Just a few odds and ends

This is a picture of one of the Mapogo males. After their original attack on one of the Nkuhuma males, that I wrote about several weeks ago, they left the Djuma area for a while. They have returned and are now being seen on a regular basis. They are very large and dangerous lions and are causing many problems in the area. One of the Africam websites has referred to them as "thugs" on their blog. Other lions are being forced out of the reserve areas by this vicious group. Some of the lions forced towards rural populated areas are now killing cattle to survive, since their usual hunting grounds have become too unsafe. This trip the Mapogo are not traveling alone but have a group of females and cubs with them. I have seen pictures of the lionesses and cubs, but have not seen them "live" on a game drive. I was lucky enough to be on the drive the first time they were seen recently. All lions are potentially scary; this group is truly frightening.

After some thought, and with encouragement from several blogger-friends, I am going to do some thoughtful work on the word of the year idea, and I am going to stick with my initial reaction that my word should be "no". I need to learn to be better able to say no when it is in my best interests to do so. I also need to say no to myself when I am being lazy or extravagant. I need to say no to bad habits. I know that it is supposed to be better when you work at something by thinking "I'm going to try to be better at...." but that does not always work for me. So, for a while at least, I am instead going to approach things with a different direction. I want to look at things as "will I accept........" or "will I allow......." and the answer is going to be NO. Will I accept being behind in my school work? NO! Will I allow the house to get as bad as it was in the fall? NO! Things like that. Saying NO is going to be a positive thing with positive results.

So, tonight's affirmative negative is this: will I carry that extra heavy bag to school tomorrow because I didn't get around to cleaning it out? NO!

So, I'm off to clean out my school bag!