Jay Brd's Nest

A woman I know, a good friend since high school (she was also Maid of Honor at my wedding), recently became a living organ donor for a man at her church.

She donated a kidney on Tuesday of this week.  I always knew this woman was a good soul, but I was blown away that she would go above and beyond "being a good person" and cross into "AMAZING PERSON" status.

The question I pose to you is this:  Would you consider becoming a living donor? 

My 2 year old son enjoys taking care of his sister's baby dolls.  Especially the one who talks.  She says "Mommy, I want my bottle" and "Mommy I want to eat" and other "mommy" sayings.

I was wondering if there are any dolls that ask "Daddy" to feed them?

I don't have any issues with my son playing with baby dolls.  I think it shows a wonderful nuturing side that all people should have, not only girls.

What do you think?

(I should add that he also plays with cars, trucks, tools and other "boy" toys.) 

Eyebrows.  Honestly, I don't pay much attention to them most of the time. 

Everything is fine and normal until SUDDENLY one day I look in the mirror and Groucho Marx is looking back at me.

 

Scary.

Tomorrow, June 25, will be my one year blog-a-versary.  What a difference a year makes!

I remember coming to myfoxstl.com to check out the weather, and seeing the blogs tab.  If I wouldn't have clicked that tab, my life would be much different than it is today.

I know many people think it's "weird" or "lame" to meet up with people you met online, but I have made some really good friends through the blogs.  I no longer consider these people my "blogging friends" but just "friends".

I believe that everything happens for a reason.  The reason why I clicked that blogs tab is clear to me. 

Thanks, everyone, for a great year!

19 days until July 12th.

Does that date mean anything to anyone??

            I'm Still waiting....  

               I did what you told me ...
               I sent the email to 10 people like you said .. 
               I'm still waiting for that miracle to happen   

               To all my friends who in the last year sent me best 'wishes',
                chain letters, 'angel' letters or other 
                promises of good luck if I forwarded something,
                NONE OF THAT  SH**  WORKED!
                For 2008, could you please just send money, Vodka, chocolate,
                Thank you!

When I read this story, I thought MAYBE, just MAYBE someone in Blogville may be able to answer a young boy's prayers.

HILLSBORO: Missing dog baffles officials
Yellow Lab disappears from animal shelter

Kyle Cozort is hoping his best friend Max will be returned. Max went missing from Jefferson County Animal Control May 6.

By Sarah AuBuchon
Monday, June 2, 2008 11:36 AM CDT

When Becky Cozort learned her dog, Max, had been picked up by Jefferson County Animal Control she told shelter workers she'd be right down to pick him up.

When Cozort arrived at the shelter two hours later, Max was gone.

Cozort, who lives on Timberline Circle in Hillsboro, said on Tuesday, May 6, Max, a 7-month-old yellow Lab, had slipped his collar and was running the streets.The next day when he still hadn't returned, Cozort called animal control, where a woman who answered the telephone confirmed that a dog fitting Max's description had been picked up by an animal control officer on Timberline Court and that the dog was there at the shelter.

"I told her I'd be right down," she said, "but when I got there, (Director) Jim Wilcox told me my dog was stolen or had escaped."

Wilcox confirmed that Max was at the shelter the night before Cozort came to get him, but was not in the cage when someone went to retrieve the dog for her.

"The ticket was there, but the dog was gone," he said. "There was no evidence of theft, but we don't know what happened."

Two weeks before this incident, Wilcox said someone had apparently broken into the shelter located off Moss Hollow Road in a remote area of Barnhart and let all the dogs out. Five dogs went missing in that incident, but two had returned to the shelter.

"It happens more often than we'd like," he said. "The cages are inadequate and sometimes the dogs chew through them. We patch and patch, but that's about all we can do."

Wilcox said there are no leads on the whereabouts of Max, and Cozort has put up flyers in the area, but hasn't had any luck so far.

Max was a Christmas present for Cozort's 4-year-old son, Kyle, who is heartbroken his dog is missing.

"You talk about giving up, but I keep praying with him every night for Max to come home," she said.

Cozort is urging anyone who might know of Max's whereabouts to call her at 636-575-5143.

According to Wikipedia, Sour grapes is the false denial of desire for something sought but not acquired; to denigrate and feign disdain for that which one could not attain. This metaphor originated from the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop, where the protagonist fox fails to reach some grapes hanging high up on a vine, retreats, and rationalizes that the grapes are probably unripe anyway.

More and more, I see grown people (aka "adults") doing the "sour grapes" routine.  They don't get what they want, so instead of cutting their losses, they whine, complain, lie, bad mouth and backstab the person/company that made them mad. 

Anyone else notice this? 

Do not cheat - go with the first dessert you picked.


If all of the desserts listed below were sitting in front of you, which would you choose (sorry, you can only pick one!). Pick your dessert, and then look to see what psychiatrists think about you.

Here are your 8 choices:

1.  Angel Food Cake


2. Brownies


3. Lemon Meringue


4.  White cake with chocolate icing


5.  Strawberry Short Cake

6. Chocolate Cake/chocolate icing


7. Ice Cream


8. Carrot Cake

I don't ask for much in life, but peace and quiet are toward the top of the list. 

When was the last time you sat in your yard without hearing non-natural sounds?  Airplanes, helicopters, motorcycles, super-loud cars, lawn mowers, weed eaters, leaf blowers (I really hate those), extremely loud car stereos, and--UGH---the ice cream trucks....I'm sure I could go on....but these things are constant in our lives. 

Some of you who live WAAAAY out in the country may not have to deal with many of these things, but most of us do. 

Sit in your yard for a while and listen to the noise pollution surrounding you.  Try identifying each sound.    Then try to block it out.  Good luck.

