Thursday, March 31, 2011

Sky Watch Friday-Moon shots

                  “Promises are like the full moon, if they are not kept at once they diminish day by day
                                                                     ~ German Proverb
                                    
“How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon From the slow opening curtains of the clouds walking in      beauty to her midnight throne!” George Croly Quotes

                      “The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.”
                                                                Jean Ingelow Quotes

                                                   Linking this post to Sky Watch Friday

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Watery Wednesday

I hope this is my last post about icicles. I don't remember the day we had a snow and I am not happy. I was sicked as well as hubby and the weather is crap!! ^_^ Sorry! Thank God  our temperature reached to 40F, and here in MI it's like really fine!!
                    That's my forsythia and hydrangea if some people are enjoying their blooms now, mine still covered with ice!!
                                                   My tulips is also covered with snow



                                                                     Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!
                                                          Linking this post to Watery Wednesday

New Family Traditions

Growing up I always hear the word our Filipino culture and family tradition or Filipino tradition. At school from grade school, to high school and even college we have a subjects that talked about this two. When I came here in the US and took my oath as a US citizen I couldn't forget what the judge told us, we came here from other country and with us we brought our culture and tradition. And to become a US citizen doesn't mean that we have to forget our culture and tradition. That word stuck in my mind and that is why people all over the world love this country, or is it?? Hehehe! But here is a new family traditions in this fast pace generations that we are in now...
 
  • Spontaneous day. Choose Sunday as your "spontaneous family day," when one person gets to choose an activity that you can do together, like checking out neighboring village houses or a visit at the zoo. But this is after all the family members went to church. Agree?
  • Volunteer together. As a family, help out somewhere once a month or once a year. Choose a day that's special only for your family and serve together at an orphanage or home for the aged. You can go to Salvation Army (the whole family) once a month to volunteer help the kitchen soup!
  • Shake up story time. Instead of reading the same storybooks to your children, you can let the child tell his or her story to you. Be his or her secretary and write down the story on a nice paper, illustrate it and make a "book" out of the pages by binding the pages together. I remember growing up my father used to tell us his stories growing up. It's really cool because we knew how he is as a boy.
  • Celebrate "opposite" day. Set aside a day of the year your family can do that is opposite of your usual haunts - hike watching a basketball game for your bookworm family or going to a stage play if you're regular TV watchers. Or do backyard cleaning once a month on Saturday's if you are all a couch potato's hehehehe. Go to the park and walk around rather walk around inside the shopping mall. ^_^

Busy Tuesday!

Today is the last Tuesday of the month of March and if it's Tuesday I am busy. In the morning I get up early to be at the church for our bible study that starts at 9:30am until 11:00Am. Then  I went home, prepare lunch, take a little rest and then gonna prepare for my Rel. Ed class at 4:00pm. But next week we are going to have a Spring break!! Wohooo!! Because you know why it's my birthday week hehehe.

Monday, March 28, 2011

It must have been love!

I am having fun backyard birding lately because I found out that the birds already come back from a long Winter hiatus. Last week, I think that was the night of Super moon, hubby and I saw thousands of geese fly by. They formed a very huge letter "V" and the sound that they created is awesome, just loving it. Today when I get up I immediately looked outside and voila the birds are there. After snapping photos, I waited for awhile behind the curtain and then I saw the mama and papa cardinal. I knew for sure that the mama cardinal is pregnant (the light red one color is the female) and when they are enjoying the seeds along with  some birds the two cardinals fly towards the snowy ground and they kissed!!!! It must have been love huh!!! I was tickled to death I can't believe it I captured the best moment of the cardinals life, hehe!
 The light colored cardinal is the female, and if you noticed her belly? She seems like pregnant, hmmm shower party soon? Hehehe! And do you noticed how she tilted her head to kiss the male cardinal, oh gush I can't get over this photo, just loving it!!
                                                   Linking this post to RUBY RED TUESDAY

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Macro Monday

       After super moon I waited for another beautiful moon formation and this one I am lucky to capture it.
                                                       Linking this post to MACRO MONDAY

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and baking

Madonna syndrome: I should have ditched feminism for love, children and baking

A playwright who embraced the feminism espoused by her mother and flaunted by Madonna now feels betrayed


