A Tribute to abra a collection of her comments

[LLapp]

I love this whole thread, really. I'm putting it here because of abra's surprise anecdote at the end.

"Giving your son a skill is better than giving him one thousand pieces of gold." — Chinese Proverb

skoogie2
February 16, 2014, 7:37 am
If you give a man a fish....

kb83
March 13, 2014, 4:44 am
And giving him both is even better.

universalmom
April 28, 2014, 3:32 pm
i'm with you kb!

montyb
December 23, 2014, 5:04 pm
Well I was giving him a skull.

montyb
January 8, 2015, 9:17 am
This time i was giving him a still.

jval
January 28, 2015, 2:46 pm
I vote gold, not skill, skull or still or even spill.

skeeter
April 25, 2015, 3:33 pm
Like Monty, I gave him a still. If your'e the biggest bootlegger in Floyd County, Virginia, you've got yourself quite a living. His aged batches with a peach in the bottom of the quart jar (for taking out the toxins -- never eat the peach) are smoother than black Jack Daniels.

abra
July 1, 2015, 10:27 am
Skeeter, sounds like you know something about the whole process.

skeeter
September 30, 2015, 4:48 am
Mighty, mighty pleasin', pappy's corn squeezin', Whshhhoooh... white lightnin'. -- George Jones

munchlet
September 21, 2017, 4:39 pm
(hic)

kahvecowgirl
April 17, 2018, 11:05 am
A still! If only my parents had been so thoughtful. They even hid the beer when they left me alone.

abra
September 10, 2019, 7:37 pm
I know a woman who found a still under her house. Teenage son put a trapdoor in his closet, and installed a still. You never know. If you've got a teenager maybe you have a still.

abra
October 16, 2019, 10:49 pm
Maybe the trapdoor was already there. That makes more sense.

[LLapp]

"My sister taught me everything I really need to know, and she was only in sixth grade at the time." — Linda Sunshine

abra
January 23, 2019, 1:53 pm
My older sister taught me so much. She was much nicer to me, than I was to my younger sisters. I have been missing her for over forty years.

[LLapp]

"Happiness isn't something you experience, it's something you remember." — Oscar Levant

universalmom
April 30, 2014, 9:30 am
if you're happy and you know it...naaaah...

abra
September 2, 2015, 1:29 pm
Why not, universalmom? Clap 'em.

abra
October 23, 2015, 7:55 am
It would be sad to be happy, and not know it.

abra
August 13, 2016, 6:27 pm
Tonight we celebrated my birthday with our son and grandsons. I was happy and I DID know it.

[hrossa]

"All love is probationary, a fact which frightens women and exhilarates men." — Mignon McLaughlin

abra
April 24, 2021, 10:58 pm
I never loved my husband probationally and I never felt like I was on probation. I guess after all these years we're both slightly exhilarated.

Eureka
March 4, 2022, 2:14 am
Your comments about your marriage always delight me, abra.

[hrossa]

"Hearing protection is a sound investment." — Unattributed

opallady
May 1, 2013, 2:08 am
So is "wearing" protection.

abra
June 14, 2013, 12:58 am
But without the pun :0)

[Eureka]

"The trouble with living alone is that it's always your turn to do the dishes." — Unattributed

abra
September 4, 2020, 1:12 am
One of the nice thing since my husband retired as that we clean up together after dinner. He scrubs the pans. We load and unload the dishwasher together. One of us cleans the stove top and counters One of us puts away leftovers. He takes out the garbage.

LLapp
October 11, 2020, 2:42 am
Abra, I think you and your husband deserve a trophy for working that out so nicely.

[Eureka]

"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." — Unattributed

abra
November 8, 2015, 8:31 am
Truth is, she may have been quite happy that he was out on his muddy river bank. That gave her the afternoon to do cryptos.

[LLapp]

Nostalgia for Abra's son...


"The world began when I was born and the world is mine to win." — Badger Clark

montyb
November 24, 2012, 11:59 pm
Badger Clark was a cowboy poet and the first poet laureate of South Dakota. (link)

lainie18
February 9, 2013, 2:51 am
Well, I guess he didn't win the world, but he won South Dakota

LLapp
November 21, 2015, 6:58 pm
I wonder if he knew Fargo North, Decoder.

abra
August 25, 2018, 1:39 pm
The Electric Company was such a good show for kids learning to read. My son could read before he started school, but when he was about nine or ten years old, we all watched The Electric Company together. It was so funny at times. One of the best parts was Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader but Skip Hinnant as Fargo North Decoder was good too.

