A Great Way to Spend the Day!

Today -well, actually now it would be yesterday -was really, in no uncertain terms, a great day!

Although things didn't start out that great -running out of fuel oil which meant NO HOT WATER until we got some oil dumped in ye olde tank -and that just meant a delay in washing up the dishes along with -as it turned out -a really big delay in my getting a shower, things ultimately worked out just fine and dandy. (Well, I still haven't got that shower worked in as yet but at least now I know I can as I will have hot water to come pouring down over my fat self and to refresh some really tired, aching muscles I have tonight as well.)

Anyway -back to my great day!

My older daughter had called me last night (that would have been Wednesday night now) and told me that she and her son-the oldest grandchild and "My Prince" (Alex) would be coming up home this morning to spend the day with old Gram here and Aunt Mandy since it was her day off and Alex had the day off from school too.

That's great, I had thought. It will be wonderful to have a little extra time to spend with this boy who is rapidly growing up -getting taller and taller (also older and older but we won't dwell on that will we) and his maturity levels are really great -well beyond his age of twelve years now.

Well, Mandy and I know the older daughter and her habits -especially those involving time and the adherence to that entity -all too well so we didn't actually figure she would arrive until probably sometime in the afternoon. And we were right! They got here about 2:30 or so.

I had managed by then to get the dishes washed up, had swept up the kitchen, dining room, entry way and living room too with the intent of getting at least the kitchen floor mopped up then too. But when daughter # 1 and the grandson arrived, she came in bringing her own scrub bucket, plus cleaning supplies (wondering here if she thinks that we don't purchase those items, or what) but anyway, her intent it seems was that she wanted very much to give her sister a hand in doing some cleaning in this old place.

About the time they arrived, Sammy was making known he had some issues and wishes of his own too -that being a nice walk -so I asked the grandson if he'd like to go with me as I walked the dog.

I think Alex sensed immediately too -as I had -that this was a great idea and a way to get both of us out of the house and away from the two cleaning maniacs -my daughters!

So, away we went!

As we headed down the road, Alex asked me if we were going to "walk around the block" meaning we would stay on the paved road, make a left turn down the street from our house where the pavement ends if you go straight and the road then changes from Cooper Avenue to Peale Road.

Nope, I had informed him that today, he, Sammy and I were going to walk down towards Peale -that little ghost town that I have mentioned periodically on my blog.

The look on Alex's face was somewhat quizzical and I asked him then if he has ever been down to Peale. He said yes, once or twice -the most recent time being when my ex-husband -the kids Dad and Grandpa, aka "Poppy" was last here about 3 years ago. On that occasion, Alex, Uncle Clate, Uncle Wally and Poppy had gone down to Peale to do a little 4-wheeler riding there.

But aside from that, the boy didn't know very much about this village that had once existed out in the woods beyond our house -and civilization as we think of it today anyway.

So, away we went!

And from the onset of our walk, Alex asked me questions -many, many questions -about Peale, and especially he wanted to know how we connected back to this town.

As I explained to him, the town was built around 1883-84 but the first influx of settlers to the village didn't take place until one weekend in October of 1884 when people employed by the Coal Company then and who were working and living in another little coal town down in Lycoming county, outside of Williamsport, PA -a town called McIntyre -were moved en masse by train from McIntyre up to Peale!

And within the group of people who moved that weekend were a couple of recent immigrants from Sweden and the six children they had then. Among those children, the second oldest of the group was my grandfather -Adolf Eld -who was, as I explained to Alex, his great-great-grandfather. The couple -Carl aka Charlie and his wife, Maja Lisa Eld -were Alex's great-great-great-grandparents.

As I explained a few little things to him about the town of Peale, about his ancestors and such, he remarked with great interest as well as pride that this then is our history, isn't it?

Yep, you better believe it my grandson, it surely is our history!

We walked and walked and talked about this historical aspects of the village, of my grandfather, his life there and also about the mines, the mining industry -the slope mines that provided a living for my great-grandfather and for all of his sons as they became old enough to go to work in those hellholes.

After the slope mines and the coal attainable by those means died out -and many of the children of those immigrants determined too that they wanted no part either of slaving their lives away in cold, watery darkness with ever-present dangers of cave-ins which could claim life and limb -the move was on and one by one, people began to leave, to move away to other parts of the country, to better work, wages and way of life too.

I pointed out to Alex the mountainside that is a backdrop to our village which has been reclaimed over the past year -the mountain re-contoured to look as much as possible to the natural contours of the land when the early coal companies had come in here and begun to remove that valuable entity -coal -from beneath the surface. As I had mentioned here in a post a few weeks back, part of that reclamation had involved the leveling and covering up of the old "bony pile" or as many around here also called it, the tipple. (My kids and their generation as well as those younger than them often referred to this as "The Volcano" too.)

We walked past the drainage ditches now being put in from that reclamation project to give the water runoff a way to get down the mountain and to empty into Moravian Run -also know to folks by a different name too. My generation has always tended to refer to this tiny stream as the "Sulfur Creek" and my kids and younger usually just call it the "Poop Creek" mainly because so many people for so many years (prior to our township establishing a Sewage Authority) just simply piped off their raw sewage from their homes into this little stream that had way before my generation been polluted with sulfur run-off from the mines upstream and around the village where I live.

Today, the little stream seems to be clear -not having the reddish cast it had when I was growing up -and also not sporting any strange, smelly entities floating down stream in it either. However, I still don't think I'd want to chance or risk drinking the water that flows in it regardless of how much the stream may have been cleaned up over the past 2-3 decades now.

We -Alex, Sammy and I -walked on further down the dirt road and before we knew it, we were down at the curve and by the one house left still standing in the part of Peale that existed on this side of the Red Moshannon Creek. I showed Alex where there had once been a big farm house in which the people who had been the last to live in Peale had lived and that house, I had always been told, had been the house designated to belong to the Lutheran minister who had served the town of Peale until about 1912 -if I have my dates correct there. (Pastor Berquist, that would have been. Somewhere I should have some old-old photos of this man but I can't locate the cd I had transferred those picture over to right now.)

From there, I told Alex we were going to take the road that branches off to the left right after you pass the lone house standing there.

As we walked up this road, you can tell by the big stones that it was originally cobbled with that this road had once led to a place of importance in this old community.

It had led up to where the old company store had once stood, had been a thriving entity for those folks who lived their lives working for the coal company a hundred to 125 years ago.

It also led up to what had once upon a time been a park in that community. A park that had even sported a swimming pool -a brick-lined pool, no less!

Today, there is a big pool of water pretty much where the pool had been but seeing any trace of the pool's structure has now gone by the wayside. The flat area around the pool and where the park had once been has become over the past 30-40 years or so the party grounds for most of the local youth -where they have their bonfires and beer parties late at night, usually around the rite of passage called high school graduation.
This is what the old swimming pool/hole looks like today -a far cry from how it appeared even only a mere 70 years ago, when the park was used at least one Sunday a year to welcome back people who had been among the early settlers in Peale, many who had moved far, far away and yet returned for the Peale Reunions that were observed here from 1930 through 1939. Surprisingly enough, those reunions garnered attendance ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 people -something I still find incredible to believe but yet, I know because I have in my possession a huge ledger book that many of the attendees signed so I know the numbers couldn't have been fudged by very much, if they were tinkered with at all even.

As Alex and I walked around the area that had formerly been the Park, we wandered off on a little path where we saw indentations in the ground, overgrown now with brush and weeds, but were one can still make out by the dimensions that these were most likely the foundations of some of the houses that once stood in Peale.

Many of the houses that existed in Peale are actually still standing today, still lived in but just not still in Peale. They were, you see, torn down, piece by piece and then the piles of the lumber, windows, etc., were transported from Peale up to Grassflat -the village where I live today -and re-erected here for the families who had occupied them in Peale to live in here -if they had decided to stay on working for the mines, or living in this vicinity. Eventually, those houses were sold to the miners and/or other people in the village by the coal company. All part and parcel of how the coal companies ruled the lives in just about every possible respect back then. Also shows too how that song, "Sixteen Tons" with the line in it about "I owe my soul to the Company Store" was a huge part of the lives of those people back then too.
The above picture as well as the one below here are both shots of the sunken, overgrown indentations that mark where a house once stood in the town of Peale, back in its heyday.
Alex was fascinated with the stories about this little, now defunct, village and said he could easily imagine how the people who resided there must have lived. The foundations we saw aren't huge, by any means, but knowing the size of many of the homes that were relocated up to Grassflat, they generally were two bedroom units but they often housed a whole lot more than just one family too. Very often, the families who rented these homes from the coal company also rented bed or cot space to other miners, recent immigrants, where they could get a place to sleep as well as meals and thus save their paychecks or as much as possible of their meager earnings, in order to accrue enough money to send back to their homeland and bring wives and children over here to join them.

That was how my Great-grandfathers -3 out of 4 of them -had done when they first came to America. Two immigrated here in the early 1870s from Scotland and lived in northeastern Pennsylvania -around Wellsboro and the Morris Run areas and my great-grandfather Eld came here in 1880 from Sweden and worked in McIntyre, saving money to send for his wife and the five children they had then that he had left behind for about 18 months till he could pay the passage for her and the children to come here.

Alex and I wandered around up behind the park area a bit more -and here's some pictures of him and Sammy as we explored down a couple of the paths and around the old foundations.

In the bottom photo here, Alex had found the remains of some broken crockery type bowl or some such.

After our little escapade today, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Alex doesn't try to convince his Dad to come over here and go wandering around the hillsides down in Peale with a metal detector to see if they can scavenge up any other mementos of the town and people that once called Peale home.

