin’. I’m not always a good dog and I resolve to be better in 2023.   I resolve not to do the scoochie…

Thanksgiving Recap 2022

Our first Thanksgiving living near the family was just as I always pictured it would be.  In years past, making the trip from Tucson meant arriving at the festivities about 11:00 in the morning and heading home about 4:00 so we could get home…

Welcome To Writers' Group

I've joined a writers' group here in Sun Lakes.  Although I've always enjoyed writing, I've never been part of a formal writing group. There are a lot of excellent writers in this community and each of one has a unique voice.  It is touching…

Colorado Leaf-Peeping Fall 2022

Several years ago we attempted to do some serious leaf peeping on the East coast.  We’d been in the Northeast area often but always in the summer and never with a guided tour.  The fall trip with Caravan Tours was delightful and we saw…

The Packing Project

After all the sorting and cleaning and approximately thirty trips to the Goodwill or church charities we were ready to put the house on the market.  (Read previous musings on new best friends,  down sizing and finding our perfect home.)  We…

Our New BF's

It’s been a party atmosphere here. Folks come by the house and visit for a bit and leave with a treasure tucked under their arm. Our first new friend is Laura, she and her husband just moved here from New York. I discovered Laura on the…

The Downsizing Project

Monty has been cleaning and rearranging the garage and is now tackling the storage shed on our back lot.  He is sorting into separate piles of Toss out, Goodwill and OMG would you look at that. The first pile is the usual: a wheel barrow…

We're Moving

You might have read the blog post entitled January 1949, that’s when the Johnson family arrived in Tucson.  I tell people we arrived in a covered wagon and had to fight dinosaurs all the way from Chicago. Some people appear to be skeptical…

A Little Love

Every once in a while I hear people refer to themselves as dumb because the made they made a mistake or had trouble figuring something out.  Maybe they describe their hearing as deaf as a post, or complain because their memory isn’t what…

Tock - Tick ~ Rules

While the Oxford English Dictionary contains a quarter of a million entries. It is not only the words that can be confusing but the flow of each sentence.  I read a fun article from BBC about some rules we know without really knowing them.…

Winner!

Are you the winner, viewer number 14,000? This week surpassed 14,000 views on www.carriebonello.com.  I could offer number 14,000 a fabulous prize but I don’t know who you are. I enjoy the administrative background information that comes…

Fall 2021

The brownies are safely stored in the oven for travel, I can hear Willie Nelson singing On The Road Again, and we are off on another adventure. The destination is Colorado, I know what you’re thinking don’t those folks go anywhere else? …

Goodbye Friend

Once in a while, someone comes along, someone who just naturally makes everyone feel a little happier, a little more alive to life.  Suzette has been that someone to me. She has given me a new perspective on a lot of things - including myself.…

Wild Kingdom

Monty and I have lived in what I affectionally call the ‘toe hills’ of the Santa Catalina Mountains for about twenty-five years. The foothills you hear about, the high rent district, is located to the north and west of us. The higher views…

Gone Fishing

We spent a delightful long weekend at Big Lake in the White Mountains of Arizona with our good friends Susie and Bob.  Susie booked a double camping site and we snuggled their truck and trailer and our motorhome right into the grove of aspens,…

Love the Eagles

On our recent trip to Colorado we drove up to Grand Mesa, one of the mountains that surround Grand Junction.  Whenever we visit Colorado there is a lot of reminiscing going back to Monty's boyhood growing up in Grand Junction.  He's mentioned…

Deja Vu All Over Again

‘Deja vu all over again’, I sometimes confuse Yogi Berra and Yogi Bear, but I’m pretty sure I’m not quoting Yogi Bear.   OK, I think we’ve been good sports about this whole damn pandemic thing.  We did our part, we bought enough…

Happy Campers

This trip started off on the right foot and just got better as we went along.  First we were traveling with our good friends Susie and Bob.  Our first stop was in Lakeside, Arizona to met up with new friends, Jodie and Steve, who are coming…

Turning Pages

Summer is here and Tucson is hotter than . .well any place I can imagine.  Like most folks living here I love the winters, blue skies, lots of sunshine it is a wonderful time to spend the afternoon outside reading.  Folks living in snow country…

Better Instructions

Remember when life was simpler, you know back in 2019 .  I remember life was good, we just didn’t know how good until it wasn’t.  We couldn’t imagine the changes that were in store for us in 2020.   Hand washing, mask wearing for…

Hold Please

It seems I’ve been on the phone a lot lately.  I love to chat with friends, it helps if we both have land lines, but when does that ever happen?  Landlines vs cell phones is an issue for another day. This morning I was dealing with banking…

What's Your Number?

When you think of your own longevity what age are you aiming for?  When we were a younger version of ourselves we might have quickly tossed out 80 maybe 85 years.  After all those were our grandparents age and they were really old!  I don’t…

This little piggy . . .

My grand children are in their 20’s but several of my younger friends have been recently blessed with new grand babies  I’m sure they are enjoying the experience and maybe doing a quick review of nursery rhymes to be ready to cuddle and…

One Ringy Dingy

  JUST FOR FUN Let's talk telephone today.  I'm thinking about the old switchboards, and that reminds me of Lily Tomlin .  She created the much loved telephone operator, Ernestine, for Laugh-In in 1969. Who can forget how she…

Grant me Patience

Today I am including a favorite read from The Daily Word, a treat we enjoy each morning with our coffee;  and an article my friend Tom  posted on Facebook from the Daily Stoic.  I believe both offer situations we can relate to and hopefully…

Springtime in the Desert

I have to fess up, yesterday (April 4, 2021) when the outside temperature soared to 96 degrees and the inside temperature was hovering around 82, I made an executive decision.   I flipped the thermostat from Heat to Cool; clicked the Auto button…