Finding Our Way; Moving Forward After the Death of a Husband.

The restaurant was the Three Thieves many years ago.  It was a favorite place for Kenny and I to have a dinner out at least once a month.  It had a notorious history as being the place where some guy had met with a hired assassin to plot the death of a business partner.  Sadly I do not remember the names, but it is all water under the bridge at this time as it was at that time.  We just loved a good steak and we could always get one there.  The salad was also to die for with the house dressing and Blue Cheese Crumbles.  I always had the baked potato and to me the skin is the best part!  Kenny always said only a glutton ate the skin.  His first wife told him that and he relayed the message to me, but I did not give a big rat's ass and I ate it!  He let me.

Last night I returned to what is now the Park East Restaurant for a dinner with six of my new found friends.  This is a very select group of women, but we all have one thing in common.  We have all lost our husbands and we all collaborated on a book put together by Beth Bricker Davis.  We each wrote our story of losing our husbands and moving forward alone.  We are an elite group only in that we are part of the book.  Each of our stories is unique, but each has the same beginning and ending.  There is no living happily in the real world.  Every day and every memory is ours, but they are all the same and the endings are the same.  We all go home alone to our respective homes with whatever life we live, but we all have our own memories of what was and will never be again.

I sat across from a lady named Marla Carleo.  Beside her was Shirley Higgins, who sometimes plays her Bass at our church. Next was Joyce Turbyfill and then Cathy  Trujillo was on the end.  On my side was me (Lou Mercer) followed by Beth Bricker Davis and then Alicia Bourdon-Goure.  Of the group, Alicia is the only one who has remarried.  I have tripped the light fantastic down the proverbial aisle 6 times, so I guess that is about it for me!

A toast to the success of our venture and then time to reminisce and catch up on each others lives.  Before last night, they were all just pages in the book.  Now we are forever held together by a bond forged by Beth Bricker Davis and a book that seems to be doing fairly well.  I am proud of Beth for coming up with this idea and then having the tenacity to bring out the best in all of us.  You do know that organizing a bunch of old widow women is akin to herding cats!

And we all  have our own copy of the book.  It is available on Amazon at click here.  Or you can buy it locally at Montgomery Steward on the end of Main Street right here in beautiful Pueblo, Colorado.

I do hope to maintain a friendship with these wonderful ladies.  We are now forever held together by a silvery cord that slips the bonds of earth.  I do hope you can pick up a copy of this because each experience is unique and while it can never make the death of a spouse easier, it can show that you are not alone.  

So, off to church I go this morning and I am going to thank that big ole' God up there for leading me out all alone last night, because that is something that I just do not do.  And while I hope you are never in my shoes, odds are you will be.  Just remember that out there in that big old world there are other people who have been there, done that.

May your path be sprinkled with sunshine and your nights filled with moonbeams! 

Buy book here!              (back row) Beth, Alicia, Marla, Shirley, (front row)Lou, Cathy, Joyce

The beautiful Colorado sky!

Every morning without fail, I leave my back door and head out back to the goose house.  When I built it, it was a duck house.  An influx of foxes changed all that.  At the height of my goose/duck raising , I had 37 ducks and 17 geese.  I also had a very big pond which was lined with heavy plastic.  It was about 35 feet long, 30 feet wide and 5 feet deep.  They loved it and swam in it all day long.  I still have pictures of it some where, but that is history and I do not like to live in the past.  Very slowly the foxes began to sneak in and carry off a duck now and then.  When I realized what was going on, it was too late and the houses behind my empty field prevented use of a gun.  One of the neighbors who lived down there, told my step daughter that he had shot over 10 foxes in one week.  But that is history.  I now have 8 geese and no ducks.  None of this is relevant, however.

This morning as I stood in my back acre, I reveled at the beauty of the blue Colorado sky.  Not a cloud in sight.  It was not cold, just a little cool, which is to be expected this time of year.  It was just that the beauty of the Colorado sky struck me as the hand of God at work.   It is so wonderful to live here in the center of the United States of America that I could not help but thank God above for delivering me to this place!  I fully intend to live out my remaining days right here on South Road, but can I?

