Calling all arm chair phycologists!

Do you analyze dreams in your spare time?  I just woke up terrified.  Here are the facts of the dream I just had:  I was young, probably in my 30's.  I had a small child and a husband that was very hard working and devoted to me and my child. We lived in a small house near a prison facility.  I do not know where he worked.  My brother (who has been deceased for 55 years) was there visiting.  We came back from a car ride to find barrels of guns and ammunition in the front room.  There was one barrel filled with grain.  Since we were all law abiding citizens we were freaked out.  Suddenly there was a knock on the door and the police were there.  They had a tip that I was running guns.

One of the police was a heavy set, very friendly cop that seemed to believe me and one was bound and determined that I was pure evil.  These two played good cop/bad cop while the other 5 ransacked my house.  They found nothing else; just the guns and ammo in the front room.  I do not know how the dream ended because I woke up.

Now, the facts leading up to bed last night.  Jiraiya and I had a visitor who actually came in my house and drank a cup of tea and we set at the table with our masks off.  Later Ross came by and picked up noodles, but he stayed on the porch and wore his mask.  Jiriaya and I walked down and looked in the ditch to see if the water was running (If it was we would try to catch a crawdad, which he calls dagcrawlers or crabs.)  We also watched a bird setting on a nest up in the tree right outside the window.  None of those activities seem to me a portend of a nightmare!  But, for some reason I woke up scared to death.

So, give me your take on this.  Leave it in the comments below this post, or go back and leave it on facebook, (which would be the quickest way for me to see it.)

So, for now I am going to make Bret his breakfast sandwich to take to work, have another cup of coffee and try to shake this feeling of dread that has me in it's grip.

Have a good one and may the peace that passes all understanding be with us today!

The sound of silence is killing me.

https://youtu.be/bGLHadex0B0

I wake up most nights just after midnight.  It is then that I do my best thinking.  Last night was no different.  I have nothing in particular to worry about, so I just lay there and think and inevitably end up back in Nickerson and I can hear a lonesome train whistle coming from the track that ran about 3 blocks from the house.  Mostly what I hear is silence, but the silence is broken occasionally by a coyote.  Rarely it is a wolf, but rarer still is a panther, or mountain lion drifting up from the river.  I love the river and I especially love walking the banks of a river or creek.

There is so much to see, or at least there was back when I was a pubescent girl with a vivid imagination.  Maybe it was just that back then the river and the cemetery were the 2 places I could go to escape the tedium of every day life.  Mom let me go to the cemetery with no qualms, but she worried when I walked along the creek.  Now granted Cow Creek ran past Nickerson on one side and Bull Creek on the other.  Access was restricted when those 2 flooded which they did every Spring.  The fact that the third and final escape was the Arkansas and it was always running high.  I went back to Nickerson a few years back and was surprised that nothing had been done about flood control, so they were pretty much busy building little dirt dams here and there to keep the water out of their houses.

There is just something about a quiet stream far from the city.  Little spiders skate across the surface where the water is still.  Tiny minnows gather in still places.  Baby frogs find their first water legs in pondlike places.  The abundance of flowers and mosses gives hope to a world that is still living away from the crowded city.  I am terrified of snakes, but in the wilderness they do not bother me at all.  I just back up and go a different way.  I am in their territory and that makes a world of difference.  When I find one in the goose house, it becomes my duty as superior human to kill it.  In the wilderness, I am the intruder.

Do you know what a crawdad house looks like?  If you come upon a small hole with balls of mud piled around it, that is a crawdad house.  I used to think a crawdad was a tiny lobster, but late in life I learned they were the cockroach of the creek.  I still like them.  When they are in the water they mostly travel backwards.  When Bret was 4 years old I took him fishing at the park and he caught a crawdad.  Actually the crawdad caught him because it had a grip on his hook and when he let go, he fell to the ground.  Bret was terrified of the "crab".  Jiraiya and I found one by the ditch a week or so age.  He and his daddy went back and found it and it was nearly dead, so Bret put it in the duck water.  The next morning we found its lifeless body near the duck water.  We had a funeral complete with rivers of tears for the poor little crab.

If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget my life in Nickerson, Kansas.  I go back there sometimes.  I do not know any of the people there, but I haunt the places I used to walk.  Bull Creek was a dry creek bed last time I was there, but I still recall how it could fill the banks and overflow across the fields when the Spring rains came.  I  remember my brother catching a bull frog and putting it in my skirt with instuctions to take it to the house and find something to put it in.  I was mortified that it would bite me.  As luck had it, I opened my skirt to show it to Josephine and it leapt into the house.  She almost beat me to death before I recaptured it.  I think I told you she was mean.

