Where are the Kleenex?

I know you will not believe this, but there was a time when there were not Kleenex!  Worse then that, there was a time when there was an ironing board in every home and an iron in every plug in.  Before that there were pieces of iron which were shaped in a rather triangular manner and placed on the wood stove to be heated to use in the chore of getting wrinkles out of clothes and other household items.  The clothes and other household items were first washed in a washing machine (God I love the way we used to name stuff for what it was used for in the home!)  The clothes were then hung on the  (get this!) clothes line to dry.  When they were dry the ones we did not want to have wrinkles in, were sprinkled.  It was called sprinkling because we put water in a "sprinkling bottle"  which had a top on it with tiny holes to let out tiny sprinkles of water.  See, when the clothes dried with wrinkles in them, they had to be dampened and ironed on the special board  (hence the term "ironing board).

A little aside here, back in the days that this went on a woman was judged by how white her whites were and the uniformity of how her clothes were hung on the line to dry.  There were 2 kinds of clothes pins which held the clothes on the line.  They were both wooden.  One type had a spring and it pinched open, was placed over the item on the line, and then released to hold the item in place.  The other was also wooden but just slid down over the item.  It was best if you had only one kind, because that is just how it was.  A drop of "bluing" was put in the second rinse water to make the whites appear a brighter white.  We even had sets of tea towels which were used for drying of the dishes back then.  (These also required being ironed.)  That was way before automatic dish washers.  The tea towels were embroidered in one corner to denote what should be done that day.  As I recall, the litany was:
 "Monday, wash day,"
 "Tuesday Iron day",
"Wednesday Mending Day",
 "Thursday Shopping Day",
"Friday Cleaning Day",
"Saturday Baking Day,"
 "Sunday Worship Day".
And the world pretty well turned on that unless there was a death or something else equally catastrophic.  Iron day was always special.

Mother would sprinkle the clothes the night before, usually.  Then when she got home in the evening the ironing would commence.  First was baby clothes, then little girl clothes, then boy clothes, men clothes and household things that needed ironed.  But what was really special was the little ball in the corner of the sprinkled clothes.  That was for which ever one of us that had been the best and begged the hardest.  It was the handkerchiefs!  Since there was no such thing as Kleenex, when we needed our nose "blown" mother would whip the handkerchief out of her pocket and pinch it over our nose and tell us to "blow."  ( A little aside here.  I was always hoping I was the first to use that particular handkerchief  as I did not want to have my nose any where near where someone else had undergone the ritual of nose blowing".

But there seemed to be magic in the ironing of the handkerchief.  They had to be square and have no wrinkles.  Most of them were women's  "hankies" because men mostly blew their nose into the air and pinched it off.  Gross, grosser, grossest comes to mind.  Women's hankies usually had a hand crocheted edge.  They were also of thinner fabric.  Each one of us girls took pride in the handkerchief ironing, because we were preparing for the day when we would be the lady of our own home and have our very own iron and ironing board.  Back in those days everything was preparatory to the day we would marry a wonderful man and spend our day making him happy and keeping his home.  So it was always  with great pride that I presented my freshly ironed handkerchiefs to mother and waited until she inspected each one and told me to put them in the "handkerchief drawer."  My life at that point had meaning!  Ah, but time marches on now doesn't it?

Today we have a washer and special liquid soap designed to remove stains, followed by fabric softener to remove wrinkles in the dryer along with removing static cling.  The iron is downstairs, or in a cupboard some where and it really is not needed if you get the clothes out of the dryer in a timely manner.  This did not happen overnight.  As I recall, I tried to get my girls interested in the fine art of ironing and they thought I was nuts.  As for handkerchiefs, those are replaced by Kleenex that are disposable.  And why on earth would we want to reuse a hanky when Kleenex goes in the trash and is added to one of the 697,000,000,000 + piles of trash floating around in our sweet earth today?

I long for the good old days when we actually used stuff that made sense and called it by the name it was used for at the time of use.  So many things in my kitchen are now obsolete, ironing board just being one.  My mangle is a collectors item.  Where are all the rolling pins?  Potato peelers? Lemon juicer?  Sausage stuffer?

Maybe I am the one that has outlived my usefulness?  Ya' thnk?

I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but...

I am not big on government and how all this works, but it has come to my attention the ours is not working at all.  I know we have checks and balances and I also know we pay a bunch of people in Washington, D. C. to pass laws and generally keep my world spinning on its axis.  Seems like there should be about 102 Senators and 435 Representatives ( I could be wrong on the actual numbers because my memory is not what it used to be back when I actually paid attention.) Along with all these people who are elected to represent us in our great capitol  are many helpers, secretary's, and various assistants of all kinds.  All these are there to make sure my life runs along on an even keel and I can go about my business of living and making money to pay taxes for these people to run my life.  Not happening, is it?

I pay my taxes and the powers that be use my money to pay these great men and women to keep me safe and happy.  Well, it sure as hell is not working out that way now, is it?  We have a nut in the white house, placed there through the help of Communist Russia and the people I depend on to make my life run smoothly are running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off trying to make me think that they are doing their job!  How friggin' stupid do you think I am?

The Polar Ice Cap is melting because of a thing called Global Warming and the EPA is non existent.

 People seeking asylum because they are being raped and murdered by the drug cartels in their  countries are being locked up at our borders and their children shipped to "holding facilities" without even a wrist band to identify infant children so they can be returned to their parents.

 Blacks and other minorities are being harassed by rebel carrying rednecks who are still fighting the Civil War.

Pipelines are being shoved across land that was "given" to the Indigenous People who habituated the land by our magnanimous government years ago when we stole the only home they knew.  Bet they wish they could take back the welcome they gave us!

The streets are full of drug addicts that became addicted because big Pharma pushed opioids for every ache and pain through prescriptions  pushed by doctors who received payoffs for selling the product that they knew were addictive.

Teachers are not given the tools they need to teach our children and the cost of getting a higher education gets higher and more impossible to achieve.

People die in our streets for lack of healthcare.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say, no one is listening in the hallowed halls.  The only time these people know we are here is election time.  And that, my friends is the key!  They are in Washington D.C. because we sent them there.  You can send an honest person to Congress, but you can not get them back.

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and the whole damn bunch have been there and padded their pockets with money and favors from the NRA, Big Pharma,  Monsanto and the Koch Brothers,  just  to mention a few.  They are not interested in our welfare.  What they are interested in are laws that let them operate at our expense.  We are not even allowed the luxury of having our food labeled and the contents that end up in our bodies are irrelevant to the bank accounts of the powers that control our lives.

Do you think that the man that ordered the babies taken away from their only security on this earth bothered to ask why so may people were running from one country.  Hell no!  That man is a loose cannon and the very people we sent to protect us are in bed with the enemy.  The countries around the whole world laugh at us.  We are backward and we should be the leaders.  Other countries educate their children and furnish healthcare , but we set here like morons wondering how in the hell that joke of a man got into such a position of power.   Let me tell you, if we do not pull our head out of our ass and wake up the Congress we are going to be marching off to our own Auschwitz.  And it has to start with a whole new bunch in Washington who are not controlled by money.

Think your vote does not count?  Think again.  Not voting or casting your "protest vote" is what got us here today.  For God sake, educate yourselves!  Register.  Study your candidates and do not just go with what Facebook puts out there as fodder for the masses!  The race for even your precinct in your local city is important.  The mayor race is important.  The Governor, Senator, Representative, and on and on.  The school board.  Do not go like a lamb to the slaughter because the man you sent to the Senate all those years ago, is a familiar name.

