So, getting pretty tired of talking about my past, let's do yours!

http://www.firstgiving.com/loumercer

Today is the last day for me to do this and I am not going to ask you for anything.  Will just leave that there for anyone who might be interested.

Now, talking about my good old days back in grade school and even high school was a kind of hoot and there is many memories that are actually humorous, sad, learning experiences and such, but we can just touch on those "I remember when" moments lightly in the future. But as you see I grew up.  No one is going to set around and read about me falling madly in love, having children, divorces, job, moving cross country, and all this because I am not going to write all that down.

I read something the other day that really made an impact on me.  It was another blog I follow.  It went something like this: "If he was so great, where is he today?  I he was such a butt hole, why did you marry him? If you would rather be there, why are you here?"  Then I had another friend explain it so I could understand it.  It is called "free rent in the noggin and that is not good."  I shall now interpret that into terms that you (I) can understand.  Something in the past that dwells in your mind and takes your mind off the present day is taking up space in your head.  Can not think of the present or future because that memory is getting free rent in your brain space.  It has to do nothing to stay there, except to be.

So, like the every changing woman I have become, I am cleaning out all the bad memories, all the dead weight, and all the frivolous things that don't make two whoops in hell (like my momma used to say).  Oh, I will remember my heritage and the strong deep roots that have brought me to the point I am today.  I will pass that on to my children and grandchildren, but they do not need to know every step I took to get to this day.  They only need to know that this is where I am.  I am in Colorado and I shall stay in Colorado.  I have very little family here as they are mostly back East, but I have friends,  mountains, blue skies and my home.  I have my church and my God.

There are people who count on me here.  If I were not here I am sure someone would step up and take my place, but they would never be me.  For some reason God saw fit to deliver me to this particular spot 33 years ago, and like a noxious weed seed that fell on fertile ground, I have taken root and flourished!  I am happy here and I am sure this is where I shall stay all the days of my life.  Who knows what the good Lord has in store for this little atom that is but a piece of space dust?  Stick around and find out!

It is a wonderful world today!!

Sometimes I just wake up and I am so happy!  Today is one of those days.  Do you ever have those?  I do not know what I dreamed, but I think I dreamed about my brother.  I must tell you about him someday, but not today.

I can hear birds outside so you know the sun is up. Well, it better be because it is after 7:00 AM!  I know I am late getting around, but I been pretty busy.  Checked my fundraising and I only need $13.00 to make my goal on that.  Still short on the personal goal, but I will dig that out of the savings because there is no way in hell that I am going to fail.  That is just not in my vocabulary.

Today is one of those days when I feel like I could grab the world in both hands and run to the end of it.  I just love days like this.  Maybe I will get out there and take everything out of that tin shed and sweep it good, throw most of the crap away and then rearrange the rest.  Oh, but first I have to go to town and get a new pair of shoes for the walk, because mine are falling apart before my eyes.  I would hate to get up in the Garden of the Gods and just have my shoes fall off my feet.  Bet that would put a damper on this good mood!

I am taking a couple camera's with me and you will see some beautiful shots when I post the next time.  My pink camera is 6 mega  pixels; my black one is 10, but the bottom falls off of it and the batteries roll across the floor.  So, I am thinking about borrowing one from Bret who seems to have an endless supply of money and can buy this stuff at his leisure!  Any way, you are going to see scenery that will have you grabbing your car keys and heading for Colorado!

And when you do that, you be sure you look me up!  I am always game to spend a few hours with someone who drives that far.  We will run up to Beulah and see my good friend, Jan, at the coffee shop and stop in and see Jim at his wood place where he does his carving.  Oh and I forgot to tell you that yesterday on my way to town a deer leaped across the road right in front of me and then jumped the fence into the cemetery!  What a way to get my little heart beating!

Well, people, I got water fowl wanting out, my tummy is growling and I bet a dollar I could find a load of clothes for the washer if I look hard enough.  So as mundane as the day may be, it is going to take more than that to bring me down today.  I love these days, just don't know why some are so much happier than other days.  I will go with it!

Let's take that Google earth thing one step further!

Did you ever just click on that google earth thing and play around with it? You can type in an address, say in Denver, and hit the fly me there button and hang on to your stomach!  In a matter of split seconds that camera will zoom from Pueblo, Colorado to the address in Denver and zip right down to street level.  There is no getting acclimated to this thing!  You just want to go some where and boom, you are there. 

