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.

The Spider

 When Miss Daisy woke up this morning she immediately took off after a rather large spider she spied on the floor.  In her exuberance to pounce on it, the spider took off on all eight legs.  The first I knew about it was when I returned…

Who Wears the Pants?

Who wears the pants in this family?  Apparently who ever gets to them first. While preparing to do some spring painting I looked everywhere for my old work pants,  you know, the ones with the hole in the knee and the multicolored paint…

Clutter?

It’s that time of year again.  Time to take a hard look at the accumulation of stuff around the house.  I don’t think we have a lot of clutter, I mean, the stuff is stashed in closets and the doors do close, so it’s not really clutter,…

Less is More?

Are you familiar with Tom Margenau?  He has written the “Social Security and You " column for national syndication since 1997. His column appears in the Sunday edition of the Arizona Daily Star.  I discovered the column several years ago…

Goals and Values

I went to an interesting wellness program last week.  I enjoyed the two young ladies presenting the program, both were Registered Dietitians  and work at Tucson Medical Center, promoting wellness for employees. Call me silly, but when I…

Sweep Into Spring

Spring here in the desert means wild flowers everywhere,  they blanket the desert and also pop up in the yard.  Poppies are happy flowers and penstemons are delightful but at the first heat of summer they all shrivel up and look, for all the…

Get Me Outta Here

Monty had carpal tunnel surgery this week. Dr. Siegel is a magician who can  do the surgery with just two tiny incisions and a half dozen  stitches.  The procedure took about twenty minutes, although the prep and anxious waiting was a couple…

Take a minute . . .

When did companies become obsessed with surveys? I have to admit at first it was exciting to think someone actually wanted to know what I thought.  That was about 10,000 surveys ago.   On a scale of 1 to 10, one being least satisfied, and…

Memory Trick

  I’ve enjoyed the Reader’s Digest monthly magazine since I was a kid. Magazines were a big deal when I was growing up.  Mom subscribed to several of the ‘ladies’ magazines and we always had a copy of the Reader’s Digest laying…

Extreme Makeover

  When we brought Daisy home she was a cute ball of fluff.  She has grown from six pounds of fluff to thirty pounds  and she is still fluffy. She has endearing curls on her face, but short of using hair gel they won’t stay out of…

Daisy and the 'fixin'

  The Elizabethan collar is a device created by the same guy who invented underwire bras and corsets.  The cone shape collar is perfect for  picking up signals from outer space. Comfort is not part of the deal. Do you remember Biff…

Snow Day

  Snow in the dessert isn’t unheard of, but when is snows ALL morning, that is news worthy.  The snow was beautiful and the quiet was deafening.  We sat in the cozy house and watched the snow fall and answered the phone a lot. …

Happy Birthday Mom

Memories of my mom speak to me in February, her birthday month.  She passed away  in 1992 at the age of 84.  Still, when something happens, significant or mundane, often my first thought is what will I  tell mom.  Some times I can see her…

Cowboy Up

It’s Rodeo time in the Old Pueblo, the Fiesta De Los Vaqueros has been a Tucson tradition for over ninety years. I was six years old when my family left Chicago and headed west. I grew up looking forward to the excitement of rodeo.…

End of an Era

So this is it, no more playful banter while Monty tries to read the sports page and I constantly interrupt with important issues from Ask Amy. The sections of the newspaper passed back and forth like a football over the cereal bowls.  It…

I'm Not Buying It

  The Super Bowl is this weekend, get ready for some great commercials. When you watch of all those commercials is pays to remember, what you see isn’t always what you get. Watching a video on the making of TV commercials can be…

Are You Smarter Than . . .?