We were gone close to three hours on our walk and I know it is 3.9 miles, round trip, from my house down to the one remaining house in Peale, so that distance plus all the trudging around we did up around the park and pool area and on back beyond that, I figure we probably walked at least five miles, round trip today.

I do know one thing for sure, I was pretty beat from all that walking around too!

And I was also really excited when I decided to weigh myself this afternoon too and saw that I had dropped another 3 pounds now! Which, at the moment, makes roughly 13 pounds I have walked off now since I started this walking program back in December!

Not the greatest in the way of weight losses but for me, I thought it was pretty darned good!

After a kind of celebratory supper -consisting of pizza that the local grocery store deli was running a sale on this week -I crashed onto my bed about 8 p.m. and woke up shortly after 11 p.m. then!

When we got back home, Maya's TSS was here and she asked Alex if he had learned anything today on our walk. He said that yes, he felt he had and had found the things we saw and talked about all to be very interesting too.

But when she asked if he thought he would ever be able to use any of this information, he said sure, because it is important for him to learn and know about his roots, his own history of how he fits into this area now.

And my response to her questions were that his nosing around down in the rubble and old foundations of this ghost town might work well if he does indeed do what he told me seven years ago that he was going to be when he grew up.

That was when I was in the hospital, having just had the first of several surgeries (colo-rectal cancer, etc) and he had drawn a get well card for me and brought it over to the hospital when he, his Mom and Dad had come to visit. As I had looked at his art work -which for a five-year-old was quite good -I had remarked that perhaps he had inherited some of the artistic talents his Uncle Clate is known for and maybe some day that he, Alex, would become an artist.

He had quickly told me then though, "NO, I don't think so Grammy as I'm going to be a palaentologist!"

Needless to say, that remark really threw me as I had no clue the child even knew how to say the word much less that he had even a clue as to what people in that occupation do too!

But after having spent the afternoon with him, exploring, talking, walking and enjoying the outdoors, and each other's company, I'm thinking maybe he really was right on track back then when he told me that was what he wants to be!

It was truly a great way to enjoy a perfect day and excellent way to spend my time in the company of my most special grandson, Alex.

Random Thoughts....

Now there's a bit of a scary title for a post for ya!

Random thoughts from me!

Oh, the myriad of things that go through my mind at any given time. Happy, sad, serious, whimsical -you name it, and my mind might go there now and again.

Take this for an example.

Yesterday, I took Sir Sammy out for a walk and headed, again, down the road towards Peale, the little ghost town. As I passed by my friend and neighbor's (Kate) home, she was out on her patio and called down a cherry hello to me. I said I was taking Sammy for his little outing and asked her if she wasn't busy, would she like to accompany me.

To my pleasant surprise, she said that yes, she wasn't in the middle of anything more pressing than just putting some windshield washer stuff in her car so she hustled down the hillside in front of her house and together, we set off then to walk the dirt road, remembering little bits and pieces now and again too as we walked of our childhood.

From where Kate's house is located to the "end of the road" -local terminology for where the paved road in the village ends and the dirt road begins - there are three other houses on her side of the road. I'm a lousy judge of distance but I'd say it's close to two tenths of a mile, maybe.

And in that space, Sammy managed to empty his bladder at the very least, four times!

That act launched us into a little discussion about first, the size of Sammy -he really is a pretty small terrier-mix type of dog -and how big his bladder must be that he can water so many places in that amount of walking area!

Kate's take on this is that dogs -or maybe just Sammy (we're not sure if he is that different from other dogs in this instance) must have really large bladders and excellent control too of how much they can spray at each stop to make so many pit stops and have more built up quickly or a fantastic ability to stop, hold it, then release again.

Like her, I find this quite an amazing feat too along with his ability to also cough without any fear of leakage too!

See, I told you didn't I at the onset of this post that when I begin to think, some of the ideas that spring from those thoughts can be more than a bit strange, can't they?

I mean, how many of you have ever given thought to a dog's watering abilities anyway?

Back to our walk -and our conversation -we talked about how when we were growing up, we had run through the various paths in the woods around our homes and especially how we had grown up recognizing various floral displays growing around the woods too. I mentioned having seen some of these flowery things the day before and lamenting about how as a child, I had known the names of many of these flowers but today, not so much coming forth in the memory area as to what these various plants are called. One that I mentioned to her was the little flowers we called "Ladyslippers" and that brought a giggle from Kate as she then told me that those plants were not ladyslippers after all. She couldn't remember either now what the little pinkish-lavender shaded plants we called by that name actually are but she said that sometime or other over the years, she had looked up ladyslippers and saw a picture of them and to her surprise -mine too -she said that they really aren't all that pretty a plant. Actually, she says they are quite ugly!

Hmmm. Wonder now who gave these tiny, pretty little plants a name that really seemed quite fitting for them.

On the subject of plants, I had a bit of communication yesterday on Facebook with Kate's youngest daughter who will be getting married now next month. In one of her notes to me, Susan had asked if I like rhubarb and I immediately wrote back to her that I LOVE rhubarb and have been trying to get some to transplant it someplace in my backyard too for a number of years.

Growing up, my Grandpa had several rhubarb plants down in the lower section of our backyard here. Not a whole lot, not a huge patch -in thinking about this, I think he had maybe 5 or 6 plants but it was more than enough to supply us with lots of rhubarb for my Grandma to make her great rhubarb cream pie that Grandpa and I both loved plus, she and my Mom would often pull rhubarb and after cleaning it and cutting it into smaller pieces, they would cook it down to make rhubarb sauce -another food that I dearly loved too. Grandma always was able to harvest enough of the rhubarb every year to provide not just the pies and some rhubarb sauce for a side dish at our meals but also, to have an adequate supply of the sauce that she would can it then, preserving it for a treat every bit as tasty as homemade applesauce was in the middle of the winter!

All of that back and forth about rhubarb with Susan got my mouth watering as I was thinking how good a pie, some home-cooked rhubarb sauce would surely taste maybe sometime this year! Susan, you see, has some rhubarb at her home about 40 miles from here and is planning to come visit her mom this coming Sunday after work and when she does, she's going to try to remember to pull some of the stuff for me and drop it off at my house! Whether she means just bringing me a bunch of rhubarb to be cooked up or hopefully, some sprouts I can transplant and then, hopefully have my own little rhubarb patch growing here again, I'm not totally sure there but either, or -or both -would really be neat is what I was and still am thinking!

This morning, Mandy had doctor appointments for both the kids -just the general check-up type appointments, nothing special, no illnesses, etc. Now, taking them for a doctor visit is something that is never just a run-of-the-mill event cause one never knows from one visit to the next with them what might happen that they will possibly wig out about -for reasons totally unknown to my daughter, or probably, in all likelihood, completely unknown to the kids too!

And today was no different. Mandy says both the kids went ballistic when the nurse just wanted to check their blood pressure. Maya totally refused to allow the nurse to check hers and although Kurtis did submit to allowing the nurse to put the cuff on him and get a reading, he screamed the entire time she was doing that. Then there was a hearing test -a regularly scheduled event for six-year-olds -and Maya had hissy fits then over that too. None of these things are the type of things that would/could induce pain ya know but just a bit of a change from the routine things the nurse does when they see the doctor and presto-magic, you have on your hands then at least one, possibly two screamers in the room. (Sometimes kickers as well, come to think of it.)

Mandy did say that once they got in to see the doctor, both of them had by that time calmed down and both acted like civilized little children for him then. Go figure, huh?

Oh the tangled webs we do weave when we try to make sense of why children with autism do some of the things they do, don't we? No rhyme or reason to those adults in charge, those of us who are regarded as being "NT" or "neuro-typical" people but to these children when they have these little fits, although they can be very frustrating to cope with sometimes, it's just a normal part of doing business with them. And, if you pick your battles with them too, most of the time you end up thinking that in the grand scheme of things, it's not worth getting all worked up about these mini-meltdowns or little hissy fits they pitch from time to time. Just definitely does keep life a bit more interesting though as you try to anticipate what things might be the ones that will trip a trigger in them.

I realized this morning when I went to wash up the load of dishes I had soaking in the dishpan that we have now finally run out of fuel oil -an event Mandy has been anticipating for about the past 2-3 weeks as she had warned me then that the gauge on the fuel tank was registering very, very low. So, we'll have to order a delivery of fuel oil that will, hopefully then take us over the summer months and into early fall then. We have an oil furnace and hot water heat and the hot water then for the house -bathroom, kitchen, etc. -is heated from the furnace -no separate hot water tank, you see. This also means that I am going to have to dip into my meager funds I have set aside from the paid posts I do from time to time in order to be able to pay the bill we already owe the oil company for the last delivery they made to us before they will bring another load of oil to dump in our fuel tank.

This makes me think about how the fuel oil charges are really getting way out of bounds for everyone to pay, not just those of us like my family, who are a very small budget all the time. And that also reminds me of how, the first year after my kids and I moved into this house after my Mom died and that year, because I had no account set up in my name then with the fuel oil company, I had to pay, cash on the nose, every time they brought us oil that year. The following year after Mom's death, I got on a budget plan with that oil company and paid the same amount to them every month, all year-round which enabled me to be on an automatic refill timetable and eliminated the running out of oil at inopportune times ya know. I remember too that winter when I was on this "budget" plan that my oil bill that year ran me $165 a month and that I had remarked about it to someone that seeing how much the oil was costing, it maybe was really a good thing my Mom had died when she did because that monthly oil bill was $48 a month more than what my Mom's entire monthly social security check was!

And now, 31 years later, no our oil bill isn't more per month than what my check is or what Mandy's income is, but boy, the price of oil definitely is far from being "cheap" fuel isn't it?