I watch as groups march against the yoke being tightened around our throats and I watch the nightly news and see the leaders in Washington doing nothing.  NOTHING!!  Their job is to lead us.  Yeah, like lambs to the slaughter.  Use some of your precious minutes to call their offices and tell the answering machine (because very few of them even bother with a live person in their office) to stop the madness and return us to the civility that we deserve.  We work hard and pay a congress to protect our interests.  And do it today.  Not tomorrow or some future time when a man with a tattoo gun is putting your identification on your forearm as he leads you to a bus.

A country that does not learn from it's mistakes is doomed to repeat them.

PEACE THROUG POWER!

No man is an island!

Believe it or not, there was a time when I could have recited most of that poem and told you who wrote it, but those days are gone.  My foggy little mind no longer spits out long thoughts including poems, and other litany.  It mostly just gives me snippets of information that may or may not be actual, but I will accept that and be grateful that the damn thing still works at all!  That having been said, I shall forge ahead with some worthless piece of something for me to write and you to read.  Hopefully one of us will get something from it!

I woke up yesterday and my Grandfather Haas was on my mind.  118 years ago he came to the shores of this great country through Ellis Island.  The Haas family came in shifts.  Great Grandpa Haas had been married twice and the oldest children were responsible for the younger children.  My heart swells with pride when I think how the whole family left Dettingen, Germany and came to this country with everything they owned in the equivalent of a back pack.

The Beck family in Nickerson, Kansas was already established so that became the headquarters of the clan.  Abbyville, Plevna,  and the Huntsville area became Haas territory.  From there they spread out to Oklahoma and beyond.  Some where along the line Gagnebeins got in the mix.  Helen Gagnebein was my great grandmother and my great grandfather was somebody and if I could find my geneology book I could tell you his name, but I can't.  I do know Helen Gagnebein was married to him and had 3 kids.  Mable, Josie, and Lewis.  Mable and Josie married brothers so those are my double cousins.  Lewis married someone and I never knew them very well.  Then Great Grandma married a guy named Hatfield and he had a son named Stephen.  I did not know them well.  Great Grandma lived on one  corner in Plevna and Grandma of the other.  Great Grandma was going to get married a third time since she had been widowed twice by this time and the intended groom died before that could happen.  She then said to hell with it all, closed up her house and moved in with grandma.  And that is when I came on the scene.

Grandma Haas was crippled by a stroke and needed care.  I was 15 years old so I went to stay with them.  I have no idea how much help I actually was, but there I was.  I could help lift and wash dishes and water the plants.  That was pretty much all I was good for, but they seemed to be easy to please.  I mentioned before in another post that the only reading material was the family  Bible, so I got pretty familiar with the King James Version!  Now that is one thing that has stuck with me my whole life.  I can spout scripture till the cows come home, but I can not tell you where it is in the Bible, just that it is there.  I always envied people with memories that worked that way.  But back to the subject at hand.

A couple days ago I was on the phone with a friend and I have got to say, maybe the word I am looking for is not really "friend".  Now anyone who knows me, knows I am a bleeding heart Liberal.  I align with the Democratic party, because their thoughts seem to fall in line with my way of thinking.  In my mind the Republican party represents money.  Democrat represents rights.  That is just how it is.  So anyway, the subject of the kids and the border came up.  His immediate response was to ship the whole bunch of them back to where ever they came from because we have enough people on the dole here and do not need any more.  My idea is to wrap my arms around them and make them welcome.  Course I came from immigrant roots, and he does not?  Is he an Indian or Indigenous as we now refer to them?  Nope.  Anyone else walking these lands of the United States of America has immigrant roots.  My friend and I did decide that we would not discuss politics.  Lot of that going on in this country today.

I do know that different crops are being planted out here on the Mesa.  One thing I am very sure of is that the city boys and girls are not going to come out here and pick peppers so more crops are planted that can be harvested by one man and a machine.  Immigrant labor has been a way of life in this and any agricultural area forever.  They blend into the landscape and into the night.  When the crops are in and the fields barren, they return to Mexico.  They work and put money into our economy and send money home to Mexico to feed their family there.  Is that wrong?  Do they not bleed the same red blood that I bleed?  Do they not love their children as we love ours?

This is a bad way to start the day.  I would much rather face the sun and thank my Lord for getting me through the night then to go out on the street and wave a sign and try to convince a non caring public that children belong with their parents rather than warehoused some where sleeping under a mylar blanket to keep warm.  I wish I could wrap my arms around all the little babies that the man we must call leader has doomed to separation.  Our country is as divided as those children and their parents.



God help us all.

A Brownie pin and a Brownie dress does not a Brownie make.

Aunt Helen Lang was married to a man named Skinny and they had money.  Now this only affected me in a round about way, but 70 years later, I still think about her.  The clearest memory of her is, of course in later life, but still my childhood memories are the fondest.  She and Uncle Skinny would pop into our life on very rare occasions and there was never a heads up, just look up and there was their big shiny car and the trunk was always loaded with wonderful things for us.  I remember when I was in 7th grade and mother had her hysterectomy, Aunt Helen brought me a store bought dress.  I can close my eyes and see it now.  It was ever glaze cotton and the color was exactly the same hazel as my eyes, whatever that color is called.  It had a white collar and strings of the hazel fabric held white daisies.  Two.  One on each string.  It buttoned up the back.  I wore it until it hung in shreds.  Even then it had a use after it was worn out.  Mother cut the good parts off and tore them into strips that were put with other strips, rolled into a ball, and when enough balls were ready, she took them to the rug weaver.  Nothing went to waste at our house.

Back to Aunt Helen.  One afternoon while I was off doing something somewhere else, Aunt Helen and Uncle Skinny came to visit.  I must have been in the third grade at the time.  I missed them completely, but Aunt Helen did not forget me just because I was not there.  She brought me a Brownie dress with a Brownie beanie.  If you do not know, the Brownie group was for the younger kids that preceded going into girl scouts, which was my fondest dream.  She also provided the brown shoes and the money for registration where I received my golden Brownie pin!  I could see vista's opening onto a wonderful life as a Brownie and later as a girl scout.  The world was my oyster!  But alas, a nine year old girls dreams die very easily in the dust of Strong Street in 1950.

Oh, I went to the first meeting and paid my nickle dues.  I got my gold brownie pin, which was worn upside down until I fulfilled a list of things to do.  That list was never finished.  As a matter of fact, it was never started.  Everything on that list required an adult to help and guide me through the process.  Mother was off cleaning houses to put food on the table and Dad was very busy shuffling dominoes at the local pub.  My oldest sister who was 12 or 13 at the time was busy being a slut and "getting herself pregnant" by a 27 year old man.  (In this day and age he would have been thrown so far into prison he would never have seen the light of day, but that was then and what was acceptable then was that he worked and would take care of her.)  And there my resources ended.  So that went by the wayside.  The brown dress stayed in a drawer with the beanie and the gold pin.  I assume at some point it ended up in one of the rugs.

My oldest sister married the man and in due time,  a baby girl arrived.  After a few years she became pregnant again and I was called upon to stay with her while her husband worked since she was in a lot of pain and had a 4 year old daughter that needed care.  So, as the day progressed and she was in more pain I really began to get nervous.  When she came out of the bathroom clutching the door jam to announce, "The baby is coming!"  I learned where babies came from and it was not the stork, like I had been told.  I was ripped into the birds and the bees business very rudely.  I grabbed Mary and ran next door to the preachers house.  His wife (luckily) was a nurse, but (unluckily ) she was not home.  He called somebody to come and I ran home to my little house on Strong Street with Mary in my arms.  Sadly, the baby was born dead and I would carry the guilt of not knowing what to do all my life.  Common sense tells me this is wrong, but we are all humans and we all fail and learn to live with those failures.

