Familial Research and Development

In 1988 my baby was 5 years old. My mom was living with us. She had breast cancer. I would take her to the doctor and make sure she had her treatments with the oncologist. I took her to her internist. I took her to the pharmacy and the grocery store and the bank and everywhere she needed. Our oldest was 15. There were six children. Life was very, very busy. I just grabbed my journal and wanted to write some of the 'stuff' I was dealing with during the two years she lived with us. 27 Oct. 1988 I have recently been fighting an emotional battle. One that has troubled me this past 10 months. Trying to understand and work with my feelings about and towards my Mom hasn't been easy for me. I have a deep respectful, and tender love for Aunt Piney. But for my own Mother it's a very different kind of love. My conception of love I think I should feel for my own Mother just isn't there. I've chided myself for it over and again, I've prayed for strength, for a chan...

I realize in today's world that there is a need for a company to protect itself from technological attacks. Whether it be intellectual property theft or malware. It's one of those ugly facts of life we have to accept. What I'm ticked about today is one of the repercussions of such 'protection'. For the past nine years I have used the Internet at work to search for articles, books, research, thesis papers, etc. to support the ingredients used in our products. By being able to use Scholar.Google, I've been able to save a ton of time (roughly doubling the work I can get done in an hour) importing articles directly into EndNote. In fact, there are times when all I can find is a citation and by importing it into EndNote I have been able to find out more details than what is readily available. Which in turn has made it so I can then use inter-library loan and find a copy of the original article to add to our database. Recently I have been finding a new twist to...

Walnut trees grow big and provide a lot of shade. They have big leaves that block the sun. I enjoy the shade my neighbor's walnut tree provides my patio in the summer. It is totally AWESOME! and the other side of this awesomeness is it hides things. Like hornets nests. And in the fall the leaves hide the patio and the lawn. And oh the leaves! All summer getting them off the lawn and patio. Then the fall comes and so much more of both nuts and leaves to get rid of. The leaves have a chemical in them, juglone, that can be toxic to lawn. It's one of those things you want to rake up and get off the lawn sooner than later. And the nuts.... they fall all fall and winter and even a few in the spring-the ones the wind didn't blow off yet. Yes, walnut trees are a bit messy. The hornet nest though, that was a bit of a shocker. I didn't notice it. But one afternoon Paul came to visit and he noticed it. We were all a bit surprised by it. It was really nice to be able...