I watch the news.  I know that south of here, children are locked in cages because their parents are trying to escape the drug lords in South America.  North of here, the Indigenous people who lived on this land since before Columbus or whoever came and they were eventually pushed back to reservations.  The government has penetrated into every aspect of our lives so that we are no longer allowed the security of our own planet.  In lands across the sea, bombs and war are an every day occurrence.  Running water, heated homes, electric lights at our fingertips are not givens over there.  I do have a radio in my bedroom that will bring me messages if the depot ever implodes.  It will also let me know if a tornado is on the horizon.  It was installed in my home over 30 years ago by the government.  They have changed the battery twice.  It is tested every Wednesday at noon.  I also get a calendar every year from the same place that furnishes the radio.  I am sure that it has some purpose, but I really do not know what it is.  Perhaps it is the government spying on me.  If so, somebody is pretty hard up for someone to spy on!  There is very little outside activity in my home and the bedroom is pretty well a "dead zone."

But back to the sky that is such a beautiful blue that it makes my heart ache!  If our government could spend the money on taking care of our weakest citizens that they spend on securing our borders and monitoring the rest of the world, wouldn't it be a beautiful world?  My grandfather came here 120 years ago with nothing but the clothes on his back and a hand held by my great grandfather.  I love my family history, and I love to go back to Plevna, Abbyville, Huntsville and all the places my grandparents lived.  Some of my fondest memories were made around the oak table at the little house in Plevna where I lived with my grandma and great grandma.  The school is gone now.  Last time I was there, only the gymnasium was standing.  The Hinshaw general store had burned.  That left the bank, the phone company and one gas station.  The Smith house was gone and 3 trailer houses were on that lot.  The Congregational Church still stood next door to our house.

The sky in Kansas and the sky in Colorado are different.  Colorado is a deeper blue.  Kansas sky goes on forever. The night sky in Kansas is not polluted by city lights and I can hear the coyotes yipping  across the prairie.  There are more stars then one could ever count.  The sky is total black with only diamonds sparkling against the velvet background. but it is the sky that fills my soul.

At least that is how I remember it.

Front sight is 2020!

It used to be that hind sight was 2020, but now when the clock strikes midnight we will be looking forward to 2020!  Well, some of us a little more than the rest of us.  I have made this leap 77 times and I find it is not luck, or whether I ate Black-eyed Peas or not, but more just a luck of the draw.  Before I found out I had to eat Black-eyed Peas in order to secure my good luck for the coming year, I had pretty good luck.  Then I started eating them and my luck stayed the same.  Could it be an old wives tale?

And speaking of old wives tales, the grandmothers were full of them.  I tend to think of them more as wise tales as opposed to the wives tales.  Here are a few for your consideration.

"Where spider web grows, no beau ever goes."
"Once bit, twice shy."
"Broken mirror brings 7 years of bad luck."
"Step on a crack; break your mothers back."
"Any thing that can go wrong, will go wrong."  (This is called Murphy's Law.)
"Spill salt you have to pick it up and throw it over your shoulder to ward off the bad luck"
"13 is an unlucky number."
"A black cat crossing your path is bad luck."
"Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning."
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight."

This list goes on and on, and I am pretty sure that I violated every one of them!  And yet here I am, alive and well and facing another year.  But, you know what?  Life is good.  Where there is life there is hope.  My momma told me that and I have lived by that my whole life.  My life has had it's ups and downs, but I would not change one single thing about it!

This is my take on life: Every man I married and every man I did not marry, was for a reason.  I learned something from everyone of them.  Some of the lessons were very hard and some still bring tears to my eyes and there are things I would know now that I should have known then that I can not change.  Every person I met along the way to today made an impact on who I am now.  Some of my lessons made me a better person; some of them taught me that life is reality.  But that is yesterday; and yesterday is gone.  I will not pass that way again.  There are no second chances at some things.

So Happy New Year!  We will toast a cup of kindness now to Auld Lang Syne; however you spell it and whatever it means!  Today is a new day and tomorrow will be a new year.  Every New Years Eve, I forgive myself, and every New Years Day, I try to do better.  Maybe someday I will get it right.

One more thing I know is that when I finally do get it right, the big guy upstairs is going to jerk the rug out from under me and holler "Hurry up and get in here while you are good to go!"

Peace to all and remember,

 "You can not sprinkle showers of happiness on other people without getting a few drops on yourself."

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: All I see is a pink ball...

Lou Mercer Words of Wisdom: All I see is a pink ball...: It is Christmas all over the world, and contrary to popular belief it is Christmas at my house.  I do not have a tree and all the trappings...

All I see is a pink ball...

It is Christmas all over the world, and contrary to popular belief it is Christmas at my house.  I do not have a tree and all the trappings.  There is no Christmas music wafting from the stereo.  And last night I missed the service at church for the first time in many, many years.  But it is still Christmas morning here.