I was in an antique store in the Junction a couple years ago and found a Brownie pin.  I looked at the little dancing elf, or whatever it is and bought the pin.  It is up in the cupboard along with other worthless treasures that some how seem to form my life.  They all seem to connect together to pull me back into myself.  I know my life is made up of the good times and the bad times and it sometimes makes me very sad.  The things I have done and the places I have gone are all in my mind some where and last night I lay in my bed and thinking about things I came to the realization, that one day, I will just die. When that happens, all my memories will have been for naught.  When that happens and people learn of my demise, they will say "Oh, I knew her!"  

Which brings me to the point I want to make.  No, you do not know me.  You know OF me.  You know who I let you see.  We are all that way.  I look at you and I see the face you present, but I do not know what you are thinking.  I do not know what you are feeling.  People say I am blunt.  Frank.  I tell it like it is.   Am I?  But do I?  Mother always said, as we get older we begin to face our own mortality and I am sure Mother was right.

But I want to put Aunt Helen to rest here before I leave.  Mother and Aunt Helen remained friends all of their lives.  When I went home to visit, Aunt Helen always came to see me or I went to see her, but mostly she came to mom's house.  When mother lived in the apartment on 15th Circle, Aunt Helen would get confused as to which one to go to and she had a big problem with curbs, in that she had a hard time staying between them!  She would see me standing in the parking lot she was supposed to be in and here she would come in that big Lincoln!  She would park taking up several spots and leap out of the car with her wig askew waving a bag of Werther's Originals that she had brought for mother.  She was 90+ the last time I saw her.

Aunt Helen has been gone for many years, but I still pick up a bag of Werther's every now and then just to take that walk down memory lane.  It works every time.  I can see her in my mind right now as clear as day.  I do not remember Uncle Skinny, but I do remember my precious Aunt Helen and her heart of gold and her hopes for a skinny little girl on Strong Street.  I just want to say, "Hang on Aunt Helen!  I will make it up there yet!"

I guess we all figure it out!

Does anyone remember back when Bret was in South Mesa, or Pleasant View, or Parkhill, or the place on the highway, and he could not bring home a grade over an F-?  I used to threaten, take away video games, bribe, beg, plead for him to just bring home any grade over a D-?  I finally gave up in utter frustration and let him drop out of school at the age of 16.  I knew a losing battle when I had fought it for all those years.

Remember how I fought the battle of growing pot in his room?  I would rip them up and he would grow more.  I finally resigned to the fact that I was a failure as a mother and prayed for the day he would run away.  And it finally came.  He got his growers license and I then began to tell people that he was not a "stoner" but was indeed a Horticulturist.  In motherhood we need to pick our battles and look at life from whatever angle makes these little turds we call our children appear to be actually functioning adults.

So, he grew to adulthood, took a mate and moved out.  There is indeed a God!  And then they had a baby.  You must realize that Kenneth and I had adopted him when we were ready to retire, which puts a whole new spin on "new mother."  At an age when I should have been playing Bingo and eating at the SRDA, I was attending PTA and teachers conferences.  So at the advanced age of 73 I became a grandmother.  To put this in perspective, I now had a grandson who was younger then my youngest great grand child.  But all this is not relevant to my this morning blog or rant, whichever you choose to call it.

The point here is I had raised a kid who did not have an education and seemed doomed to a life of menial labor.  I wanted him to get his GED at the very least, but that entailed study, which by now I knew was never going to happen.  And then one day he walked into PCC and came out with his GED and it had very high scores.  That almost gave me a stroke!  Try to remember, I am very old, and not used to much good in my life!

Now comes the best part.  This same little tyrant is in the same job for over a year now.  Hell it might be two years, because when you are over the hill, you pick up speed and my days, months and years are not nearly as long as they were when I was in my 20's.  So here is the situation as it now stands.  He started school at PCC at some point and has already gotten his welding certificate.  He is now going for his structural welding and working on some sort of degree.  He works a full 40 hours a week and goes to school 25 hours a week, and still maintains a home with a wife and son, but here is the best part...He is on the Presidents list at school, which I am assuming is equivalent  to the Deans List and has received a letter congratulating him for this feat.  He maintains a 4.0 GPA and I am wondering just what they have done with my little boy I raised.

So here is what I have come up with for explanation to this phenomena.  Some kids learn differently.  Some take knowledge from books.  Some from the teacher.  Some from life.   Maybe some are not ready to start school at the age of 4 or 5, but rather in their teens.  Maybe I did a better job of raising him then I thought I did.  I do know that I look at him a whole lot differently then we he was getting stoned out behind the garage.  I have never smoked the stuff and have no intentions of doing so, but he does furnish me with weed so I can make salve and lotion for my poor old aching back and sometimes I share with my friends.

So as I gaze out across my desk and out the window, I just gotta' say  God gives us a big basket and sometimes we do not know what to do with the stuff in it, but it all works out in the end now, doesn't it?

Baby, Grandma Lou, and Bret (left to right.)

Where do I stand on the presence of a nut in the white house?

Let me be very clear on this one.  This is MY country too.  As a christian I am pretty sure the devil incarnate is holding sway in our nations capitol.  At no point in time have I thought for one minute that he and all his cohorts are doing anything that is going to help me or my causes one bit.  Not one iota.  There was a time when I would have researched all the candidates and made an informed choice, but after seeing the way the Republicans in both the Senate and the House have sucked up to the big orange orangutan that is called our leader I would not vote for a Republican if he were handing out million dollar bags of money on the corner by my house.  Not only would I not vote for one, if my "friends" profess to be followers of the current administration they are out the door.  I refuse to break bread or sip the cup with anyone who finds humor and justice in what this administration is doing to immigrants, poor, homeless, gay, bisexual, black, Hispanic,  women, medicaid recipients, food stamp recipients, and the list goes on and on and on.

Further let me state that the idiot in Washington who brags about "grabbing a woman by the pussy," would be well advised to not try grabbing this woman by anything because it would be the last thing he ever grabbed.  It turns my stomach when I see the women standing around him as he signs into law an edict that takes away their rights as women.  There seems to be no middle ground with this government.  Try to remember that I lived through the time period where women went from being chattel to being productive members of society.  I was there for integration.  I saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, JFK, Robert Kennedy.  I missed the part where our government seized the land and sent the Indians to reservations in the middle of nowhere, but I did work in a bar where it was illegal to sell liquor to Indians and I was there when they were no longer "Indians", but became Indigenous People.  Discrimination by any other name is still discrimination!

At his point in time my news feeds are flooded with pictures of babies being ripped from their parents arms and warehoused in Walmart warehouses.  Of course, those people have no maternal or paternal feelings and the babies are not really human like the babies of the lily white guards ripping them from the only security they have known.  Your president, because he sure as hell is not mine, is snuggled up with the North Korean dictator and throwing kisses at the despot that is in control of Russia.  We march.  We wave our flags.  We write letters and we might as well be wiping our asses on them.  Where is America's outrage?  I have signed so many calls to "Impeach Trump NOW!" that those keys on my keyboard will no longer work.

The only hope we have is with our vote.  If you are going to the polls and vote in the same ilk that made this maniac what he is today then I would wish you would just stay home.  If your goal is to "split the vote" or vote for one of the yoyo's that follows this joke of a president, I would wish you would just stay home.  Of course if you are unemployed, you might want to vote for him because, and trust me when I say this, the federal government will soon be hiring for devoted people to man their ovens.

