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One of the advantages of growing up in the South when I did was helping my grandmother’s in the spring and summer in their respective flower gardens. As different as these two women were, they were both master class gardeners and very active in their towns garden clubs. I didn’t know it at the time but “helping” would allow me to learn a few things about arranging flowers on the cheap. If you don’t have flowers in your garden that you can cut, go to one of the large warehouse stores where you can pick up fresh cut flowers in bulk. This will give you many flowers to choose from that are nice and inexpensive.

Simply cut some floral tape or electrical tape to crisscross and create a grid at the top of the vase. Take one strip and secure the grid by wrapping it around the top. Use the grid to arrange the flowers the way you like with your favorite cut flowers and finish it off by wrapping the vase with a nice ribbon of some kind. Once you experiment with this several times you will see how quick and easy flower arranging can be!

Of the three Twilight movies, Eclipse is the best one. However, in the scheme of things, that’s not saying much. My girlfriend swears it’s because I “Haven’t read the books” and in all fairness, she may be right. But why make a movie if you “have to read the book” before you “see the movie”? You should be able to make a movie that is entertaining and goes somewhere. But my biggest issue is character development.

Edward, Bella and Jacob are boring as they brood over each other. Edward is cold (he is the undead) and Jacob is warm in his wooly wolf buff body and both have the teens and some adult females swooning over them and I get it. What I don’t get is whatever do they see in Bella? My girlfriend spent thirty minutes telling me why Bella was so intriguing to these two guys. I finally got it after what she told me but that didn’t come across in the movies at all. If I don’t care about the characters then I don’t really care about the movie. But since I do have a Twilight lover as a lover, I can’t wait for the fourth and final movie in the series. If for no other reason, so she can explain to me the rest of the story.

I have always known that there was a portion of our populace that may not keep up with the times but lately I have realized that we seem to be going backwards as a nation; or it’s just more obvious these days. Looking at what people are watching on TV is one indicator of what is most important to people and the other is where they place their hard earned money.

First, let’s start with TV. If you pick up your remote on any given day and scroll through what is being shown on regular and cable TV you will understand what I am talking about. Shows like The Bachelor and Jersey Shores that everyone at work talks and obsesses about are asinine at best. We are under one of the most difficult financial struggles in our nation’s history and we are debating TV shows or Edward VS Jacob? And I am talking about adults not teens!

Why don’t we feel safe to discuss the hard questions? I believe it’s because the answers to those questions have direct consequences to our situations and we are afraid of them. It is easier to put our heads in the sand when it is important than to risk someone disagreeing with us and, heaven forbid, challenging what we think or believe. It’s just easier to not think about those things and hide in the entertainment and dummy down.

As difficult as the economic situation has been on some, you would think it would be a no-brainer to extend the unemployment benefits to those who have been without a job for over a year or more. However, there is a backlash in this country in regard to the long term unemployed that says these people are lazy or not trying to get a job. The fact is, there are no jobs to be had in some areas and in other areas such as manufacturing these jobs are not expected to come back. So what do those people do?

Our Republican dominated government ran up a deficit from 2000 to 2008 that far exceeded anything we have ever seen in the past and yet these same Congressman and Senators are now screaming to balance the budget and making the very people who paid for the banks and wall street to be saved starve and go without? Yes, we have a deficit problem but I say it’s a deficit of ideas, of common sense and of truth. We need people of both parties who are more about Americans and less about party lines. Until we get those people into office, I am afraid we may all loose at the expense of partisanship.