May 1 a week early!

Well, Lisa, I want to give you this little tidbit of info early so you can think about it while you are making your little baskets with your daughter.  Many years ago in a land that time forgot, there was a practice that people had which was really cool.  May Day!  Today the term May Day!  means that something is happening and we need all hands on deck to save the whole damn mess.  World wide it marks Workers Day and led to the first passage of an 8 hour work day.  In ancient times it was a Druid Holiday called Beltane, celebrating the return of warmth to the earth.  Purifying fires were used to assure a clean start.  Romans had a similar holiday called Floralia to celebrate flowers.  They were combined to become our current (or past) May Day celebration.

Here is a quick link for you. 

http://www.lifescript.com/food/articles/article_archive/c/celebrate_spring_with_a_may_day_party.aspx?gclid=CIzwzLSBy68CFbMEQAodiw2PYg&trans=1&du=1&ef_id=sbZPiEpOU3UAAIVt%3a20120423125052%3as 

Ah, but back to Nickerson, Kansas and a great memory.  There was at that time a special rite called the May Pole.  Our teacher constructed a pole with 6 streamers attached to the top that hung way down.  Our job was to take a streamer and skip around the pole thus winding the streamers around the pole and producing a rainbow affect.  Those who were not skipping merrily were to toss flowers at the feet of the skippers.  When the big day arrived the skippers arrived in their finery.  One of the girls was a little bit heavy and much better endowed then the rest of us flat chested flower throwers.  It soon became apparent that dear teacher had not put a lot of thought into the finery the girls were wearing, which consisted of pastel dresses with scoop necks.  Perhaps it was the mother at fault here.

The music began to play.  The girls began to skip.  As the music picked up tempo so did the skippers and so did the chest of Weezer.  As she skipped and bounced it became a spectacle to behold and we stood transfixed in mortal terror that she was going to put out her own eyes.  Some one should have thought the skipping thing through, but I will say this;  It was a lesson well learned for the teacher and all of us who would some day  be blessed.  And it was a memory burned forever into our memories and to our credit and in my knowledge, I do not think anyone ever teased her.  Well, not after the first day or so.  And she finished school just as respected as the day she started.

Fast forward to Huchinson, Kansas and 217 West 5th Street where I lived with my nest full of children.  May Day was on the horizon and the kiddies wanted to make baskets and give them to the neighbors.  So the night before they carefully constructed several baskets and awaited the morning.  I had to work the early morning shift and when I arrived home I was told that the baskets had been a big success.  Well, it seemed so until I found out just where they got the flowers for the baskets.  Seems they took thier little baskets up the street and picked flowers along the way.  Then they came back and hung them on the door handles, knocked and ran away.  Not all the neighbors appreciated a herd of kids tramping around in thier flower beds and harvesting thier bounty.  I think Debbie was the ring leader on that one!

My first neighbor on the West was an old lady whose son was a policeman.  The kids would see her coming from the store and run to carry her bags and help her across the street.  Good little kids or maybe they were just anticipating the need of one day having a friend on the police force.    One day her house was egged.  She was devastated.  How could she hope to get that mess cleaned up?  Being a good neighbor I got a ladder and my kids and I instructed them in the fine art of cleaning up that mess, all the while wondering who in our neighborhood would do such a foul thing.  I found out many years later just who those mean kids were!  I think Debbie was the ring leader on that one also!

So there, Lisa, go tuck the wee one in and cherish this time because I am trying to recall a cross stitch I did years ago that went like this;

Cooking and cleaning can wait for the morrow,

For babies grow up, we learn to our sorrow.

So dust you just lay there, cobwebs go to sleep;

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Well, my eyes were open very wide!

You know I sell on eBay, right?  And you know I run a lot of junk through there, right?  Earlier in the week I had listed a Minolta 35 mm camera on the auction with a starting price of $4.99.  Well imagine my surprise when I popped over there to check on my auctions and found I had not listed a Minolta at $4.99, but rather a Leica digital 16 mega pixel and the starting price was $4,000.00.  

