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April Slushing Spirit Crushing

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Later in the day in Thursday’s comments, Renee spoke for many when she said:

Two things come to mind:

1) Trail Baboon is based in Minnesota so the weather is exempt from being categorized as “Off Topic”. It is always on our minds.

2) Renee is right, but check the date. Our five day forecast must be an unfunny practical joke.

Whatever happened to the gentle sound of this benevolent saying – April Showers Bring May Flowers? I believe it originated long ago in a place where they get an earlier spring.

Perhaps we need something more realistic.

April Blizzards
Freeze Our Gizzards.

April Drifting
Heavy Lifting.

April Sleeting
Strength’s Depleting.

April Plowing
Furrowed Browing.

April Icing
Ain’t Enticing.

April Sliding
I’m in hiding.

April Snowing
South I’m Going.

What is your favorite (true) saying?

71 thoughts on “April Slushing Spirit Crushing”

  2. My favorite saying is Rise and Shine. However, there are others. When I get to work today, I’ll look for a favorite that goes something like, “No matter what they are talking about, they are talking about money.” My office is in moving chaos, so I may not find it today.

    Grueling week here. All good news, but hard work.

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  5. Back in the 60’s when I was in high school iwas invited to be the singer in a rock and roll band. The guys who invited me had enough stuff already figured out that I simply had to show up and sing. One of the things they thought long and hard about was the name of the band. They ended up researching the book of quotations and found that the area with the most quotes was ” home”
    Home is where the heart is always comes to mind first. At 16 this was not a life changing notion that I was about to begin a stint in a group that would celebrate home but now 50 years later I find at this may be the most imprrtant notion on the planet. The Egyptians and libians have discover this, any American kid beyond 2nd grade lives this daily. The new home that is created in the year 2011 is one of mankind. The networking with the people of the world makes home a different concept than it was in 1960 but not really. That is where the appeal comes for kids. My daughter hangs woth her friends in Europe dIly and the conversations they have are ongoing and make am and pm relative. The notion of home being an address is the one I grew u
    With and today an address is a trasient thing to be changed much more often that it was in 1960. People used to stay put and today if ou have a job, a house, a wife for more than 5 or 10 years you are in the minority. For me home is a place wher you go to be with lived ones in a familar place to feel better about the world in general. I am in a cheese hotel in Wisconsin this morning but I am checking in at home to see how evyone is doing, both with my kids and with my blog family. I just saw a wonderful movie this morning call ” how about you” with Vanessa redgrave, check it out and thanks for being the blog family that feels like home.

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      1. I’m thinking it would be lovely to wake up and take a nosh off the bed spread (made of a creamy baby swiss). Then you could move onto the cheddar lampshade. Edam for the seat cushions and perhaps a chevre for the pillows…mmm…cheeeeese….

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    3. I agree with Barb. I’m fascinated by the idea of a “cheese hotel”. Home is great, but when on the road what a comfort it must be to abide with cheeses.

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    4. I’ve seen some of the old Wisconsin cheese factories because my Grandfather and one of my Uncles were Wisconsin cheese makers. Maybe tim is staying in an old cheese factory made into a hotel. There is restaurant at the Dells in Wisconsin that was previously a cheese factory.

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  6. It takes on to know one,
    I know you are but what am I?
    First smeller is the feller
    No good deed ever goes unpunished
    If you can’t say something nice ,don’ say anything at all
    If at first you don’t succeed , try, try again
    Put a cork in it
    It’s not who you think you are, it’s not who I think you are, it’s who you think I think you are.

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  7. will enjoy reading today as we wait for the newbys to drop those kids. sunday and tuesday but who knows. let’s see – i guess right now my saying is no rest for the wicked.
    tim, how you can pull off such eloquence so dang early in the morning is beyond me! thanks.

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  8. In the morning, the chickens are “all cooped up” until I release them and in the evening they all “come home to roost.” I could go on with endless farm & farm animal sayings but will stop with “Make hay while the sun shines” — though I seem to have an inch or so of snow out my windows today. April Fool’s Day for sure…the weather playing with our moods, minds and hopes for spring weather.

    good morning all and have a great weekend whatever the weather gods/goddesses bring us.

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  9. It’s either DNA or God. If I knew which, they’d put me on a pedastal and curtsy to me.

    Thanks to Mrs Dawson, my high school Biology teacher. Useful as a parent who has been asked too many questions.

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  10. Good morning to all,

    The only saying I could think of right away this morning was “there’s no fool like an old fool” because it’s April Fools Day. I don’t like that one because I am getting old. Still, I did manage to avoid falling for an April Fools joke this morning.

    Of course, if you can’t think of something there is always help on the internet. I went to http://www.wiseoldsayings.com . I only got up to the Fs and the one I liked best was “at high water fish eat ants, at low water ants eat fish”. Second choice was ” a donkey can’t be made into a horse by cutting off it’s ears”.

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    1. oh, JimiCG – that leads me to my favorite story of late. my farmer neighbor friend, Mike of the Large Hands (OTLH), told me this about a donkey. he swears it is true. a man bought a steer to show – very fancy – for $15,000. (why buy a steer for this much is beyond me) anyhoo – he wanted this steer to learn to lead so he could show him. so he bought a donkey because he had heard you can tie a steer to a donkey and the steer will follow the donkey around and learn to lead. so he did that and left for work.
      came home that evening to find the donkey and steer still tied together, but the donkey had CHEWED THE STEER’s EARS OFF!
      it was a very unfortunate ending for all involved, especially the donkey and the steer (and i would argue, should have been more painful than losing 15K for the dummy that tried this). and some very, very expensive hamburger because Mike says you can’t show an earless steer.
      and you couldn’t make this up – it’s not an April fool it’s a human fool.
      🙂

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      1. You can’t make a donkey into a horse by cutting it’s ears off but a prize steer can be turned into hamburger by tying it to a donkey that chews it’s ears off.

