Proud Parent

My daughter lives in NC and I live in Pennsylvania. She is an Art Teacher and was voted Teacher of the Year where she is at. I am a pretty proud parent. She has 3 children with a 4th on the way. To celebrate her award she is taking her kids and going for ice cream. That is the problem with living so far away. I do not get to go for those celebratory ice cream trips. With the way the economy is a lot of parents and their children have to put up with being long distance families. With the gas prices the way they are it will be difficult for travel also. I usually do a 2 week summer trip and she and her family come in for Christmas. It will be difficult to do this year. Still, there are those great phone calls and thank goodness for email. What I am thinking is that we enjoy family time when we can and we try always to be supportive no matter how many miles are between us. So love your family as much and as long as you can. Maybe I can't go for that ice cream trip but I can have a milkshake and toast her award just where I am. If you have any proud parent stories let me know I would love to hear them.

Depression

I met a man today that was a former Minister and he said he was depressed because his son was serving a life time sentence in Prison. I thought that was a good reason to be a little depressed. Then I thought about depression in general. Usually depression is something to be avoided but it does rear its ugly head from time to time. So I thought about things that make me depressed. I'd like to tell you what they are but it is depressing and why should I ruin your day. That is the one aspect of life I wish we could all avoid but there it is. How do we deal with it? Some people say to not dwell on the depression and try to turn your negative thoughts into positive ones. That is hard to do sometimes, unless ice cream is involved. Death and depression seem to be inter-related too. Not too many people say, "I heard that Jim just died, isn't that great. I feel so happy!" Usually it is a sad thing that happened to Jim. Depression depends on how severe the bad news is I guess. A little sad depression is like a bump in life. A really bad depression could be sort of a really deep cliff. Hopefully your depression periods are not so bad. If they are I have a hug for you. How do you deal with those depressive times in your life?

May I?

I noticed it was May today. I have not been watching the calender and I have not been blogging, as a matter of fact I have not been doing much but enjoying these beautiful May days. The sunshine has drawn me out and I have been riding my motorcycle, despite those bugs, and the little ice cream shops have reopened. This year I like coffee flavored ice cream for some reason. There is a great iced coffee with a swirl of vanilla ice cream that stands in the middle of this liquid delight. I am on my second buy 10 get one free card. It is nice to stand in line in the sunshine and meet other people that crave the ice cream cone. There were two little children at one spot that also enjoyed the outside coin operated kiddy rides. I smiled because they seemed to enjoy the motorcycle the most and I had arrived riding my little Harley. So what flavor ice cream do you like on these fine May days? Do you like the cones or do you like the milk shakes or sundaes or just any ice cream treat that happens to be your moment of ice cream dream.