The Golden Years? My dying a**!

Let me see.  To bed at 9:00.  Awake at 2:00 AM to pee.  Back to bed to contemplate the fate of the world.  Doze off.  Up again at 4:00 to guess what? Back to bed to contemplate actually getting up and getting an early start on the day.  Oh, hell yes.  Like I am so busy I need to get up that early.  Sadly one of these mornings I will not even get up and who is going to know?  Oh, yeah, the dogs and that damn cat who have to eat several meals a day all home cooked and chuck full of fresh vegetables.  So at 5:00 I give it up as a lost cause and give the animals their treats.

Not that my animals are spoiled, but they need a treat for going to bed and a treat for getting up.  They also require treats throughout the day for simply going out to the bathroom, coming in after going out to the bathroom, for helping me let the geese either out or in, for staying home while I go to the store, or barking at the UPS man, or the trash man, or the airplane going over.  But this post is not about my spoiled rotten animals.  It is about my golden years and what a friggin' joke they are.

Gone are the days when I could actually cut my own toenails.  Gone are the days when my yard was always mowed and the roses were blooming and the weeds were under control.  Gone are the days when the car was clean and my floor was swept and the sink clear of dishes.  Gone are the days when I really gave a shit about anything.  My bones are stiff, my joints creek and I can not hear what you are mumbling about over there.

I have had some pretty sad days in my life, but the saddest one of all was about 2 weeks after my husband had passed and I was standing and looking at his picture on the wall and it dawned on me that I would never again be held by a man who loved me completely.  I would never be able to just turn off the stove and go out to eat because he just wanted to take me. 
No more fishing trips. 
No more running up to Cripple Creek.
No more peanut shells on the floor.
No more heated debates over politics.
No more watching me mow the grass.
No more walking up behind me and putting his arms around me and laying his head on my back.
No more anything.

I did start dating, but the first guy died.  The second one told me, "I always felt like I was standing in Kenny's shadow."  As it turned out, he probably was.  Mother always told me that divorces were easy, because there was usually hard feelings on both parts.  But when the partner dies, they take on sainthood.  You forget the little things that irritated you and the partner is remembered as perfect.
Mother was so wise. 

I miss sharing happy times.  I miss sharing sad times.  I miss sharing little victories I win.  I miss showing him what I did down in the sewing room and I miss cooking for him.  And I miss setting in the front yard with the animals and watching the world go by.  I miss him.

Well, I need to go down one level and pick up the mouse body.  Thanks, Icarus.  I really have nothing planned for today, but I know I have to get started on my day.  Put my memories away and mark another day off the calendar.

All I can say, is have a nice day and enjoy what you have while it is there to be enjoyed.  Matter while you can, because time is fleeting.  Time and tide wait for no man.

Writers block or at a loss for words or am I brain dead?

I love to write and usually I do a lot of it, but sometimes it is like everything above the neck is out to lunch.  I recall writing my first novel.  That was a piece of cake.  Then I started the sequel.  Then life happened and I wrote the one about Sherman and I that he had requested.  Then he died and I went back to the sequel, but 25 pages and 5 years later, it is still in the drawer.  Or some where.

I lay it my little bed on nights when I can almost get to sleep, but not quite accomplishing that feat, and come up with the most brilliant ideas in the whole world.  It is then that I fall asleep thinking that I will remember and find when I wake up the next morning that the brilliant thoughts have all flown.  I have thought about taking a notebook to bed and jotting down the ideas.  Right!  The next morning I look at the chicken scratches on my note pad and wonder what in the hell language I was writing.  If I can read the words the whole concept has changed and any thoughts that I jotted down are lost in the morning.

Maybe I am trying to hard!  That just dawned on me.  I made an omelet a little earlier.  First I chopped up asparagus in the skillet.  I cooked it a little bit and then put 2 scrambled eggs  on top to cook.  I sprinkled cheddar cheese on it when it was almost done.  Then I got out the sirachi  (however you spell that) and it went on top.  I should have stopped at the asparagus and eggs.  What I ended up with was the asparagus that I love tastes like...  well, not asparagus.  The cheese hangs in strings and really adds nothing to the taste except calories.  The Sirachi  has a taste that overpowers everything else.  And that is what my writing becomes.  It is not at all what I started out to write.

I started out to write about one thing and end up writing about something else altogether.  I call it rambling, but it is not that.  What it is seems to be is that I am just flaky and have no discipline at all.  Perhaps I would be better served if I picked a topic and stuck to it!  Along those lines ....well, shit!  I just lost that thread that I was going with.  Which reminds me, I need to get the patches sewn on that Letter Jacket or there will be no pay day for me this week.  And speaking of "week" I need to make an appointment with my dermatologist before my face falls off.  And speaking of face I need to pick up those little wet wipes to clean the baby's butt with since I used them all yesterday.