All this has Mandy thinking that maybe we would be better off if we purchased an electric water heater this summer and had that to use to heat hot water for our usage. She seems to think that would be less expensive but I'm not so sure it would work that way. For one thing, having an electric water heater would then increase our electric bill -just for openers -and also, with the state having lifted recently the regulations that were in place that were supposed to keep peoples' electric bills somewhat reduced, that means come next year, the electric company will then be able to charge what may very well truly be -or seem like -an arm and a leg for electricity and which one -the heating of the water by the furnace or the heating of the water via an electric water heater -would actually then be the most economical?

Maybe, ultimately, we would be better served to find a "bucket-a-day" type stove -such as the one we had in the house when I was a kid and that stove is what was used solely to heat the water for our washing, bathing concerns. It meant that one had to build a fire in it or maintain it every single day of the year in order to have hot water available, and it was fueled by coal so that would mean if we had that type of apparatus, we would also then have to be purchasing coal and have a coal bin of some type in which to store the coal and it would also mean dirt, dirt and more dirt being probably tracked upstairs then from whoever would be in charge of firing the darned store. Mess, expense, difficulty getting the coal into the area of the stove -ARRGH.

But the bonus to that -and yes there is a bonus to it -is that in the winter months, the kitchen would be a lot warmer from having a little stove like that with a fire contained it it and the heat from that contraption would then rise and warm the floor of the kitchen and give a bit of a toasty warmth then along the way.

Ah -questions, thoughts on all of these things and no real, hard, fast answers to any of them either. The debate on this topic will no doubt rage on here in the household for a while yet.

Just got a phone call from my older daughter telling me that she and my older grandson are now on their way up here to spend the day with us. And that's great that she is bringing him up on a day he has off from school as we really don't get a chance to spend near enough time with him. He's quite the handsome dude, good student in school, polite (well to his aunt and to me, anyway although his mother occasionally says he's getting a bit mouthy at times) and overall though, just a great young man about to enter into his teenage years. Expect the mouthy stuff to not just continue now but also to increase -if he operates the same was his mother did then and his uncle and his aunt! Just saying...

So now, off to the kitchen I go to finish washing up the dishes in the sink because I heated a bit kettle of hot water a little while ago and it should not be a decent temperature that I can withstand then to put my dainty little pinkies in there without scalding myself on that lovely chore!

And as I wash up those dishes, more thoughts will be racing through my mind. Some will merely crawl through too. But odds are none of them will be rocket science type things. None of 'em will be earth-shattering discoveries and some of 'em might just be downright weird too.

All of that remains to be seen, but in the meantime, y'all have a great day!

Just a Walkin'

It's been a day of surprises here for me.

First -beginning early-early in the day -at a hour when most people are sound asleep (but I was sitting in my chair, working away on the "Rooster" tabletopper for my cousin Ruth Ann and watching re-runs of one of my favorite shows on the Hallmark Channel (Cheers) when I heard noises on the stairs, little feet carefully come down the steps and into the living room then pops Miss Maya!

I asked her why she was up as she really should be in bed, sleeping -and dreaming -away so she would be all rested and ready to hop out of bed in the morning to get ready for school. She told me she needed a drink.

So, I told her to go and get a little glass of water and to that, she informed me, in a tone of voice that was almost haughty -"Some people drink things besides water, you know!"

Oh yes, my dear little one, that is quite true. And your Grammy, for example does love occasionally to indulge in beverages other than water or those that are made with water as a main component -like coffee, tea (hot or iced) and yes, Gram likes certain other beverages too that are -at least for several years I would hope -out of Miss Maya's range and liking. Things like oh, maybe a nice cold can or bottle of that fermented stuff called beer! Although my intake of that frosty beverage has dropped considerably over the past few years, I still do enjoy a good cold brew -or two -or sometimes more. LOL

So anyway -back to Miss Maya -I told her to go get herself a drink -of her choice -knowing full well that would involve her putting a little chocolate syrup in a cup and adding a dabble of milk to it and stirring it all up with as much, if not more zest and energy than one would use in mixing up a cake or some other concoction.

The milk having been devoured, I told her she really needed to go back to bed but again, she has a speedy response for me to that suggestion.

"I' m really not very tired or sleepy at all, Gram!"

I thought about forcing the issue and making her go back upstairs and to bed and then thought if I do that and she's not all that sleepy at the moment, she'll be awake upstairs and in no time, I could envision she would also wake up her brother and then, I'd be stuck with both of them up and fighting, and Kurtis having some kind of hissy fit so picking my battle carefully then, I told her she could stay downstairs with me but she had to either go lay down out in my room or lay down on the loveseat or the sofa.

Although there was plenty of room on the sofa for both her and Sammy -who was curled up at one end there -she couldn't lay down there and share the couch with him, so she got herself a lightweight blanket, found her special teddy bear and fluffy dog stuffed animal and curled up on the loveseat. That was shortly after 1:30 a.m. and it was just past 2:30 a.m. when I saw that her eyes had finally closed completely and that she was asleep then!

I just left her there then to sleep the rest of the night on the loveseat cause I sure as heck wasn't about to try to carry her upstairs nor was I going to rouse her and make her walk up the steps either! Best to let sleeping dogs lie you know!

This afternoon, I went out to our church around 1 p.m. to meet up with seven other women from our Women's Group and we set out to give the social hall there a darned good housecleaning!

Cupboards in the kitchen were all cleaned out and scrubbed; the stove and oven cleaned plus windows in the hall, wainscoating, heating vents -all given a good wipe-down. All the tables and folding chairs were given a thorough once-over and finally, the floor swept and mopped up. If anyone were to come into the social room now, I would defy them to find any dirt, anywhere, left over there!

While I was working on the wainscoating and heat vents, my neighbor and good friend, Kate, was doing each table and the folding chairs. We talked a bit as we worked - a nice feature of having a group of people sharing in those chores you know- and when I got to the end of one wall and went to get up from working on that stuff on my hands and knees, I realized I had a bit of a problem.

I was beyond the reach of the last table so I had nothing stable then to grasp hold of and balance myself while trying to pull myself up to my feet!

I thought maybe if I got myself up on one knee and I could put the weight then onto the other leg and do a balance act there, I could stand up. But that knee didn't want to cooperate, so I reverted then to trying to do the same thing but with the other knee and it did seem, momentarily, that it was going to work and then, BOOM! I lost my balance and did a semi-split there on the floor with my left leg bending at the knee and kind of causing my left leg then to splay out a bit and my left ankle was slightly bend under all of that weight then too!

Yeah, it was quite the sight -a not very neat and tidy three-point landing for sure, but thankfully, nothing injured except a bit of pride you could say. Although it did take me very much by surprise and when I made my landing, although in my mind, I meant to say "Oh Sheesh!" but a slip of the tongue and the other women probably thought I was calling out in prayer because what I said was "Oh Jesus!"

I should have known better than to try to get up off the floor in the first place without having anything to hold onto and to give me some leverage but no, I had to prove it to myself, for once and for all I guess, that there are certain moves my old body doesn't approve of and that happens to be one of 'em!

When we were about finished up, my stomach -or intestinal tract actually -began to give me fits with lots of cramping and such so I made a speedy exit out of there then and came home to sit back and put my legs up, rest my back a bit too that way and try to get the intestines to settle down.

Finally, about 5:30 -feeling a little tired but not wanting to fall asleep right then and there -I opted to take Sammy for a nice long walk as an effort to keep my legs and back from stiffening up too much on me.

We walked down the road -in the opposite direction then of the neighbor who complained -and headed down towards the ghost town of Peale.

It had been about 3 weeks since I had last been down that part of the road and what a treat I had today.

Three weeks ago, there were dandelions blooming all over there. Today, still lots of bloomers in that category but lots of them already going to seed and ready to have their fluffy tops blown off and spreading their seeds deeper then into the forest.

Trees that had only the faintest hint of a bud on them three weeks ago now showed many of them to be in full blossom. White flowers, pink ones denoted apple trees among the firs, hemlock and pines. Maple and oak trees had buds coming out and some even had tiny leaves beginning to form. And those evergreens -many of them had lighter green showing on their tips which indicates the new growth coming on to those trees too.

Just beautiful! Seeing all the colors, the different shades of greens and the flora along the road showed how this had all sprung back to life in those three weeks then since my last visit.

It's been many, many a year that has passed since I was a youngster and used to walk down that road or along the old railroad track and see the new blossoms, the new ground flower growth popping up along the way. Back then, when my cousins and I would walk with their aunts along those routes, they told me the names of all the little tiny white or purple flowers we saw blooming but when you stop visiting places like this for a long period of time, don't pay any particular attention over those years to the growth around you, those names, the ability to identify plants leaves you.

And sadly, that's exactly what has happened to me.

I saw some lovely little white blooms as well as some tiny purple and lavender ones too but I couldn't tell you now what plants they were from! I saw the bushes along the roadside beginning to turn from the winter brown to the lovely light green shade and I'm pretty sure many of them will be producing a great crop of huckleberries this summer. I "think" I can still recognize those plants! I know I did see some leaves of some other vine type things growing in and around those bushes and I'm pretty sure they were wild strawberry plants getting their foothold in the ground again.

But when it is time to go pick those things, those bushes, those fir trees and other ground cover growth will then be so thick along the road that it will be hard to reach in and pick their succulent fruits because by then, the wildlife of the area will be out then too. And those woods are really full of creepy crawly things that I hate and am also terrified of encountering one of 'em too -copperheads and rattlesnakes!

