Everyday Disasters

Reflections on Life

  • Toyota Dashboard Safety – Maintenance Icons

    Quick and Cheap Oil Change didn’t reset the maintenance required light on the dashboard – causing me to discover that in Toyota cars it overrides the door open icon. (Quick – what is more important – knowing that your child might fall out or that you’re overdue for an oil change? Who makes these decisions?)

  • Mad Cow Disease Safeguards

    I can not tell you how pleased I am that in 2003 the FDA was able to find the one cow in the US with Mad Cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)). (Actually they found all three, but who’s counting?) I am only a tad nervous that our friends to the north have recently found…

  • Happy Anniversary Carnival of Family Life

    I somehow forgot to hit the send on my submission this week (I meant to submit the silly story of how an auction took over not only my life but almost lost all my cousin’s possessions).  Even so, it’s such a nice carnival I wanted to wish The Canival of Family Life happy birthday.

  • Auctions & Your Family Life

    If you commit to running an auction you can say good bye to your family life outside of the auction preparation for a while.  My family always was involved – in nursery school my children would put the labels on the envelopes for the gift certificates, as they got older they helped wrap baskets and…

  • The Year Before The Auction – Location & Theme

    There are several elements that must be covered with any fund-raising event but several specific items must be kept in mind to ensure a good auction. Volunteer chairs, location and theme should be set as early as possible.

  • Running A Great Auction

    I love auctions for schools, churches and charities. (I’ve run over 20 of them for various schools and charities.) They are the most painless way of supporting your favorite cause. Volunteers get to have guilt-free coffee klatches with their friends (“I don’t have time to clean my house – I’m working on the auction.”) A…

  • Carnival of Family Life

    Sorry I checked out for so long – School auctions can be totally consuming – we raised over $140,000 but we left the bodies of volunteers strewn over beds all over town. (Actually it wasn’t that bad – we’ve all worked together before and were able to do a great job with a lot less time…

  • Mother’s Day Gifts

    I love coffee. I also like to get Mother’s Day gifts. My idea of the perfect gift is a coffee cup my kids have made. (I have simple needs – my first couple of Mother’s Days I just wanted a wheelbarrow for my garden. My sweet but silly husband kept buying me jewelry.) Anyway the…

  • Protect Your Child From A Shooting – Read

    This week started with a trio of tragedies: floods, the massacre in Virginia, and the death of a local senior on a charity trip to Ghana. The following are my thoughts on how to protect your child. There are some things in life you cannot protect your child against – airplane parts falling on your…

  • The Downside of Teaching Your Children to Garden

    When I first moved to town I had a fabulous ‘landscaper’ (that’s what you call the person who mows your lawn on the East Coast).  He wasn’t like the other landscapers in town who would come in fair weather or foul and mow the lawn (no one really minds huge ruts in their lawn as…

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