Come on, Walmart! Work with us here!

I have been seeing  on facebook that we should not use the self check kiosk, at Walmart, but rather make them call up more checkers from the back.  This makes sense because Walmart is a retail business and their job is to sell stuff to us.  Isn't ringing us up part of the sales process?  So I went to google for answers.  I typed in Walmart self check.  I immediately got pages of how to screw Walmart out of a sale and also how to watch to make sure the little scanner is not screwing you and how much longer it takes to checkout through the kiosk than through the line.  Having done it both ways, I have some thoughts and it all boils down to how we are screwing ourselves.

I recall when the self checkouts first started popping up.  I think there were 2 or 3.  Then there were 5 or 6 and I think when I was in the North-side Walmart the other day I counted 16 or more.  I also noticed at that time that there were only a couple people using them and the lines at the cashiers were very long.  I know Jerome had his cart full and it took a bit of time to get cashed out.  The cashier was a little harried as it was time for her break and her line was  backed up into the aisle.  I heard her say to someone "This lane is closed."  I thought she was talking to Jerome and my hackles immediately went into "protect Jerome mode."  She quickly told me that Jerome was fine, but no one after him would be checked out there.  (Simmer down, chickie do!)

So, I have come to a conclusion that the kiosk is fine for 2 or 3, maybe 4 items.  When the basket is full, go for the cash register with a human.  Now I want to say that it rather boggles my mind to see 25 cash registers setting in the middle of the store and only 5 or 6 of them being stocked with a human checker.  That just does not look like a good business practice to me.  It would make better sense to man the torpedo (so to speak) and get the paying customer out of the store and into their vehicle and on their way.  The cashier can even hand them their receipt and tell them "Thank you.  Have a nice rest of your day."  I realize the cashier is tired and the customers are frustrated, but aren't we all?  Life gets hectic on the best of days and maybe one smile on either side of the cash register could make a difference.  Just maybe.

For some reason my mother instilled in me a little voice that says "You never know someone and you never know what they are dealing with so always be kind."  I try to do that, but sometimes I just want to grab someone by their collar and scream, "Listen bitch!  I have feelings here and if you think standing in your line is high on my list of priorities, you got another think coming.  Wipe that look off your face and smile at me or I will give you something to cry about!"  But that pretty much goes on in my head while I stand in line with a stupid look on my face.  Lambs to the slaughter, I think.

I am resigned to my fate.  I will continue to shop at Walmart because they have what I need and the last time I went to Joanne's for fabric, I had to wait until the girl finished her text before she could call my number.  When I asked if they had any Betty Boop fabric she was quick to answer, "I dunno."  So you tell me, is there some one out there in this big world who really wants my business and not just my dollars?  If so, let me know.

Some words just do not go together.

There are some words that should not be uttered and some that should never be said out loud and then there are the ones that when linked together strike fear in my heart.  Son.  That is a good word.    Pueblo County Sheriff alone is descriptive.  Now link those all in one sentence and it becomes a very scary sentcnce to a mother at home alone especially when I have caller ID  which comes up "Pueblo County" at 6:30 PM.  Got to be a solicitation call or...
Ring! Ring!
"Hullo?"
"Lou Mercer?"
"Yes."
"Ms. Mercer, this is deputy Lile with the Pueblo County Sheriffs office and I am here with your son."
Now being a mother who has managed to raise 6 kids alone and not have any of them incarcerated for a felony, been the instigator of a stand off,  jailed for DUI, or any of the other things you read about or hear on the news I consider myself beyond blessed.  But far in the back of my mind is always that I am one phone call away.  Thank God this woman kept talking because my heart had already stopped.
"He is fine, but his car has quit working.  He was going to walk to the Walmart and call you, but I am giving him a ride as it is a long walk.  He wants to talk to you.  Here."
And I talked to him and I hopped in the car to pick him up and deliver him to Florence.

Now, to get to the irony of this little story I must back up to a few days prior to this phone call.  I hopped in my car to run up to the highway to Jackie's shop where I do seamstress work.  Every other corner out here in the county is a 4 way stop.  I was turning right on 25th Lane so I made what is known as a "California stop".  Now you all know what that is and how it works.  You can see for miles.  No one is coming so you just apply the brake and before you actually stop, you are around the corner.  There is a stop, but if one blinks an eye, they might miss it.  Apparently the deputy watching from wherever blinked.

To make a long story short very soon I had red lights in my mirror.  As luck would have it I found both the registration and insurance card along with my drivers license.  I am sure that surprised her! I know it surprised hell out of me.  She was very polite and nice and I am sure that she did not know I had NEVER been stopped before.  She made it very easy and when she brought back my papers she gave me her card.  She was Officer Lile with the Pueblo County Sheriff.

I found Bret right where he said he would be outside of Walmart.  I explained to him how the county sheriff calling me gave me a start.  At that point he informed me he was no longer a child and if he was doing something wrong they would just cuff him and put him in the back seat and he would have to make his own bail.  But mother's minds work in a strange way.

Back to the coincidence of Officer Lile being in two places with Mercers just a few days apart.  When I saw how far Bret would have had to walk to get to a phone I was even more grateful to Officer Lile for giving him a ride.  He works in a grow, so I am sure he smelled to high heaven of weed.  I know he was tired and the last thing he wanted to do was a death march to a phone and then deal with the car that night.  I am sure there are officers who would not have let him in the car, but she did and I have got to give a big Lou Mercer shout out to her.

I know police work is hard, dangerous and at times not very rewarding, but if anyone out there knows this woman I would like you to tell her how much my son and I appreciate her taking the time out of her day to do a good deed.  I am sure I will see her again some day because that is how angels are.

If you see me on the 10 most wanted list, don't be surprised.

It seems if I get out of bed in the morning, it is invariably on the wrong side.  Or is it?  Could it be that all the news stations are geared to everyone except me and I feel that maybe I have outlived my usefulness?  I love the news.  I must confess I tend to watch one of the more liberal stations, but to each his own.  For the most part the news is geared for some one way younger than me.  The white headed old farts that I grew up watching and trusting are no longer with us and have been replaced by some young stud or studdette who stands in the middle of the empty stage clutching his/her tablet, which they never bother to look at.  Apparently the message here is that they have one and I do not so ha! ha!

They think the fact that Kim Kardashian went to visit trump is big news, but sadly I do not give a shit.  Wrecks, wars, catching a murderer, the scam going on that affects me is way more important to me than the fact that some young chickadee appeared on the red carpet in a see through dress immediately followed by the news that some lecherous old man looked at her and is now being charged with inappropriate sexual comments.  But I am not going there and it is really not the news that ticks me off, but rather the weather.

I watch Jeopardy! every afternoon at 3:00 and again at 6:30 PM and that is when weather happens.  I am treated to a little gal in her pretty little dress walking back and forth across a bare stage and pointing at a little red cloud with blue edges.  Sometimes it is even in my neck of the woods.  Now I heard her the first time.  And then again 2 minutes later and again when I thought I might catch a glimpse of final Jeopardy!  The bulletins are second only to her giving the regular weather when we are not in danger of blowing away.  This is the time she tells me the "out the door temperature" and what I should wear for that.  This is followed by my "drive home" time.  Apparently this is not my weather station because I do not do the "Out the door nor the drive home" times she is talking about.  My times are crawl out of bed time, Metamucil time, and Late night with David Letterman.

