Good morning and Happy Friday!!!

I hope all of you have a great weekend planned!  For those of you in P'cola, beautiful weekend coming your way!  Here in Philly is supposed to be pretty nice.  But, wouldn't ya know that where I'm heading, New Hampshire, is rainy and windy.  BLAH!  Oh well, just gotta make the best of it!  I'm sure it will be a beautiful drive up today.  Hopefully the rain will hold off a while.

Christian left this morning for a nine day trip for work.  And, oh so conveniently, our washing machine broke last night while I was doing laundry for both of our trips.  Fabulous, huh?  It's one of those front loading ones and it keeps coming up with an error that means "overload on motor".  So, first, we tried lightening the load... that didn't work.  So, after it had already gone through the process of filling the washer with water, it decides to not work.  So I had to pull all of the soaking wet clothes out of the washer and put them in our bathtub with hot water and laundry detergent and wash EVERYTHING by hand.  It was soooo frustrating but hilarious too.  I was standing in the tub trying to hand wash underwear, shirts, jeans and Christian's flight suit.  Needless to say, it wasn't easy.  Christian started laughing at me and tried to make excused to get out of helping me but that was not happening.  We ended up throwing underwear at each other and I almost fell down into the soapy water in the bath tub.  It was hysterical.  hahaha  So, now we have a repair man coming Monday morning to take a look at it.  Hopefully it's nothing major!

I'm leaving in a little bit for my six hour drive.  I have my ipod loaded, my GPS ready and plans to stop at Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte!  It's not a bad drive and it actually goes by pretty quickly.

A couple of things in the news that are worthy of a little of my insight:

1.  Holy cow for "The View" yesterday!  If any of you are living under a rock and haven't watched t.v. in the last 24 hours and you haven't seen the clip from the fight with Bill  O'Reilly, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, it is a must-see.  It's really pretty ridiculous.  Bill O'Reilly pops off and said "Muslims killed us on 9/11".... big statement... and big mistake.  He should have known he was going to catch all kinds of hell from folks for that, especially liberals like Joy & Whoopi.  Oh well, politics aside, I can't stand Bill O'Reilly.  I think he's a pompous ass.  He's such a jerk and soooo condescending.  And, I have to admit, I like watching Joy Behar's show on HLN.  No, I'm not a liberal.  And no, I'm not a conservative.  I don't care for anyone who's so far to the right or left that they can't see what else is going on the world.  There are a lot more important things in the world than political parties.  So, I'll stand behind Barbara Walters (Wawa) on this whole fight.  She handled her colleagues and guest with grace and set everyone straight.  Bravo, BW, bravo.

2.  Bullying.  If any of you picked up one of the most recent issues of People Magazine, you'll found several articles profiling the suicides of children and teenagers as a result of bullying.  This hits home to me because I was bullied for a long time in high school b/c of stupid girl/boy drama and it really takes a toll on a person.  It's amazing how hateful some kids can be.  I read all of the articles in People and it breaks my heart to hear some of the hurtful things that are said or done to children/teens because of a minor difference.  So, even though I'll most likely miss it b/c of my trip, tonight on ABC, there is a two-hour special on 20/20 about bullying.  I encourage any of you to watch it if you can.  We have to do something about all of this crap.  It's ridiculous.  It starts in the home!  If you condone your kids talking about others under your roof and you don't reprimand them, who knows what they're saying when they're not in your presence.  Be careful parents!  One story I heard yesterday brought me to tears.... a woman was on a radio show that I listen to and she discussed how one of her children committed suicide b/c of bullying.  That was last year some time.  Now, her younger daughter is being bullied by a little boy about her brother committing suicide.  Saying things like "haha your brother's dead" and other hateful, hurtful things.  If this kid just gets a slap on the wrist and continues on with life without any major repercussions, what do you think our world will be like in 10-15 years when these kids are adults?    What happened to instilling kindness and respect for others in our children?

3.  Hip Hip Hooray for the Chilean miners!  Such a great story and I'm so happy all them are safe and home with their families.  But, did any of you hear about the one miner who's mistress showed up to greet him but his wife didn't??  This is craziness!  Apparently, while they were trapped, the wife was up at the site of the mine and kept seeing a woman crying and eventually realized she was crying for the same man!  They compared stories and realized what was going on.  So, as I mentioned, the wife decided to stay home on the rescue day while the mistress was there and received a not so warm welcome from the miner who knew he was in deep doo doo.  Let this be a lesson to all men- the women always find out, one way or another.  I heard on the news this morning that there's another miner who allegedly has FOUR mistresses!!  Oh, the price of limelight.

Well, that's about all I have for today!  Have a wonderful weekend!!!

xoxo,

Chrissi