Now my little mind alternates between forgetfulness and  worrying about forgetfulness.  What in the world had I been thinking.  I quickly clicked on the item thinking perhaps some one else's items were inadvertently thrown in my store.  No.  There it was and the Seller was loumercer3, power seller, 1080 feedback, bronze star.  I went back to the list and discovered that a cheap bauble for $1.99 was now a set of something for a drum set.  Dead panic.  I immediately called eBay security and learned that this was an account takeover.  Needless to say, I was on the phone with them until I thought my ear would fall off my head.  But they immediately suspended action on my account, removed the items, refunded my listing fees, and then we went through my store item by item to be sure that all the listings in there were mine.  After that I then had the pleasure of changing passwords and security questions.  I did thank my lucky stars that no damage was done and that I caught it very early.  (And people wonder why I hang out on this computer!)

Now, this brings up the rest of the scenario.  Say I had not caught that.  First I would have paid a very high insertion fee for this $4,000.00 camera.  Then say it sold, I would have $4000.00 deposited in my account.  Of course, when I did not mail the camera to the fellow who just gifted me with $4000.00,  I would be out of compliance and in big doodoo with big Mama eBay.  No doubt they would jerk the money back, sue me for the fees and there would go my stellar career as an eBay top seller.  Which leads me up to my big question here;

No doubt this is what is called a hacker, but why?  What did he/she get out of this little intrusion into my life.  Apparently they have more time on their hands then I do.  I squeeze time out to do my listings.  Course the Minolta that they altered is gone now and that one will need to be completely rewritten.  May be able to work that in Monday.  The thing is I will be busy the rest of the morning changing passwords on everything that has a password.  Damn jerk!

I love my computer and I love the ease with which I can dance around the Internet, buy stuff, talk to people in other lands far away, look up information, and just all the good things, but don't I hope that someone invents a program that the next time someone tries to access my information, it just fries their computer.  Oh, that would be ideal!  Especially if there were a camera to record their face as it happened.  If someone is smart enough and determined enough to go to all the work of getting into my account they should be clever enough to do that.

Ok, done for the day.  I am off to alter pin numbers, passwords, and whatever else.  Have a good one and be safe out there!

OK, Shea kids, here it comes!

Way back in the deep recesses of my mind I recall working at the Ineeda Laundry in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Now I seem to be drawing a mental blank on this one, so it was probably in the days before I had sense enough to actually remember stuff.  I strongly suspect I may have been doing a little extra drinking back in those days.  So I am assuming it was before I began the wild child bearing cycle.  But maybe not. 
I do recall one afternoon Sister Mary called and told me to come to her house on 25th (?) Street as Tommy, your dad, had called from work and said there was a tornado heading right for her house and she needed to grab the baby and head for the basement.  Now back in those days, I was good!  I could beat a tornado to some one's house and save them. So I clocked out and made a bee line to Mary's.
Upon arrival we began to carry stuff to the basement.  Snacks, milk, pop, water, blankets, coffee pot, coffee, bread, tooth brush and tooth paste, the bassinet,  a change of clothes, pillows....and at last we were ready.  We secured the door and awaited the wrath of the storm.  I do not remember which one of us realized first that we had locked Dorothy Rene on the other side of the door.  We immediately undid the door and saved the baby.  Then we laughed so hard and made a deal that we must never tell another soul what we had done.  Oops!  That slipped out.
Then there was the time she called frantically alternately between laughter and horror.  Seems there were a couple cats on the roof doing what a couple cats are known to do, and she was mortified that the neighbors would see.  She insisted that I must come immediately and get them down.  Well, kiddies, needless to say, I did not answer that call to do the big sister duty that time.  Even in a drunken stupor, I am smarter than that!
Once she invited my husband de jour and I to supper.  She was making Chicken and Noodles.  At that time they owned a big black hairy dog.  I watched the dog eating his kibble and then helped set the table.  When she appeared with the Chicken and Noodles in a big pink plastic bowl, I  remarked, "Oh, do you have two of these bowls?"  She replied that she did not.  More fits of laughter because I had just seen Poochie eating out of this one!  Your dad was horrified, but we got a big kick out of it and my boy toy never knew what was going on there.
I remember way, way back when Mary was maybe 9 or 10,  Mother would cut our hair and it was a rite of Spring, so to speak.  But Sister Mary did not want hers cut, so she was the only one of us kids who did not suffer the dreaded "bowl hair cut".  That was in our house on Strong Street.  I also remember once mother was going to run the vacuum for some reason unknown to me since we had linoleum floors, but when she opened the bag there were a nest full of newborn mice in it.  She handed them over to us to take out to the front sidewalk (And why we called it that is beyond me since it was the only sidewalk on the whole block!) and smash them with a rock.  Even writing that sounds gruesome!  We, of course, spirited them off to a safe place where mother could not find them.  I think the cat took care of our little hatchet job.
Anyway, this is the first time in a few years that your mom has not come to spend a month or so with me and I sure miss that.  I am going to try to get down sometime this spring, but it just does not seem to be working out for me.  I miss Mary very much.  I miss all the sisters, but I guess life just hands us all these little twists and turns and then Dame Fate sets back and laughs at us.  I wish you kids could peer inside my head and see some of the sights in there.  Glad I still can!