I used to be able to turn on the weather and they showed me a very clear picture of the jet stream and high and low fronts and I could pretty much figure it out, but now I have none of those things.  Just the little woman walking back and forth with her tablet pointing at things that mean absolutely nothing to me and telling me the times this will happen in terms that imply I must work a 9-5 job or I really do not need to know what the weather is doing.  So I have found me a weather site that gives me the jet stream, high pressure and low pressure and throws in a temperature or kind of a guess at it and does not force me to go "out the door" or commute back home from God only knows where.  Like right now, I should be slowly creeping along on the interstate, but I am setting at the computer contemplating whether I should puree my food tonight or put in the dentures and live dangerously.

Thus ends my little rant for today.  Hopefully I will be able to watch Jeopardy! tonight.

Time to settle back into my mundane life.

The trip to Dallas is over and becoming a soft glow in my "been there, done that" memory.  The High Tea at the church is over and done.  The tea cups are clean and packed away down in the church basement.  I have bought "crumpet rings"  for the next endeavor.  First Church Preschool had graduation last night and I cooked 18 pounds of pasta for them.  All my company has departed and Patty is back in Lakin.  Last night I went to bed at 9:00 and did not turn over until 5:30 this morning.  Sadly the worlds smartest mouse is still alive and well in my kitchen.  Thank you Icarus!  Life is returning to mundane here on South Road, which means I must return to my blogging.  That is a chore I really look forward to and enjoy most of the time.

So welcome to my world, writers block!  Normally I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about something and it winds up being on my blog the next morning, but when life is too full, my writing takes a back seat.  I have not had an original thought that did not involve a scone, a pot of tea, or a room full of ladies in their finery for a few weeks.  A time or two I flashed on something, but it was quickly replaced by thoughts of a hot stove, a full oven and jars of lemon curd and clotted cream.

Life goes on.

This blog has suffered and The World is not My Home and my mossy little room over on that blog has really suffered.  I need to reread that so I can carry on where that one left off if I find my notes on that.  In the meantime, I did start the tiller yesterday and made a few passes in the garden spot.  The ground was too dry to do much good, so I watered and will try it again today.  Hopefully, I will wake up in the middle of the night thinking about where I left off and carry on from there.  I can only hope.  In the meantime, send me good thoughts and I will get something done today, even if it is wrong!

PEACE!

What is in that bush?!

I am setting here in Dallas in my bedroom (but I think if I am not here it could be anyone's bedroom, not just mine.) and outside the window is a bush and in the bush is a mother bird and at least 2 babies.  The babies are fully feathered and hopping around from twig to twig.  Mother just flew in and crammed something down the little birds throat.  He does not look very happy about it, but mother knows best!  I am afraid to get my camera because if the flash scares the little fellow he may lose his grip and fall to the ground.  Sam told he there is a cat that hangs out around here and we all know what cats are good for don't we?  Well actually, they are good for several things, but I am talking here about their eating of the birds and such.

(Side note here.  Right now at my house there us a mouse running loose that my Icarus brought in and turned loose for  me to catch.  See, she loves me and knows I am incapable of catching my own mouse so she is trying to make it easier for me.  I am hoping that by being gone for almost 2 weeks, she will be mad enough at me that she will will not care if I starve.  We will see how that goes!)

It is amazing to think that probably 30 days ago this little bird was just popping out of an egg maybe an inch in diameter or less.  And now he has all is feathers and a very big beak for the mother to cram food into.  She just came and did it again.  I am sorry, but if that was my baby I would not feed it!  It actually tries to fight her off when she comes.  I do not see the other bird, so either it flew away or the cat carried it off for breakfast.  Oh, never mind!  They are right there side by side so mother is feeding them at the same time.

It is amazing how nature works, isn't it?  Birds do not appear to be very smart, but this bird has managed to hatch out at least 2 babies and kept them out of the cat's mouth long enough that soon they will fly away and start their own nest somewhere.  If they do not fly away today it is going to surprise me.

Oh, oh!  Sam is home.  I better go clean up my mess before he sees it!

Hello, Dallas!

Well, this morning bright and early, I crawled on a Boeing 737-800 Jet and less than 2 hours later, I was landing in Dallas, Texas and Pueblo, Colorado was back in the rear view mirror.  I have lived 76 years and never even been tempted to leave the ground, but here I am!  When I got off the airplane, I still had no idea where I was and yet Sam found me before I could figure it out.  And then he scooped my suitcase off the carousel and we were headed across Dallas to his house.  7 1/2 hours after I left the house, I have traveled what would have taken me 14 hours to drive, ate a granola bar, had a nap and am on my second glass of water.

So what I have dreaded for all of my life has turned out to be a really cool adventure.  There is something about soaring way high above the earth that is very humbling.  To just be able to look out the window and see the tiny little world down below, is an adventure that can not be told, but has to be experienced.  Something about looking down on the clouds makes one feel infinitesimal.  I had made up my mind that I would just do it and that is what I did.  I had many people give me pointers on flying, but I knew it would have to be done to know for myself.

Oh, when the plane was taxing down the runway and it began to shudder a little and the guy in the seat next to me said, "No, that is not normal" I did know a little moment of panic, but then I remembered what Gayle's husband said about it being much like a car ride only way bigger and there would be some turbulence, I relaxed.  I figured about the worst that could happen was a fiery crash, but hell, when you are my age something is going to get  me and it might as well be a newsworthy event.   But here I am.  Sam had all the work of booking it, and paying for it, all I had to do was get on board and I am very glad I did.  For that I thank him.

I have a book at home by a photographer named Wark that is all aerial photos and I now know what they look like in real time.  There are many circles in Colorado and Oklahoma that I have no idea what they are.  I saw dried up rivers and lakes and reservoirs that I never knew existed.  Lot of farmland all green and growing.  So tonight I shall go to bed in Texas and instead of visions of sugar plums, I shall have vistas of clouds and mountains.  As for flying, I wish I had tried this back when I was young.  I might have been a bird! 

An exercise in futility.

Mother called a lot of the things I did "an exercise in futility" and she was right on things like holding a marriage together, hoping for a raise, cleaning house with 5 kids under the age of 6, and she was usually right.  Now let me tell you what the biggest "exercise in futility" is in my world today.  It is that damned email.

When I open AOL a cheerful voice announces "You've got mail!"  It is such a cheerful voice and I never cease to open said mail box.  I run the cursor down the list and click on the first one that is an actual email from someone I know.  Early in the morning it is not unusual to have 45 or 50 emails and maybe 2 will be real communications from a real person.  I deal with those and then go to any that says  "Paypal", "Etsy" or "ebay".  Paypal will be an order and Etsy is usually a question and ebay requires some sort of action.  These days orders are a rarity.  AOL sorts my email and puts a lot of it in the spam folder.  I look at that list and click the "delete all" button.  Then comes the part that pisses me off.

I go back to the original mail list and look at the first one.  I open it and it is from some vitamin company.  Now if I simply delete it, they think I like to read their crap and the send me more.  Learned my lesson the hard way on that!  So I go to the bottom of their spiel and click the "unsubscribe" button.  It pisses me off that I have to unsubscribe to something that I never subscribed to in the first place, but that is beside the point.  I click on "unsubscribe" and if the gods are smiling on me I get the "sorry to see you go your name has been removed."  That is in an ideal world.  More often than not I get one of the following:

"We are sorry to lose you.  Please update the reason you are leaving." which is a pain in my keester.

Or a simple "you are unsubscribe ."  That is good.

