FASCINATING BLOGS

OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO

With my new computer I am writing to bloggers that I have neglected for so long. I hope I can reach most of you that have written me soon. What a wonderful world it is! Now it is so much easier. Before it always took me forever to go to each one. I had to wait for it to come on and then I would get this "windows not responding" thing. Now it is zip and it is there. It is great. Only thing is I get so interested I go on and read previous posts too.

I have been amazed anew at the places we can go without Dr. Seuss, and the things we can learn through this medium. People are fantastic and so much talent is out there. Talk about authors writing about the human condition, in blogging, we have the epitome of that. I have learned all about kangaroos from one. I have one blogger with so much talent and such a love for words that she can almost make my heart melt just like the violin solo in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake does. Her writing is gorgeous and she writes sentences that are like poetry in and of themselves. She writes of a walk in which she encounters a fledgling owl. "We stood in each other's company for a very long time. Long enough that I could see his eyes glowing ebony in liquid gold. Those eyes recalled to me that light will always be offered in the darkness, even when my heart is too hurt to search. " I hope Deb of Cactus Scout does not mind my quoting her but I admire her so much.

And then there are the really funny ones like the hilarious story of this goony soon to be mother-in-law shopping with her friends for a wedding dress. We who are women can relate so well to her references to her trials with a mammogram whether blessed with a little or a lot.

There are a lot of grandmas out there that care for and love their grandchildren and love to show pictures of them. They are fun to look at and hear about. One of my bloggers always refers to her husband as "the farmer", never his name. I love to go to the people who live on farms. I am entranced with farm life and I love cows and horses. Pigs not so much.

Younger readers find tales of my youth an interesting insight into history! And one's feels the pain when you read stories about a nephew dying of leukemia who asks for prayers. Curiosity is stirred when you read about this gal in Australia who is really into nature and saving animals that are endangered. Did you know that a gorilla is required to make your cell phone? She advises not to throw them away--recycle. Saves more gorillas. I always find it fascinating that those folks in Australia and the Philippines are talking about summer when it is winter here and visa versa.

Yes, blogging is a most wonderful thing. It means a great deal to me. If I ever have to go to a rest home you can bet my computer will be under my arm--to heck with clothes and such.

BITCHING DAY--WARNING

There are a lot of things that disappoint me on the political scene but I won't go into that. I would like to express my opinion about the Supreme Court which is (supposed to be) apolitical. I am in complete disagreement with the make-up of the court today. They all are from the Eastern part of the country and they have no idea what goes on in the Midwest, the South, or the West, and I think they should also be represented on the highest court in the land. I also think that a lot of universities besides Yale and Harvard can produce judges just as well as they can. Everyone is a graduate of Yale or Harvard. Ridiculous! And if one wants to go there, they are leaving out representation from the largest religious group in America. How did this court end up being so undiverse? Have we been so into making sure we have racial and sexual representation that we have forgotten these other factors which are very important also? I have nothing against the current candidate but she is of the same mold also. I think it is time for a change in the way our judges are chosen. Certainly the criteria should change. And politics should not enter into in any way.

Well, that is the important thing I wanted to get off my chest this morning.

I also wanted you to know that I have bought a new computer and a printer as well . Jim and I went to get it at Office Max . We got it home and Jim set it up and it didn't work. The something wasn't talking to the hard drive. Some of you might know what I am talking about because I sure don't. Anyhow we packed it up and Jim brought it back. We had decided to get another brand and Office Max did not carry that brand and so they would not take it back without charging us 15% of the total bill, a charge for restocking it, and it amounted to quite a bit. We refused to pay it and took the computer back and brought it to another Office Max on the other side of town and he was most sympathetic and gave us a new one even without the receipt! All of which proves different owners have better customer relations. And don't take this crap about paying to return a defective computer.

This is a bad post. But I did want to see if anyone out there agrees with me about the Supreme Court and I did want to let you know I am up and running with a new and fast computer. It is heaven not to have to wait 30 minutes for it to boot up in the morning and also to constantly not get "windows not responding" every two minutes whenever I tried to do something.

And I hope you all have a good day today even after reading my gripes.

JUST STUFF

Have you ever sat and marveled at the orderly precision automobiles and trucks maneuver at a four way three lane stop sign? I have and though I am not a person to admire strict obedience to rules and regulations, having recently become the recipient of another speeding ticket, this does impress me. It is like a well-performed ballet. A perfect performance. And I have become a paragon of virtue following the speed limits to a tee. My dad and the neighbor across the street taught me how to drive and one of the things my dad stressed was to keep up with the traffic. That I have done all my life, but now I guess it is not working so well. You would be surprised at the looks I get, the angry yelling, the finger, all the time. Most of the time I grit my teeth and let it go, but once in a while I thumb my nose back at them. Shakes some of them up. They have never seen that before. Teenagers laugh and others just shake their head. Wonder what they think?

