Write From Karen

Even after getting his head chomped on, the turtle still doesn’t give up.

There’s a life lesson here somewhere …

Last Drawing!!

The last lucky winner is:

CONGRATULATIONS to Shannon H. from Shannon’s Moment of Introspection!! (Shannon, please contact me with a mailing address so I can mail the journal!)

THANK YOU to everyone who participated and who read the wonderful entries about motherhood. I had a blast doing this and we’ll do this again next year!

I’ll post the winners along with their prizes on May 26th.

Please click on the participants below to find out what motherhood means to them!

You can find guidelines and rules here. Any questions? Please feel free to contact me.

Which post affected you the most?

This was originally published on my Blogspot blog, February 2005. Back in the days when I really spoke my mind. Now? I’ve been tamed.

Somewhat.

Is it pay day yet?

Living from paycheck to paycheck. Boy, I remember those days. Right after graduation, I moved out of mom and dads. I was ready to be on my own! It was scary, but exhilarating at the same time. My first apartment was the attic of a house that had been divided into four sections. The ceilings were sloped and it was small, but I felt right at home. (My sister and I shared the attic in the house I grew up in). I was hot stuff. I had my own pad! I remember this creepy guy that lived downstairs…he was a big dude with a gut, looked like he had swallowed a bowling ball, one of those perfectly rounded bellys that stuck straight out from his body. I caught him staring at me several times. Really creeped me out. And it wouldn’t just be the staring, it was the gradual sneaking up on me. I’d see him at a distance, staring at me, and then I would look up five minutes later and he was still staring at me, only the proximity changed. Ew. I learned not to hang out outside for long period of times.

One time, a friend of mine, Mike, came over. He was 6′1 and hefty, a big dude only in a good way. I pointed out the creepy guy to him and Mike stared the guy down. Just stood there with his arms crossed and stared at him until the guy slinked away. Funny, the creepy dude never looked at me again.

But I digress.

Money was tight. Every single penny went to something: rent, car payment, gas, food - in that order. I never had to live by candlelight because I couldn’t afford the utilities (like someone in my family who shall remain nameless) but it got so bad that I had to ration my gas. I knew exactly how far it was to work and back, how many gallons that would burn and how much time I had until I could afford to put more gas in the tank. Needless to say, if I didn’t bum rides from friends, I didn’t go anywhere but work.

But that’s the payoff of being on your own and it’s a valuable lesson to learn - that you have to be responsible with your money, prioritize and budget. It’s part of growing up. Young people start accumulating debt. Credit card companies feed off these baby birds leaving the nest because they are vulnerable and because they need the cash.

Adults have new eggs to crack. Marriage and children. Those two things drastically change financial needs. The challenge here is to distinguish between needs and wants. And herein lies the point of this entry.

What’s wrong with this picture: A woman is in the checkout lane at Wal-Mart. She has a toddler and a crying baby. They both look malnourished, dirty and just plain miserable. The woman plops down dry cereal, powder for formula, candy bars, and beer. She then digs out the food stamps and promptly gets defensive and glares at the people around her.

Her cell phone rings.

She talks/boasts loudly to the other person on the line about how her man does this or doesn’t do this and in the meantime, she’s motioning for a pack of cigarettes. Do you think this woman has her needs and wants screwed up?

It infuriates me. I used to work at Wal-Mart and would see, first hand, the careless way people took advantage of us, the taxpayers. It’s one thing to help a person who WANTS to be helped, it’s another when they are obviously taking advantage of the system because of their own personal agenda.

It saddens me when I see children involved and obviously suffering. What’s wrong with people?

I used to work with a gal who was on the verge of getting kicked out of her apartment. She had two kids and a car that worked half the time. She was so skinny, I seriously worried about her health - there wasn’t enough money to feed herself after taking care of the kids.

Though she had cable TV, smoked, and owned a cell phone.

*Sigh* The difference between needs and wants. It’s really as simple as that.

Me and my sister, sharing a secret. Taken about … 1970.

Now that I really look at this picture, I think I might be asleep. I bet my sister was trying to wake me up.

Brat.

With another school year drawing to a close, you’ll want to make sure your young graduate gets his just desserts — such as a jelly roll diploma wrapped in a fruit leather bow.

RECIPE INGREDIENTS:

2 eggs plus 1 egg white
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Jelly
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
3 tbsp. butter,softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
Decorator’s gel
Fruit leather

DIRECTIONS:
1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a 15- x 10-inch jelly roll pan with waxed paper and grease the paper well.

2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and egg white with an electric mixer on high speed for 5 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon of the vanilla extract, then gradually beat in the sugar at low speed. Stir in the dry ingredients until well mixed.

3. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 12 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

4. Invert the hot cake onto a clean towel sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar; remove the waxed paper. Trim the cake edges with a sharp knife (adults only) and roll up the hot cake and towel from a narrow end. Let it cool on a wire rack.

5. Unroll the cooled cake, remove the towel, and spread on jelly, leaving a 2-inch strip at one end plain. Reroll the jelly-covered portion of the cake.

6. In a bowl, beat together the cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, and the last 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and use to frost the cake.

7. Use decorator’s gel to pipe “roll lines” on the cake ends and the class year or your child’s name onto the unrolled portion. Finally, add a fruit leather bow.