Ringworm, head lice and God only knows what else!

My grand daughter was here this weekend with her husband and 3 kids ages 5-13.  All boys!  It was a lovely visit and I look forward to the next visit.  Her husband carpeted my stairs and did a lovely job.  I want to go on record as saying, the title of this blog is in no way connected to her family.  It just brought back memories of when I was first out on my own and my kids were my complete responsibility.  That was a horror story.

Having spent a couple weeks with mother watching the kids and my working, I rented a house down on Smith Street.  The first thing that happened was I hired the girl across the street to babyset.  Then the car broke down.  I paid $49 to Clell Burnett for a 1949 Black Ford 2 door.  Sam immediately poured sand in the gas tank.  School started and Debbie immediately came home with a ring worm.  I knew about ring worm and how to treat them, but she could not stay in school with out a doctors note, so off we went.  Treatment consisted of shining a purple light on it to be sure it was a ring worm and then a tube of something to smear on it which did not work.  Total cost for that (not to mention my time off from work) was $10.  A car cost $50 and a doctor visit 20% of that.  Hmmm.

Time passed and the neighbor girl stole any jewelry I had, Sam set the bed on fire, and my rental house began to leak.  The landlord told me if he fixed the roof, my rent would be raised.  Apparently I had not read the fine print about the roof being extra!

Mother at that time, had her house at 217 West 5th setting empty and she let me move in there with the understanding that I would make the house payments and all upkeep.  Sounded like a dream come true.  She still owed $11,000 on it.  It was perfect for us.  Bunk beds for the one bedroom and twin beds in the front bedroom.   Huff family lived right up the street with kids my kids age.  They also had a big dog.  They also had head lice!

Now, I will go on record as saying ring worm is a whole lot easier then head lice!  Ring worm can actually be controlled with a cotton ball and a bottle of Clorox.  Head lice requires washing everything in hot water, medication on a fine tooth comb and doing it over and over again.  Nope.  Do not want any more of that.  Seems like if you have one or 2 kids that Lady Luck lets you slide;  5 kids, not so much.  Luckily, back then, immunizations were requested, but not required.  I tried to keep the kids current and with help from the programs at school I managed to get them all into puberty without any of them contracting, small pox, polio, or any of the other fatal diseases.  Childhood illness was kept to a minimum, thanks to God and love of their mother!

So here I set almost 60 years later remembering how I raised kids, and how the are raised today and I can not help but be amazed.  Her oldest son is 13 years old and I think she said he is 5'7" and Lord only knows how much he weighs!  He is actually the same size his grandpa was when I married him!  Big boy.  Bigger than his dad.  Wonder what she feeds that kid!  I know he plays football.  Very polite kids.  At least I think they are polite.  There is always the off chance that they are scared to death of me!  My kids called my mom "Grouchy Grandma".  I wonder what these kids call ME?  They actually seemed to like me.  I could be wrong.

Well, this is what I woke up to this morning.  Another day another dollar, I guess.  Today is the day I am going to get something constructive done.

Yeah, right!

Just a minute to vent.

My life is pretty cut and dried.  I do this and I do that and most of the time I am at home with the television on and it is always on channel 11.  It is on that channel for a reason.  Millionaire comes on in the morning, the news at noon, Jeopardy! at 3:00, and again at 6:30.  Well it seems that what I watch is not important, because for the past week I have been watching basketball.  Come on, people!

Now if I actually watched basketball, I would be thrilled, but I just gave you my list of what I watch.  If I wanted to watch basketball, I would buy into a cable company and do just that.  Now granted the little fellows hopping around out there on the court in their little shorts is a sight for these old eyes, but these eyes would much prefer to see Alex Trebec in his suit and tie!  I thrill to the intelligence shown in all those segment's and categories!  I am exposed to very little intelligent conversation here all alone, or at the grocery store, so Jeopardy! is my salvation.

Now if I were the only one who resents this, it might be different, but I am not.  Yesterday I set with my friends mom so he could do errands and I asked him if he watched basketball.  Nope.  I asked my friend Linda and she said nope.  It seems I do not have any friends in my circle who have to hurry home to watch basketball.  A few of them watch the Bronco's, but that is football and it is on Sunday afternoon usually.  I have been known to sleep through a few of those games.  Well, actually, I have been known to nap through Jeopardy! , but that is what I do.