It's 4 in the morning and once more the dawning.....

It seems like I do my very best thinking early in the morning.  The clarity with which I can see the world at 3:30 or 4:00 AM is almost blinding.  My house is a wreck.  I thought it was Bret and Amanda that were the messy ones, but I have since discovered that it is I!  There is no one here but me and these animals and yet the place looks like it was struck by a hurricane, and it very well could have been.  So yesterday I decided it is time to take control of the situation.  I decided that I spend way to much time on this computer, so I am going to limit the social aspect of the Internet.  I have lost contact with several of my "e buddies" so there is no reason to keep copies of our correspondence. 

So, first goes the guy from Vermont or where ever he was actually from.  Idle curiosity made me weigh that file.  One and one half pounds!  That is a lot of paper wasted.  I thought about reading it, but opted to just toss it in the recycle bag.  I do confess I may have leaked a little tear on that one, but life goes on.  I am sure the demise of that friendship was all his fault.  Then I picked up the one from Gino.  But he is still my friend.  We correspond on a very irregular basis, but I know he is there.  Niagara Falls.  I will probably drop him a line this week.  But Wayne, Steve, and the interminable list of "one week stand's" are lost to me.  I do keep my little Amy in a special file on the computer and I will not lose touch with her.  Alex is a 3 minute job a couple times a week.  So my butterfly days are over.  Unless somebody really interesting pops up on the horizon.

Now eBay.  That is a vital part of my livelihood, so that has to stay.  But I will henceforth hold myself to a schedule.  I will do all my listing in the evening from 4-6.  I will still answer questions through the day when they arise.  I will do the packing and mailing thing early in the afternoon so it can go in the mailbox by 4.  This will work very well except when eBay surprises me with free listings or penny listings.  So I have to add, unless eBay changes my pattern.

The blogs will be taken care of early in the morning.  Like now.  I will stop rambling and keep them short and concise!  I will keep a list beside the desk of things I want to write about.  And I will adhere to that list.  Unless something comes up that I really must address like a spider making a web over there in the window on the outside and I am afraid it will come inside so I have to watch it. 

Oh, and then there is the yard to maintain, geese to take care of, garden to till and plant, seed catchers to make, newsletters to write, people to take care of, visitors to entertain, cookies to make, dogs to walk, lunch with Phyllis, and that nap thing in the afternoon.  I guess we will just see how commited I am to this getting a handle on things.  First I better make a list.  And get ready, Lisa, Dorothy, Tina, and Tommy, because I am going to tell secrets on your mother in the very near future.  I just been thinking about her and this will make you laugh!

Well, surprising as it may seem, I have once more gotten off track.  So I am going to get with the program and take 2 steps over to that desk and throw away the floppy disks I have been saving since 1994.  I will make you proud!

Getting a little weepy in my old age.

