My Mom forwarded this to me in email: 

Heteronyms... Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning. A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym. You think English is easy? I think a retired English teacher was bored...THIS IS GREAT! Read all the way to the end... This took a lot of work to put together!

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the base of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes..
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France .. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible..

PS. - Why doesn't Buick'; rhyme with quick'?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this.

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is 'UP'. It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special..

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.......it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

Just moved the site over from WordPress to b2evolution. People have asked me why, a few times. There are a few reasons. But, for now I am fixing glitches with moving to another CMS. I like b2 and I don't think it will take me long to get to know how it works and where things are now. Meanwhile, images are mostly not working. Categories and tags did not make the import, not sure why. So I am manually going through my posts one by one to renovate a little. What usually happens when you move to a new place... you renovate to make it look more like the old place. :) People are funny like that.

Making my life easier, I have added comments from the original post to this post. I have been moving my site content to Joomla. It's a different set up from WordPress and b2evolution but I think it will be more active and user friendly.  Still need to fix the images with posts (that was mangled by WordPress) and add my links which I will end up doing manually, one at a time. But, I hope this will end the project of moving from WordPress to some other CMS. It has been a longer adventure than I expected.

Here are the comments:

Comment from: Jane Gassner [Visitor]

I lost the entire archive of MidLifeBloggers.com and JaneGassner.com sometime during the holiday season. It was one of those, "you only have 24 hours to migrate" and for various reasons, I got in at the 25th hour. I couldn't decide how upset I should/would be. MidLifeBloggers was a longterm venture that still got a lot of hits. JaneGassner.com, not so much. But MidLifeBloggers was old business, and I had said everything I wanted to about midlife and beyond. Jane Gassner had the potential to be new and, if not shiny, then gaining a slight glow about it after time. So I'm redoing JaneGassner.com but starting anew. It's springtime, and perhaps that's influencing me to not try to make it as it was. Considering that it wasn't that successful, it's probably a wise decision.

03/28/17 @ 09:27 pm

Comment from: laura [Member]

I really like history so that part of it would be hard for me. But, I have thought about just starting fresh too. Moving a site is never completely smooth and simple but I've been trying to move old content and have not made time to write new posts. That is kind of backwards. Starting fresh might have been better than trying to preserve old content (that mostly only matters to me).

03/29/17 @ 12:18 pm

Comment from: laura [Member]

I like your new site. Writing something for writers has it's own challenge. It makes me doubt myself and compare myself with others too much. I thought about closing this site. But, I do like writing it. So... here it still is.

You have doubled images in posts with WordPress featured image. I kept having that problem too.

I've been trying to declutter myself. It's a slow process. On a good day I've made some kind of progress. But, I count almost anything as progress at this point.

One rule I hope to stick to after this is not bringing in more stuff than I have gotten rid or or used. Too much stuff is the cause of clutter. No matter how much storage space you have or don't have, you can only keep so much stuff around and you only need so much stuff around too.

I have too many books. I know I have too many books but I still keep bringing more of them home. Like lost souls.

I have gotten good at not keeping fiction books. Once I read them I take them to the secondhand bookstore and bring back fewer of them in exchange. Less is more, right?

But, I have a mild obsession when it comes to non-fiction books. I have a book on every topic that has ever interested me. Sadly, that's not much of an exaggeration.

I don't collect books. I don't quite hoard books, in my opinion. But, I do keep books. I keep them in plastic storage containers, on top of my chest of drawers, in piles on the floor and on actual bookshelves too.

I'd love to have a book room, a library. It's a dream. I've never had the kind of space, just to myself, for displaying all my books.

I'd settle for a corner, a reading nook. But, that won't work out right now. Too many people in a small living space and I'm the only one here who actually likes to keep books.

I just have too many books, more than I can keep. But, they are so hard to part with. Leaving a book behind is like giving up on a dream, a plan or a goal you wanted to keep. It's very hard to do. I still remember books I've lost along the way, years and years after they have been gone.

Maybe some day I will have my reading space. I like to look at other reading rooms, places and spaces. I design my own in my mind. It has masses of revisions at this point.

Do you have a reading space, just for yourself and your books?

Wouldn't You Like a Book Nook Too?

Create a Book Nook without Renovations

1. Find the right spot in your home. A quiet corner you can relax in.
2. Get a comfortable chair, pile cozy pillows on the floor or pull up a couch you can stretch out on. Bring a blanket and pillows to keep you warm and content.
3. Let there be light. You need a good reading light. One you can easily reach to turn off if you get sleepy.
4. A little table for your books, a place to set your beverage of choice, maybe something like fake flowers to pretty it up a bit too. You might keep a stash of paper and pens for taking notes and jotting down ideas.

When you really love bookshelves...

• On the Bookshelf

• Bookstore & Bookshelf P@rn

• Bookshelf Porn

DIY Book Reading Nook

• Thrifty Decor Chick: Closet turned book nook

• Perfect Bookshelves | Do It Yourself Home Projects from Ana White

• Book Nook - Workbench Magazine

The Dusty Bookshelf Challenge

1. Write a blog post with a list of all those books that are literally or figuratively sitting on your shelf that you’ve been meaning to read for a while.

2. Pick a level

• Pixie Dust – Read 0-5 books
• Dust Bunny – Read 5-10 books
• Cobwebs – Read 10-15 books
• Grungy – Read 20+ books

EXTRA CREDIT-Say how long that book has been sitting on your shelf!

3. Link your blog post where you are doing the challenge at the bottom of this post (with the blue button) and then enter the giveaway!

Create your own haunted house.

Plan the layout, the type of rooms, the design and colours. Write about the street appeal and what people see, hear, smell and sense from out on the street.

Then, create the monster living in the house, the surprise in the centre of the maze of rooms and storytelling. What happened to create this monster and what will happen in the future? Do things get better or worse for your monster in your haunted house?

"A woman is like a tea bag - you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"I always look ahead. I never regret. I have excitement every waking minute." - Gloria Swanson

"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work." - Bette Davis

"life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it." - Greta Garbo

"Taking joy in life is a woman's best cosmetic." - Rosalind Russell

"Women have to harness their power - it's absolutely true. It's just learning not to take the first no. And if you can't go straight ahead, you go around the corner." - Cher

"in my dreams I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance." - Louise Brooks

"This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up." - Marilyn Monroe

"You must train your intuition - you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say." - Ingrid Bergman

"Love for the joy of loving and not for the offerings of someone else's heart." - Marlene Dietrich

"If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman." - Margaret Thatcher

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." - Judy Garland

"It is impossible to get anything made or accomplished without stepping on some toes; enemies are inevitable when one is a doer." - Norma Shearer

"Success is a great deodorant." - Elizabeth Taylor

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world." - Lucille Ball

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." - Katherine Hepburn

"I never say never, and I never say always." - Grace Kelly

"If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, becaue the punishment is the same either way." - Jayne Mansfield

"Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I'm possible!" - Audry Hepburn