Oh, finally got something done with that damned hair!

Do you see who this is? This is my friend Trisha! Trisha just finished giving me a permanent and making me very beautiful! See, today I decided that I had all I could take of my hair poking out here and there and needing cut, so I took myself to the city. And it was there that she took me to her chair and worked her magic. She is a novice in that she barely started there. Her daughter will finish in March. Then daughter will start a shop probably on the south end of Colorado Springs and Trisha will go help her when she graduates in August. And then another daughter will do massage, so I am staying in tight with this bunch!

But this place and I go back a lot further than today.  See, many, many years ago, when I was first separated from my very first husband and waiting tables at Skaets Steak Shop in Hutchinson, Kansas, that self same husband was drunk out here in Pueblo, Colorado. Ah, the plot thickens.

This man found his way to this shop and to the man who at the time ran the Center Beauty College.  Frank Schultz was a very kind and gentle man, but he had a mission in life. Well, actually two missions. The first was to teach young girls how to be cosmetologists and do it at a very reasonable charge to them. His second was to sober up men he found and put them to work. That business was called Center Tree Service and the first husband was a tree trimmer. Frank did indeed sober the little fellow up and put him on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, we never made it that far, but such is life.

Years later I came to Pueblo. I remembered Frank Schultz and went in to get my hair done cheap! My daughter, Dona enrolled in his Beauty College and when she went to State Boards I was her model.  I then modeled for 2 more students and that was fun. I got facials, manicures, fake fingernails and it cost me nothing!  Course I let them practice on me once a week, but I had to leave the hair cause when you went to State Boards the student had to cut off at least an inch and you better have it to spare!

Dear, dear Frank Schultz passed to his much deserved reward three years ago, but Center Beauty College lives on in the graceful and very beautiful form of his daughter, Leasa Wood.  Cici is still there as the most able receptionist in Pueblo, Colorado. She has held that post for 38 years, if you can believe that! She could tell some tales, I am sure.

Center Beauty College is still located at 228 West Third in downtown Pueblo.  Right there on the corner where it has been for 38 years.  The phone number is 542-3833.  Poke that little number in and go get a haircut at a reasonable price, or do like I did and go top of the line permanent for $30.00.  It is a bargain for you and the students need some one to practice their craft on.  A boon to both of you.

So, here I set, all dressed up with no where to go!  But bet I could if I wanted to cause I am lookin' good and feelin' fine and it is thanks to Trisha, and the whole crew at Center Beauty College!

World AIDS Day planning committee at work!

Here we are at Joe's Coffee Shop in the basement of Pueblo Community College.  This is our first year to  be on the campus at PCC and I must say it has been a real treat!  They have been most accommodating and the friendliest  people I have come across in a very long time.  Why it just makes me want to go back to school!

First I have to tell you who all these people are and if I knew I would sure share that with you.  Not really.  I did not get my little release like I need to go around the table naming names, so I am just going to point out a few.  Needless to say they are all friends of mine !  OK, top picture.  See that kid on the right with the dark shirt and glasses?  That is John.  He is on the National Quality Center Consumer Advisory Council Steering Committee.  Quite a prestigious fellow.  We just went and had Chinese before we came so he is probably dozing off, but more about him in another post.  The empty chair is mine.  The two ladies on the left are with PCHC. One is our co leader along with John.

Bottom picture on the right is Eric.  We used to go to church together, but I changed.  The lady with her back to me is one of the PCC Staff who is most kind.  Another one is behind her head.  The lady on the left is with Pueblo City/County Health Department.  So there you have a loose accounting of the people it takes to plan an event of this magnitude and actually pull it off with any degree of decorum.  Tomorrow is our test!!

Events will start at 9:00 AM and run until 7:30 PM.  Pueblo Community Health Center will offer free testing the first part of the day and then SCAP and IMPACT the rest of the day.  Dr. Steve Johnson, MD Professor & Director of Infectious  Disease, University of Colorado, will be our Keynote Speaker.  Our guest speaker will be Merilou Johnson, MSW, MPA, Program Director Colorado AIDS Education Training Center.  They are no relation, just share a last name. 

I have not met Merilou Johnson, but I have met Dr. Steve Johnson and can attest that he is one of the kindest and most intelligent men I have had the good fortune to visit with in my time in this business.  He and Dr. Swartz were Mark's doctors for the last several years of his life, so I had the good fortune to visit with them both every month.  They are both very caring men which is a necessity in this area of medicine.

Now for my far away friends, you should know that this is a coup!  I figure this is going to be the biggest WAD Commemoration to date in this fair city.  Right now I have to go finish Rick's panel or I will be standing there tomorrow night with egg all over my face and this whole table full of people glaring at me.  Not me, man.  I am looking forward to tomorrow and hope when I come home it is with a feeling of accomplishment!