But the one that sends me through the roof is the one that pops up and says: "You must prove you are not a robot."  Then there is a set of pictures. "Choose the pictures with cars."  I do that.  "Choose the pictures with street signs."  I do that.  "Chose the pictures with store fronts."  It is at this point that I loose it.

I have been know to write scathing letters telling them that no way in hell do I need Viagra or whatever they are wanting to sell me and hit the send button.  On those occasions I immediately hear the click on AOL that means I have mail and it is to say that my missive has been returned because that mail box is not a reply address.  Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

So now here I set wasting time telling you things you already know.  The cat is on my lap digging her claws in the tender part of my legs and bumping my chin with her head and the mailbox is continuing to open and close over on the open screen under this one.

So there you go.  My bitching for the day.  A definite exercise in futility if I ever saw one!

It must be spring.

I was setting at the computer today and I felt something brush my hair.  Now since I live alone here with a cat and a dog, something brushing past my head is cause to make me become alert.  Sure enough, a little Sparrow landed on the shadowbox on the wall by my desk.  I opened the front door and tried to shoo him that way, but he did not understand.  Of course Icarus was helping me since she had brought him in with hopes of him being supper for her.  I finally got him herded into a place where I could drop a dish towel over him and carry him outside.  I found him a nice place inside an evergreen where he could safely get his bearings before flying back to his family.  

I do not know why that silly cat becomes a hunter in the Spring of the year or maybe it is the birds are young and not wise to the ways of cats and are more easily caught.  Now the wind is whistling through a window that is not quite shut and scaring me.  I guess maybe I am a little paranoid because I went out to Los Pobres for lunch with my friends out there and on the way home I got to thinking about that little white line in the middle of the road.  Life is sort of like that line.  As long as I stay on my side and the car coming towards me stays on the other side, we are both good to go and will pass by never really seeing each other at all.  But if one of us were to cross that line we would both suffer.  Life is like that.  As long as I do the things expected of me and you do the things expected of you, we will never have a problem.  We drift through life never really knowing the people we see on a daily basis and then one day, we are gone.  

Some times I think maybe I am lonely, but I do not want to change my life to incorporate another human into it.  I go to bed when I am tired and get up when I am through sleeping.  If there were another person here, I would need to take their needs into consideration.  I eat what I want, when I want and rarely close the door when I shower.  I may get up at 3:30 AM or sleep till 6:00.  I have been known to eat lunch in my pajamas's and sometimes the sink is full of dirty dishes and the laundry covers the floor in the bathroom.  I do not always answer the phone just because it rings.

So, this is my mood tonight.  Needless to say, I do not like the wind.  I have never really seen a use for it,  but then nobody really asked me, did they?

My bleeding heart.

There was one thing my mother always had growing in a shady part of her yard and that was a Bleeding Heart plant.  I never quite figured out how that worked, but I know I bought her several over the years.  Every time I wanted to get her something she expressed a desire for a Bleeding Heart.  The preschool at our church was having a plant sale a couple weeks back and I just could not resist.  One Bleeding Heart.  Right now it is residing in the refrigerator because it is not quite planting time.  Over  the years I have planted a couple in my yard, but they are no longer there whether it is because I neglected to water them or mowed them off or what, but I shall try again.  I seem to have the same luck as my mother on keeping things alive!

I do not know how many years my mother has been gone, but I never see a Bleeding Heart that I do not think of her.   I know my fascination with the plant is tied to her, but what was it that drew her to the plant?  I do not remember grandma having one in her yard.  She had Spearmint.  Lots of Spearmint.  I remember that because it was right under the window of the room where they slept and there were big spiders that lived in the Spearmint patch.  I used to live in fear of the spiders coming in, walking across the grandma's and coming into the room where I slept.

I had Catnip growing here over the septic tank.  That stuff really spreads.  I never really seen the cat in it, but some times Charmin or Boots would act very weird.  I planted Poppy's there once.  They were double and they were lavender.  Those were nice, but when they reseeded themselves they came back as single red Poppy's and then they died out.  Once when we were in Grand Junction Joe Fisher picked me a bread sack full of Apricots from a tree up on the BLM land.  I made jam out of them and threw the seeds out over the septic tank and they all came up next Spring.  I planted several in the yard and planted 12 over at Kenny's  mom's house.  Now 25 years later those are all died out except one behind my house.  It has bores and I have to trim it on the side closest to the house every summer so it does not rub the roof.  I am thinking at the rate I am trimming this side that soon it will be hanging over in the field next door and I will not have a tree anymore.  I am hoping I can get one more harvest so I can grow more trees and next time plant them away from the house.

Of course there was a time when I had 68 Hybrid Tea Roses growing in my yard.  The kids used to give me a bush every Mother's Day and when I had 10 kids total it did not take long to fill up the yard.  Course roses need fed every month and pruned every time they bloom and I am basically lazy, so here I now set with 5 that I do nothing with and they just refuse to die.  So I am going to plant a Bleeding Heart.  Not sure if I will do that before I go to Texas or wait.  I can hear the weather lady down on the television yapping about a coming snow storm.  I hate to pay $14.00 for something just to let it freeze.

Well, the sun is up now and it is time to get around and do something constructive.  Or not.

My information has been compromised!

What a friggin' surprise!  For the record, my facebook info in nominal at best.  They have my name and they know I am a Liberal.  Now stop and think about this for a moment.  When I had my gas turned on, I gave them my name, address, phone number, my next of kin, an emergency contact and my SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.  Same with the electric, phone, kids info at school, any job I applied for, my drivers license, bank accounts, credit apps, prescriptions, doctors office, insurance policies,  and any one else who comes in contact with me.  And I am supposed to be worried because facebook knows I am a liberal!  Come on people!

Zuckerberg is in session now being quizzed and drug through the wringer to see if he knows something about me that they don't.  Let her rip, Mark!  Throw me under the bus.  You do not need to waste time protecting me because the Government is burrowed into our daily lives up to their eyebrows.  They do not give a rats ass about anything except that they can keep track of us.  Oh, I am sure by now they know I am a born and bred liberal democrat, and if not it is because they really don't care about us peons that live a day to day existence, trying to make ends meet and keep a potato in the pot for later in the day.  Their big deal is to try to figure out a way to get that $.47 interest on my savings account that I made last year.

The thing about Facebook or any other social media is people get on there to tell anyone who will listen all about themselves and then if some one reads it they have an idea what their political leanings are.  Every day I get calls from insurance company's and car warranty places, and credit card offers.  Now they all know what kind of car and the year of said car and have a price quote at the ready.  Did I call them and tell them what I drove and give them my phone number?  No I did not, and yet they have all that at their fingertips.  Who sold me down the river?  Not facebook that is for sure.

And here is something that really upsets me.  My husband has been dead for 18 years and yet he gets phone calls from salesmen who are shocked to learn of his demise.  How old are these contact lists that are being sold to someone for a price?  I tried to get his name off the bank account, but that is not happening either.    I guess the point I am making is what does it matter that someone stole my info from facebook?  It has been out there for years  and will no doubt still be out there when I am pushing up the daisies in some distant future.

I did not panic and quit facebook and probably will not change anything I do.  So, relax, Mark Zuckerberg, I am not leaving you and you do not need to tell me you are sorry.  You are just another human that is going to be chastised so we forget for a few days what an asshole we elected to the oval office.

Corky was a dancing fool!

I woke up this morning with Corky on my mind.  First let me go on record as saying it is always both a surprise and a pleasure to actually wake up.  It becomes more of a surprise as each year goes by.  But this morning I was thinking about Corky.  Must have dreamt about him, because he was very vivid.  Corky dates back to when I was 16 or 17 and still in high school.  I do not remember how I met him because I lived in Nickerson and he lived in Hutchinson which was 11 miles away and I had no car.  Now I can set here and try to guess how he came into my life or I can tell you about him. 

