By Nancy Whitaker

JIMINY CRICKET

When the days begin to get shorter and the weather turns cooler, can you hear the crickets chirping? Now, I am definitely not fond of crickets and usually scream when I see one, but when I hear them chirping, I know winter is approaching and it is time to get ready for some winter weather.

I can hear them singing their merry song around my house now, but have not seen any in the house.

I have always been curious about these insects and I did not know this, but only the male crickets chirp. I would not have made a happy cricket, because the females just don’t sing or make any noise.

FRIGHT NIGHT

Let’s face it. Everyone is scared of something. Dogs, cats, birds, adults, babies, teens, big people and little people all fear something.

My problem with fear is that I always try and look into the future and imagine the worse case scenario. In some cases fear is good, because if you hear about a storm coming, you prepare for it.

Have you ever noticed when we hear a blizzard is on the way, how everyone heads for the grocery store to stock up? I, for one, am scared that we will get snowed in and not have anything good to eat. Is there a difference between being fearful or just being prepared?

My little Shih Tzu is scared to death of thunder or any noise even closely resembling thunder. He shakes, cries and runs and hides in a small dark area where he feels secure.

Merry Hallowgivingmas St. Easterpendence Day

I for one am glad to see the beginning of the fall and cooler temperatures. This past summer has been a “Long Hot Summer,” with hot temperatures, high humidity and destructive storms. It was just one I wouldn’t like to see repeated.

Apparently though, winter and Christmas is on the way, as I have observed Christmas decorations in various stores. Yikes! I haven’t even put away my sundresses and flip-flops yet and am in no way ready for the Christmas season.

We ask ourselves each year, “How soon should merchants put out Christmas items? How early should we start hearing Christmas music on the radio and in the malls?

R.I.P.

I don’t know about everyone else, but my dogs have always been a part of our family. On Tuesday, we lost, our 18 year old pet who we lovingly referred to as a member of our family. It was in approximately 1994, that we got a little wiener dog from some local people. He was so small you could hold him in the palm of your hand, plus he was brown, so we named him Brownie.

Like all pets, Brownie became a part of our everyday life. When he was young, he could run super fast, shake the innards out of his stuffed toys and jump close to four feet in the air. In fact one time Brownie jumped up so high at a campaigning politician that he nabbed onto the candidate’s watch.

Brownie was always a big eater and could eat at any time of day or night. He used to be able to stand on his back legs with his little paws up, begging for hours. Naturally, we thought it was cute, so we usually shared our food with him.

By Nancy Whitaker

DO YOU KNOW “THE OMAR MAN?”

Anybody who grew up in the 1950s is probably familiar with all the delivery men we had stopping at our homes.

Those were the days when you had a milk man, egg man, ice man, brush man, coal man and a bread man. Even though I was quite young, I still recall the ice man bringing the big chunk of ice that went into our ice box. It was always fun for the iceman to give us a chunk of ice to suck on.

Another delivery man we had was a milk man. He used to put bottles of milk on the porch and take the empty bottles. This service was very nice because it was difficult to get the grocery stores more than once a week. Some women did not drive and if they did there was usually just one car in the family to use.

By NANCY WHITAKER

WOULD YOU EAT THAT?

Eating out in a restaurant or a fast food place is a lot of fun and a pleasure that gets Mom out of the kitchen, and allows someone else do the cooking.

I am a food lover in all ways. I love to read cookbooks, try new recipes and even take pictures of food. I think of myself as a Food Network junkie, a lover of restaurants and a foodaholic. (Now is that even a word?)

Of course you can watch all kinds of shows on TV showing us all the various types of culinary diversity. If you stop and think about it, every part of our lives and existence revolves around food.

By Nancy Whitaker

IS IT LOVE OR AN UPSET STOMACH?

Have you ever been in love and got butterflies in your stomach? Do you recall your first taste of love and how you felt? What is love? I believe there are different kinds of love which can be shown in many ways.

Of course, there is that precious, sweet love between parents and their children. It has always been said that blood is thicker than water and those words still ring true.

For instance, if someone picks on one brother or sister, they may have siblings who will stick up for them. You may find you have a lot more than one to whip.

Then, there is the love that a child feels for their mom and dad. When your child wants or needs something, they look to their mother and father with love and expectation in their eyes.

A ROCKIN’ WEEKEND

Sometimes you have a wonderful weekend with lots of good things going on and you hate to see it come to an end. I had such a weekend last week.

There were a lot of good things going on beginning with the U.S. 127 garage sales. Normally, I don’t go to these, but this year two of my daughters and I decided to brave the crowds, reckless drivers and all, and go in search of that elusive bargain.

We met in Van Wert and got into one vehicle. We parked the car on a side street and started to walk down a street where garage sales were in abundance.

CRYIN’ TIME

As any new parent knows, babies have a very loud method of revealing their emotional state and it is by crying. It is frustrating to hear your baby cry and not be able to figure out why he is crying. You may have fed him, changed his diaper, burped and rocked him, but the little fellow is still crying. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice to know what he wants?

Unfortunately, the baby handbook does not offer any details on how to determine what the crying means.

However, in the future we just may be able to tell what our baby wants by a new type of baby monitor the Japanese are working on.

“AIN’T IT FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY?”

It seems as if time slips through our fingers like tiny pebbles of sand. It keeps on passing and the clocks keep on ticking. There is no way to stop it, wrap it up, save it for later or get it back.

I, for one, live my life around time. Time is something I can use wisely (sometimes I do) or time is something I can waste and I do a lot of that too.

Some moments in time pass incredibly fast and other moments seem to just draaagggg on. Certain days of the week seem to drag for an eternity and it seems like it takes forever to get to Friday and the weekend.