Cuban Caravan part 2!!

Here is that shot I told you to watch for.  This Google thing is like a whole new world to me.  Just put your mouse on the picture and click!  But in case that does not work, I have done it for you.  The teal shirt says:

Cuba has:

One teacher per 10 primary children.

Vaccinations against preventable diseases.

A lower infant mortality rate then the United States.

No homeless children.

100% literacy.

The red shirt says;

Now is the time to:

Free the Cuban 5.

End the economic blockade.

End travel ban for all.

Take Cuba off "terrorist list."

Hand Guantanamo back to Cuba.

Normalize Diplomatic Relations.

There is the link you are going to need to learn more.  See in my simple mind I can not understand why we are carrying on diplomatic relations with every one in this world, from China, Russia, and Iran clear down to Osama Bin Laden, but we will not deal with Cuba, a struggling nation 90 miles off of our coast.  And this has gone on for at least 40 years.  I just can not see this.  If someone out there, reading this can give me a reason, I am a reasonable person.  I am fair minded, but we have 5 Cubans in prison for doing less than criminals walking the streets here in Pueblo.  Just clue me in cause I am clueless in Pueblo!

http://www.PASTORSFORPEACE.ORG

I missed these Cuba shots and they are so worth looking at!

I want you to take a look at these pictures that I have been looking at for the last how many months and not seeing!  If you think that going to Cuba with a school bus full of anything is a piece of cake, you are sadly mistaken.  These particular pictures were sent to me while they were at one of the crossings.  I probably posted a link, and maybe you actually looked at them.  You should have hollered and said " Hey, dummy, here is the whole thing in a nut

shell!"  See those three little guys there?Pretty soon you will be able to read the back of their shirts!  Now see how big they are?  Probably about the size of most of us and they do not look like heroes to me, but you hang on there!  Now, see these guys at the back of the bus?  They are the crossing guards and they are looking pretty closely at these computers.  The computers look pretty evil to me!  They did in fact have to confiscate a few of them.  All of them contained the same hard drives, so it was not the info.

But look at these guys!  Can you hear the conversations?  I can and I am thinking a few of these guys may have made a few dollars off this little crossing here!

OK, I can not get the picture I want to load on here.  So I am going to continue on another post which will be called Cuba Shots part 2.  You have got to read these guys shirts.  It explains why myself and a lot of others are adamant about the Cuban Caravan.

Remember way back when you were dating?

I was young once and I can still remember that time.  I was young and actually dated boys.  I don't think things happen the way they did many years back.  For one thing, everybody has a car now days.  Usually given to the kid by one parent or another so they do not have to drive them around.  Back in the day, it did not work that way.  Cars were few and far between and if the boy wanted to use the car to take a little chickadee somewhere on Saturday night, the deal was made weeks in advance.  A date was a big deal back then.  The guy had to come to the door and actually meet mom and dad. Well, it was supposed to work that way, but it didn't always.

See back then I thought my parents were way to strict and old fashioned and and I just could not be bothered with those little customs that other kids held so dear.  One might say I was a bit of a rebel back then.  So I always managed to meet the lucky boy up on the highway.  Looking back, I see that I might have been sending the wrong message.  Well, I am pretty sure I was not getting the message across that I had parents who cared about me and wanted to know where I was more for my benefit than just because they were nosey!

So, I met Prince Charming up on the highway and we would go to the drug store and have a coke ore something equally decadent which cost in the neighborhood of five cents.  Dates were cheap back then.  Then we might walk around a while.  You know, look at the stars and stuff because back then there was not so much light pollution and you could see the stars.  Then back to the car and drive some where so we could see better.  Inevitably that damn car would run out of gas!  What to do now?  My idea was to hit the road and go get more gas, but his was to neck.  Neck!  We could neck all night and that car would still be out of gas.

I have always been a woman of action.  "Come on!  It will be midnight before we get back.  I ain't gonna set here all night."  And it was then that the truth came to light,  I could either give or walk.  Give or Walk?  Is that your idea of foreplay?  Well, I have also been scared of the dark most of my life, but here was a situation that would warrant closer scrutiny of whatever was in the dark.  On the one hand I was alone with an idiot who did not have sense enough to put gas in his car, thinking that sex would make that thing run.  And if we had sex, he would still be out of gas and I would be walking.  Either way, I knew I was going to hoof it home that night.

Ever look back on your life and just wonder how you could have actually been that stupid and ever lived?  I got more walking time in when I was a teenager than in all the rest of my life.  And you would have thought that the guys would have wised up at some point, but they never did.  I did finally decide all the boys in my hometown were jerks and started dating the boys from the big city.  Now those guys knew how to treat a girl!  Actually I think they were afraid of me because I had some very muscle bound legs.  Guess they thought I might kick them!