Funny isn't it though, how -when I was a kid -my friends and I would take our little pails and head down that road and pick berries with very little fear of those creatures! Usually, we would have one adult with us -for protection and to beat the bushes a bit to roust out any unwanted snakes -but I know and fully understand today why my Mom -and my Grandmother too -were always worried from the time my pals and I would leave on one of these berry-picking expeditions until we got back home with no bites on us other than from some pesky mosquitos or insects of that type.

But these days, I'll enjoy going for walks down there, along that road and trying to imagine what it may have been like there well over a hundred years ago when my Grandfather was growing up in that ghost town and how different the sights there are today than from when he saw them.

Hard to imagine a young boy of 9 or 10 years of age going out and picking berries after having put in a full workday -10 hours or so -loading coal into the mine cars and leading the mules out of the mines, pulling their heavy loads behind them, isn't it?

But that's what life was like back then for him and for many, many other youngsters his age and up. Work from dawn until the late afternoon and then come home and tend to a garden or go picking berries and other things from the woods around them to sustain them with fresh food during the summer months and through the hard work of canning and preserving those items, food to keep them nourished through the long, cold months ahead.

I don't know about you but it makes me marvel that they had that strength to persevere, to push on, to harvest any and all foods they could.

How many of us today could do that? How many of the children today would even be willing to do all that?

All of that makes me very thankful that they could and did and also, that today, we don't have to endure that much work, that kind of hardship, in order to have fresh food to eat.

Enjoy the produce on your tables today and remember how hard our ancestors had to work to have the bounty of the land around them to carry them through.

Aroma Abounds!

Ah, how sweet it is -the smell, that is of pork and sauerkraut cooking away in the oven!

This is one dish I really love -especially with a good helping of brown sugar mixed in with the sauerkraut that adds so much flavor and zest to the dish then too.

The drawback to this meal though -it means because Maya and Kurt wouldn't think of touching pork and kraut with a ten-foot pole, ya know, that I will have to make something else that they will eat for supper then. Picky, picky kids! When my kids were little, my tag line was "Sit up, shut up and eat what's on the table cause I'm not running a freaking restaurant here!" As a result, all three of my kids grew up to be pretty easy to please where food is concerned. Mandy is the only one with a specific thing she hates -that being onions -and Clate isn't overly fond of raw tomatoes although he loves pastas with tomato sauces of all types on that! Go figure, huh?

Another drawback to eating sauerkraut though, as you can well imagine I suppose, is that it can and often does, create digestion issues for a lot of folks. Amazingly enough, even though I had colo-rectal cancer seven years ago and since then, have also even had a colostomy, this is one food that didn't before the diagnoses nor since then either, given me a lot of issues. I know some people though who, if they eat this stuff, are ready to start checking out colon cleansing reviews among other things if they were to indulge in this type of meal!

A little side note here too -the other day when I was walking Sammy, one of my neighbors complained to me about him and asked that I please not let him run along the bank in front of their house and also, to keep him from watering the posts along their steps down to their house as she says "It smells, and draws their dog to it!" Her suggestion was that I keep him on a shorter rein when I walk him.

Well, today when we went out, I tried doing that with Sam but the poor dog was wheezing very quickly from my having to hold him in so close, so tightly and I found that it was also forcing me to almost run beside him when I had him held in that close -plus almost tripping me too because he was virtually right beside or almost under my feet then too.

I generally take him with me to walk and go pick up our mail then and I like to walk him along our road up to the mail boxes because it is just a nice length for our walk -about 1.3 miles round trip. Plus, our road is flat too so it doesn't then involve my trying to climb any hills along the way.

However, I guess I will have to resort to going around the other road to go pick up the mail if I plan on walking him then but that's gonna be a killer route for me as there is a very long hill involved in that route as well as another hill too that is shorter but steeper that I'll have to climb. If I thought this walk with him today had me winded, I can hardly wait to see what condition I'll be in if we take this other road! Not just winded but I know it will have a drastic side effect too on my ankles, knees, hip joints and back being really stiff and sore then too!

Oh well, what the heck else am I to do?

I know I do need the exercise -for sure -and so does he plus he needs the extra length of the leash as well to give him a chance to run, explore and enjoy the outdoors time. Guess I'll just have to bite that bullet then, won't I?

Problems and Solutions

I don't know if I should broach this subject here or not but it's something that's on my mind and I'd like to know how others feel about this issue, and what they would do, or perhaps have done if they experienced the same problem(s).

Can we talk? I mean, really talk, get real and be honest about something that has been bothering me, on my mind -whatever is left of that entity anyway.

The topic I'd like to discuss is lack of or loss of trust in a relationship, the effect it can then have on libido and why "significant others" can't understand how the former can cause problems with the latter!

In talking to a very close friend recently, she confided to me that she had lost all desire to DO anything with her husband. In discussing this a bit further, she also confided that there had been some serious problems over the past couple of years that had escalated -a whole lot -recently and although he had sought help for the issues he had that had begun this erosion, she found herself now unable to respond to him at all.

Having been in a similar situation myself -many years ago -it brought back a lot of painful memories to me.

I recall at the time, my partner was drinking more and more and also, doing a lot of other side activities -womanizing -with the result being I found myself losing any desire to have sex with him.

My withdrawal in that respect then created other issues -mainly that was a lot of emotional abuse. Accusations of infidelity, yes. Constant criticism of my parenting skills, my cooking skills, my housekeeping skills, my inability to have a job that paid any where near what he earned also became a target.

After about 2-3 years of the constant berating, my own self-esteem was lower than low and with it, also any desire to have sex with him at all and it sure didn't give me any ideas about picking up with anyone else either seeing as everything about me was deemed as totally unacceptable. (Oh and there were also a lot of charges levied about my abilities in the bedroom too -which doesn't exactly work to make a person feel like doing anything.

Why is it when one person in a relationship does something or a series of things that damage the relationship, create extra problems and stress, but then that person realizes maybe there was something wrong in those actions and takes a few steps to correct them, they also immediately think that everything that was going wrong or haywire before is now going to be automatically corrected and all will then just, presto magic, return to everything being just fine and dandy, as if nothing ever happened?

Or is it just me who feels this way about the damage a loss of trust can do and how it doesn't heal and things return to normalcy overnight?

Back when these things happened in my marriage, I really was on the verge of losing a good bit, if not all, of my sanity and I went for counseling. The counselor I saw at that time suggested something to me that actually was a lifeline, a real mind-saver, for me: Al-Anon!

Realizing that I was far from alone with those feelings of total inadequacy eventually helped me to begin the restoration process of my self-esteem as well as to bolster my courage too.

Granted, it wasn't enough to heal the depth of the wounds in our relationship and eventually we divorced, but it was enough for me to get myself a little bit back on track and back to some semblence of normalcy then -and I've used the tenets of Al-Anon and AA in my life as much as possible ever since then.

But,how can I help my friend? Simply telling her that I had experienced a lot of the same feelings back then -would that be enough?

What I'd really like to know is how anyone else may have handled the lack of desire issues that frequently come about from having the trust in a relationship broken.

And, do men and women both react the same way in circumstances such as these too?

My friend right now isn't sure what she wants to do -stay with him or as my daughters would say "Kick him to the curb?" She doesn't really WANT a divorce but at the same time, she's just not sure that she really can find the feelings needed to repair the damage that's been done to the relationship -especially since now he is exhibiting a lot of jealousy and accusing her of infidelity. After all, if she doesn't want to have sex with him, she MUST be getting it somewhere else, ya know.

I was looking online tonight, trying to find some information I could give her that might help her make some very tough decisions.

One thing I read was "Women give sex to gain love and men give love to gain sex" and you know, I do believe there is a whole lot of truth to that statement.

The crux of what few items I found on the topic of loss of trust and loss of libido that suggested stress, infidelity, various types of abuse could create what my friend is experiencing was that counseling was a good starting place. (Most of the articles I found suggested that for women, this generally is a hormonal type problem or one being caused by taking anti-depressants, or from recent childbirth or obesity. Hmmmm. I found that really sad as in my mind it makes too much of the blame then laid back on the woman in the relationship.)

So come on and let's talk about this issue, will you?

Remember too, if you're afraid to discuss this because you don't want anyone to know you've had issues or feelings like these, you can always comment anonymously.

What would you tell someone who you are very close to if they came to you and told you they were having a problem like this anyway?

Wrap-up on the Week!

It's been another of those weeks -busy! Birthdays, funerals, church committee meeting -and walks with Sammy have kept me moving outside the house, as well as inside in addition, of course, to the current embroidery project. Always something in the works in the needlecraft department or so it seems.

Monday was the day-early celebration of Kurt's fourth birthday -as I wrote about on my previous post.

Tuesday was working at the church to serve a funeral dinner for the family of a 91-year-old lady, who had been a member of our church.

Wednesday I was out to church again for a meeting of the Social Ministry Committee, of which I am now the Chair Person. My first meeting in that position and it was more just a review of stuff and trying to learn more about what all our group is supposed to attend to and what my specific responsibilities would be in that context then.

Today, we are supposed to go to Bellefonte for some kind of band concert there in which my older grandson -"the Prince" (Sir Alex) is participating. Should be interesting as the last band concert of his we attended was I think two years ago and the kids did a great job that year. (Alex plays the trumpet and has done quite well learning that instrument. Makes his old Gram very proud and I'm quite sure our Aunt Mike is looking down on him with even more pleasure and admiration than ever before too. She had a huge soft spot in her heart for him -and he, for her as well. Not too many kids can say they knew their Great-Great-Aunt as well as he knew her.)