Yesterday I went to a friends house for lunch.  I dined with Ross Barnhart and his brothers and most of their wives.  His cousin was also there.  It was lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Today I am staying home.  I have some things I want to do today, but right now I am thinking back to Strong Street.

I know we lived there for several years, but I am not sure how long.  My favorite Christmas is the year I received a pink ball for Christmas from Santa Clause.  Santa always left our gifts on our chairs at the table.  That year I received a coloring book, a box of 8 Crayola's, 2 chocolate candies an orange and a pink ball.  It was about the size of the orange and it was the most wonderful ball in the world!  When I dropped the ball it bounced very high.  I threw it against the house and it bounced back.  It was so wonderful, but of course , that did not last.  It was just a matter of time before the wonderful pink ball picked up a sticker and no longer bounced.  The last time I recall seeing it was deflated and living in a mud hole.  Soon the coloring book was all colored, the Crayon's broken and missing from the box.

The last Christmas I recall was the last one I want to remember.  Jake told me Santa was not real and he knew that for a fact because Momma was going to let him play Santa and give out the presents that year.  I did not believe him, so I asked him what I was going to get and he told me.

"It is a tin doll house with a mother, father, brother, sister and a dog. A black dog." And that was what I got.  Jake had assembled it by pushing the metal tabs through the slots and folding them down to hold them in place.  And sure enough, there was a pink mother and father, a boy and a girl, and a little dog.  It had a couch and chair, a table and 4 chairs, and a tub and stool and sink in the bathroom.  The kitchen had a sink, refrigerator and a stove.  Jake told me he would get me more stuff someday.  But it never happened.

Some how the wonderfulness of the doll house was over shadowed by the sadness the Santa was not real.  All those years, it had been my momma cleaning other peoples houses and saving money a little at a time to surprise me.  It made me sad to think of her doing without so I could have something I really wanted.  I came to hate that gift more every day.  Momma never knew, but I did.

I hated the poverty that was our life.  I hated that my father did not ever touch me or carry me like he did Mary, Donna and Dorothy.  I told myself that he probably did, when I was little, but I do not remember that.  He spent a lot of time drinking when I was growing up and I attribute it to that.  Sure doesn't help these many years later.

So today, I am staying home, alone.  I am alone because I want to be, not because I have no one.  I have 6 children who have mates and children and some of those children have children which means I am a great grandmother.  I have nieces and nephews.  I have very good friends.  I just want to be alone, so I will.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and pray that you all enjoy life to the fullest.  I know I am going to do just that!

Peace!

It is legal here in Colorado, so.....

Yesterday my middle daughter arrived here from Kansas.  This is a piece of information that seems trivial, but marked a big day in my life.  Oh, she has been here before and I am always happy to see her, as I am all my offspring.  But yesterday was special in more ways than one.  I had lunch with Michael McQuire and Teresa Cordova from church.  Michael and Jimmy, his partner, gave me a homemade fruit cake with lots of frosting and pistachios, which I love.  Thank you boys for a special gift.  Then I hurried home as I had a plan for the afternoon.  First I called to see where Dona was in her journey, and then I planned her surprise!

As you know, Colorado is home of the free and the brave, as is every state in our union.  It is also legal for marijuana!  Now, I have never tried marijuana as a recreational drug, but I do make a pain cream out of the leftovers furnished to me by a dear friend in Canon City.  Some how he extracts the hallucinogenic properties and he is left with something that looks like a bunch of dried up leaves pressed into a block.  I then take that, cook it and turn it into a pain cream that will put your sciatic into a deep sleep almost instantly.  Very good stuff.  It contains none of the hallucinagenic  of marijuana and I have many people who swear by it, me included!  But that is beside the point.

I know my friend, Shirley,  used "gummies" to help her sleep, so I know pot has properties that are beneficial.  I have heard of marijuana brownies and how the high is different so I have been researching that aspect.  YouTube is full of information, so Saturday I made "cannabutter."  (I should interject here that a friend of mine had provided me with a big bag of weed a month or so ago.  His instructions to me were to turn it into something that could then be turned into cash.  I told him I could not use it in my pain cream so we agreed that edibles was the way to go.)  Thus began my venture into the world of marijuana edibles!

First another friend showed me how to remove the "buds", grind them into something I forget the name of and then take the "trash" that was left and use it for my pain cream.  Every part of the plant is used for something.  So I put the pain cream stuff aside and proceeded with baking with the "canna butter" when I got home from church.  First I made chocolate cookies.  Then I made chocolate cake bars.  I left the bars in the oven a little too long so they came out harder then I would have liked.  I will do those different next time.