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    2. My mother used to say “A helpful fool is worse than an enemy.” She was born on this day…I think the time I first remember her saying this she was speaking of herself…:-)

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  11. It is offical now that The Weather channel has announced Fargo/Moorhead has the worst weather in USA. I’m darn proud to live in the land of blizzards and floods.

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  12. I always liked the saying from PG Wodehouse “Cats will be cats”. Thank you, Dale, for taking my anguished cry from last night seriously. There is some indication this morning that the storm may shift on a more northerly course, but even that seems like cold comfort. Have a trick-free day fellow baboons!

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  13. I made up a sort of mantra for myself a while ago to help me get through some bad times, and though it isn’t an old saying, I think maybe it should be: “There’s no way out but through.” It’s also the tag line in one of my (unpublished) poems. A friend of mine depends on the aphorism her grandmother invented: “Just do your best and don’t worry.” I’m going to stitch a sampler of that for her one of these days.

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    1. I’m not a religious person, but somehow this saying that was used by my very religious Grandmother sticks in my head: “God helps those who help themselves”. I guess that saying is a little like the ones you mentioned, CG.

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  17. Here’s one from a speaker who presented at a summer program I used to work on, “be more interested than interesting.” I will admit (blush) to trying a little too hard sometimes to be interesting instead of interested – but it’s a good rule of thumb. I have a friend who does this with such ease, you don’t even realize it’s happening until much later. I have had several conversations that went like this: “I ran into Ted today. We had quite a nice chat.” – “Oh, that’s nice. What’s Ted up to these days?” – “I have no idea…” And then you realize you spent 20 minutes or half an hour talking with Ted and he was the one doing all the question asking and “being interested” and he allowed you to blithely natter on about your hangnail and city politics and your kid’s latest art project and heaven knows what all and never once did he mention what he has been doing or how his life is because he was busy finding out about you. I’d suspect this was a personal foible on my part, but several friends have mentioned this same phenomenon in their conversations with Ted.

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  18. No matter where you go, there you are.

    Especially true as I had to navigate around the light rail construction on University Ave. on a tight timeline this morning.

    ach.

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  19. I long ago discovered that no single aphorism serves to guide me through life’s complexities except maybe this one: “Things will look better in the morning.” That’s been pretty useful. But for the most part, the magic words that have guided me past potential disasters have been remarkably mundane, which inspired the following quote from one of my pheasant hunting books.

    “It is one of life’s sly jokes that all the great personal truths we discover turn out to be clichés. Wisdom—when we have bled and suffered and sinned our way to it—turns out to be something we have read on a fortune cookie.”

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  20. Morning–

    My family tends to pick up on things from movies. Currently it’s from Kronk and ‘The Emperors New Groove’ and his “Riiiiiight…….” (Complete with the finger pointy thingy by my daughter.)

    ‘Red Sky in the Morning, Sailor take Warning’
    When someone says ‘Hey’ you can respond ‘Straw is cheaper, grass is free. Buy a farm and you get all three’.
    Or ‘I see. Said the Blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw…’
    My personal favorite: ‘Walk this way’ and you say ‘If I could walk like that I wouldn’t need the orthopedic shoes’ (With the Groucho cigar motion).

    I frequently say to my kids ‘Where’s the challenge in that?’

    I’ll have to think on this… there must be more.

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    2. the challenge line reminds me of this bit from Riders in the Sky-

      Sure, we could do it that way, that would be the easy way, but it wouldn’t be The Cowboy Way.

      Employed that on more work projects than I care to think about

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  21. Today’s topic reminds me of “A Few Good Men”… stars Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, not usually my favorite actors. The Tom Cruise character has a running schtick w/ the man who runs his local newstand. They use as many adages as possible each day when they speak to each other:

    Luther: It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
    Kaffee: You can say that again.
    Luther: It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
    Kaffee: (with him) Fat lady sings. I walked into that one.

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  22. Great examples all. Two that I’ve passed on to my girls that they have thanked me for and continue to quote themselves are: “What you know how to do matters less than what you know how to get done.” and “Expect the best but prepare for the worst.”

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  23. I’m sure this isn’t quite right but I haul this out every year about this time. I think I may have heard it on TMS many long years ago.
    Minnesota Spring (author may be known, but not by me)
    First a mighty blizzard woke us
    Then a rain cloud soaked us
    Then, before the eye could focus-crocus!

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  24. If it had been a snake, it would have bit me. Unfortunately saying this more and more often as I get older!

    I’ve also used Anna’s “I’m getting to the point where I can hide my own Easter eggs.” several times in the last couple of weeks.

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  26. Some people have been put here to remind us that God makes mistakes. – unknown (my former supervisor said this often).
    Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. – Dire Straits?
    The key to change is to let go of fear. – ?
    The world is a grindstone and life is your nose. – Fred Allen

    And for my workplace:
    Although the wind
    blows terribly here
    the moonlight also
    leaks through the holes
    in the roof
    of this ruined house. – Shibiku

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  30. Hold your ponies.

    Hot flashes aren’t cool.

    If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goat.

    I’m not convinced Jesus was a Christian.

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  31. Here’s one I often tell students-

    ‘Work smarter, not harder’

    And from the book ‘Owen Meany’ by John Irving-
    ‘Faith and prayer. They work. They really do’

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  32. Thanks for all the wisdom, people. I’m just back from a spring break with family in MI and FL and IL. You are the best. I’ll maybe think of some wisdom myself. Or I may just go to bed. Good to be home.

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