I am coming along with my recovery quite well. I can walk fairly well but sitting and getting up is a trial. In fact, I have signed up for the Bellin Run (Walk) on June 12 and I hope to be ready for the one mile walk then. Oh Ho! You thought I was going to walk the whole 10 K? If I can do the mile, I shall be happy.

Summer has finally arrived and Jim has planted over 100 glads already and cleaned up the garden and I will plant the pots one of these days. I get my geraniums from East High School each year. Those kids have a green thumb and their plants are very healthy and cheap. I like to have an eclectic group of flowers in each pot but I use the geraniums as a base as they always are in bloom.

The birds have taken over the back yard with Jim's three feeders. The squirrels are a problem but Jim puts some in the big willow for them. He figures they will leave his feeders alone if they have their own stash. I don't know. That one squirrel is almost as big as a dog now.

Here is a picture of my fishing results down in Texas. This was the result of only a few minutes. As you can see they are not big, but my they were tasty. I shared them with a couple of people there for the wedding who had never eaten bluegills or crappies. They actually are my favorite eating fish! And I don't have that big a pot belly. I just carry everything I own in my pockets!

MOM LOVED YOU BEST!!!!!!

MOM LOVED YOU BEST!!!!!

It is interesting to think about how one feels about our siblings now and how we felt when we were growing up. Did you read an article in the USA TODAY about how children feel about their mother on Mother’s Day and how all mothers say they love their children equally, but they really do not. Mothers love each child differently would perhaps put it more truly.

How many of you feel that you were your mother’s favorite? Or how many of you feel that your mom loved one of you more than the others. In my birth family, we all knew my mom loved my oldest brother the best but it didn’t seem to bother us. She seemed to have enough love left for the rest of us. There were five. Three boys and two girls. I was the baby and came long after what was supposed to be the last. I only remember being spanked just once on my bottom. When I was four I had run away from home across 13 railroad tracks and my dad felt he should make it memorable and so I got my spanks and then was placed in the corner behind the door. The furnace controls were there (the old chain ones) and I broke 'em.

If you knew your mom loved one of you the most, did it bother you? Or did it bother you when you were growing up and does not now. Or does it still rankle you even yet.

Did you feel perhaps that you were loved by your dad more than your mom? If there were two of you, did you feel that one was loved by mom and the other by dad?

It seems the problem does not arise so much in large families as it does in small ones. And of course in a one child household, there was no problem at all.

Think about your present family. Do you prefer one child over another? Do you really feel that you give more attention to one than another? Do you prefer boys to girls or visa versa. Are you still remembering what it was like to be the less loved one and trying to overcompensate with your own children to make sure one does not feel the same way? .Or is history repeating itself and whatever went on in your growing-up years is still going on. Does anyone honestly believe anyone can be completely even in their distribution of affection so that things were really quite perfect in your household ?

What about single parent families? Now that is a whole new balliwick. With only one parent the rivalry for her attention is even greater. And her ability to be fair with each one is even harder. If one seems to be the easiest to raise and get along with, she may very well favor him or her.

And what about all the blended families--his kids, my kids, and our kids? Now there must be a lot of interesting ways that this could go.

I thought this was a human condition that is something all of us have experienced. It is an intriguing subject and can evoke a lot of thought.

KUDOS TO ALL WORKMEN OF THE WORLD!!!

Before my visit to Texas came to an end, I had to go and have an self –incurred accident. Never one to heed good advice as you have seen in previous posts, I used a bathroom shower that I was not supposed to. The previous owner of the lake house, and living in Marble Shoals made it inevitable that he would have a bathtub raised up on three marble steps. It was a really cool bathtub and the shower head was just right for me. Well, after using it several times, there came a time of reckoning and as I exited being extremely careful, I fell ass over teakettle in quite a spectacular fall. I tested. My hips were intact. But I broke or bruised my tail bone and hurt my back and tore my left arm up into what Julie described as a hamburger. After a visit to the hospital where I had the usual x-rays and l9 stitches in my arm, I survived quite blessedly I think.

Forced to be immobile, I have been sitting here watching the men next to the lake house put in a new pier . I have been admiring the precision with which they work. They work together like a well-oiled machine knowing what to do next and which man will do what to accomplish their goal. They both carry out the long pieces of wood , one on each end and lay it carefully in a predetermined order on the part that is finished. One does the welding and the other holds the framing piece upright and checks that it is straight.

Long have we extolled the artists, the musicians, the writers, even architects but I do not know of any museums dedicated to workmen. And where would we be if we did not have skilled workmen in many fields? The knowledge that they possess and the skills they have honed and passed on to future generations is unfathomable. In our everyday lives, the skill of the electrician, the desperate help of the plumber, the carpenters that build and add on to our homes all bring to mind the value of these people. The mechanics, the repairmen for every appliance, the roofers—all make the world go around and we just accept it as an everyday thing when it is really a great thing.