  Life with a puppy, or are you smarter than a five month old?  We keep reminding ourselves we only have to be smarter than a puppy, but when we finally turn out the lights at night we aren’t sure who won the day.   The first…

Go Postal

Before 2018 ended, I carefully wrote 2019 on the first twenty checks in the check book.  Twenty checks will last until September and by that time I should be used to 2019. I also made a trip to the Post Office and picked up several books…

Mickey Mouse

Our yard birds are always hungry so keeping the bird feeder stocked is a daily chore.    Yesterday when I made my morning trip to the gardening shed,  I got a little surprise.  Being an old desert rat, I’m always  careful to look…

Password Mystery

Here we are in a new year, time to get organized.  I’m not talking about  straightening the kitchen junk drawer. Time to get serious about our password situation.  I Googled passwords today and in 58 seconds there were over 3 million…

New Year's Resolutions

According to Wikipedia - A New Year's resolution is a tradition, most common in the Western Hemisphere but also found in the Eastern Hemisphere, in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal…

School for Miss Daisy

  I guess the fun and games are over, I started puppy school last week.  I thought I ran the world and now I find out there are expectations even for puppies.  I was getting my people trained just the way I wanted them,…

Deck the Halls

  Christmas time arrives with so many memories. Nothing starts the flood of emotions quicker than looking through the boxes of ornaments and what-nots that we only enjoy for a week or two during the year.   The first thing I found…

Christmas Cards

I love birthday and Christmas cards. I belong to a generation of older folks who love to get mail.  I credit my mom for the postal excitement.  When we moved to Tucson she left her family in Chicago. In 1949 no one called long distance unless…

Dog Day Thanksgiving

 There was a little girl Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead When she was good,  She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid   Mr. Longfellow must have had a premonition that…

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  What’s not to like about a toasty kitchen filled with the wonderful smells of roasting turkey, family gathered and everyone catching up on the latest news and enjoying time together.   Easter would…

Kodak Moment

A Kodak Moment, a phrase anyone over fifty understands.  A moment in time that is perfect, a moment you want to save forever and show to your grand children, even if they aren’t born yet.  How to get that perfect Kodak moment? In…

Miss Daisy

We have a new member of the family,  Miss Daisy, who joined our traveling band on September 29th.  We lost our beloved Zoe this summer and as heartbreaking as it was to lose her; we knew there would be another canine companion in our future.…

Vacuum Dilemma

  The vacuum cleaner is not my friend.  Several years ago I bought what I hoped would be my last vacuum, but it died an early death and I’m interviewing prospective replacements. I'm firmly convinced  vacuums were invented by men who…

Nineteen -Sixty Plus Nineteen

I remember 1960 like it was yesterday.  I graduated from high school on a Saturday in  June, turned 18 on a Wednesday in September and got married on a Friday in December.   I’d read a couple of romance novels; you know the ones…

Indecisive?

Indecisive? Well, yes and no.  I really thought by this time all the big decisions would be made and we would just be coasting.  But for some reason life seems more complicated, and decisions are harder to make.  When we were younger…

What's In Your Refrigerator?

My mom often reminded me  - Always wear clean underwear, you never know when you might be in an accident, and you don’t want anyone to see your nasty pants.   That’s the way I feel about the refrigerator.  In my mind it would…

I Had a Dream

  Or was it a nightmare? Dreams are so confusing.  Is there a message  hidden somewhere in the recesses of our brain or simply a mis-firing of the neurons.  Trying to sort out a dream after a long night is absurd.   Why was I…

My Friend Rachel

  I bet you know Rachel, the gal with the too perky “Hello, I’m Rachel with Credit Card Services, there is nothing wrong with your credit card we just want to tell you . . . .”  I have to admit I’ve never heard the rest of the…

First Day of School

  Today I’m borrowing stories from two of my favorite moms. Monty’s daughter, Noel, wrote to tell us about her first born, Will, starting kindergarten. I found her description of the first letting go experience very touching. My daughter,…

Zoe and the Serpent

by Zoe I'm having a bad day, last night was my people's night out. I was busy entertaining myself in the kitchen (that seems to be the only room available to me when my people are away from home). Anyway, I have a new peanut butter bone and…

Life with Mom and Dad

by Zoe I was the first, the first puppy born to a first time mom on a cold February morning in 2009. It’s good to be first but in this case my mom didn’t have any idea what was going on or what to do. Thankfully my kennel mom, Arlene,…

The Art of Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping is an art form, if you’ve had the misfortune of shopping at the local Walmart on Saturday morning you might consider it martial art form! I have a theory about grocery shopping - it takes an hour to go the grocery store.…

The Hope Chest

We, of a certain generation, save kitchen stuff. What is the purpose of saving an old burnt cookie sheet, a cracked wooden spoon, or a bent spatula? In reality, we think these things are treasures and surely our children or grandchildren will…