I never thought I would be saying this, but being a free woman isn't all it's cracked up to be. Is that the rustle of taffeta I hear as the suffragettes turn in their graves? Possibly. My mother was a hippy who kept a pile of (dusty) books by Germaine Greer and Erica Jong by her bed (like every good feminist, she didn't see why she should do all the cleaning). She imbued me with the great values of choice, equality and sexual liberation. I fought with my older brother and won; at university I beat the rugby lads at drinking games. I was not to be messed with.
Now, nearly 37, those same values leave me feeling cold. I want love and children but they are nowhere to be seen. I feel like a UN inspector sent in to Iraq only to find that there never were any weapons of mass destruction. I was led to believe that women could “have it all” and, more to the point, that we wanted it all. To that end I have spent 20 years ruthlessly pursuing my dreams - to be a successful playwright. I have sacrificed all my womanly duties and laid it all at the altar of a career. And was it worth it? The answer has to be a resounding no.
Ten years ago The Times ran a piece about my play Paradise Syndrome. It was based on my girlfriends in the music business. All we did was party, work and drink. The play sold out and I thought: “This is it! I'm going to have it all: success, power and men are going to adore me for it.” In reality it was the beginning of years of hard slog, rejection letters and living on the breadline. A decade on, I have written the follow-up play Touched for the Very First Time in which Lesley, played by Sadie Frost, is an ordinary 14-year-old from Manchester who falls in love with Madonna in 1984 after hearing the song Like a Virgin. She religiously follows her icon through the years, as Madonna sells her the ultimate dream: “You can do anything - be anything - go girl.” Lesley discovers, along with Madonna, that trying to “have it all” is a huge gamble. I wrote the play because so many of my girlfriends were inspired by this bullish woman who allowed us to be strong and sexy. I still love her and always will, but she has encouraged us to chase a fantasy and it's a huge disappointment.
I may be an extreme case. My views may not represent those of other women of my generation. Perhaps I am just a spoilt middle-class girl who had a career and who has now changed her mind? I don't think so. This month the General Household Survey found that the number of unmarried women under 50 has more than doubled over the past 30 years. And by the age of 30, one in five of these “freemales”, who have chosen independence over husband and family, has gone through a broken cohabitation.
I argue that women's libbers of the Sixties and Seventies put careerism at the forefront, trampling the traditional role of women underneath their Doc Martens. I wish a more balanced view of womanhood had been available to me. I wish that being a housewife or a mother wasn't such a toxic idea to middle-class liberals of yesteryear.
Increasing numbers of my feminist friends are giving up their careers for love and children and baking. I wish I'd had kids ten years ago, when time was on my side, but the problem is not so much time as mentality. I made a conscious decision not to have serious relationships because I thought I had all the time in the world. Many of my friends did the same. It's about understanding what is important in life, and from what I see and feel, loving relationships and children bring more happiness than work ever can.
Natasha Hidvegi, 37, has left her job as a surgeon to look after her son. “I found it impossible to be a good surgeon and a good mother. Though it was a horrendous decision, I don't regret it.”
I thought that men would love independent, strong women, but (in general) they don't appear to. Men are programmed to like their women soft and feminine. It's not their fault - it's in the genes. Holly Kendrick, 34, who holds a high-status job in the theater, agrees: “Men tend to be freaked out if you work as hard as them.” This is why many of my girlfriends are still alone. The truth, though, is not that men haven't accepted women's modernity - the alpha woman who never questions her entitlement to the same jobs, fun and sexual gratification as them - but that women haven't either. I feel a great pressure from other women of my generation, who have partners and kids, to join their club. In their eyes I am not the trailblazer but the failure. My friend Rita Arnold, 36, works in marketing. “It's not men who judge me for being a careerist. It's other women. The claws come out.”
This leaves me sick to the stomach. We are letting each other down but there is a worse betrayal than that. I am a failure in my own eyes. Somewhere inside lurks a woman I cannot control and she is in the kitchen with a baby on her hip and dough in her hand, staring me down. She is saying: “This is happiness, this is what it's all about.” It's an instinct that makes me a woman, an instinct that I can't ignore even if I wanted to.
Felicity Wren, 36, is an actress who has yet to find Mr Right. “I feel the pressure, but only from myself, about how I do not have a conventional life. Most people don't care.”
Had I this understanding of my psyche ten years ago I would have demoted my writing (and hedonism) and pursued a relationship with vigour. There were plenty of men and even a marriage offer, but I wouldn't give up my dreams.
I talked to the girls who were the subject of my play Paradise Syndrome in 1999. Sas Taylor, 38, single and childless, runs her own PR company: “In my twenties I felt I was invincible,” she says. “Now I wish I had done it all differently. I seem to scare men off because I am so capable. I have business success but it doesn't make you happy.” Nicki P, 35 and single, works in the music industry and adds: “It was all a game back then. Now I am panicking. No one told me that having fun is not as fun as I thought.”
As I write this I feel sad, as if the feminist principles that my mother brought me up on are being trashed. Am I betraying womanhood? No, I am revealing a shameful truth. Women are often the worst enemies of feminism because of our genetic make-up. We have only a finite time to be mothers and when that clock starts ticking we abandon our strength and jump into bed with whoever is left, forgetting talk of deadlines and PowerPoint presentations in favor of Mamas & Papas buggies and ovulation diaries. Not all women want children but I challenge any woman to say she doesn't want loving relationships. I wish I'd had the advice that I am giving to my 21-year-old sister: if you find a great guy, don't be afraid to settle down and have kids because there isn't anything to miss out on that you can't do later (apart from having kids).
In the future I hope that there can be a better understanding of women by women. The past 25 years have been confusing and I feel that I've been caught in the crossfire. As women we should accept each other rather than just appreciating “success”. I have always felt a huge pressure to be successful to show men that I am their equal. What a waste of time. Wife and mother should be given parity with the careerist role in the minds of feminists.
My mother had children early and has brilliantly juggled a career as a filmmaker and parent. She was part of the generation that overlapped, that had feminist values but had children early. She hasn't had the job opportunities of my generation, she had to make sacrifices and take lesser jobs to be at parents' evenings. Choice and careers are vital, of course, but they shouldn't be pursued relentlessly. I love being a writer and still have my dream but now I am facing facts. The thing that has made me feel best in life was being in love with my ex-boyfriend and the thing that makes me feel the most centred is being in the country with kids and dogs, and yes, maybe in the kitchen.
Touched for the Very First Time opened this week at Trafalgar Studios, London; www.touchedtheplay.com
Blonde ambition
1984 Madonna released a video of Like a Virgin, which inspired a generation of teenage girls.
1985 She married Hollywood actor Sean Penn. They divorced four years later.
1986 Madonna released Papa Don't Preach, about a young, unmarried, pregnant girl choosing to keep her baby.
1989 She released Like a Prayer, which scandalised Roman Catholics when the singer challenged taboos with race issues in her video in which a black man is wrongly accused of rape.
1990 Madonna embarked on her controversial Blonde Ambition World Tour, during which, in her performance of Like a Virgin, male dancers caressed her body and she simulated masturbation.
1992 An album called Erotica was released and she published Sex, a book in which she again flaunted her sexual freedom.
1998 Madonna had a child, Lourdes Maria, after a “fling” relationship with a personal trainer. She stood up for single motherdom.
2000 She married Guy Ritchie in a “fairytale wedding” and moved to England, bought a country pile and started writing children books and expounding the virtues of the kabbalah.
2008 Madonna divorces Ritchie and her “perfect family life” with Lourdes Maria, son Rocco and adopted son David Banda ends.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Friday my Town Shoot-Out