The embroidery project this week is another tabletopper -which to answer a question someone asked me earlier this week simply means it is a small tablecloth, squared in size, usually between 31 by 31 inches up to as large as 36 by 36 inches. (For the center of a table, or a card table or use on a round bed table or living room decor.) This one is called "Proud Rooster" and it consists of a rooster, embroidered very colorfully, in each corner, done in cross stitching. It also has a matching table runner in the set which shouldn't take all that long to do that up too. This set, along with another tabletopper of small cross stitched flowers are all for my cousin, Ruth Ann, down in Austin, Texas. I'm looking forward to completing this and getting it shipped off to her as she's waiting there, patiently, for me to complete them.

Just got a phone call too that I have to be at church this coming Tuesday afternoon for a meeting with the WELCA (Women's group) for us to have a "work party" -meaning cleaning the social hall and to get things lined up, ready to go for the Spring Garden Party our group is sponsoring. Anyone in the vicinity of Lanse, Pennsylvania on May 1st, stop by our church between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. for a really nice luncheon and a chance to select from various plants and other gardening items we will have on sale there. This event, along with the Fall Bazaar we have the first Saturday in November are the two big fund raisers of our organization and the monies raised from them are then used to provide various things around the church throughout the year. All in all, a darned good benefit event in all respects -good food, lots of fellowship time with old friends, a way to make and meet some new friends and a lot of fun too!

The latest little humor event involving the kids was last evening and involved Kurtis.

Maya had requested that I fix tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches -a very simple meal -for us for supper. The key word there being "simple" and it filled the bill fine and dandy for me. When I served the kids their food, Maya dug in immediately and did quite well in polishing off her sandwich as well as her soup. When she was finished, she put her dirty dishes then in the sink for me.

Kurtis, on the other hand, proceeded to pull his sandwich apart and then, using his index finger, sort of tried to lick off most of the melted cheese from each part of the bread. Once he got as much of the cheese eaten away like that, he then tried to dunk the bread into his soup a couple of times. Then he decided he was finished and left the table. A few minutes later, I went out to the dining room and kitchen to get a damp rag to wipe the sloppage from the soup and bread crumbs from the table but his plate and soup bowl were not there on the table. I checked the sink and saw he had put his plate in the sink but there was no trace of the soup bowl to be found anywhere. I hunted high and low for it but to no avail -even checking the garbage can for it as he has been known on occasion to put his dirty silverware as well as sometimes even dirty dishes in the can but no trace of it there either.

When the son-in-law came home and was going to fix himself a grilled tuna and cheese sandwich to accompany a bowl of the soup, I mentioned to him to keep an eye out for the missing bowl too. And about that time, I opened the drawer in the cupboard where I keep the kids silverware as well as their small bowls for various things and what was there? Why it was the missing soup bowl! Not clean, of course, as it still had a lot of traces in it of the tomato soup but instead of putting the bowl in the sink or at least on the counter by the sink, it's become his habit now to put dirty dishes he's used back in the drawer where I store the clean ones!

Well, at least I will know ahead of time now if a dish or bowl goes missing that he has been using to save myself some time and energy -and not get all antsy hunting for things -by just looking in that drawer first!

And that's what's been keeping me moving here for the past week, what will be on my agenda too for the coming week.

Now, what's new in your world these days too?

Change the Date, Please!

It's a big day in the household today!

Kurtis is four years old today so, in celebration of that event, we had our little family dinner and party for him last night. He had told Mandy he wanted a Spiderman cake but I had already planned to make him a Banana Split Cake for his big event so we told him the chocolate squiggles on the top of the whipped cream were Spiderman's webs and he seemed okay then with that idea.

Actually, he was so excited over seeing the Spiderman candle -just one -in the middle of the "cake" I don't think he gave it a second thought.

All was going very nicely with the cake, the singing of Happy Birthday and all that, including the presents. He was so excited, opening his gifts until he had a little problem getting the last package from Aunt Carrie out of the bottom of the Spiderman gift bag. So Maya tried to give him some assistance.

That worked fine until it came to the package from Uncle Clate and Aunt Betty that he had some problems with the scotch tape on it and again, Maya was coming to the rescue. However, after she got the tape removed, she wanted to keep on opening the gift and we told her that she needed to give it back to Kurtis so HE could finish opening it.

And that's about when the trouble began!

It was about at that point that she realized that he was the one receiving the gifts and that there were none for her -even though Aunt Carrie had brought a separate package of Play-Do with her so that Maya did have a little something new too. But Maya didn't see things that way. Not at all!

Judging by the volume unleashed in her crying, one would have thought she was being beaten within an inch of her life and you'd have expected that both faucets of the tear ducts on this kid had to have been opened full steam!

She wailed, ranted, screamed -yep, had one royal hissy fit that rapidly expanded into a massive meltdown.

Insisting that today was her birthday -not Kurtis -was the main theme and then, she went on to try to tell us that her birthday was this or that date in April but certainly not in October. All the while, she kept sobbing that she didn't get a present and why didn't she get a present and no explanation in the world about how Aunt Carrie had brought her a package of play-do too was acceptable.
Here's the saddest little girl ever helping her little brother celebrate his fourth birthday! (Be thankful this is not a video with sound too cause the noise she was making was really deafening, trust me!)

After trying and trying to soothe her, to get her to understand that she can't just arbitrarily change the date of her own birthday, Mandy finally gave up on getting her to quiet down and ended up taking her into the bathroom, changing her into her pajamas and sending her to bed.

Truthfully, I think she was a bit overtired from having had some playtime outside earlier in the day and before supper and was just unable to unwind from it all so that the presents and watching/helping Kurtis with his gifts was just enough then to send her over the edge because very quickly, after going up to bed, the house was quiet and no small child was screaming, crying, wailing or moaning in disappointment.

I'm trying to upload two videos -one of Kurtis singing Happy Birthday to himself, along with the rest of the family and the other is of him opening his presents, up until the time that Maya decided to take offense at the whole procedure. However, YouTube is taking forever in uploading those videos so I'll have to post them later on another post.

Slight Mispronunciation

Sunday morning, Mandy had to go and unlock the bar for the cleaning person to be able to go in and do his thing.

Because I wasn't up yet and neither was the SIL, she took Kurtis with her.

They got in her car and she started to back out onto the road when Kurtis suddenly pointed to his Dad's pickup truck -a big red Dodge Ram -and said to Mandy, "Big Sh--ty truck."

Needless to say, she was a bit taken back by this statement from him. Where the heck had he heard that anyway? (This is an instance where my vocabulary had no bearing whatsoever on this story. Completely innocent, I swear that!)

So, when she came home, she relayed this story to both Bill and to me and we all got a big chuckle out of this -especially when Bill explained that he wasn't really saying what she thought he was saying.

Seems the little guy has been laboring over the delusion that his Dad's pickup truck is a "Chevy" (although his dad has been trying to tell him no, it's a Dodge Ram) but anyway, it turns out that's the way Kurtis says Chevy!

Now I was thinking about this a bit -and wouldn't it be nice if we could apply that word though to actually describe some vehicles that are maybe a bit older, a little on the worn side, etc. -especially when applying for that wonderful old auto insurance?

After all, giving one's vehicle a bit of a derogatory description surely should work to lower the insurance payment, don't 'cha think?

Works for me anyway!

Taking a Break

I finished another tabletopper today. This is the seventh one I've done now since the end of January. And, now I started working this evening on number eight!

Sorry, but I don't have any pictures taken of the most recent one but here's the one I got completed earlier this week. This is the one I should and could have had finished over two weeks ago but the kit didn't have enough floss of one color to complete it and a second kit I had purchased -same identical design, etc. -well that kit was missing the very color that was a bit short in the first kit.

Anyway, this one was to be a birthday present for my good friend and neighbor, Shirley. Her birthday was last Wednesday and I didn't get the floss color I needed to complete it until this past Monday so I took it with me to our monthly meeting at church of our women's group (WELCA) and gave it to her then -only a week late but this time, it was no fault of mine for being tardy.
Here's the full view of the "Cardinal" Tabletopper and below is a view of just one corner of the piece.
The one I finished today -took two weeks to do it -was also done in cross stitch as is the one I started this evening. These two will be sent to my cousin down in Austin, Texas.

But let me tell you something now. I'm not really a fast stitcher when it comes to cross stitching -and heaven forbid I would be working on counted cross stitch, cause I really slow down when doing that stuff cause it makes me feel like I'm gonna be totally cross-eyed when I'm done.

But tonight now -I had to take a little break from my stitching action cause my right hand was starting to cramp up a tad. I think the last time my hand was this stiff from doing something was when I was helping Mandy write out invitations to her wedding. My penmanship is not something to write home about to begin with, so I have to really take my sweet time and be ultra careful to make every letter legible ya know, so addressing all those invitations was really a heck of a chore for me. (I'm just thankful that they didn't want all their wedding napkins all hand-written too or I would really have been in big trouble in ever using my right hand again then, huh?)

So now, the tabletopper I am currently involved with is one that is also "for the birds" -except this one has a big rooster in each corner of the cloth. And when I get the tabletopper done, it also has a table runner that goes with the kit that I get to do as well.

The fabric for this set though is such that it's about as stiff to poke the needle through as my hand had become working on it which makes picking up any amount of steam and speed a bit rough.

Once I get this set finished, you can bet your bottom dollar my project after that will be a couple things that are all embroidery stitches and no cross stitching involved -at all!

And, after working on cross stitching first cardinals and now roosters, I'm probably gonna be crowing too, come to think of it!

English, Please!

My son -as well as my son-in-law -are both fanatics when it comes to cars! I suppose I may as well go back a generation too and include my ex-husband in that category as well because he was pretty much in that category too.