If you have ever been to my house, you know how I love flowers and the Lilac is one of my favorites.  I have seven or 8 altogether, but the one at the end of my back sidewalk is my favorite since it is also my biggest.  It has been blooming now for almost a week.  Every time I go out back, which is a minimum of times a day doing chores, I am met with the most heavenly fragrance.  It is strongest in the early morning and early evening, but all day it is on the air.

There is just something about a Lilac that invokes my younger days.  Seems like there has always been a Lilac bush every where I lived.  All the old Aunts had Lilac bushes.  Lilacs and Spirea.  Oh, and Forsythia.  My Spirea bush is about to croak and the Forsythia quit blooming years ago, but the Lilac is better than ever.  My Lilac bushes came from roots at a lady's house where she was ripping hers out cause she was "sick of the damn thing."  Lilac's are very hardy and can me started from a thought of one. 

Back to the weepy part.  When I pass this Lilac I always stop and breathe deeply.  My mind flits away to Grandma's house and a much happier time in my life.  But it makes me sad.  I know that this will only last a couple weeks and then it is gone until next year.  There is no way to capture the smell.  I have Lilac fragrance that I use in my soaps and lotions, but the headiness I experience at the end of my sidewalk is irreplaceable.  I stand there and just wish I could stop time.  My friend in New York sent me pictures of the Lilac festival there a few years back.  At the time I thought how nice that would be to go visit, but then I thought how nice it is to stroll around my yard and touch my own little crop. 

The one by the sidewalk is getting very big and I have to trim it so it does not close my sidewalk.  Today I am going to dig up some roots on the sidewalk side and take them out back and plant them for the geese.  I know I will have to put a fence around them because 13 geese can trample a lot of my transplanting efforts, but I don't mind.  I just want to share with them.

I don't remember being weepy over a smell before, but I am now.  So I attribute this to the fact that I am getting old and probably a touch of senility is setting in as well.  Or it could also be that I am getting older and have learned to appreciate the little gifts that God has given me in the form of a beautiful bush and a fragrance to carry me back in time.  I am sure that when I get to the Pearly Gates, there will be a Lilac bush on either side, and they will be in full bloom and I will just follow that fragrance right on in and up those streets of gold!  

And that, my friends, makes me smile!

Victory!!! I found out how to do the slide show. Damn Google any way!!!

Sleepin at the foot of the bed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkEotkyjHU 

Remember this guy?  This song and "Out Behind the Barn", "Got Company Comin'".  Everyone of those songs hits a chord with me.  We grew up pretty much in abject poverty, which made us right there with everyone else.  We had just come out of the big depression and things were changing.  Dad farmed with John Britan which wasgood because John had a tractor and 40 acres across the river.  Dad had horses because he did not trust that new fangled stuff.  We wanted to go some place, we walked.  Laundry was done on a scrub board before we graduated to the wringer washer.
We had a two bedroom house and there were 6 of us kids.  That made 8 humans sleeping in 3 beds.  Dad had his own bed.  Mom shared with Mary and Dorothy which left us 4 older kids on one bed.  I do not know where Jake slept, but I think he had a pallet on the floor.  Not with us girls, that was for sure.  There was no such thing at our house as privacy.  We had an "out house" and that was pretty private.  Well not really, cause it was a two holer.  But there was a latch on the door.  I often wondered if the latch was to keep me in or some one else out.
I can remember 2 wood heating stoves and one wood cooking stove.  Lord, when it was winter and the wind whistled through the cracks in the walls there just was no keeping warm.  We would hunker down under a pile of quilts, but they were not the pretty ones I have now.  These were what ever we could piece together to cover the old wool army blankets that seemed to pile up over the summer and fall.  Those things were made of something that does not ever  rot, wear out, shrink away, or stop scratching.
The amazing part was, if someone were traveling through and they stopped at our house, there was always a place for them to sleep and a meal for them to eat. Looking back I seem to think that the hayloft out in the barn was the warmest place we had and I think sometimes us kids slept out there.  I do remember when Jimmy Dickens was singing these songs that I could not imagine any other kind of life.  That was just how it was.
Of course, now I am older and look back it was terrible times.  No human should ever live like that, but we did not know any different so we just played in our little piles of dirt or climbed the tree, or chased the chickens and hid from what ever we were afraid was going to carry us off, like the gypsys out North of town.  I was always scared to death the gypsys would get us and to this day, I would not know a gypsy if one grabbed me!  And what would they want with me any how?
Well, I just wanted to tell you about the Jimmy Dickens songs.  Guess this is one reason I only listen to County Classic Radio.
Got to go take a nap.  I have made myself very sleepy thinking of the good old days.  You know what?  I would not trade one minute of my early years for a mansion on the hill.  they are what made me who I am today, and I am just pretty pleased with myself most of the time.
Have a good one.