Now where was I?

If I had known then what I know now!

My Mother was wise.  Very wise.  She taught me that no good deed goes unpunished.  She also taught me that you can not judge a book by it's cover.  All this was woven in with the 10 Commandments that are written in stone and I am sad to say that over the course of my life I have probably broken every one of them, some of them repeatedly.  Well, maybe not the murder one, but the covet for sure and in my drunken stupors of bygone day I was never real sure whose bed I might wake up in.  Neon lights were my favorite.  My life is a billboard for what an education can do for you and honey, I graduated Magna Cum Lade from the school of hard knocks.

I was moving a cabinet a little while ago and that entailed cleaning out drawers.  I happened upon poems I had written years ago and I would like to share one with you.  For some reason the working title of this was "Abuse".  I am not sure just what kind of abuse, but here it is:

Mother, may I please go out and play 
In the forest by the house today?

May I take my dolly with the broken arm
Deep in the forest so dark and warm?

You see the sun is shining bright,
But in the forest there is little light.

I promise that I will take care
While in the dark cool forest there.

Dolly needs to rest and mend her arm
And the forest holds a magic charm.

I'll make a bed of pine boughs sweet
And lay dear dolly at my feet.

I'll lay her gently; Her eyes will close,
And she will be in sweet repose.

The forest nymphs will gather round
As dolly rests upon the ground.

Then you will see her arm will be
As perfect as it used to be.

Then daddy can if he but will
Take you to the forest still.

He'll lay you down 'neath sky and tree
Then bring you safely home to me.

For I can see you growing weak,
I can barely hear you speak.

So Mother dear I can but plead
Rest in the forest is what we need.

I often find stuff I wrote years ago and wonder why I turned out like I did.  I guess life got in the way.  Sam sent me a picture of myself when I was a Freshman in Nickerson High School and I wonder where that slip of a girl went and more importantly, when did she leave?  I flash back to days gone by and try to put my finger on the day I lost all that naiveté and became calloused.  Or was it a series of days...and nights.  I would like to blame it on someone, but who?  The first husband?  When I became a mother?  Second husband?  When did I learn to be a waitress?  A cook?  An accountant?  A widow?  When did I learn to sew?  Weave?  When did I turn into an activist and a compassionate woman?

I used to tell my mother that I wished I could do it all over again and this time I would get it right.  There would be one husband.  2 kids and a puppy.  We would live in a nice house and have money in the bank.  We would go to church every Sunday and donate to charities.  If only.  And Mother always told me "Hind sight is 20/20....looking back.

So here I set a withered up old woman trying to tell the new generation how to do it and they laugh at me.  Tape player?  What is that?  Manual transmission?  $100 bill?  Phone stuck to the wall?  That is a pisser.  It makes me sad that the old days are gone.  If I had it to do over again I would most definitely take pictures of the old wringer washer with the Kodak box camera my brother sent me from Germany.  I would have a pair of dad's overalls tucked away some where.  And I sure as hell would not have thrown my first diamond wedding rings in the river up by Concordia.

Live and Learn.

Look Paul! I must have stolen a horse!!

My friend, Paul from the other church, has been taking riding lessons for over a year and finally bought a horse.  It is a match made in heaven.  As for me, I have always been afraid of horses.  Have you seen their teeth?  Those things are huge and I do not want to make one of them mad and have it bite me.  I am doing  very well with the cat and 2 dogs that reside with me.  We get along pretty good as long as I keep the groceries coming and the bed warm and the water dish full of fresh H2O.  But something has happened to make me question whether I have perhaps been living alone to long.  I did harvest the grapes and make juice which I drank all of it, but it was not made into wine so it should not affect me at all.

These are my grapes.  I only have one vine left, but they are the dark blue Concord with seeds.  Baby eats them by the handful, bug, bird poop and all so I figured I better get them picked and processed if I wanted them.  Best juice ever and not a drop of sugar in the whole gallon of juice.  If I were a jelly eater, I would have made jelly, but I am not so I just drank it all except what I shared with Baby.

This is my Climbing Cecile Brunner which did not bloom this spring at all.  I was very disappointed, but on a day when I was sad I looked at the bottom of the bush and here was a pretty little rose just for me!

But, now this is what happened the other morning.  I got up and went outside to hop in the mobile and go some where.  I passed this on the way to the car and did a double take.  What!  That looks like horse dodo.  Upon closer inspection it turned out that it was indeed horse leavings on my front lawn.  I was pretty sure I did not have a horse when I went to bed and upon further investigation I could not find one of the big hairy things anywhere on my property.  Not any on the neighbor lady's premises either.  I am very happy that I lock the doors at night, because Lord only knows what might turn up in there if I am not careful.  I do recall in the early years of homesteading out here on the Mesa that I had planted Tulips across the front of the house and I came back from town to find a big cow munching on the.  That was sad to stand and look down in the ground and see spots of yellow, red, and orange which would have one day been tulips.