So I say, HAIL TO THR WORKMEN OF THE WORLD and God bless ‘em for being.

Texas Glory

In my last post I wrote about my trip to Texas to visit my daughter and see my firstborn grandson married. Rather than go over every party and aspect of this grand occasion, I thought I would just tell about some of my impressions.

Above is a picture of the wedding couple. The wedding was distinctly a reflection of Chelsea ‘s unique tastes and it made for a very interesting and varied experience. Chelsea was a dream in her mermaid like dress—one that very few women could get by with. A perfect figure wrapped tightly with the ruffles below her derrier (I think). The bridesmaids wore short skirts with cowboy boots and Chelsea herself is said to have changed into her boots under her dress for the dancing. Food and drink were wonderful and plentiful and the setting at the ranch was beautiful.

I learned to love the Texas Aggie’s fight song and it is ringing in my head all the time. There were a lot of the grads there and they get in a circle and sing it and then lock their legs and sway and whoop at the end. They first did this on the ship we were on for the rehearsal dinner and I thought it sort of interesting, but the second time at the reception for the wedding, I decided I really liked it.

By the way, on this ship we were supposed to see millions of bats flying out from under one of the bridges. We sat and waited but this was not their night. If Texans were this hard up for entertainment I felt sorry for them. And of course, they aren’t , but people were lined up on the streets above and all the ships were sitting there waiting. I guess it is sort of like the swallows coming back to Capastrano, but then this is supposed to happen every night!

But the really beautiful wild life I saw were the two white swans on the lake guarding their young. And deer were around too at night.

Roadside Texas Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrushes and some little white things and some pink cup like wild flowers were abundant along the roadsides all over. Sometimes there were fields of bluebonnets—a lovely sight. And the trees and shrubs were at least 10 shades of green all the way from almost black to a light chartreuse. I never became a great painter, but I did learn to see the world in a whole more vivid way!

But my most favorite sight are the cows out to pasture not in fields , but in groves of live oaks. I love this scene more than any other in this hill country. It is one of the first things I ever noticed about the Texas countryside.

Learned that when Texans say “It is only down the road a piece” could mean anywhere from 15 to 100 miles.

A plethora of friends and family attended—260 of them found their way through curvy, hilly LBJ country even fording streams to get to this wedding. In the car I was riding in we were using one of those new-fangled direction things they have on the cell phones and finally even the machine gal gave up and got lost in the wilderness we were in!

So many of these people have such interesting family histories that go way back to Poncho Via I think. I believe they all fought at the Alamo along with Davy Crockett. I jest. But Chelsea goes back to Robert E. Lee and her grandfather and great grandfather were all professors at Texas A and M.

When it rains it is as if someone is up there tipping over the clouds it comes down so hard and fast. And the thunder scared the bejesus out of Dave from San Diego.

The lake house is heaven on earth. People we knew from all over the United States were there—good friends that one wishes one could see every day . There were people from Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, San Diego, Dallas, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Colorado. Old friends who mostly all knew one another met for dinner and two or three good evenings of catch-up conversation and fun. It was a very special time.

Chelsea and Jake are somewhere in Italy now enjoying their honeymoon. They had an auspicious beginning. Let us hope and pray that their lives will continue to be filled with happiness and joy.

Good Times A Comin'

Texas is supposed to be in the South and the South is supposed be warm and even hot, right? Somebody didn’t give the right order then because it is cold, cloudy, and damp. But my spirits aren’t ! It is beautiful here at the lake.

I had a great flight down here. I saw the most majestic thunderheads while on the plane that I have ever seen as we approached Austin and the pilot managed to miss most of them. The peanuts were delicious as well!

I am here for my first-born grandson’s wedding. From all I have heard so far it is going to be a very busy week. Julie and her husband have been working cleaning everything in sight—the kayaks (I couldn’t get my butt down in one and worse I could never get out again if I did), the boat, every nook and cranny of the lake house—even the motorcycle if one of the guests choose to ride it.

The rehearsal dinner is going to be on a cruise ship on a different lake located in the city and the wedding will take place outside of a barn on a ranch and the reception held in aforementioned barn. I guess this is la rigeur for dreamworks weddings here.

People will start coming in on Wednesday and from then on it is go go go. I don’t know if this ole gal can take all this excitement!!!!

Julie is out planting flowers in pots on the pier. Everyone has big elaborate piers down here as they don’t have to take them down for the winter. Some even have second stories!

It’s going to be a great ride and we will send some pictures of the big event. And I hope to get to answer some of your comments sometime soon. I want to thank you for all your kind responses to my last post. This is not my computer. I think I will have to get a new one. The last one has served me well.