Corky was the coolest guy in the world.  He came with lots of friends and while he did not have a car, his friends did.  And he loved to dance.  And I loved to dance.  At that time there was a dance every Saturday night at the convention hall.  If you know your history, you have surely heard of Dick Clark and his "American Bandstand". (Now my facts and names and such may not be completely correct, but this is what I seem to recall.)  It was held back east in some big city and it was all the rage.  It was on television and all that.  So ours was held at the convention hall with some disc Jockey and to save the floor we all checked our shoes at the door and it was called a "sock hop".

Corky was always my dance partner and we were good.  One of his tricks was to face me and at the precise moment  he would cross his arms,  I would squat, he would step over me and some how I ended up behind him and we never missed a beat.  Another was to put our backs together and link elbows and he would lean forward which flipped me across his back and I lit on my feet facing him.  We did the stroll, and all kinds of things he learned on watching bandstand.  Several times we ended up winning for the evening.  It meant nothing, just that we were the winners.

Corky and I were a "couple".  Back then being a couple meant absolutely nothing, just that we danced together.  Then we decided to take it to the next level.  He borrowed his brothers car, we skipped school and went to Wichita to Joyland Amusement Park.  Being a school day, the place was deserted with us and a few other kids skipping school being the only ones there.  We rode the roller coaster.  We rode the Ferris wheel.  We walked in the hot sun.  We made a recording in a booth.  Then we rode the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel again.  The only thing left was the Roundup.  That is the round thing where you are strapped in standing up, spun around, and tilted on its side and that is when I threw up!  Luckily the operator saw what was happening and leveled the ride out quickly so the only one was lucky enough to have my vomit hit them in the face was me.  Corky was very caring and compassionate to me and decided maybe it was because we had not eaten, so he bought me a hot dog and we left Joyland, never to return.

Of course he got in trouble for skipping school as did I.  When the whole truth about our day came out, as the truth always will, we were both grounded.  Since we had no real emotional connection, and mileage being a detriment, we drifted apart.  We both found new friends.  Our dancing days were over, but I still have not forgotten Corky, or Joyland, or the sock hop at Convention Hall.

Hutchinson, Kansas is actually a very small town at heart.  Idle curiosity made me wonder what had become of Corky.  And Jimmy and other friends.  Most of my friends had married and led rather mundane lives, but some of my dance partners had remained single.  I had married and moved away, but moved back in 1967 with a string of children in tow.  I left Hutchinson again 10 years later for the fertile fields of Colorado and have been here ever since.

In 1980 the AIDS epidemic began.  It was known in the early years as "The Gay disease."  My very dear friend, Gibby, was one of the first to fall.  I took up the banner and became involved in the fight very early in the game.  I was to learn many years later that both Corky and Jimmy had been lost to that disease.  Such a waste of life.  The hate back then was palpable.  There was talk of "rounding up all the queers and locking them up" so they could not spread the disease.  What a lack of compassion! It took people like Rock Hudson dying and Elizabeth Taylor standing up in his memory to finally wake up our country. 

When December 1 was declared a day of remembrance for all the artists and actors lost to the disease, it was a giant step forward.  The first one held in Pueblo was attended by one man with AIDS and a woman who had lost her brother to AIDS.  It was at the Arts Center.  The next year I was there with 2 friends.  Now it is a very open celebration and is held at Rawlings Library on December 1.  Our little Pueblo AIDS Memorial Quilt hangs in the 4th floor for the month of December.  Quite a step from huddling in the shadows to this.  The quilt has been featured in the newspaper with full page coverage 2 times.  

I never made a panel for Corky or Jimmy.  I made one for Gibby.  

And there you have the workings of my mind this morning.  Damn!  I sure hope it rains soon.

709 North Strong Street and the midnight dash.

I know I speak of my formative years in Nickerson as mostly happy, but there was something lacking.  While the majority of the homes in town contained running water and indoor "facilities" the sewer system and the running water had not yet reached our little street.  The running water consisted of a pump in the kitchen, a pipe that led from the sink to the wall where there was a hole that let the water run onto the ground out back.  We had Muscovy ducks which were very happy with this method of ridding our selves of waste water.  Ducks like water and they could always be found in the middle of the mess.  That is what ducks do.  Interesting note here; to my knowledge Muscovy is the only domesticated duck that is able to fly.  At least I think that is right.  I had 37 ducks of different breeds here on South Road several years back and only the Muscovy could fly, which they did with amazing regularity right up to roost on my air conditioning unit.  Nasty damn things.

Any way, that was the set up for the running water in our house.  Bathroom facilities were an entirely different matter.  That little job was taken care of out the back door and down the path to the little wooden shack that was perched over a deep hole.  The cool porcelain of city bathrooms was replaced by a wooden bench with a hole cut in it and the white roll of "toilet tissue" gave way to the Sears catalog.  Sometimes it was a Montgomery Ward.  Sears was favored for it's absorption, well all the pages except the ones which were colored because they were slick.   Oh, and sometimes we were real lucky and had a corn harvest that produced soft corn cobs, but that was never.  And there was always the danger of  "picking up a sliver " if one moved the wrong way while on "the throne."  That combined with my fear of dark places and black widow spiders was enough to keep me in a paranoid state most of the time and my bowels in a locked state. Those are just some of the hazards of life in poverty Ville.

Using of the facilities in the daylight was one thing, but at night it was an entirely different matter.  Living in the country brings a whole new set of problems.  First, there were no street lights on Strong Street, or the next street over, or the highway either.  Flashlights were unheard of at our house.  There was a kerosene lantern which we could use if we could find matches.  Now I want you to know that no way in hell was I going out to that God forsaken place alone, and neither would any of the other kids.  The river was not far away and sometimes we could hear a cougar or mountain lion calling.  I think there might have been a panther at one time or maybe a panther was a cougar.  Coyotes yipping in the field behind the outhouse was a regular occurrence.  Mother assured us that coyotes were more afraid of us then we were of them, but I was not sure about that!

So I learned early to not drink a bunch of water before I went to bed and thus maybe avoid that trip in the middle of the night.  I think the sisters found it easier to wet the bed than walk that lonely walk.  It seemed like it was a very long ways to the bathroom, but reflecting back, I do not think it was that far.  I think it might have been 60 feet, but it sure seemed a lot farther to my little body.  If there was a moon then the shadows scared me, and if I had the lantern the shadows scared me.  If an owl hooted then right there was the end of the trip!  If I could stay on the path it was alright, but if I veered to the left just a tad I was in a cactus.  If I strayed to the right I was in the chicken fence.  I do recall how bright the moon used to be out there in the middle of the night.  And the stars!  There were millions of them.  I could pick out the big dipper and the little dipper.  I look at the sky at night now and it is very pale.  I am glad I have those memories.  Kenny and I were in Utah once and lived in a campground.  I could see the stars then.  I wish I could go back there and appreciate it.  The Utah sky is bigger than the Kansas sky.

So, anyway, there you have the drawback to the Strong Street life.  But, I survived.  I know there are some of you that are reading this that think how horrible that was, but it really wasn't that bad.  It was an inconvenience for sure, but it was what it was.  I am very glad that I have indoor plumbing now because I am terrified of the dark.  I have a night light in the bathroom and if I leave something in the car, it will have to keep until morning.  I do not think there is anywhere left in this world where there is not indoor plumbing, but if there is, I do not want to go there.

