My favorite daughter

I have a favorite daughter - Lisa. (for those of you who are offended by favoritism - Lisa is my ONLY daughter).

I know how people say that their child was a "good child"....well, Lisa actually fit that role. I probably only had to whip her twice in her whole life (yes, I believe in spanking children). Her brother is a whole different story. I will have to write about him later. Back to Lisa - she is always considerate and sweet. She does exceptionally well in her present job, hospital admissions, because she is so nice to people. I remember when she was younger, she would wake up and quietly close my bedroom door and turn on the Saturday cartoons at a low volume. (Her brother would turn it up at full volume and leave my bedroom door open - so each Saturday, I hoped she would wake up first) :)

I couldn't ask for a better daughter. She has given me two beautiful, wonderful and cute grandsons (not prejudice here). She is lucky to have a wonderful mate - Mike. And, he is lucky to have her.

She is very creative. When she was 9 years old, she made a hand-made quilt. I have several of her beautiful cross-stitch pieces in my home. No, she did not get her creativeness from me - it skipped a generation - she got it from my mother. They are now busy and interested in scrapbooking.

She makes beautiful jewelry. She now has her own website and I would love for you to visit it. It is ldfdesign.etsy.com. I am sure if you have some suggestions for her, she would listen. If you do buy something from her, tell her that her mother sent you. :)

Truth about clay

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves, he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay calls he had left. Then it struck him.

He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But, we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay. May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

Live your life so that those who know you but don't know God will come to know God because they know you.

My opinon

Ok, everyone has an opinion. I am fixing to give mine on three subjects. These are all based on my experiences (and pain) and if I can help just one person out there, then maybe it wasn't all in vain.

In my opinion, please do not EVER use Dr. Elliott Clemence in San Antonio, TX as your orthopedic surgeon. In May, 2005 I started just falling down. This is not fun. Just imagine walking somewhere and you never know if you are going to make it to your desitination or, in one instant, be on the floor. Someone referred me to Dr. Clemence. He was in Jourdanton at that time. I have sinced learned that he was once in Beeville (no longer there), Kingsville (no longer there), Alice (no longer there) and Jourdanton (no longer there). This should say something. So, anyways, I went to Dr. Clemence thinking I would get a cortisone shot. Nope. He informed me that I would have surgery in July. So, on July 27, 2005, my life was changed. I had a total right knee replacement. Aspirated. Spent 12 days in ICU. Came home with two stage three bedsores (does this mean that Southwest General Hospital really took care of me?!?!). Now on the other side - they assigned Dr. Riveria, a pulmonary dr, to me and he was fantastic !! He was caring and an excellent doctor. Dr. Clemence would come to the door of the hospital room and not even enter - it was like "eww, you have cooties and I am not even going to get close to you.". Not Dr. Riveria, he would come in and hold my hand and ask how I was doing. Once home, I started getting other symptoms - Dr. Clemence would just ignore those and say "that has nothing to do with your knee". After going to another doctor, I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis. If Clemence had listened to me and cared for me, he might have diagnosed this earlier. In one short year, another orthopedic doctor has informed me that I need another knee replacement - on the same knee. I have heard of this happening to two other women that had Dr. Clemence. So, in my opinion, please do not ever use Dr. Elliot Clemence.

In my opinion, please do not use AFLAC. AFLAC came to my place of employment and when I told them my story of my knee surgery and ICU, the man said that I would have gotten at least $35,000 from AFLAC if I had signed up with them. Well, being the dummy that I am, and gullible, I fell for it and signed up immediately. With my knee and spinal stenosis problems, I missed a total of 52 days and was docked 1/10th of my yearly salary (yep, a lot of money). Did AFLAC help me? NO. You have to fill out tons of paperwork and then they come up with every excuse under the sun why you shouldn't get any money. A doctor gave me a prescription to go home and keep my feet up for 10 days. I filled out the paperwork and turned it in to AFLAC. I waited from September to March to get that $200. And this was after speaking to man from AFLAC and turning in the paperwork twice.

In my opinion, do not ever drive a KIA. This was about 8 years ago, I bought my son a brand new KIA. Within 6 weeks, it had already broken down three times. Now I am not saying that my son was the best driver but these were major breakdowns. Maybe they have improved KIA's since then, but I wouldn't drive one if someone gave me one.

Remember, these are just my opinions (and I am sticking to them!!) :) Everyone has stories about something and that is one great thing about blogs - you get to share them with anyone willing to sit down and read. Besides, like I tell people, that is why I usually get away with saying anything I want because no one listens to me. So, I get away with writing anything I want because no one reads my blog. :) But, if I have helped one person, then GREAT !!

My thoughts

I have been thinking....how come we can vote for a ban on public smoking and not even consider voting on a ban for public alcohol (intoxication)? Does the government get more money from the beer and wine companies than they do from the cigarette companies? I have never heard of anyone smoking a 6 pack of cigarettes, getting into a car, and killing a family. When a person smokes, they are just killing themselves - when a person drinks and gets behind a wheel, they could kill a whole family. So, why don't we pass a ban on public drinking???? If people can't smoke in a restaurant, then people shouldn't be able to drink alcohol in there either - it's only fair!! If smokers have to stay at home to enjoy some pleasure, then alcohol drinkers should have to stay at home too!!

I decided to do some research on this topic. 250,000 people have died in alcohol related deaths in the past ten years. (from alcoholism.about.com) From www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/3261/7398/1057 the conclusions were: "The results do not support a casual relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed."

If anyone out there has some data that shows how many people have died from second hand smoke, please let me know. But, I am willing to bet you that more people die from alcohol related accidents than from second hand smoke.

I guess it just boils down to life is not fair. Another "fair" topic should be urine tests. How come the people going to work every day have to sometimes take an urine test in order to earn the paycheck that the government takes money out to give to people who get to stay at home? If the workers should have to take an urine test, then the people getting the free money should have to take one too in order to get that free money !!