Now, just think about how quickly this little bit of technology has been handed to us to play around with.  I guess we went from the spy planes, to spy satellites to mapquest and now here we are zipping from my house to yours in a matter of seconds.  So think about this and tell me how it works.  I am sure there are megabillions of pictures that flash by, but how long will it be before the google satellite will be live on the scene?  We already have onstar and northstar and what else that can locate our car or our cell phone or whatever we have lost including our way.  Garmin was a lifesaver on my last trip, but it did have a lot of trouble getting me through one of the Roundabouts in Missouri.  Garmin knew exactly what she wanted, but I could not compute.  Finally she sent me around the mile and got me on the right highway  that way.

So now say I go for a walk.  Whoever wants to see at 7:26 exactly where I am.  Find Lou.  Can that be done in the near future?  I am betting on that.  Then the satellite up in the sky can follow me on my merry little way and I would never know it was watching me.  Granted this is a pretty expensive piece of equipment to play around with, but think of the ramifications of something like this.  We could lose our whole right to privacy, if you know what I mean.  google earth could just hover over my house and see every move I make and report right back to whomever is footing the bill.  I can see that little report now, "Lou took out the trash at 7:03.  She then went to the duck house and let the ducks out at 7:06."

Now I do not know about you, but this kind of scares me! I realize very few people have the resources to pay a satellite to follow some one around, but how many years ago was it that few people could afford the Garmin, or TomTom?  So let us think about this when we are out there marveling at technology.  Technology is only as good as the people running the satellite!

I am running out of time for the raising of the money!

Ok, There you have it.  I am 71% of the way there, but that means I am still short 29%.  Now as near as I can tell this blog has only raised $15.00  That is kind of sad, don't you think?  I know by your reactions to the AIDS Quilts that you are touched by this disease and my compassion for the people who suffer the devastation it brings.  This walk only comes around once a year and I really want to do good for these people.  Right now I am the #4 fundraiser and my team is #3, but that is not going to hold water here the end of this week.  There are some big money people out there who will blow us right out of the pond.

I would just like to show the fat cats that us little people can move a mountain if we need to.   By making a donation, and I do not care how small it is, you are telling me that you support me in my efforts on this cause.  Sometimes the road seems to go straight up hill and even a saint like me needs a little encouragement.  It comes this time in dollar bills. Course you can also pop up to Colorado Springs and cheer me on when my poor little body is walking up the side of a mountain in the high altitude where there is no oxygen and I am probably going to drop dead and then you will wish you had thrown $5.00 my way!

This is my last official plea and I would just be tickled to death to see your name on my list.  And I would go right through the roof if the guy in Canada or the one in Germany who reads me were to donate!  But I will take what I get!   And I will thank you from the bottom of my heart as the clients who benefit from these dollars also thank you. 

So good night to you and God be with us till we meet again!

Sixteen Annual Peace Flotilla, and a good time was had by all!

Last night at the Nature Center marked the 16th time that the little floats with candles in them were launched down the Mighty Arkansas River here in Pueblo, Colorado!  I had not been for a couple years and was just amazed at how much the event has improved.  This is all thanks to a little guy in our town named Doug Gale. You will meet Doug and his lovely wife Dorothy probably next week. I want to take pictures of them and do them full justice, because if God ever touched a man and said "Bring peace to the world and feed my people, it is this man."  I am inadequate to do justice to a man of this stature but I will give it my best shot!

But last night was the Peace Flotilla.  There were girl scouts, boy scouts, McClelland School children, Martin Luther King Center, and more floats then you could shake a stick at.  Someone said there were 83, but that was before I threw mine in the mix.  School kids are more organized.  They had blocks of wood about 10" square and their candle set in the middle.  Then they wrapped it up the sides with butcher paper which had been decorated with peace signs!  Very neat.  I wove some New Mexico Sunflowers into a circle and jammed some purple candles in the thing and called it good. Gave it to some sad looking kid who didn't have one to launch and made him all happy.  Made me happy too cause then I did not have to walk half a mile in the dark through the willows to the launch place!

Usually I run into lots of my friends at something like this, but they were sadly lacking last night. My pastor, Jeanine Lamb and another preacher friend, Steve Parke was there so I kinda hung with Jeanine.  Steve had his guitar and a friend or two and they were the music for the evening.  Gotta' love that Steve!  He does the folk songs and what ever it is us old hippies used to sing.  So they played and we sang at the top of our lungs, "If I had a Hammer!", "Where have all the Flowers Gone?", "This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land." 

Now I need to interject here that I had a lovely visit with Pastor Lamb, which I shall call her out of deference to her vocation.  Yesterday she had given a sermon that really made me think that I may be a good person.  Not perfect by a long shot, but my Lord takes me like I am.  It is me he wants, just like I am so it is me he's going to get!  Aside from the preaching thing she is also a very interesting person. Oh, yeah, and a very good listener.  Knows when to nod and everything!