Well, my SIL and my ex-husband were both mechanics with respect to their employment but my son -he just loves cars and Volkswagons in particular, come to think of it.

Most of the time I don't have that much of a problem with this stuff that is, until my son and the SIL get to talking technical terminology about cars and parts and different types of work that has to be done to this, that or some other vehicle.

When they start that stuff, they could very easily say they needed a ls2208 and I would never know the difference if that was a legitimate thing for a vehicle or some other item or even if they were speaking in a totally different language.

And that same bit carries over to people in computer technician type jobs as well. When they start going on about different computer terms, under the assumption that simply because I have a computer, I understand, automatically, what they are talking about, they just don't ever get it then when I say, "English, Please!"

No comprende the automotive or computerese or even legalese (attorney-speak) stuff ya know!

Excuses, Excuses!

Anyone here remember a song from way back that had the line in it "Please Mr. Custer, I don't wanna go?" I don't remember the name of it or what it was about although I think it was supposed to be the voice of an Indian guide or some such for General Custer for his Last Stand.

Anyway, that line has been popping in and out of my mind for oh, the past two weeks now. It revisits me every time I start thinking about the next round of surgery that I gather I'll have to end up having sometime in the future.

Nothing as been resolved as yet whether I will have "just" a hysterectomy -which most likely would be done at the local hospital -or if I will have to go back to Pittsburgh to have that surgery along with the hernia repair.

I am not happy about either aspect here -just really don't want any surgery, at all, is a big part of my issue right now.

But every time I give thought to going back down to Pittsburgh, my mind gets overwhelmed with other thoughts too -like maybe if we were to encounter a travel emergency of some sort on the way down or back, what would or could we do? And then there's all the prep one has to do before having any kind of abdominal surgery and I hate the thought of that.

Plus, hospitals generally tend to want to have you admitted at obscene hours in the early morning too -like 6 or 7 a.m. -and even if I only have the one type of surgery and have it done locally, that still means I'd have to be up, awake (or at least semi-awake), showered and dressed before 6:30 a.m. and that means very little sleep then for me with my crazy late nite hours. And heaven forbid I'd have to go to Pittsburgh cause then we'd have to leave here around 3 a.m. to arrive there on time.

See what I mean about why then that darned line from that song has become very much of an ear worm these days to me.

Late for the Late One!

How many people do you know who can tell you where they were -exactly -almost on an hourly basis too, on a specific day many years ago?

Sure, those of us who were around in the 60s can usually recall where we were, what we were doing too on November 22, 1963 -the day President Kennedy was assassinated but what about some other date?

Take for example, April 6, 1967 -43 years ago. Do you know what you were doing on that date?

I do -boy, do I ever. And I can detail much of that day from about 6 a.m. until around midnight that night too.

Why?

Because that's the day my first child, my daughter, Carrie, was born!

Although I actually have a lot of photographs of her over the years, I don't have very many of her that I have on my computer -mainly cause I have yet to get around to scanning ALL those old pictures into my computer! Not because I didn't take many pictures of her over the years -far from that!

I had planned to do a post about her on her 43rd birthday but well, things just sort of got away from me and so, here I am, running a couple hours behind schedule, writing this just for her, on her big day.
Here's one of the oldest pictures I have on my computer of Carrie -taken in 1969, when she was a mere two years old. There are so many things about Carrie when she was little that I see just about every day now surfacing in Maya! Not only does Maya look almost like a clone of her aunt, she also often acts a lot like Aunt Carrie too. (Kind of scary, that stuff, ya know!)
This picture taken in 1980 at our Eld Family Reunion that year is one she may possibly go through the roof and never speak to me again for posting it, so I'm taking one big chance showing this here. Shown on the picture from left to right -Bill, Brett and Barbara Donaldson, Carrie, Mandy, me, Clate and my Mom's brother and his wife, Ralph and Hazel Eld. (Barb Donaldson is my first cousin and the only child of my Uncle Ralph.) In this picture, Carrie has on a pair of rainbow striped suspenders that she won at the reunion in one of the games for the kids and this past Christmas, Mandy found a set of suspenders like these on E-bay, I think, bought them and gave them to Carrie for a special "memory" Christmas present.
The above photo of all three of my children -Carrie, Clate and Mandy -was taken in 2001 and was the special Christmas present my kids gave me that year. I love this picture of the three of them together, especially with Carrie and Clate each having their hand on the next younger sibling. I had one other picture of the three kids together, taken when Mandy was just a baby, but unfortunately, it was damaged, the frame broke, the photo got wet and some of it stuck to the broken glass and now, we can't even find it! Carrie has been on a mission of sorts of late, trying to locate that photo and see if she can take it someplace and perhaps get it repaired and restored but so far, all the searches for it have come up empty. I don't recall the name of the studio that did that portrait of the kids -just that the photographer came to the house and posed the kids -all decked out in their finest apparel, ya know. And wouldn't you just know but it was the ONLY picture from the shots he took that was purchased because the day they brought the proofs around to pick from, I was at work and my Mom, who knew the purchase deal on those pics and also knew that we were pretty broke at the time and really couldn't afford to order a bunch of those photos, chose one pose so that we didn't have a big expense then from buying a lot of photos. (Yeah, she knew me all too well that I probably would have bought several other pics and would probably have gone into hock to pay for them too, if need be.) So that's why there's no other photos from that session available to us today -unless somehow or other, I could ever remember the name of the studio that did those pics back then. Fat chance of that happening too, ya know!)

Moving a long a few years -in 2003, this was Carrie the day she first met Maya -who was about two weeks old by then.

This picture, taken in 2005 when their Dad came to visit for a couple of days, is Clate, "Dad" and Carrie. And I really like the smile on her face in this one.
And this shot -taken at the same time as the one above, is Mandy, holding Maya, Dad, Carrie and her son, Alex -my "prince" (as you may recall that's my nickname for the older grandson.
This photo, taken in July of 2009 at the memorial service for my aunt, Isabel Hill, is of Mandy, me, grandson Alex (the Prince) and of course, his mother, Carrie.
Last but not least -and this one is I think, probably gonna be a surprise to her as it was taken by my cousin Ruth Ann at her Mom's memorial service in July of 2009 and I don't recall if I ever even showed it before to Carrie.

But this is my oldest -my firstborn -and is very much what she still looks like almost 2 years later too.

She sometimes thinks I pass over her, that I favor her brother over her and her sister and little quirks like that -something I suppose many kids tend to believe about their parents and the status they may hold within the family.

But no matter what, she's always gonna be my favorite older daughter and is number one in my book!

Care Bear -My apologies for the lateness of this post -but you, above all of you kids should appreciate the old slogan "better late than never" ya know.

Considering the fact that you were late arriving in this world -like a week overdue -and I've often said that you've been late ever since then too.

Hope you had a great birthday -and remember, Mom did bake a cake this past Saturday, just for your birthday celebration too. Right? That should count for a little something, don't 'cha think?

You're the leader of this dysfunctional pack of siblings and such -a job you didn't ask for but got it plunked in your lap anyway -to keep your siblings and yourself as tightly knit as possible now and in the future as well. So far, you've been doing a pretty darned good job with that assignment and I know you'll continue to do all within your power to see that the three of you and now, the grandkids too, are as close as close can be for each other.

Love you, my baby girl.

You sure do make your old Mom very proud -just one beautiful young woman!

Monday Blues (or Bitchy?)

Anyone here ever get "the blues" -and I'm not referring to the music and "getting" that?

Anyone here get depressed -and if I don't get some "yes" replies to that then I'll know several people right off the top who apparently aren't reading my blog or are telling fibs then along the way?

Now, is anyone here willing to admit to getting bitchy and really, for no real reason either?

I think, at my age, I am beyond the PMS thing. One would hope that being post-menopausal would bring something besides not having to purchase sanitary products every month, don't 'cha think? Or maybe I was expecting too much from menopause and instead I got hot flashes which never showed up when it was cold and/or I was freezing.

I woke up this morning anticipating that we (Mandy, the kids and I) were gonna go to either State College or to Dubois to do a little shopping. For me, it was mainly so I could go to Joann Fabrics and get some embroidery floss I need in order to complete the "Cardinal" tabletopper that I ran out of one particular color I needed to complete it and then, when I opened another kit -identical kit, that is -thinking I could "borrow" that color I needed from that kit, don't you just know that color was missing completely. I called the manufacturer of the kits and complained, asked them to please replace the missing floss -which by that time really called for them to replace two skeins of floss because the first kit was missing a particular color too but I just happened to have that color skein in my stash boxes so I had used my own floss there.

Well that was two weeks ago today since I placed that call and the lady I spoke to said they would be happy to send those two skeins out to me -to replace what had been missing in each kit and I still haven't received that floss. How long does it take to send something that small from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania anyway? Sheesh, I could darned near have walked to Wisconsin and be well on my way back to get the damned floss if I'd known it was gonna take this long. (I had even told the lady I really needed the stuff too as I wanted to finish this project by last Wednesday in order to give it to a friend for her birthday that day.

But here it is now April 5th and the piece is still unfinished and I still have two birthday cards (one for my good friend and the other for her husband too -their birthdays are a day apart) sitting in my china cabinet waiting for me to get the damned floss, finish the tabletopper and then, deliver it and the cards to my friend and her husband -almost a week late now, but well, better late than never, or so they say anyway.

