Each Day Already is a Challenge

Is it really Thursday?

Now I understand what my mother and grandmother told me when I was just a kid. Time really does fly. Sometimes it seems as if the hours and days just speed by without much participation on my part. I wonder where the time goes. I wonder what I have accomplished. Nothing?

Some days and weeks that's just the way it seems. Like I'm just treading water. Like life is going on all around me, but I'm just standing still. Hmmm.

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Yesterday, the news local evening news was on in the other room. I was half-way listening to it, but not really. I heard the news anchor mention a school shooting in Michigan and I figured it happened either in northern Michigan (where one of my sisters lives) or in the Detroit area.

I was surprised to hear that the shooting took place in Midland, Michigan. That's where I lived! That's where my parents had lived. That's where my other sister and her ex and her two kids had lived. I wondered if any of them knew the girl who had been shot, or the boy who did the shooting.

I called my sister, who now lives back in Texas. She said that things were rather tense at work yesterday. There were quite a few parents of Midland teens attending meetings in Texas. They were all concerned about their kids. The school was in lock-down for a while. Fortunately, most kids had cell phones and most used text messaging to inform their parents and friends that they were okay.

My sister told me some details that had not appeared on the news. The news said that the girl had broken up with the boy and he went to school and shot her. What it didn't say was that the girl was not in school yesterday. Her mother drove her to the school to meet the boy to talk. Mom waited in the car. When the fight started, the mother drove her car in between them. She watched as the boy shot her daughter once in the arm and three times in the chest, then put the gun to his own head.

Can you imagine how that poor mother feels? She drove her daughter to meet this kid. And she watched, helplessly, as her daughter was shot.

Supposedly, the girl's condition was changed from critical to serious yesterday afternoon. Hopefully, prayfully, she will be okay. But, then again, will she ever really be okay? Will the mom? Or the families of both kids? Their friends?

What a different world this is than the one in which I grew up. Personally, I would gladly give up cell phones and text messaging, even this very computer, if we could have just a bit of those Ozzie and Harriet days back again.

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On a happier note, here's my bunny. I know lots of folks have them now, and so do I.



This was a gift from gardengirl and made by AntiBarbie .


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By the way, here's a rather different contest:

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. This writer has provided a few examples of bad trips. They're really....well, funny, I guess. I do believe I'll have to enter this one.