So the unsuspecting daughter was met at the door with a cookie.  At 4:20 (which in itself is symbolic) she ate one half of a 2 inch cookie.  The following is the observation of subject:

1.  It tasted like "weed", but that is not a bad thing because it IS weed.
2.  At 4:50, she felt giggly.
3.  At 5:00 she was "stoned".  It was a very good "stoned", whatever that meant!
4.  She remained in the euphoric condition of "mellow" until she returned to her normal state at 7:20.

Now it should be noted, that during that time frame, she and I visited in our usual way.  So, I think I can safely say that this experiment was a success!  I think my cookies will be useful.  I do need to work on the preparation of the product, but that will come with time.

So all you people out there who think I am just your usual run of the mill grandma, please keep in mind that I still am.  I approve of marijuana for its medicinal properties, but I do not use it.  If you want to use it, I am here to help you enjoy it in a safe way and in the comfort of your own home.  I am not quite ready to take this to market, but I can see how that can happen.  It may be that this is as far as I go with it, but who knows.

In the meantime, I will put my baked goods in the freezer and when the time is right, I will proceed.

Or not.

Apparently I am pretty stupid.

Apparently I do not know the law.  See, I always thought that if someone was "delivered a summons to appear in court" that it meant they had to show up when called.  I further believed that if I were in that position, I would be required to tell the truth.  Now I never did claim to be the smartest bulb in the box, but some things are drilled into my head and have not left, lo, these many years.

I was raised that my country was a country of morals and scruples.  A country of immigrants.  A land of opportunity where I could be anything I wanted to be.  A free education.  I can recall the voice on the radio many years ago that declared.  "The war is over!  We have conquered the enemy."  It meant little to me than because my world was Nickerson, Kansas.  The only enemies I knew about were the cougars that screamed down on the river and the Gypsy's who camped outside of town to steal children.

Washington, D.C. was many miles away.  After Roosevelt had his "fireside chats," Harry Truman was President.  He was a "home grown boy."  I think his wife tried to be a singer, but failed.  Or so I remember it.

The point is this:  From Roosevelt until now, I remember all the Presidents.  I always respected the President because that is how I was raised.  I also respected the minister at church and the principal of the school.  Public figures were to be respected.  They were honest and open.  They loved their wives and respected them, or so it seemed.    There was no scandal in our little town, or at least none that touched my life. (I did hear once that the dentist's wife had too much to drink and drover her car into a ditch.  He later divorced her and married his nurse, but even that could have been heresay in my little mind."

The point is this, I was raised in a different world.  We respected our elders.  We respected our leaders.  We stood up when the flag was presented and we placed our right hand over our heart as a sign of respect.  We never questioned it.  We just did it.  It was the right thing to do.  The days of sand and shovels are behind me now!

I have never voted a straight ticket in my life.  The first election I voted in was for John Kennedy.  I voted for Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.  The rest were Republican votes.  Well, not Donald Trump. I figured Hillary was better qualified, not that I liked her personally, but I decided early on that if Trump would not produce his income tax returns, he was not honest.  Seems I nailed that one.

Now, I know I am going to piss off a lot of my Republican friends, but I wonder if they are really thinking straight?  The man has been in office for 3 years now and has yet to produce a tax return.  He will not even stand up and defend himself in an impeachment hearing.  He has ordered his minons not to appear.  The world laughs at us!  Our environment is going to shit!  Every day that I turn on the news I am amazed at what he has pulled over night.  I do not feel safe in my country and I am not proud of what we have become.

What bothers me most, is what this administration has done to our country.  His son, daughter and son-in-law hold positions of power in government business both here and abroad.  Immigrants are dying on our southern border.  There is no regard for life.  No respect for women.  No respect for minorities.  Russia is our friend while the Indigenous citizens have been shoved onto land that is polluted by the Keystone Pipeline.  Our schools are funded by our teachers!

I could go on and on, but it is pointless.  If you are my friend and you think I am radical and nuts, count me out of your circle.  I like to think that my true friends will see a little bit of wisdom in what I am saying.  But if you are content to set in your warm houses and cuss the homeless, count me out.  If you can look at our migrant population with disgust, cross me off you mailing list.  If you can look at Mitch McConnell and smile,  delete my phone number.

Our country is in the shitter and we all know it.  If you think I am right, let me know, but if you think I am a lunatic, it has been enlightening knowing you.  Enjoy your selfish bigotted life.

Peace and prosperity to my loving friends.