Before hubby got sick last week, we were at his sister's house helping her to set up her new computer. I spotted this house next across her house and I took a snapped right away.

A yellow sunset
                                        
Crossroads Village, with more than 30 historic structures, takes you back to a simpler time. Friendly villagers in period dress welcome you to the homes, mills, and shops. This is one of the house that the county relocated and preserved. Located in Flint, Michigan.
                                      Linking this post to Friday my Town Shoot-out

Sky Watch Friday


 I took this photos the night before the Super moon. I was having fun chasing the moon because the sky is cloudy and it's fun to see the moon comes out and sometimes hide. After several minutes of having fun I went inside the house because it gets cold. When I was inside I looked again the sky and I am amazed of what I saw, I called my hubby and says that is something else.

                                                    The white cloud looks like a mask
                                                  Two big eyes and large mouth


                              It's my first time to photograph such eerie sky. Do you see what I see?
                                                 Linking this post to SKY WATCH FRIDAY

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Not feeling well

Sorry my friend bloggers I was not able to blog hop today. I am not feeling well. I have a high fever and a cough. It started yesterday afternoon when the snow also came back ^_^ Will visit you all soon. But had to take a good rest for now.

My 4th Featured Blogger

It's the time again.  I just featured my 4th Blogger at my blog come and visit it here
My Featured Blogger


Tuesday, March 22, 2011

ABC Wednesday-J

                          It's the time again for ABC Wednesday and the letter for this week is J!





My step-daughter gave this to me. A huge blue JAR.













