Reflections and Directions

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22655 – 941

Here’s the haps:

See, this is what happens to me when I don’t commit to a regular posting schedule. Twenty days go by before the next post. To be fair to myself I have been busy. The newest grandbaby, who lives in our house with his mom and dad, and brother, is three months old now. Pike, named to honor his great-grandmother, is pretty wonderful. Smart and cute and starting to babble back at Grandpapapapa with a big old winning smile. But since that daughter, who is a schoolmarm by trade, has to go back to work and her husband, who owns a mobile mechanic business, also has to work, someone needs to tend to the daily needs of Pike. So, between Mrs. Herb, TNT, and I, (yes, it absolutely takes all three of us) he gets looked after and duly doted upon. This consumes time that might have been spent reading and visiting or even sometimes writing blogs. As much as I love following so many of you, as many as I humanly can, if you have ever held a baby and had them smile when they recognize you, you will understand why many things wind up playing second fiddle.

Oh, yes, babies do a lot more than just smile, but you adjust. After having four natural kids and eight natural grandkids along with those who have joined our tribe along the way, you learn a few things. Babies will do gross and nasty things on you as well, but without malice. I have been puked on, “spit-up” on, pooped on, peed on, and changed more diapers than I could ever count. It’s worth it. When I see my friend who has six kids and his suit coat has a stain on the shoulder I think, “Now there goes a real DAD.” It’s a badge of honor. Now, when you get to be my age and are the Grandpapapapa/Bumpaw/Grampaw/Grumpaw Bear/Grandpa/G’Pa you have a bit of immunity. Although I still change a diaper now and then, if there is a parent around it’s, “Oops! Your child needs you.” I often smell like baby barf.

I actually had started this post on my birthday, which was the 6^th of this month, and planned to reflect on the past sixty-two years but I got nowhere with that. Then time kept on marching on and I got busy doing other stuff. I haven’t forgotten about you guys, though. The problem, which sounds silly to say it out loud or type it out loud or whatever I mean to say, is that I have a very classy, intelligent, and quick-witted audience. I mean, I have the crème de la crème of readers and I don’t take it for granted. The crossroads I am at right now is that I sometimes worry about my content but in the same breath, I enjoy doing the meme dumps and cartoon dumps. Sometimes those are for myself as much as anybody else. I have a fairly substantial collection of them but I will try to limit myself to no more than a dozen (or a baker’s dozen) when I do them. Oh! Before I forget, I was recently blessed with a renewed subscription to one of my favorite cartoon sites, Andertoons. I’ve mentioned Mark Anderson here before but his licensing policy for members of his site is very generous so you’ll be seeing more of his stuff here as well.

Don’t worry, I have not forgotten my original purpose of having this blog, which was to practice my own writing and discuss whatever comes into my mind to discuss, whether it’s talking about church or politics or telling stories or, as seems to be the case with this post, nothing at all. I just also will be doing some more of the fluffy stuff, as well.