I want to go back home next Spring.  I will drive 96  Highway and the State Patrol will have a man at every bridge, because the creeks all flood in the Spring.  It is just something that we can count on.  Since Kansas is flat it floods easily.  I love Colorado, and my life is here, but I think when I die, my soul will live in Kansas.

At least I hope so!

Farewell to Uncle Manley and Aunt DoLores.

Back in 1960 when I married Earl Seeger I picked up 11 sisters and brothers in law.  Most of them I never met, but some I did.  Manley was one I did, but not his wife, Doloras.  I knew Manley lived in Denver.  Let me see if I can name all of them: Harold Manley Seeger, Cleo Seeger, Virgil Seeger, Raymond Seeger, Jesse Seeger,  Dorothy, Betty, Dona, Alma,  Delvin, Earl, Larry.  I have a call in to one of the girls, because I think there was one more. ( I had forgotten Jesse.)

The point of this is that we found out recently that Harold Manly Seeger and his wife DoLoras passed away in an Aurora assisted living facility in Aurora.  They died 9 days apart from the Covid 19.  This is a very trying time in our history.  This not anything I want to contract that is for sure.  When people start demonstrating and telling me they are tired of being held back from living their lives I find it very troubling.  There is no vaccine and without a vaccine or a cure we are pretty much at the mercy of a pandemic that will kill a lot of people.  I am not really anxious to die with something like this.  Pretty sure I still have a few good years left in me.

Now I know pretty soon they are going to lift the restrictions, but let me tell you, I am still going to wear my mask, wipe everything down with the Clorox wipes I have because I do not want to become a statistic.  I do have to say that not being able to go to church I have completely lost track of what day it is.  Bret is supposed to write the day on the chalk board on the back door.  That way I know what day it is, but some times he forgets.  I had 4 Wednesdays last week and that is not good.

I have a niece who voluntarily went to New York to work there.  Her name is Lisa and she is a very good girl.  When Desert Storm came she was one of the first there.  And Desert Shield found her still in Iraq.  She is one of my heroes.  I host a Mothers Day Tea at our church every May and she attended last year since she is now living up North in the Denver area.  We had planned a big "Lou's family attendance " this year, but up jumped the devil and my high tea has been cancelled.  Many disappointments in life and this is just another one.  Next year will surely be better.

But back to Manley and DoLoras.  Manley was the oldest and at one point he came to stay with Duane for a few weeks.  Of course by that time we were divorced, but I always remained friends with his family.  His sister, Dona, lives in Colorado and his younger brother, Larry lives in Kansas.  I saw Larry last summer, but have not seen Dona for several years.

So now I am rambling and reminiscing.  I will be glad when this mess is over.  It is not the idea of having to stay home, it is the fear of going out.  So, you all be safe out there.  I will be downstairs doing "stuff".  I am trying to consolidate my fabric and sort it into some sort of useful form.  It rained last night and that is good.  I just need to remember that today is the day that the Lord has made!

Peace to all.

I glimpsed my future and that shit ain't gonna happen here!

Remember a while back when I was flirting with the idea of dating because I thought it might be nice to have a gentleman friend to hang out with?  Plead the blood of Jesus over that thought!  I saw myself at the grocery store yesterday and Lou Mercer is not ready for that!  We are in week number something or other ( I have actually lost track of time) of this social distancing and not getting closer than 6 feet to any other human.  I am a rather gregarious soul and do enjoy people so this has been very trying for me and probably a lot of other people.  But, back to the subject.

I went to Lagrees yesterday to pick up a couple items that I needed.  I always start on the produce aisle.  I picked up a bag of lettuce, a tomato, and 3 bananas.  Next stop was the mark down shelf.  There was already a gentleman there, so I waited.  He picked up each bag and ran his fingers over the plastic covering of each item in every bag.  He deemed three of them as good enough to go home with him and I watched as he took them over and put them in a grocery cart that was attended by a lovely lady that I figured must be his wife.  I saw he already had several of the bags in the cart.  A cursory look at the rack told me he had taken anything that was worth paying for.