What a wonderful way to live. 

This article (from STLtoday.com) cracked me up...enjoy.

 

 Get that thing out of your ear, willya? By Bob Rybarczyk SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH 04/22/2008
So the other day I met Colette for lunch at a restaurant. I enjoy restaurants. This is why my stomach feels like a Ziploc bag full of maple syrup. Anyway, as I was dining, I couldn’t help but notice that a woman sitting at the table directly behind Colette was wearing one of those wireless cell-phone earpiece thingies. I wondered if maybe she’d just arrived and hadn’t yet thought to take it off.

Nope. She sat there during her entire lunch, across from her friend, with that thing in her ear. The stupid earpiece blinked a bright blue light at me every fifteen seconds or so. I realize this shouldn’t have annoyed me, but it did. It was like trying to read in a quiet room and hearing someone go “psst” every fifteen seconds. After a half hour of blinking blue lights flashing at me over Colette’s shoulder, I wanted to yank the thing off of her ear and crush it in my powerful jaws.

At one point, she actually took a call. She sat there at the table, completely ignoring her friend, and had a conversation through her flashing earpiece thing. Again, this should not have bothered me. I was not the one being ignored. Heck, I didn’t even know this woman. But I couldn’t help thinking that if someone had done that to me, I’d have pretended that I had to go make a call of my own, then I’d have run to my car and left the self-absorbed skank with the check.

OK, I really wouldn’t have done that. I’m far too much of a weenie. But I would have thought about it. Yeah, that’s right. I would have actually considered it. That’s how I roll.

I see earpieces everywhere these days. I went to a Chris Rock concert a few weeks ago, and a dude in the row in front of me wore his earpiece through the entire show. What’s the guy going to do, take a call right in the middle of a joke? If he did, I didn’t see him do it. I still had to put up with that stupid blinking blue light every fifteen seconds. I wouldn’t have noticed it, but they darkened the theater when the show started. In a dark theater, those flashing blue lights are like pleasantly colored lasers of hate.

The other day at the grocery store, I found myself in an aisle with two people wearing earpieces. Both of them were having conversations. There they were, inspecting the labels on canned goods, and talking into their earpieces. For a confusing moment, I thought one of them was talking to me, because he said “hey, buddy.” It took me a couple seconds to realize he had an earpiece on and was talking to it, not me. Then the guy gave me kind of a “mind your own business” look. Nice.

Don’t get me wrong. I think earpieces can be useful. I recently got one to use in my car, and I like it a lot. I can talk and keep both hands on the steering wheel. This is a good thing. When I get out of my car, however, I leave my earpiece behind. If I’m not driving, I usually am able to muster enough manual dexterity to actually hold a cell phone in my hand. I’m fairly certain this ability does not make me special.

I think it’s time that someone spoke up about this growing societal problem before it really gets out of hand. We’re already a nation of addicts, and I really don’t think any of us wants to see chapters of Earpieces Anonymous springing up in every city. If you’re an earpiece addict, consider this to be an intervention. Trust me when I tell you that this is for your own good. I know this because, well, I just do. Think of me as yer daddy on this topic.

Now listen up, because daddy is only going to go through this once.

First, you need to understand that when you use an earpiece in a public place, you look like a crazy person. I don’t mean a fun-crazy person like the Iron Sheik. I mean a crazy-crazy person like the guy on the corner with the aluminum-foil hat and a three-day-old salmon taped to his shoe.

People think you’re obnoxious. They make fun of you the moment you’re out of earshot. Yes, they make fun of you every single time. Yes, all of them. You’re the person wearing his underwear outside his pants. Yes, you are. Trust me.

Second, when we see you wearing an earpiece, we are not fooled into thinking you’re important. Important people do not wear earpieces at the grocery store on a Saturday afternoon. No, they don’t. Important people don’t feel a need to put their importance on display. People who try to look important never are, just as people who describe themselves in personal ads as “classy and intelligent” never are. Trust me. I’m yer daddy. I’m right.

Third, the earpiece does not make you look cool. Yes, we know that you probably paid $100 or more for it. No, we don’t care. Most of us own things that cost $100 or more. Heck, these days it costs $100 to buy a week’s worth of gas. You can’t buy a bowl of soup in Tijuana for $100 right now. The only guy impressed by $100 is the guy with the aluminum-foil hat, and he doesn’t care about your earpiece because he doesn’t know what year it is.

Fourth, and this one might be the hardest for you to swallow, it really is OK to not be accessible by phone sometimes. If your hands are busy holding grocery bags, it’s OK to let that call go to voice mail. Unless you are a doctor, nobody is going to die because you didn’t have your earpiece in. Even if you are a doctor, the chances are that the call is about a tee time. Your spouse can wait a few minutes to find out what you want for dinner. Your friend can wait to find out what you’re doing on Saturday.

I know, I know, the suspense of not knowing who’s calling, or what they want, or that it might be something really important, is a siren’s song you think you are powerless to resist. You’re wrong. Unless you’re 12 years old, you once led your life without a cell phone and without an earpiece. When you did, the world did not implode. No, it didn’t. Trust me. I’m yer daddy.

I’m sorry to have been so hard on you, but it’s for your own good. The first step to managing your addiction is to admit you have a problem. If you’re wearing an earpiece right now, while you’re reading this, you have a problem.

Yes, you do. Trust me.

And, you’re welcome.

Bob Rybarczyk (brybarczyk@sbcglobal.net <mailto:brybarczyk@sbcglobal.net> ) writes stuff. He is really glad he’s not running for President, but if elected, he will serve. Look for his first novel, “Acoustic Kitty,” ($15.95) at Amazon and other online booksellers.