I also recall coming home one evening about dusk and seeing 3 baby skunks playing on the grass.  My Chile dog used to get sprayed by skunks on a regular basis.  The remedy for skunk spraying is a bath in tomato juice.  After going through 40 quarts of tomato juice one season, I finally talked to the dog groomer and she told me she used Massengill Douche Powder.  That was way better.  Course the druggist looked at me a little strangely when I told him I wanted a pound of the stuff!  I was a tad naïve in those days.

Snakes and foxes, coyotes and chicken hawks.  centipedes and mice.  Always something creepy, crawly, or slimy set to ruin my day.  But I love my little piece of earth out here and I love my little 2400 square foot house.  I guess if strange animals wander in and relieve themselves on my yard, I can live with that.  I am not real fond of cleaning the house or burning the weeds or any of the mundane chores that daily life requires of me, but it is what it is and if this is the worst thing fate can throw me, I can live with that!

Where have you gone, dear David?

David Stevens

7/19/1947 - 9/14/2017

Rest in peace, my little friend.

I do not remember when I met David.  Time means very little in my world and marking time is not something I do well.  I know I met him when I came to First Congregational  from Christ Congregational and I know it has been 10 years or so.  The important thing is that I met him and he made an impact on my life in a way few men have.  David was special.

David was special in more ways then one.  He was a big man, but I can not say how big as the wheel chair he was confined to did not allow one to measure.  I know his hands were big and he loved his cowboy hat.  I do not know how many years he was in the chair, I just know I never seen him without it.

He lived in a home with other people and he liked to help them.  I would like to say I met him when he came to our church, but I am not sure he wasn't there before me.  At our church we have a microphone which we use to let the congregants make announcements or report on someone in need of prayer.  David loved that mic!  Any Sunday he was in church he would pick up the microphone and tell us that his parents and everyone were in heaven, but he had a new family and that was the members of this church.  We were his family now.  He would tell of his former church where he used to be a greeter, but now he was a greeter in this church and that made him very happy.  He was an usher and while he could not manipulate the wheelchair on his own, he smiled as broad as any man and enjoyed being a greeter in his church!

And you know what?  That made me very happy.  David was a simple man, with simple needs and he always put others before himself and isn't that what it is all about anyway?  A lesser man would have been sad to be confined to a wheel chair and to be taken care of everyday.  A lesser man would have perhaps rebelled at his lot in life.  But not David!  David started counting the days until his next birthday on the day after his birthday.  He looked forward to that more than Christmas, I think.

I am sure that David is up there (wherever up there is ) telling God that he used to be a greeter at this church and that we are his family.  He is probably explaining to his mother and father that since they had gone, he had found a new family and they should not feel bad because he did that because he missed them so much.  And I bet that is one happy reunion around that dinner table, but David, if you are listening, know that while we miss you, and our church will always have an empty place on that back row, we are very happy that you are where you are and we want to thank you for taking care of us for the very short time we had you.

Rest in peace our little friend and know that you were loved and you are sorely missed, but we are happy you are free at last!

Ah, the age of innocence!

This is a picture I have that is very old and I have had for many years.  Since I have geese it seems apropos that I have it.  Along with that I have a family history that details how great grandma and  other relatives before that raised geese.  They also raised sorghum and made molasses.  This may actually be a picture of me.  Probably not, though.

Here is another one by a different artist.  This one is a print.  The title is To New Pastures.  Either picture by either artist is basically the same.  This was back when leggings and boots and tending the flock was what it was.  Geese are funny little things.  You herd them.  I walk behind mine and they go where I point.  A cow, or horse or even a dog is led or at least they follow.

.

What do you suppose this little girl is thinking about while tending the geese?  Video games were not even a concept back then.  Running water was probably not in her home.  She may or may not have attended school.  Not all girls did back in those days.  She probably was married by the time she was 13 or 14 and had her own family before she turned 20.  Things like that do not seems plausible today, but it was a different age then.

This is my grandson.  Herding the geese comes natural to him.  On days when he is coming, I do not let the geese out until he arrives.  I carry my camera so I can get a third picture for my wall.  I guess this is as close as I am going to get!

He prefers a sunflower to a stick when it comes to herding.

Well, actually he needs 2 sunflowers!

We are pretty sure he will be ambidextrous.  And after all that herding, he needs a nap!

How different his life already is from the little girl above!  He spends grandma time watching youtube and Wheels on the bus.  He arrives in a red car when mom and daddy bring him.  A "walk" consists of a stoller or buggy.  Whatever they are called.