I caught sight of him several more times in my journey through the store.  The lady never let go of the cart and when he would venture off to check something out, she remained with the cart.  Very soon I formed a vision in my mind of what life with this guy would be like.  I would be in charge of the cart and he, as the bread winner, would be in charge of what went in the cart, and also what I would eat.  I pictured the home with him collecting the mail and sorting through it and letting me look at the advertisements that arrived.  He would pay the bills while I stood quietly by.  I wondered if the woman had any wants or desires of her own.  I know I have plenty!

The jest here is that he was the man of the house.  He decided what they would eat.  My job would be lord only knows what.  I made up my mind from that 15  minute peek into some one else's life that no way in hell do I need a man.  Been there, done that, and like it like it is. I want to push my own cart and put in it what I want to eat.  I really do not mind picking up a bag on the discount shelf and finding day old produce in it.  I usually always buy my bananas when they are ready to turn because they make better banana bread.  When I buy eating bananas they are usually pretty green.

I did not see them leave the store, but I am betting money, he was driving.  Now, I am pretty sure that  they have a tidy house, they eat good and no doubt watch the same shows every week night that they watched for the last 40 years.  Maybe I am just getting old and set in my ways, but I would like to steer the boat, so to speak, every once in a while.

Granted it would be nice to have a man around to talk to and share my day with, but I have baggage and I am pretty sure any man I find in this day and age is going to have his own baggage and I just am not ready for that.  I sometimes eat breakfast for supper and sometimes my noon day meal is something I just ran through the blender.  Or more often than not, a nap instead of eating.

I am a packrat, by nature.  I buy my own car when I need one.  I love my company and I am pretty sure it is going to stay that way.  The square dancing lessons are over.  Fishing out the back of the boat is over.  Classic Country music still plays on my stereo and always will.  Last man friend I had gave me a jazz cd.  Wonder where that went?

So, stay home.  Stay safe.  And stay single!  That will be my mantra!

All that is missing is the sign nailed to the front door.

It is day number something of the shut down and social distancing and I am about to go stir crazy.  First there is this matter of not knowing what day it is.  I used to go to church and so I knew when Sunday and then Monday was.  The grandson came on Wednesday and Thursday.  That is past history.  Can't even spot the weekdays by what soap opera is playing, since they are all screwed up also.

So now I have a white board on the back door and whoever knows what day it is has the chore of writing it for me to see.  So far this week I have had 6 Wednesdays.  Looking forward to Monday.  I know when people get old and have help coming in, it is the job of the caregiver to assess the client and part of that is to ask them what day it is.  That works really well if one of the people knows for sure.  I have however devised a plan to figure out what day it is.  I look down in the corner of the screen on the computer and get the number of the day.  then I look at my fireman calendar and find that number.  This works well as long as I am on the right month.  And then there is the act of remembering the day until I get to the next one.  What I should have done was start marking off days, but they all seem to run together.

I spent yesterday down in the sewing room and actually got the cutting table cleaned off.  Also found a quilt top which I quilted, bound and now have it laying across the back of my recliner ready for my morning nap.  When I got up this morning, I was excited for several reasons.  The first, I am on the right side of the sod.  I cleaned the bathroom yesterday, so I do not have to do that today.  I thought I would maybe go out and burn some limbs I have out back.  Maybe I will rake around a little.  I need to go buy some Aamdro because I have a giant red ant hill right by the bottom step of the deck.  These are the mean ones.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
Not sure this program is still working, but going to publish this.  Just want to keep in touch with the real world.  Better times are coming!  Hang tight.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Good Morning World!!! I love you!

For a few weeks now I have been kind of moping around.  This virus has had me in it's grip along with a few other things.  My little heart has been heavy.  I actually lay in bed and think of reasons not to get up and wish for the day that eternal sleep will become a reality.  But no more!

This morning I woke up to the beautiful sunshine that God has given me.  I woke up with a peace of mind that told me that no matter what today brings, or tomorrow or the next day, I will handle it and thank God that I can.  I know my mission on earth has not been fulfilled and God has lain out a clear path for me to follow.  While I do not know what is next in my life, I know I will follow that path.

Right now, it all looks pretty bleak, but this will change!  The sun is the still beautiful light shining in my window.  It shines on my kids first and then comes to stir me.  My cat is trying to crawl on my keyboard and usually that irritates me, but not today.  I am thankful I have a keyboard and a cat.  I am sad about my dog, but at least I had him for a while.  I am sure he and Shirley are together and my wounds will heal.