I thought I had this dilemma resolved Saturday though as I had asked older daughter, since she was going over to State College (where there is a Joann Fabrics Store) to pick up the two colors I needed and bring them up with her and her fiance and her son when they came up for supper Saturday evening. She had called me from the store and I gave her instructions or rather, directions, as to where the embroidery products are located in the store and then, step-by-step instructions as to where and how to find the two colors I needed. However, you know what "they" say about the best laid plans of mice and men, don't you? And now you can also figure out that something happened to those two skeins of floss along the way that they didn't quite make it to my house.

Seems her fiance -who is a bit of a neat freak and obsessed with everything being totally neat and tidy, had -in his rush to clear out the little bitty things (like small bags and such) that had come into their house, that he gathered up papers and burned them -not realizing that in the midst of that stuff was this little bag from Joann Fabrics with those two darned skeins of floss I needed!

Crap! Actions like that tend to make me think maybe there is a good side to being a hoarder after all. At least things that are needed don't get pitched into the garbage then anyway. Okay, I know -nothing gets tossed if one is a hoarder but well, that's beside the point here, isn't it?

I really don't know what to blame my current frame of mind or mood on today though.

Is it that I am just kind of ticked off because last night the SIL "borrowed" my jeep to go to my son's place (so he and some of his buds could have a "jam" session of their so-called band they think is gonna be the rage in the near future) and didn't come home until almost 2 a.m? Or that I had just put gas in the gas-hog jeep on Saturday and he burned off a quarter of a tank using my little buggy all day yesterday? (To that idea I say dream on but then I think too oh shoot, everyone has to have a dream of some kind, don't they? And just because I don't particularly care for heavy metal crapola doesn't mean they aren't half-decent at playing it either, does it? How the hell would I know anyway if they were decent or half-decent or maybe, indecent at playing that kind of music since it all pretty much sounds alike to me. Sheesh -I'm sounding like my mother there in her interpretation of everything rock'n'roll, 40 to 50 years ago!

"Noise, just noise, that's all it sounds like to me" is what she always said. And although I try, really I do, to be fair about all types of music as much as possible, I really do not like the heavy metal stuff and I don't care to listen to the rap stuff either as they both tend to hit my ears as being just "noise" ya see.

Or am I just having a bit of a snit because last nite, Mandy decided she wanted to go down to the bar where she works to spend a little fun time with a few of the patrons there and before leaving, she had mentioned to me she had hoped the SIL would have been home before she left so that way, I could have gone along with her, could have gotten out of the house and around some real live adults for a little bit of beer guzzling perhaps and some supposedly scintillating conversation too in the process?

Instead, she didn't come home then till almost 2 a.m. too as they both (her and her husband) were camped out then at my son's place, have great rapport with him. More of that scintillating conversation I missed ya know.

Or was my mood today coming from the fact that Mandy announced shortly after I got up that if I gave her the information of the stuff I wanted/needed, she would pick it up for me as she and the kids were going over to State College to visit a friend of hers there and she could stop by Joann Fabrics then and get the stuff for me. No word about US going over there together and getting a chance to look around a bit, do a little shopping maybe. No. What I heard there was "You stay home Mom and I'll pick up what you need." No, she didn't say that, but that's what my inner hearing picked up on then.

Granted, most of the time when she goes out -to Clearfield, State College, Dubois, etc. -I tend to just stay home and give her a little note where I have written things I may need her to pick up for me. Much of the time I really am not that gung ho about getting out of the house and going places and shopping isn't really a pasttime I am totally interested in -just when the mood hits me, pretty much. So I suppose it's understandable that she didn't think I was interested in going any place today cause I usually don't want to be bothered, to have my time to embroider interrupted like that.

So why did these things all of a sudden decide to annoy me anyway?

Why did so many other things suddenly really piss me off today too? (Or why do somethings regularly tick me off and nothing ever gets changed even when I make mention of these piddling things too?)

Things like no one seems able to clean up the sugar they spill -daily -on the kitchen counter while spooning some sugar into their coffee but they leave it for me to have to wipe it up, after it gets sticky then too from some other itty-bitty spill near by that region.

Why is putting a new roll of toilet paper seemingly a task of rocket science caliber that no one can do that?

Why, with one litter box in the bathroom, very closely parked near the commode, can't anyone just scoop out the crap when you see there is a little bit in there instead of leaving it accumulate for someone else -usually me -to sift it and dump it in the commode and then have to plunge and re-plunge the commode afterwards in order for the damned thing to flush it away?

Why, now that all nine of these damned kittens here have learned how to climb up the mesh netting of the pac'n'play where they are supposed to be -contained - and they are also now eating cat food too (which means too that they are pushing that stuff out the other end about as quickly as they ingest it too) and since of course, they are not yet litter-trained, there are little trails of their gifts being left hither, thither and yon and yet, no one else seems able to grab some paper towels and gather that crap up and then, spray a little cleaner on the area of the floor and wipe up a little after these little beasts? ARRGH!

I just remopped the kitchen floor late last night -prior to going to bed -because of some of their lovely little packages having been left behind and this morning, when I got up, I damned near had to re-mop the stinking floor all over again.

Fake grass -the "Easter basket grass" ya know -all over the living room floor last night as well as in the dining room and kitchen and who got to clean that mess up? Don't even have to wonder, do ya?

And the thing is, those who know me will probably wonder why this stuff is bugging me so much because I don't have the reputation of being a total neat freak -not in the least. I've always been more of the demeanor of waiting for my fairy godmother to show up and clean for me or whatever needed done could and would wait until I got in the mood to do it.

And now, the things that are irritating me -little bitty things -many of them tend to be about cleaning things up. Why all of a sudden this turn-around in my methodology anyway?

I never wanted to become my mother!

The first time I heard myself yelling at my older daughter to put some slippers or shoes on because I had a hard enough time getting socks to come clean without her grinding more dirt into them set me back a notch then as I had this thought of "where have I heard that before?" And that's when it came to me that OMG, I was turning into my mother! Heaven forbid and perish that thought!

And yet, all too often, it seems the things that annoy me, niggle away at my inner being, are all these petty little things that yes, make me think I am my mother now, aren't I?

Oh please, don't let that be so. Please, please, please!

I get annoyed at being left alone and yet, when I can't get a minute's peace and quiet some days, then I get annoyed because I can't be left alone.

Honestly, I hate being alone! Always have disliked that immensely and I attribute that to my having been an only child and hating that aspect of my life when I was a kid, a teen, and yes, all through my adult life and now, as a senior citizen -I still don't like it any better now than I did at all those other stages, long past now in my life.

I used to enjoy cooking but any more, it hits me as drudgery. Unless I know that I am cooking a meal that has been requested by specific item or for a specific occasion, then I am back to liking doing that for a little bit anyway.

I used to love to experiment, to try new recipes -especially cookies or cakes, pies and stuff like that -but sheesh, now it seems anything I cook or think I'd like to cook is all stuff I am supposed to be staying clear of because of high cholesterol or sugar or too many carbs and too much weight of the few pounds I did manage to lose (all 8 of 'em ya know) come flying right back to me then. Just takes all the damned fun out of the kitchen for sure then!

Then there's my bedroom which is so bloody small one barely has room to turn around in it and it looks pretty much, because of all the important stuff I have stashed in there -clothes plus all kinds of craft stuff (necessities, ya know) and books and you name it, that there's barely enough room there for my sewing machine and not really enough room there to actually use it comfortably.

I think about just dragging the sewing machine out and putting it in a corner in the dining room -where at least, it would be semi-accessible but to do that would mean moving the kids toy box to some other place and that would lead to more toys being strewn all over the dining room and living room instead of most of them being a tad more contained in the dining room. An untenable issue for sure and the only solution I can see would be to build a nice, medium-sized bedroom on to the back of the house where I could have my bed, a big enough closet for my OWN clothes only, enough space to be able to store my craft stuff in a semi-organized fashion plus put my computer in there, along with my sewing machine (of course) and heck, while I'm at it, why not make room to move the Hammond organ that I got from my late aunt's estate in there too, since I'm really the only one who knows anything about playing it (and not all that much either, for that matter.)

What's wrong with that idea anyway? Well, for openers, there definitely isn't enough money in this household available to build even an outhouse -a very rough one at that -much less add on a nice sized room too!

What the hell is it with this stupid money factor anyway that it appears that it is gonna follow me to the grave of never having an adequate amount of the stuff, much less any extra, to be able to do anything, ever!???

Oh and to go back a notch here in my rantings and ramblings, let's address the lonely factor again.

A couple weeks back, when I had finally decided to call it a day (or a night) and crawled into bed, it was a night that was a bit on the nippy side and my room isn't known to be a warm room -except in the summer when it becomes stifling hot there -so when I laid my fat behind down, the sheets were cold as were my feet. And I found myself kind of wishing that I had a bed partner ya know. That was one thing nice about my ex-husband in that his body was always pretty much like a furnace and as a result, the bed was always warm. (Not hot the way he would have preferred but at least to me, it was a warm place) And anyway, that was the last thing on my mind that night as I drifted off to sleep.

Imagine my surprise then when, a couple hours later I woke up feeling something -a body no less -laying beside me, by my backside and it was a bit of a jolt at first to my system. What the heck was this anyway? And then I realized it was just silly little Sammy, who normally hops up on the foot of the bed when I go to sleep but for some reason or other, there he was, laying beside me, snuggled up against my back.

Maybe that was God's answer to my dilemma about not like to sleep alone, huh? What's your take on that idea anyway?

So now that I have addressed some of these little things that annoy me I'm thinking, since I have some meatballs in the crockpot cooking now for supper, and by bitching about this stupid stuff here (plus, having dug out a little celexa tablet that I took about an hour ago to maybe alleviate my blues today a tad) that I'll do something else now that might solve some of these issues.

I'm gonna put my shoes on and take Sam out for our walk first off.

