The better question is: When am I not in trouble?

I find myself having to count the days on my fingers whenever we have a three day holiday. I do this to make sure that I'm not talking Tuesday talk on a Wednesday and that is today's day, July 7, 2010 and I bid you welcome to a hot cup of coffee and a few minutes to shoot the breeze or maybe even to shoot the bull. I couldn't find an origin of the shoot the breeze idiom, however, I did like one fellow's guess. He said it sounded like that our words were so unimportant, they were mostly aimed at the air around us. I hate it when someone nails it on the first try and at the same time convicts me of what I typically can be found doing in my daily assault on the English language. Yet, as I am often found to say, it is what it is and because it belongs to me, I reckon I'll have to take both ownership and responsibility for it. I know in today's world we are supposed to have someone to blame for all of our issues but I ran out of space for both my issues as well as guesses about the potential guilty parties.

But it is always good to visit with you and by the way, how in the world are you doing, anyway? For some reason I picked up this greeting from a radio commercial about the Three Step Marketing program. While it's not original with me I do like the sound of it because it is a way to focus on others, and we all could do that a little more, don't you think? Ladies are funny. We have a couple who work here in the office. When the lady comes to clean, that makes three. Ladies talk about stuff that men would never, ever, under any circumstances, even think about mentioning. The good news is a whole lot of it is pecuilar to lady folk, therefore, thankfully, we are ruled out of order to begin with. But at times I can sit here at my desk and hear them buzzing away. Just picking up bits and pieces of the three dimensional conflab, it is clear they have stuff they are willing to share. It reminds me of being in the doctor's waiting room. Just when you think you have heard it all, there's more! Sometimes I get up and go to check on things out in our shop so that they can really let it fly. This allows them to ditch the hushed tones and speak freely about whatever it is that's on their minds. I'm almost certain it is never about the Monday night football game.

I know much of it is medical in nature and I suppose us guys do talk more about our health challenges as we add to the list each year. It has to do with the depth of the discussion I suppose where guys deal mostly with highlights and ladies get down to the nitty gritty of it all. But, we should be thankful for these differences because they were designed by our Creator and when we follow His direction we end up with the right balance. You do have to be careful the way you say things. The other day we were driving down the highway and the wife asked if I would take a detour because our daughter-in-law had told her about a brand new development of stores and resturants near their home. I jokingly said something about how that detouring to go see a brand new fast food joint was not my idea of anything of interest. Jokingly. That is a key word here because she actually missed the joking part. She went from zero to 70 in a heartbeat. She asked why I always had to be so grumpy and sarcastic. I told her I was only joking. She said that's what I always say when I want to get out of trouble after saying something like I said. Uh oh, I didn't know I was getting into trouble and I really was joking, at least that time. See what I mean? I can picture a car load of ladies getting all excited about how they have decorated a new drive through but most of us fellows would just as soon pay attention to the shortest distance between two points. Remind me next time to make that detour because it would have only taken ten minutes and I could just as soon done without the ensuing commentary. When will I ever learn? Not anytime soon, I fear. Have a great day and enjoy, whether it's attending the grand opening of a Dairy Queen or seeing how many red lights you can miss, enjoy, and always give God the glory! Amen. ......More later.