My church is still closed and while I do not have the comradery of the congregation, I do have the everlasting arms to hold me.  I know that professions of my faith will catch some of you off guard, but those of you who really know me will not be taken aback.  It is probably almost sacrilegious to think that a woman with as many ex husbands as I have could ever make it to heaven, but you are wrong.  I am a good, compassionate, caring person.  God knows that!  And when it is all said and done, he is the one that matters.

I thought I was lonely and actually entertained ideas of dating!  I actually had one particular little fellow in mind, but he was not a willing participant and for that I thank him.  Companionship takes two, it is kind of like a dance.  But you know what?  I have been known to dance alone before and will probably do it again.

For now, there is only one thing I need and that is my mind.  You would be amazed at what goes on in my head!  I have moved mountains and conquered the world.  I have loved and been loved and that will not change.  I do not know what tomorrow will bring.  I do not know if this virus will catch me here in my little home, but I do know that whatever cards I am dealt, I will play.

There is probably not a person reading this that knows that 60 years ago I almost succeeded in a suicide attempt.  It was a one time thing and I never tried it again.  I thought about it, but that was all.  I know there are people out there now who are struggling and I just want to say this:  If I can help, give me a call.  I can not solve your problems, but I can listen.

If you need an ear to listen, leave a note in the comments down below.  You can leave your email or phone number.  I am on facebook.  It really is a wonderful world out there!

Peace to all!

My kingdom for a horse, or son, whichever comes first.

I woke up this morning at 2:30 thinking about my first pregnancy and marveling at how times have changed.  I married Duane Seeger back in 1960.  I was 19 years old and I had known him for 3 weeks.  In hindsight, I think I might not have made the wisest decision, but then it was a good run and I got 5 kids out of the deal.  He wanted a son.  He explained that to me when he proposed.  I kind of wanted a son too, so it seemed a match made in heaven.  So we spent the first year trying to get pregnant and the next 4 trying to stop!

In 1962 I had Debbie.  1963, Patty.  1964, Dona.  1965, Sam.  We took a break, got a divorce and then had Susie and got another divorce.  I have actually sent several divorce lawyers through college.  But that is not what this is about.  This is about how the whole business of delivering a baby has changed.
I remember when Momma had my little sister, Dorothy.  It was right before harvest and back then women laid in bed for 10 days (or so it seems).  When harvest started mom had to drive one of the trucks that hauled the wheat to the elevator.  She was nursing, you know, and no one else could do that, so Dorothy laid on the seat beside her.  The rest of us kids were left at home at the mercy of Josephine.  Women did not go to the hospital to give birth.  It was done at home, usually with a midwife in attendance;

Side note here:

Origin

Middle English: probably from the obsolete preposition mid ‘with’ + wife (in the archaic sense ‘woman’), expressing the sense ‘a woman who is with (the mother’).

And you must remember that women were second class citizens until the last century.  A good horse was more highly prized than a wife.  A man could always get another wife,  but a horse was hard to come by!

Lucky for me, I went to the hospital for all my births.  The first one, Duane dropped me at the front of the hospital and called the next day to see what I had.  He came 3 days later to take me home and rail at me for not having him a son.  I kind of liked her and she was really cute.  For the next 2 years, we repeated that scenario until I finally got it through my thick head that he REALLY wanted a son and I finally had one in 1965.  He did not want him named after him and he had no idea what he DID want.  I had always coveted the name Samuel Reuben.  Everyone knew that.  So I told the nurse my choice and she was aghast!  It was a Catholic hospital and that was a Jewish name. So I caved and named him Earl Edward.  Back in those days I would not have said shit if I had a mouthful.  I have gotten a backbone since then.  Today he is still called Sam.  He was always Sam and he will remain Sam.  Somethings do not change.  

Now I had a son and Earl Duane actually came to the hospital to pick me up.  Boy was I surprised!  Sadly, our life and relationship did not change because I gave him a son.  But life did go on for both of us.  He has been gone for many years, but one of the girls still lives on the land in Lakin, Kansas.  

Now, I must confess, when I crawled out of the bed 3 hours ago, I was thinking about Wakeeney,  Kansas and events that had transpired there, but I digressed.  I must remember to do a blog about places we lived and how the rental of apartments had changed from back then.  Right now I have to go do other things, because I am old now and my duties have changed.  

The old testament comes to mind at this moment. Not sure of chapter and verse, but I know I knew it at one time....

Go forth and mulitply!!!!