Julienned carrots











A JOYRIDE around the blueberry farm.










                                                             Linking this post to ABC WEDNESDAY

A knock at the door in the middle of the night

Hubby was sick and so I stay awake to see to it that I could gave him his medicine at the right time. He was at the bedroom sleeping when around 12:30midnight I heard a loud knock at the front door. I was in front of my laptop playing games, when I heard a car door closed. Though I didn't noticed  a car headlight pull through the driveway but when I heard the loud knock, I was startled!! WHAT THE HECK??? I thought who could it be? I immediately went to the bedroom and I saw hubby was already standing and asked me who is was. I said I don't know, and I asked him back if someone of his children called him to visit him in this wee hour in the morning and he said of course not. I told hubby to be careful and so he grabbed his gun and I was holding the cellphone. Then again we heard another banging at the door and hubby asked,

Hubby: What's going on?? And a female voice shouted back.
Female : There is a cat that is hit and it's in the middle of the road!!
Hubby:  says, we don't have a cat!!
Female voice said, you don't?
Hubby said : nope we don't have a pet cat!!
Female said : Oh okey!

We don't open door to anybody, sorry! And my husband's family and children knew, that I suggested  it that if they are going to visit us they are going to call us. BUT!! I won't open any door before they arrive because when I knew they are coming I am already looking at the window waiting for them. It's my rule and thankfully hubby agreed to it. You see we live in the country side and so many murders, or random killings, home invasion, or robbery happen even if you live away from the civilization.

So last night, we are startled and if it is really true that a cat is being hit and is in the middle of the road, what the heck it's only a cat, I knew some people love their cat but here is my analogy if it's a pet cat do you think that the owner won't find the cat before daylight is over?? When we didn't heard the female voice again, I ran to the other room and pick out the window and what I saw is a car pulling out at our driveway. 

Ain't that scary??


Power Star





Hubby and I had been using this for almost 7 years now. And it does worked on us pretty good. I've been hearing from my relatives alone that they pay a lot for their electric bills. But I would tell you guys if you have this small gadget you will amaze how it works for you and your pocket, ^_^ And for the record we are selling this so if anyone wants to inquire message me. 

Product Description

TECHNICAL PARAMETERS
Rate Voltage: 110-250VAC, 50Hz / 60Hz
Working Temperature: -15 degree to 60 degree
Single phase model
Use one POWER STAR Saver for every 18, 000 watts

PRECAUTIONS
The device must be plugged in firmly. Avoid loose connections.
This device can store electrical charge, wait for 10 seconds after the electrical supply is switched off before unplugging the device.
Keep away from children.
Do not tamper, open or repair the POWER STAR Saver by yourself, call your dealer or distributor for service.

NOTES
This device operates by adjusting the power factor of the incoming supply into your house. For it to work optimally, it should be installed as close as possible to the opint of entry of your electricity supply so as to detect all loads before the meter and adjust the power factor accordingly, if it is installed too far down into the circuit, it will not be able to affect the electricity supply to other appliances ahead of it.
Most effective with inductive receivers (Motors, transformers, fluorescent lighting, etc. )
Reduces wave form distortions.
Surge protection.
No movable parts.



Monday, March 21, 2011

Cardinal


I had a pair of Cardinals that keep on visiting my bird feeder. When I see them I grabbed my camera and noiselessly crept at the window and behind a curtain tried to look where the birds are located. What I like in cardinal is that they don't fly too quick even if they noticed a little sound or movement unlike some other birds.


                                                 Linking this to Ruby Red Tuesday

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Keep your eyes to the sign

Last month hubby and I went to Detroit. I like walking around Detroit it has many buildings there that is worth taking picture but because it's still cold we drove around and parked the car and just walked towards that place that we are supposed to be.
                                                         The sign at the parking lot

                                      Ahhhhummm nobody wants to mess up with this one!! ^_^

                                  I like to eat in a diner it's a place sometimes you eat good food.

                                  We just passed this place, a known place for any kind of events.

     When we passed this sign, hubby asked me did you bring our passport? Of course, I didn't but will see this Spring or Summer will be there. But I asked hubby is that the thing that we have to passed a tunnel? And he said yes, that made me think, I am claustrophobic!!
                                                    The United States of America
                                             Linking this post to Mellow Yellow Monday
                                                 Blue Monday and Ruby Red Tuesday

Bluebird

Again, watching my backyard birds this morning. And as I was watching a small cutie pie Bluebird passed the window. I grabbed my camera and ...

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