Then they released the Great Horned Owl into the night sky and launched the floats. These were then caught by the Sheriffs Dive Team right before they went over the rapids and returned to their owners.  I am a thinking that my little float with the 3 purple candles might have gotten by unnoticed in the dark and made it's way to the sea.  At least that is the dream I shall hold on to as I once more, in my idyllic world think that peace may actually be a reality some day.

This is Pastor Lamb!

Now it is back to High School at Nickerson, Kansas.

Well, I did digress there a little, but I am sure had I stayed on the ancestry I would never move on with this little tale.  Sooner or later you are going to know a very lot about me.  May not all be good either!

Ok, so now I am back in Nickerson and I must go to school, like it or not.  In Nickerson one class was as large as the whole high school at Plevna.  I came from a city where everyone knew everyone and now I was adrift in a sea of faces, very few of whom I had any idea who they were.  I very promptly fell in with the "wrong crowd".  Never knew there was such a thing, but there I was smack dab in the middle of one.

Now, you are probably going to wonder about this paragraph, but I swear it is all true.  At about this time Nickerson began building a new High School.  I think I went to the old building and the new building at the same time.  I think, but I am not sure.  I remember very little about the 2 1/2 years I spent at that school.  I remember that I flunked sewing (Home Economics), scraped by Algebra, English, History, Latin and Speech was a complete disaster.  I do remember that one of my new friend's dad made home brew!  As I recall, that was a tasty concoction.  I do recall sleeping through a lot of my classes.

I recall dating once or twice, but never dated anyone the second time.  I recall that Hutchinson Naval Air Station was still in operation during my Junior year and the neighbor girl married a guy from there and moved back to Indiana or some such place.    Her sister dated one of the "swabbies".  Not me man!  Those guys were way to smooth for this little hick, although I did meet one who was here from France and I let him kiss me! Mama mia!  That's a spicy meatball!  Also about that time something was going on overseas and several Polish guy wound up in our circle.  That is all I recall about that business.

Sorry to disappoint all ye who had faith in me, but this is the way it was.  I know there are those of you who recall every moment of your existence, but I am not sure of dates and events enough to elaborate.  I am pretty sure I was there and I am pretty sure I behaved fairly normally.  I do recall the "sock hops" at Memorial Hall (?) in Hutch and I recall a guy named Joey and winning several dance contests.  That Joey was into what ever we danced to back then.  I guess it was just plain old Rock and Roll. He and I were a perfect match and we had lots of fun together.  I do not recall ever kissing Joey and years later I learned why.  Seems he was the first gay boy I ever knew.  (You do realize names have been changed to protect the innocent?) Joey actually died from AIDS many, many years later, although this is all through the grapevine.  I never seen or talked to him again after our sock hop days, oh and the fiasco when he took me to Joyland in Wichita and I threw up on the Round Up.  We made a recording in a booth there and I kept that for many years.  Wonder where that went?

During my life at Nickerson High School there were several memorable events.  Elvis Presley hit the scene on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Oh, that was love at first sight for a lot of girlies!  My brother joined the Army, went to Germany and came home from Germany.  Momma finished secretary school and we moved to Hutchinson. 

I think my head is going to explode!  I better go let the ducks and geese out and do something mundane for a while!  Hopefully see you tomorrow!

It is me and my momma!!

Do you see those 2 youngsters up there?  The one on the left is me and the one on the right is my momma.  Course I am a lot younger there and from the way I am propped up on the pillows I appear to be about 7 or 8 months old.  But just look at that smile!  I was pretty happy about something.  Probably had just been fed and was nice and dry! This picture is in a silver frame that is absolutely beautiful so I am sure my momma loved me when she stuck me in there all those years ago.

Now take a look at momma!  I bet she is about 4 or 5.  Got her a puppy and is one happy little girl!  I think she might be setting on the porch of whatever general store they lived close to. I imagine it was in Plevna or perhaps Abbyville.  I do love those leggings and boots!  Wish I could get me a pair of them right now!!

I have a picture in my store on eBay of a girl herding a flock of geese and I swear it could be my mother.  Has the same leggings and boots, but has a head scarf on her head.  Remember those?  Well, most of you probably don't!

So I am going to take these two pictures out of the bottom of that box and put them here on the computer desk so I can just glance over there and remember my roots.  That way when I get to thinking I am nobody important I can remember that it was women like my momma and her momma and grandmother that made this country what it is today.  I still got those same genes pulsing through my body and through my children's blood.

So I will go out singing

"I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers to big to ignore!"