As I write this, I can see that path in my mind.  I remember the neighbors had a concrete floor in their outhouse.  Hank Windgate did not have a door.  The Ayers family just had a tin tub with a hole in it over a bigger hole.  So all things considered, I guess we had it pretty good.  My daughter, Debbie, has a saying that seems apropos here:  "What doesn't kill you or make you bleed, will make you strong."  So there you go!

Until death us do part.

That used to be in the wedding vows.  Let me see if I can actually remember those vows.  "I, Louella Beth (insert last name here) do take thee, so and so, to be my wedded husband, to love, honor, cherish  and OBEY, in sickness and in health , forsaking all others and cleaving only unto thee till death us do part."  Or something like that.  Now you should know that every time I took those vows, I really meant them.  At least at the time.  As I recall, the vows kind of changed over the years and when I married Kenny, the ceremony consisted of a retired minister in an assisted living, his wife in the next room asleep and Kenny and myself.  Oh, yeah and the handing of a $20 bill which he quickly pocketed.

He signed the license and said, "Well, for all intents and purposes you are married unless you want me to say something more?"

"Well, yeah.  but leave out that obey part and just say about him loving and cherishing me.  Oh, and bringing home the paycheck.  Leave out the part about me having to clean house and all that,  I'll cook but that is about it."  So he laughed and said that and then had  us sign .

The whole time spent with him was about six minutes, after which we stopped at the donut shop and had a donut for our wedding supper.  It was 15 degrees below zero when we passed the bank in Canon City that day.  But you know what?  That marriage worked!

It is now 35 years later and here I set.  Kenny has been gone 17 years. and it is like he is still here.  To put this in perspective, he occupied almost half of my life.  No other man can make that claim.   We thought alike.  We liked the same foods.  We both liked the same music.  We went fishing and I baited my own hook.  We had one serious disagreement (which was of course his fault.).  I did not have to wear makeup and whatever I made for supper was fine and if not, we went out to eat.  Time flies!

So anyway, I woke up this morning thinking on my life.  I think I am turning into a hermit.  I get up and kill time until bedtime.  Then I sleep until it is time to get up and do the whole thing again.  Ever once in a while I think I should start dating, but then I have a second thought that beats hell out of that first thought.  I dated one guy for a while, but sadly he succumbed to cancer.  Then there was a guy that was way younger than me, but he loved himself enough for both of us, so that one fizzled out.

Well, to get to the point of this missive, there is no point.  I am just kind of putting things in perspective in my life and I do that by poking the keys and reading what I wrote.  Life is good, and most importantly, the world is still turning.  I should, no doubt, go on a cruise or something, but I do not want to leave home.  I am going to crawl on an airplane on April 28th and fly to Dallas.  Getting on an airplane is something I swore I would never do, but here I am with my ticket in hand and the day approaching.  Sometimes we just have to do stuff because.  I guess that is what is known as making a bucket list.  So far, it is the only thing on my bucket list.  Perhaps if I make it to Dallas and back, I shall make a bucket list.  We will see.

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! 

A water pan? Are you kidding me?

A week or so I manage to disembowel the front of my car while driving down the road on my way home.  I had taken 20th Lane because the speed demons were on the highway I usually travel.  I suddenly found myself airborne and then slammed down onto the pavement.  I continued on my merry way home and when I parked, still wondering what in the hell that was all about.  A quick check of my car showed the front bottom part of my grill (I think it is a faring) was no longer attached.  So, it was not my imagination after all.  I looked up a number for a county office that I thought would perhaps tell me what that was I hit.  A very nice lady asked to help me.  I explained that I had no idea how she could, but this was the situation as I saw it.

"I do not know what in the hell I hit over on 20th and County Farm, but it caused me to become airborne and ripped the faring off my front end as well as scaring hell out of me. "  She took my contact information and apologized, but assured me someone would contact me.  Sure.  Been there, done that.

To my surprise, a very nice man named Dale called me the next day to say he found nothing and when I told him I was not on County Farm, but was crossing it, he went back to investigate that info.  Then to my surprise he called me back to explain that it was a water pan I had hit.  What?  A water pan is where there is a dip for the water that overflows the ditch to run across the intersection and into the ditch on the other side.  A culvert came to mind, but that was too simple.  Out here in the county where there is a big ditch and lots of watering of the produce in the fields, it is apparently easier then culverts.  The end result is we have lots of these "water pan dips" and they are not nice.  Some of them are called widow makers for a reason.  Having lived out here half of my life I have learned to slow down and I had crossed that particular dip many occasions with no problems.  So what had happened this time that made it different?  I did not know.

I had the car put back together.  Dale called a couple more times to just check in. (?)  I thanked him each time for his caring attitude.  Then came his final phone call.  They were not happy with that "water pan"  so they dug it up.  They found a broken pipe which had been leaking and patched several times creating a crater under the water pan, which I discovered quite by accident.  He assured me that it was now repaired and covered with gravel and that would be concreted in as soon as they could get a delivery.   He thanked me for calling it to his attention and I say "Thank you Pueblo County for actually listening to an old lady!"  He even asked about whether I had my car fixed or not.  A public servant with a heart!

I drove over that way today and checked it out.  Yep, it is something I can cross now without losing the front of my car.  Usually when a problem comes up out here and I report it, there is no action and I am sure my complaint goes in a big pile with a whole lot of other ones, but I have to say a big Thank You to Pueblo County Roads and a guy named Dale for following through on my concerns.

Well, hello guardian angel.

Yesterday about noon I was on my way home from town and decided to pop into Lagree's for a few items.  I had cataract surgery planned for this morning so I was a little preoccupied.  I got my groceries and came home.  I finished up a sewing job and thought I would just deliver it right quick.  The car keys were in my pocket and I began the search for the purse.  Nowhere to be found.  I checked the car.  Downstairs.  Trash can.  Back porch.  By this time I was in a panic.  I knew I had it at Lagrees and hoped I had left it there.  I called and sure enough it was in their office and I could come pick it up.  So off I flew.  It is just a mile up the road so it did not take long.

Upon my arrival they determined that it was indeed mine and handed it to me.  Seems I had left it in the cart in the parking lot when I loaded my groceries into the car.  Some person had seen it forgotten there and contacted them so they could go retrieve it which they did straightaway.  And there it set in the office for 3 hours waiting for someone to miss it.  Now this tells me how honest the workers at that store are.  They could have gone through it and found some identification, but they chose not to violate the privacy of the owner.  I can not tell you how stupid I felt, but they were very understanding.  The consoled me with words that I was not the first, nor would I be the last to do something like this.  I came away from that store feeling like I really was a worthwhile being who had just gotten careless.

I knew without even looking that the money I had in that purse when I deserted it would still be there and it was.  I love the mesa out here and I love the fact that we have honest people in our neighborhood store.  Sometimes the stores in town have sales that make my little Lagree's look pricey, but when it is all said and done I love to shop there.  I love the people who work there and run the store.  Kenneth was always a firm believer that we needed to support our local businesses because if we did not they would fail.  The store had already failed once when it was Chet's and we had been without a store until Lagree's opened it.

So I want you all to know that Lagree's is located at 27050 US Hwy 50 out here in Blende.  The hours are 7-9 and you can always find a bargain.  For sure you can find honest hard working people here who want to help you find just what you need at a reasonable price.  And best of all, if you need help they are all over that.  And if you leave your purse in the shopping cart in the parking lot, damn good chance it will still be there!  And tell the cashier Lou Mercer said "hey".  You may just find one who knows me.