My Mother Is a Travel Agent for Guilt Trips

(Spotted on a passing motorcycle): If You Can Read This, My Wife Fell Off

Veni, Vedi, Visa: I Came, I Saw, I Did a Little Shopping

What If the Hokey Pokey Is Really What It's All About?

Coffee, Chocolate, Men; Some Things Are Just Better Rich

Liberal Arts Major... Will Think for Food

Gravity... It's Not Just a Good Idea. It's the Law

First National Bank of Dad; Sorry, Closed

In Dog Years, I'm Dead

Love May Be Blind, But Marriage Is a Real Eye Opener

The Trouble With the Gene Pool Is That There's No Lifeguard

Wanted: Meaningful Overnight Relationship

A Day Without Sunshine is Like Night

Old Age Comes at a Bad Time

Your kid may be an Honor Student, but YOU'RE still an idiot.

I don't have a license to kill. I have a learner's permit.

Taxation WITH representation isn't so hot, either!

5 days a week my body is a temple. The other two, it's an amusement park.

Alcohol and calculus don't mix. Never drink and derive.

1. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, in full view, they were both eaten by a killer whale.

2. A psychology student in New York rented out her spare room to a carpenter in order to nag him constantly and study his reactions. After weeks of needling, he snapped and beat her with an ax leaving her mentally retarded.

3. A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist towards the electric kettle. Intending to jolt him away from the deadly current she whacked him with a handy plank of wood by the back door, breaking his arm in two places. Until that moment he had been happily listening to his walkman.

4. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

And finally.......

5. Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return to sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.

Your day's not so bad, is it?

On Sears's hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping
(Gee, that's the only time I have to work on my hair

On a bag of Fritos: "You could be winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside."
(The shoplifter special.)

On a bar of Dial soap: "Directions: Use like regular soap."
(And that would be how?)

On some Swanson frozen dinners: "Serving suggestion: Defrost."
(But it's *just* a suggestion.)

On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom of box ) "Do not turn upside down."
(Too late!)

On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: "Product will be hot after heating."
(As night follows the day . . )

On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body."
(But wouldn't this save more time?)

On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication."
(We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if we could just get those 5-year-olds with head colds off those forklifts.)

On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May cause drowsiness."
(One would hope.)

On most brands of Christmas lights: "For indoor or outdoor use only."
(As opposed to what?)

On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
(I gotta admit, I'm curious.)

On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: contains nuts."
(Talk about a newsflash.)

On an American Airlines packet of nuts: "Instructions: Open packet, eat nuts."
(Step 3: Fly Delta.)

On a child's superman costume: "Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly."
(I don't blame the company. I blame parents for this one.)

On a Swedish chainsaw: "Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands"
..just for laughs :o) !!!!

Smells Like Rain

A cold March wind danced around the dead of light in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean section to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. "I don't think she's going to make it'" he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk; she would never talk; she would probably be blind; she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation; and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.

Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of drugged sleep, growing more and more determined that their tiny daughter would live - and live to be a healthy, happy young girl. But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

"David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements", Diana remembers, "I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen. I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don't care what the doctors say Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!"

As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure. But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana.

Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort - so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultra-violet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there. At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later - though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero.

Danae went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted. Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, whatsoever, of any mental or physical impairments. Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more - but that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing. As always, Danae was chattering on-stop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, 'Yes, it smells like rain.' Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?" Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain." Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."

Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest - and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well."

Oh how we all long to know that scent of our father.
Hold Me Father........

If you are from the northern states and planning on visiting or moving to the south, there are a few things you should know that will help you adapt to the difference in life styles:

1. If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck with a 12-pack of beer and a towchain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.

2. Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store. Do not buy food at this store.

3. Remember: "Y'all" is singular, "All y'all" is plural, and "All y'alls'" is plural possessive.

4. Get used to hearing "You ain't from around here, are ya?"

5. You may hear a Southerner say "Oughta!" to a dog or child. This is short for "Y'all oughta not do that!" and is the equivalent of saying "No!"

6. Don't be worried about not understanding what people are saying; they can't understand you, either.

7. The first Southern expression to creep into a transplanted Northerner's vocabulary is the adjective "big ol'," as in "big ol' truck " or "big ol' boy." Most Northerners begin their new Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.

8. The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.

9. Be advised that "He needed killin'" is a valid defense here.

10. If you hear a Southerner exclaim "Hey, y'all, watch this," stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say.

11. If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.

12. When you come upon a person driving 15 mph down the middle of the road, remember that most folks here learn to drive on a John Deere, and that this is the proper speed and position for that vehicle.