It is hard to imagine, but the same blood runs in his veins that runs in mine.  Will his memories be the same as this little girl?  I don't know.  I am hoping that on some level we are the same.  I feel that I have a link with my kids, grand kids, great grandkids, but do they have the link with me?  As much as my kids try to be different from me, they stay the same.  They try to branch off and become their own person, but deep down, they crave home made noodles and a needle in their hand.  

I guess, what I am trying to say is, I think somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I have memories that belonged to my ancestors.  I would love to go under hypnosis and see if I am another Bridey Murphy.  Are there dreams that are actually memories?  

Or am I just nuts?

4:30 AM!!! Oh, Come on God! Give me a break!

I always wake up around 3:00 AM and reflect on life for just a few minutes before I doze off until the real wake up time.  I have heard this means I will either die young or live forever.  I am not real sure but I think the dying young is already an option that is off the table.  So this morning I opened the peepers to reflect and decided to just get up and get it started.

I do believe that life is best lived in reverse because at 4:30 AM I can see very clearly what I should have done as opposed to what I actually did.  It must have been about 1973 or in that general area somewhere, when I was working at the Red Carpet Resturant in Hutchinson.  I worked nights when I started there, but eventually moved into the morning cook/baker/fry cook position.  At this particular time I was just dating husband 3/4.  Now that boy was a drinker.  (Of course they all were so that point is moot.)

I think perhaps the "drink until you fall down and pass out gene" runs in my family.  Not that it makes anything I did right, but you need to know that my learning curve spikes in a lot of places and is non existent in the other places and the spike and the curve is not always in the upward direction.  To make this story readable, I need to tell you that the night before, he and I had decided to "go dancing".  This entailed some drinking.  The laws then were that you could take your own bottle to the "dance place" so we did that.  Course we ordered chasers.  I had opted to only drink wine that night.  Wise choice?  You decide.

I started out with something called Annie Green Springs or some such innocent sounding concoction.  It was really good as I recall, but of course that bottle went dry and since I was still thirsty someone went next door on a liquor run.  I was very clear that I wanted the same brand and all so I would not lose my rhythm.  Sadly, they did not have that brand, so I receive a giant bottle of something called Rascal Berry.  It sure sounded innocent enough.  I should have known that was not going to be good.  By this time it was after midnight and I had to be at work at 5:00 AM.  At 2:00 AM or so, I decided I had the flu.  I needed my bed.  Or at least comfortable sprinting distance to the commode.  It could not have been the wine.  Wine only has a 10-12% alcohol content.  

When sweet thing dropped me off at home so I could drive myself to work, I was still wretching.  I do not know  just how romantic that evening had turned out.  As for my life the next few days, it was a blur.  My mother waited tables and thought I should go home since I had the "flu" and Francis was quick to tell her that it was self induced.  No sympathy what so ever.   The boss just glared at me, but offered me no time off to recuperate.  I was top notch at my job and even in the throes of death, I was the best he had.

The next few days passed in a sort of blur. 

Day #1  I did not hear from sweet thing and I prayed for death. 
Day #2  I emptied my system of every thing I had ever eaten in life.
Day #3 was no better.
Day #4 was the turning point.  I could keep an ice chip down.  That was the best ice chip I ever tasted.   Praise God! 
Day #5 was  mostly just shaking and sipping some sort of buttermilk concoction that I was craving at the moment.  Some where in there I must have had a day off, because a full week passed with me courting the angels of death, before I began to pull out of the downward spiral.

Now you should know that back when I was dating husband #1, my brother, Jake and I decided to have a little drink to celebrate.  What we were celebrating I will never know, but I do know that he went to the liquor store and bought a 5th of some sort of "rot gut" whiskey.  We hoped there was enough to make us happy.  Since all we had to chase it with was red Koolaid, we used that.

That little celebration was the first time I had the "dry heaves."  Ever have those?  I do want you to know, that from that day to this, I can not drink red Koolaid.  The sight of anything red in a glass turns my stomach.  When I say "turns my stomach,"  I mean since me into culture shock and there is going to be some upchucking going on with my digestive track.  Never tried that again.  I suspect it may have been more the liquor than the Koolaid, but I can never be sure. 

I guess what I am trying to point out here is that liquor is evil.  It makes me sick.  I must be allergic to it.  I realize that I am just not a good drinker.  Nor am I a happy drunk.  Any time a guy thought he would ply me with liquor and get lucky, he was sadly mistaken. 

Alcohol and me are just not ever going to get along in this world.  I may have actually been Carrie Nation in another life.  I wonder what her background was?  Now you know some of mine.  When I make my off handed remarks, they are coming from life experiences.  Several times I have been told that I should write my life story, but no one would believe it.  So I am just going to be content to tell you that

"My life would be best lived in reverse with the brakes on ."