Then, I'm gonna gather up my purse and a little list of what things I think I absolutely have to get, put a little more gas in the jeep (which will then deplete how much extra cash I have to spend, of course) and I'm gonna head on over to Dubois then to hit the Joann Fabrics store there and get the floss I have to have (plus maybe a few more skeins of some other colors too) and when I come back home after having been out among the public for a little while even though odds are I won't see anyone I know over there so no chance for scintillating conversation then ya know) perhaps when I get back home and finish getting supper ready, I won't be quite as inclined then to hurry up and gather up 9 kittens, one almost fully grown Tom-kitten plus two Mama cats and take the whole lot of 'em to the pound!

Cause right now, the frame of mind I'm in, that is one thing I am sorely tempted to do!

Well, it would eliminate one form of crapola here anyway, wouldn't it?

But then, maybe, just maybe, that Joann Fabrics store will have some nice scents there in one corner with the candles and potpourri and such that it will take over my senses and make me all calm, quiet, relaxed and ready to face the nit-picky things that have me enduring a case of the Monday Blues Bitchings today!

It could happen that way, ya know!

Disciplinary Decisions

One of the hardest issues that face my daughter, son-in-law and myself as we work with Maya and Kurtis is the issue of discipline.

Discipline for small children can be difficult enough to begin with -especially when there are three varying factions involved -like each parent, plus a grandparent on the premises.

My kids will tell you that when they were growing up, I could be a very tough disciplinarian. Not that it seemed to make a hill of beans of difference to them a lot of the time, mind you, but yes, I suppose I was harder on them than maybe I had to be, or even than I should have been. Then again, in retrospect, maybe I wasn't tough enough either.

Who knows and it's pretty difficult to play Monday morning quarterback in that realm after so many years have gone by now, whether I was too rough or not hard enough on them.

I'm thinking I couldn't have been THAT hard on 'em since all three of my kids still speak to me -most of the time anyway -today.

But with Kurtis and Maya -as you know -things aren't always as they seem -to us, and certainly not to people in the outside world, away from our little realm here.

Take today for instance -Sunday, Easter Sunday ya know, and we all attended the 10 a.m. church service at our church.

With my kids, they were attending church with me from the time they were babies and I was the only disciplinarian they knew there as their Dad never went to church with us.

When I was small, attending church with my Mom and Grandparents, quiet was the key word, for sure. I don't remember how Mom and my Grandmother got that message across to me, but they did it, that's for sure. Back then too, the congregation seemed to react differently to from the congregation when my kids were small to the way it is today. Back then, EVERYONE was quiet! There was no whispering even before the service much less during the service and small children who made noise, of any type, were frowned upon and yes, frequently looked down on too.

With my kids, once they got past the baby stage where they actually understood a few commands, it got to be that I could generally keep them in line if they got a bit restless just by shooting them a "looks could kill" glare and they were pretty much sit up, shape up and yes, be quiet.

I don't recall ever having to leave a service half-way through to take any of my kids out to the vestibule to get them to settle down, to be quiet, to behave, to not fight with each other. Not that they were angels, but somehow, they got the message early on and they really did do me proud.

We've had a lot of issues from time to time with Maya especially.

It's not that we didn't introduce her to going to church because we began taking her with us to services when she was just a mere 2 weeks old and we continued doing that too until she was about 2 1/2 when things went amuk.

Initially, she did quite well all things considered at those early church services and rarely did Mandy ever have to take her out because she was fussing, making a lot of disturbances that tend to bother some factions in the parish.

But, when Kurtis came along, we have no clue what happened but suddenly, Maya was a problem child where church was concerned.

It all happened very quickly too and totally took Mandy and I both completely off guard as well.

When Kurt was about 2-3 weeks old, we had decided to attend an evening service and to take both kids with us. As we pulled into the church parking lot, Maya started to act up -crying, whining, pulling back from us as we tried to get her out of the car and then, as we tried to get her to walk into church.

As soon as she set one little foot inside the door, into the narthex, she let out a blood-curdling scream that I think probably was heard on the other end of the township plus, she threw herself down on the floor, kicking and screaming and generally creating quite a scene.

We were both pretty much dumbstruck by her behavior and Mandy decided then and there that there was no point in trying to re-establish any sense of order or decorum with her, so she left and brought her back home -leaving Kurtis and me to attend the service, just the two of us, and she returned in about an hour then to pick us up. (Kurt, by the way, was good as gold!)

From that point on over the next 13, almost 14 months, we couldn't take Maya with us to church as she apparently had developed some type of fear or obsession in her mind and as soon as we got near the church, she would launch into a massive meltdown.

Now I am a firm believer in that the only way children learn behavior -proper behavior that is -pertaining to church, is if they are taken there, and from seeing how adults as well as other children behave plus having little things with you to try to keep them entertained -small quiet toys, books and yes, often little tidbits of food too -cereals, crackers and such -and gradually, they learn how they are to behave.

Well that's how it had worked for me and with my kids. With Maya -not so much!

It wasn't until she was better able to communicate with us, to understand a few simple commands or requests that we dared to take her with us again to church. And overall, for the past three years now, she has learned and has generally done quite well.

Kurtis now is the one we have to work with -a lot -to keep him settled and quiet. He's learning but often, with either of these two, if you see them beginning to work up to becoming a tad on the fussbudget side, the best option is to take them out to the narthex immediately, let them cool down, chill out and then, bring them back in and start the process all over again.

Today, Mandy had told Bill she would appreciate it if he would attend church with us so that she might have a chance to sit through the entire service and not have to take one or the other child out to the narthex if they got too restless or a bit unruly. And, he agreed to do that -to go with us.

Well, things were going fairly well -not that Kurtis is totally quiet as he does tend to speak out loud whenever the mood so hits him, but so far, he hasn't really been really bad and obnoxious and disrupting the service. This morning, he was doing okay but then, started to get a bit unsettled and it was evident he was working up to a good cry, so Mandy had Bill take him out.

However, since Bill rarely (almost never) goes to church, he really wasn't/isn't familiar with the routine Mandy generally uses with the kids when it comes to taking them out from the service.

So, instead of his sitting with Kurt in the narthex, he decided to take him outside and walk around with him as a means of distracting him, keeping him calm, etc.

On the surface, that does sound like a reasonable idea except for the fact that Maya saw that her Dad was outside with Kurtis, allowing him to be able to play, to run around freely, and the good old thing called "sibling rivalry" kicked into high gear on her then as she started to whimper and cry about Kurt being allowed to go outside with Daddy.

So, rather than risk her going into a full-blown meltdown then too, Mandy took her out to join Dad and her little brother. It also then became evident that he had no intention though of bringing Kurt back into try to participate in the service so Mandy then told him well if that was going to be the case, he may as well just take the kids home. (Not a problem since we had taken two cars to church -since all five of us won't fit into one vehicle, ya know.)

So that's what he did.

And Mandy was then upset because they hadn't handled the whole disciplinary thing as a united front. And, by taking both kids out, by allowing them to rule the scene instead of it being the reverse of that, they were learning the opposite of what we try to teach them, which is that they are to listen to Mom, Dad or Grammie and also, that if they don't want to be in a specific setting, all they need to do to get their own way then is to set up a bit of a ruckus.

Actually, Kurtis hadn't been that loud and really, neither Mandy or I might not have even taken him out in the first place but Bill, not being very familiar, certainly not accustomed to how we would handle him, and what constitutes too much noise, etc., made the decision initially to take him out and away from the disciplined atmosphere of the church service.

It's one of those things though that any parents with children who have autism have to iron out, make decisions a bit in advance too as to how they will handle these situations when there might be a difference of opinion in one parent over the other as to the best way to deal.

Definitely though, going into these situations with a united front is the best way to deal from the parental perspective and also, it gives a more solid foundation to the children so they learn faster what to expect of a situation and how they should act/react then there too.

Just one of many ways all parents, regardless of how their children learn, have to learn from experience what works best for their children and what behavior the parents will tolerate -or not -from the children, autistic or not.

Another little reminder that April is Autism Awareness Month and with respect to that, I am just trying to show little things to try to provide a bit of knowledge about autism, about issues, behaviors and such in hopes that maybe it will help others to gain awareness and especially be more accepting of those around who either have autism or who deal with the various behaviors and issues on a daily basis.

What's Too Much?

Recently, my daughter made a trip out west -to visit with her Dad, who she hadn't seen in 2 years. It was a nice vacation for her and also, gave her a chance to meet her Dad's new wife too. (He remarried about 15 months ago so this was the first time she had the opportunity to meet her.)

Well, for the most part, all went quite well. She definitely had a great time going around with her Dad. They are so much alike, enjoy so many of the same things and I'm happy that they now have the relationship they have although it is difficult to visit, with him being in Nevada and her (as well as her siblings) all being here in Pennsylvania.

However, one thing that happened while she was out there was that her new stepmother gave her a big bag of cosmetics -of every type, color -pretty much a "you name it and it was there" kind of package, ya know.

Now Mandy uses some cosmetics but not a whole lot so, she pretty much passed this bag on to the 18-year-old here who, like most any teen the world over, LOVES makeup!

But let me tell you this, if she tries to use all the stuff in this bag, she's gonna be needing all kinds of acne products after the fact I'm afraid!

Truth be told though, I was kind of hoping some of the eye makeup stuff would get shared with me. I don't use it that frequently cause where the heck do I go that I need to use a bunch of makeup -but I do like a little bit of eye shadow every now and again if I do happen to have a chance to go somewhere a bit special.

Maybe I can work a deal with the 18-year-old along the way. Think that sounds like a good game plan? It could happen, really -it could.