LLapp
March 9, 2019, 2:14 am
Abra, my son was an early reader like yours, but I insisted on watching Electric Company with him because I loved the show just for the entertainment. Believe it or not, it was my 10th grade biology teacher who got me hooked on it -- he finished a lecture with a few questions, and then added "And, what about Naomi?" I asked him what that was about and then went home that afternoon and watched the show, because my bio teacher could do no wrong.

badbob
June 22, 2019, 4:51 am
when my son was a child (he's 40 now) damn i'm old. our local PBS station showed Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Mr Rogers back to back to back we watched them all . then we watched Inspector Gadget for realism

Eureka
May 21, 2020, 10:18 pm
The Westerner (first stanza) My fathers sleep on the sunrise plains, And each one sleeps alone. Their trails may dim to the grass and rains, For I choose to make my own. I lay proud claim to their blood and name, But I lean on no dead kin; My name is mine, for the praise or scorn, And the world began when I was born And the world is mine to win.

TimmyTee
July 5, 2020, 8:36 pm
Thanks Eureka. That fleshes it out MUCH better. The cryptogram sounded awfully solipsistic.

abra
April 23, 2021, 10:07 pm
Thank you, Eureka.

abra
April 23, 2021, 10:12 pm
Cute story, LLapp. I love that so many of us watched with our kids. HEY YOU GUYS!!!

[Eureka]

(This made me laugh.)

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." — Robert M. Pirsig

abra
August 5, 2011, 8:58 pm
ZEN - I kept trying to use MEN.

haverwench
January 12, 2013, 10:32 pm
Which doesn't work, grammatically.

WRQ9
February 1, 2013, 9:37 am
Nor does it follow the rule of non-equivalent clues.

abra
March 27, 2016, 12:32 pm
I tried MEN again, and yes, I knew that the grammar was wrong. Zen just didn't come to mind, and I couldn't figure out what other word to use. Then there's the fact that I didn't get the memo about the rule of non-equivalent clues. )

darkyr
September 16, 2016, 9:03 am
I was shorted the same memo.

LeonaB
May 22, 2018, 4:27 pm
The rule of non-equivalent clues?!

abra
August 25, 2018, 5:51 pm
^Apparently if you know it, this quote is a cinch.

[Eureka]

"A mother's heart is always with her children. " — Proverb

abra
May 9, 2015, 11:59 am
Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I sometimes feel sorry for my son, because he's our only child, and he's on the receiving end of a lot of "heart". He bears it well though.

[LLapp]

And his name is a whole sentence!! One of abra's favorite things. I wonder if she noticed it -- she must have, right?


"Despite what they tell you, there are simply no moral absolutes in a complex world." — Berkeley Breathed

abra
August 22, 2018, 6:33 pm
One of my son's very favorites. We had a terrible time trying to find a DVD of A Wish For Wings That Work, for Christmas one year.

LLapp
October 6, 2019, 1:18 am
Abra, your son had great taste in cartoons. Does he still have them?

abra
February 1, 2020, 6:46 pm
Yes, and he's passed them down to his kids.

[Synonymous]

A precious one from abra:

"Golf is the cruelest game, because eventually it will drag you out in front of the whole school, take your lunch money and slap you around."
— Rick Reilly

Comments on this Puzzle:
montyb
May 22, 2012, 8:08 pm
And next week you go do it again.
LLapp
September 30, 2014, 8:46 am
I had no idea that golf was such a brutal game until I started doing these cryptograms.
Barnabas
December 1, 2014, 3:39 pm
You're a glutton for punishment, Monty.
wigoddess
February 19, 2017, 6:56 am
nope.. not into golf... yet
montyb
July 19, 2019, 11:18 am
Yet I am so very close to finally breaking 80.
imsoeasy
December 16, 2019, 12:22 am
You'd think these golfers are swinging their clubs at each other.
Ian123
June 23, 2020, 2:13 pm
I think sometimes they are.
abra
September 12, 2020, 2:49 am
When I was a teen, wee moved to a new house that was a block from a 9 hold golf course. I don't know if my dad ever played golf before, but he played then. I just remember that it gave new things to buy him for gifts. Bermuda shorts and polo shirts. He didn't live to be old. I'm glad it made him happy.
Synonymous
September 16, 2020, 12:36 pm
Spent 10 minutes looking for my ball once. Finally someone yelled out "Look in the hole!" I did and it was my first hole in one. Surprise! And, montyb I seldom broke 90. Keep going.
marnita
December 15, 2020, 4:24 pm
My father tried to take up golf, but he had a terrible temper, so he didn't stay with it for long.
abra
June 23, 2022, 10:28 pm
I found out on FB that that golf course I mentioned above was the first golf course west of the Allegheneys. When they added nine holes it became the first eighteen hole course in the country. It was soon turned back into nine holes. We never knew that it was historic.

