Saturday, February 20, 2016

Five Things On My Mind

1)  My children:

I have two children, 19 and 9.  They are great kids...almost all the time.  They are two different people, not just because one is a girl (woman almost) and one is a boy, one a young adult and one a child.  No, they are different personalities.  So different.  So, parenting them has made us use different techniques.  I worry about them.  I worry that I am being a responsive, responsible, loving parent.  That I am doing right by them.  They are on my mind all the time.


2)  My business:

I have been in business for almost 20 years now.  It started small with four soap scents, a lip balm and a body balm.  Now, I have multiple scents, in different formalae and a plethora of products.  It is getting harder to compete in this crazy world.  For example, I am looking at a new ingredient for one of my product lines, and asked the vendor if it was "all natural".  He sent back to me a chain of emails culminating in one that was a long paragraph, with lots of technical terms, explaining how the product was "initially" from macadamia nut oil, then they "blah, blah, blah" to it, so yes, it is naturally derived and "natural" is hard to define.  I responded to my first contact, that if it takes a paragraph to answer a yes or no question, the answer was no.   However, it is hard to compete in a world where people travel down a slippery slope to make money.  Other companies in my area are talking how their products are "all natural" using "naturally derived" ingredients.   (yes, I will actually use the ingredient, but my information to my customers is that it is NOT all natural)

3)  My town:

I moved to Dripping Springs almost 22 years ago.  It was a sleepy small town.  I moved here because it was.  It was 15 miles down a state highway to the edge of Austin.  Then, they voted to make our county "wet" (you could sell alcohol).  Then they got a new wastewater plant.  Now, we have big box stores galore, a well lit night sky, and three bars on the old main street plus a dance hall.  At last count, 8000 new homes to be built.  And the wastewater plant wasn't big enough,so now they are building a BIGGER one, which will discharge its effluent to a waterway that replenishes an major aquifer.  This week, we went to the park, and I was SHOCKED.  A new subdivision is going in next to the park.....high density.  They RIPPED out all the trees of the acreage next to the park, put in a construction entrance and bulldozed down the vegetative buffer between the park and the construction.  All day at the park, we heard heavy equipment and the sky was hazy with dust.  And there is nothing anyone outside the city limits can do about it all.

4)  Society:

WOW.....every day I am amazed.  Used to be, there were the "seven words you can't say on TV".....  now, they have movies, geared to young people where those words are used and used again.  We have lost our genteel nature.  We have lost being polite. Obscenity, violence, cussing....its everywhere!   Its on my mind a lot as I preview the movies, books and music my 9 year old can view/read/listen to.  "But everyone talks that way" I am told.  No, I don't talk that way, my HUSBAND doesn't talk that way, my DAUGHTER doesn't talk that way.....

5)  what else:


As if I could worry more?!?!?!?!   However, a new thing that I discovered recently and I have been thinking about, not a major issue, but one that caught my thought was old music vs new music.  I haven't really found a new artist I like as much as I liked old musical artists.  And, as I was listening to an old Loggins and Messina (WHO? I had several moms ask me today at the park) CD, I had a flash as to why I like old music.  As a musician, I listen closely to the guitar and harmonies.  Harmonies now are not a "close" as they used to be, if they even exist.  And in the "old days", as you listen to older cd's you can still hear the slight scratch of fingers on strings as they change chords.  Now a-days, all that is "cleaned up", digitized, and the bass or percussion is not even a live instrument.  Just something less critical on my mind......

And, now lets see what is on the minds of the other bloggers in this group:

Andes Cruz: https://andescruz.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/thoughts/

marie bell :: http://www.pencilfox.com/2016/02/five-things-on-my-mind-february-blog-o.html

Kathleen Krucoff ~ http://wp.me/pA5jX-OB

Robyn Hawk: http://flyviewsandreviews.blogspot.com/

Beth Cyr: http://BethCyr.com/blog