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2 Blue Stars

Kathleen M. Goodrich

SGT U.S. Army Veteran

You all know that I sell on ebay.  A couple months back I grabbed a handful of lapel pins and put them on as a lot.  The one little bar with a red band, white background, and two blue stars was the one that ended up as my display picture. 

I have had the best luck in the world with my customers on eBay.  If I list something and it is not right, someone will call it to my attention.  If I do not know what something is, someone will email me and tell me what it is and where it came from and what it should bring.  And so it was with this little pin.

In this day of the "me" generation it is refreshing to meet some one who still holds to the value and honor that our Armed Services represents.  This young woman was kind enough to start a dialogue with me and teach me just what this little lapel pin represents.  The following is our correspondence:

Dear loumercer3,
The 2 "Blue Star" Pin is typically worn by a Mother who has two Sons or Daughters serving in the Armed Forces Overseas. In the unfortunate event that one or both of her Children are Killed in Action the Blue Star Would be changed to Red. This pin at one time belonged to a very proud Mother. I thought you might like to know what this pin means.
Kathleen M. Goodrich
U.S. Army Veteran
- kathyvfw

Dear kathyvfw,
Thank you for that information! I am going to take that ad down and relist with this information if that is alright with you? I may not relist it. Seems rather derogatory to sell something that important on ebay along with a pile of other worthless stuff.
thanks again.
Lou Mercer
- loumercer3

Dear loumercer3,
On behalf of myself and all Vetereans, Thank You for giving this most precious symbol of a Mother's Love and Pride the Dignaty and Honor that it deserves. If you must sell it please sell it separately. I am a bit doubtful that someone will bid on it as it most assuredly has been worn by By a Mother and is quite sacred for that reason. I am a U.S. Army Veteran but I am also A Mother of a U.S. Army Veteran and I Proudly wore a Blue Star Pin.
You may think you have a pile of wothless stuff but please remember your Heart is priceless.
Thank You
Kathleen M. Goodrich
SGT U.S. Army Veteran

- kathyvfw

Dear kathyvfw,
I will call the local VFW tomorrow and see if they would like to have it. Or the heritage museum.
First I am going to do a short blog on it.
Thanks again,
Lou

-loumercer3

Dear loumercer3,
Thanks again for caring. My apology for spelling Veteran incorrectly I had spelled it Vetereans possibly a tear or two got in the way. The pin belongs where it is known as much more than a peice of metal. Many Thanks for taking it on it's final Journey.
Kathy

-kathyvfw

And there you have it; what the little pin with blue stars represents.  It is no longer in the bag along with the other pins.  It is now in my jewelry box and when Frank and Kay get back from Texas I will give it to them and they will find a nice home for it where people will know what it represents.  At that point in time it will be accorded the honor it deserves after spending several years in a box of junk jewelry that I picked up for $15 at a garage sale.

I do want to thank Kathleen M. Goodrich for finding my listing and for sharing her knowledge with me.  I am sure her mother also wore a pin like this. 

And my words of wisdom for today ring very true....There are some things that even money can not buy.

Do you know what this pin represents? three guesses!

I put this on an auction and a very lovely lady was kind enough to give me the information on this pin .  It is about 1/2 inch long and 1/4 inch high.  It is a lapel pin.  I will give you exactly two days to tell me what it signifies. 

Post your guess either on the comments here or on face book.

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