[LLapp]

Lots of grandmother memories, plus a message from Abra to her grandsons. (And I love her message to me at the end.)


"Uncles and aunts, and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a grandmother, at holiday time, is worth them all." — Fanny Fern

oddcouple
January 4, 2013, 2:32 am
I miss mine.

gryhnd51
August 20, 2013, 4:13 am
If you were lucky, like I was, to have had that truly "wonderful grandmother"...then this quote will surely touch your heart and bring back happy memories.

wvwoman
April 9, 2014, 12:53 am
oh, gryhnd51, i had one of those wonderful grandmothers--besides doting on me (!), she taught me so many things, like canasta, huck weaving, how to make a bed, how to bake...lovely memories.

Quizzical
July 2, 2014, 6:23 am
You were truly blessed.

killdozer
December 27, 2015, 6:23 am
I never like these kinds of warm fuzzy generalizations. Not all grandmothers are wonderful - or mothers or fathers or anything else.

wigoddess
December 15, 2016, 5:08 pm
True enough killdozer... I had one warm, fuzzy and loving grandmother and the other wasn't.

Persephone59
January 8, 2017, 9:04 pm
I have a beautiful granddaughter, who's 11 now. She has 3 grandmothers. I am her father's mother. I am the one who lives far away, the other 2 (her maternal grandmother and my ex's wife) are near at hand. I am totally left out. And yes, I've lived here since my son was young.

abra
September 15, 2017, 2:11 pm
I didn't live that near to my grandmother, I had only one living grandmother. She was tremendously talented, a wonderful baker and cook, and an expert at all needlework and crafts. I loved her and I know she loved me, but I don't think our relationship was as gryhnd and wvwoman have described theirs.

CCCookie
June 27, 2018, 2:08 pm
I never knew my grandparents. I made sure my sons knew their grandmothers; their grandfathers died by the time my oldest son was 4. I've tried to be a good grandmother -- but it hasn't always been easy. When parents don't provide much discipline it's difficult for grandchildren to appreciate discipline from a grandmother. Nevertheless, I try to create good memories with my grandsons.

zayda1
August 1, 2018, 11:11 am
I had the best grandmother, & coincidentally her name was Fanny F. just like the author of this quote. She & my equally wonderful grandfather lived just a half block away when I was a child. They didn't have easy lives (among other things, everyone they left behind when they came to US was later murdered in the Holocaust) but they were never bitter. Although she's been gone almost 50 years, I still hear my grandmother's voice often.

skeeter
March 5, 2019, 11:54 pm
wvwoman, you really brought back a great memory. My sixth grade teacher taught all of her students huck weaving, which she called Swedish huck embroidery. It was part of our studies of various countries and their cultural endeavors. I still have the two hand towels I made that year!

abra
October 26, 2020, 3:01 am
I hope my Grandsons will remember me and love me. I think that they will. They are teens now but i know they have memories from when they were little. We decorated cookies at Christmas, and made ornaments. We painted and did crafts. I hope they'll remember those things.

abra
August 4, 2021, 7:25 pm
I have a collection of beautiful felt ornaments made by my grandmother, probably about 30 of them. There are stars, elephants, rocking horses, Christmas Trees, and many others. They're beaded and have sequins. It's hard not to remember my grandmother at Christmas time.

LLapp
January 10, 2022, 2:06 am
I would be such an awesome grandmother. Sigh.

abra
May 15, 2022, 10:48 pm
One of these days, LLapp, one of your kids will give you this fantastic, news. You will want to shout it from the roof tops, and they will tell you ''Don't tell anyone''.

[LLapp]

"The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most." — John Ruskin

abra
July 13, 2015, 1:41 pm
Usually, when they speak of someone who loves color, it means someone who surrounds themself with a lot of bright colors. Pastels, and neutrals are colors too. Who doesn't love color?

darkyr
February 24, 2017, 2:53 am
Everyone loves color, but it is a contest to see who is the most pure by loving color more than everyone else. On your mark, get set, GO!

Marboy
April 7, 2017, 12:54 pm
Ummm, teal - I really love the colour teal!

abra
April 19, 2017, 1:35 pm
This room is bright red. I am wearing bright red today. Our dining room is cadet blue. I win.

[LLapp]

"Man cannot live on chocolate alone, but woman sure can." — Unattributed

skeeter
April 28, 2015, 5:16 pm
If I have but five minutes left on Earth, I want some chocolate and a foot rub, then I'll be ready to go.

abra
April 25, 2022, 2:31 am
I'd even give up the chocolate for the foot rub.