So it is my television.  I bought it.  I pay the electric.  The waves come through the air to the little antennae in my window that I bought and taped up there, so why can't I just watch my little game show and not have to have hours of my time blocked off to basketball?  Or here is an idea.  The actual play time for a basketball game copied from a google site is...( 40 minutes of actual playing time, with 3 full time outs and 2-30 second time outs per team. This amounts to 48 minutes when added to playing time. most college games have 2 slated "tv timeouts" per half,...which can be several minutes each. that's another 8 minutes, totaling 56 minutes. )  I think they set aside 2 hours or more for each game.  Of course I realize that the sponsors need time to advertise the same thing over and over and over............

So if they would just cut to the meat of the game, I would not have to miss programs that I really like and I do not know if you have noticed or not, but you can always hear their shoes squeaking on the floor when they are running and stopping fast.  This makes napping a real pain in the ass as opposed to the sedate conversations on Jeopardy!

The point here is this, I am a consumer when I am awake.  I like to watch my game shows and resent having my day turned upside down because, well, just because.  Here is an idea.  Put the games on an alternate channel and leave my schedule alone.  I do not like basketball, nor football, and watching some guy whack a golf ball around for 3 or 4 hours is right up there with watching paint dry and definitely on my list of things not to do in this life.  

So there you go.  Fat chance I am going to see my Jeopardy! today and Lord only knows, I need that nap! 

Phases of my life

I was just sitting here with the Super Bowl on down stairs and not listening to it and I started thinking about different mantras I have had hang on my wall and how little impact they actually made in the grand scheme of things. 
Right after I married Earl Duane, I made a little cross stitch thing that said "Home Sweet Home". 
Two  divorces and 5 kids later I had a bumper sticker that said "If It Feels Good Do It." 
Then I changed cars and husbands and of course a new bumper sticker.  "Horn Broken.  Watch for finger!"  That was my rebellious years. 
Followed by "Love Many, Trust Few, Always Paddle Your Own Canoe."
Then came Kenny and I began to grow into myself.  The needlework on the bathroom wall now said "Ewe's not fat, Ewe's fluffy!  That was the cutesy one. 
Then came "When you are over the hill, you pick up speed."
 That was followed immediately by  "You know you are old when everything either, sags, dries up, or leaks."
Today I stare at my final thought for the day.  "Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most."

Dear Bret took these for me to enjoy!

I have always been fascinated by the powers of the Universe and by the beauty of the skies, especially the cloud formations. I spent many years taking pictures of these beauties and had a bunch of them in an album. Now this was back in the day when you took the roll of film out of the camera and took it in to the store to be developed. At that time you got an actual 4" x 6" picture that you could put in an album.

                                                           

One of the most beautiful pictures I had was one entitled "The Wyoming Cloud". Now granted the skies in Montana are one of the most spectacular sights in this world, but the Wyoming Cloud was a true work of art.  Alas, like all things bright and beautiful, my album was doomed.  Enter a son in law!  Open season for the Bronco's.  Stir up my natural desire to wager.

We started out small, "Here is a lovely shot of a cumulus over  Pikes Peak. " Well rats!  What are those Bronco's doing?  "OK, this Buttermilk Sky over Fowler on the way to Kansas the day after Al died."  Crap!  Now I was sure the Bronco's could not lose every game, so I was finally down to the wire.  "Alright, Jimmie, the Wyoming Cloud against all the others you are holding.  This will put me back in charge of my album!"

What is that famous poem that says something about "Ah, somewhere birds are singing and somewhere children shout, but there is no joy in Mudville, for mighty Casey has struck out!"  Or something to that effect.  Who would have ever dreamed that the mighty Denver Bronco's could lose every damn game!

So there I sat, a defeated woman and the new son in law!  Now one would think that a boy in his position would have been eager to please, but such was not the case.  I have the album and a few scraggly clouds that no one really cares about and somewhere over at Jimmie's house in the bottom of a box buried in a closet is the beautiful Wyoming Cloud, lost and forgotten.

But Bret took these for me one afternoon while I was gone and he just thought they were pretty.  I had one as the wallpaper on here until he got his new bike and now he sets there on his Harley smiling so I can see the $6,000 worth of dental work.  And why did I get up this morning thinking about that cloud in Wyoming?  I miss the days of dropping my film off to be developed.  I miss the jumping in the car and going somewhere far away on the spur of the moment.  I guess the cloud represents a part of my life that is gone and forgotten and it is just another thing I need to let slip away. 

 Life does take it's little twists and turns on the way from the cradle to the grave, doesn't it?