One of the guys from way far away in Dodge City caught my fancy and the rest was history.  We dated three weeks.  He met momma and dad.  Never made me walk home. Took me dancing and we drank some beer.  I got sick, but I knew I would spend the rest of my life with this gorgeous man with blond curly hair, blue eyes and a Roman nose.  Funny thing, life.  My forever lasted 10 years and 5 kids.  The Dreamer that I had loved with every fiber of my being turned out to be just that, The Dreamer.  He wrote the most beautiful love letters, but neglected to pay the rent.  He painted pictures of a most glorious future, but wouldn't change a diaper.  Guess life just kind of got in the way, and life does have a way of doing that, doesn't it?

I have come to a decision and you shall be the first to know, after me of course.

I am going to start dating after the first of the year.  Now I know, I did hang out with the tall guy for a while, but I am not sure that qualified as dating.  The way that worked is I hung out at his house or garage and kind of helped him organize stuff and we talked a lot.  Sometimes he fed me or we went out and ate.  I do not think that was dating.  I think it was hanging out mostly.  None of that personal stuff, you know.

I think dating is where the guy actually would come to the house, ring the door bell, open the car door and take me some place, like out to eat or the movies or something like that.   Maybe we could hit some garage sales.  I don't know, but I am sure if we work at it we can come up with something to do.  Oh, yeah, like the fundraiser things that I hate to go to alone, I could like to have someone take me.  OK, now comes the "someone" part.  How do I get me one of those?   Sometime back a thing kept popping up on my email telling me I could find me a man at Match.com, or Zoosk, or any number of places and all I had to do was click on there and it was free.  Let me tell you, that sounded pretty easy to me, so click I did.  That is an experience I shall not soon forget. 

There were pages and pages of men who described themselves as "good looking, hard bodies, long walks,romantic, financially secure, and looking for love."  Now no offense intended here, but if he has to tell me he is good looking that is strike number one.  A 75 year old man with a flat stomach and hard body is a little hard to imagine.  I am having a hard time even imagining one with hair!  Now his idea of a long walk and mine may not be the same.  Right away I started thinking of a long walk on a short pier!  First hit I got was a guy from Pennsylvania who was ready to relocate, all I had to do was send him my email.  I may be a bit of a doubting Thomas on this "Get the man of your dreams for only $7.95.  Limited time only." 

Now, in all fairness, this may be the way to go for some people, but not for me.  Hell, I could not quit laughing long enough.  I found another way!  And it is free!  I can just pick one up.  They are every where!  My friends know single guys.  Well, mostly widowers.  So I am a widow.  That works, or should work.  All they have to do is introduce me.  Course they have to screen them first, you know, weed out the ultra conservatives, homophobes, Catholics, men afraid of spiders, and things like that.  Don't want one in a suit. No smokers.  No drinkers. Like animals.  Don't want to ski.  No racists and must like big dysfunctional families.  I am a thinking, I may be a little too particular.  You think?

Well, now that I think about it, I am not sure I want to do that dating thing.  I suppose it would probably happen at night and I like to go to bed about 9 PM.  That could present a problem right there!  And say I did date one, what if I got to liking him?  What then?  If I start liking him and he starts liking me, then we got another problem.  But if he could just like walk me to the door at 8:30, peck on the cheek and hit the road, that might be alright.  Yes, dating will be a good thing if I don't actually have to spend any time with him!  I am going to think about this some more.  When I reach my final decision I will share that with you.

Right now I think I just looked at the full moon the other night and thought about the good old days when I was a young, romantic girl.  That was when the wee, wee hours were for snuggling with a fella, or dancing the night away, not trying to kick the cat out of bed and letting the dog out for a quick minute then back to sleep.  Well, I do love my bed and I think right now I am going to go crawl in it and say my prayers.  May rethink this whole thing.  Got a whole month before the first of the year and everything is subject to change.

Didjaeverthink?

I have secrets that I will take to the grave.  We all do, I know.  May not be earth shattering to anyone if they knew them, but to me they are sacred.  Well there is only one, really.  No, there are two of them.  One is something that was never a real secret, but I knew.  Wait, make that three.  There was that first one, and then that second one.  At the time people knew, but they forgot.  Those two were never real secrets, but that third one is so secret that only me and God knows it, because the other person who knew has been dead a while and I think that person forgot even before they died. 

Oh, boy did I ever have one of those didjaeverthink days today!  I had what I thought was a friend and I came that close to telling my secrets.  Imagine how I would feel now, knowing just how close we actually weren't, had I told my secrets.  A very wise man once told me, "You know of people.  You do not know a person. Only that person can know himself."  He was right.  I have a face I present to people when I first meet them, but I am not good at keeping that face on and next thing you know, I have a new best friend and I will tell that best friend only the truth about myself.  Well, needless to say, not everyone is honest nor do they want honesty.  So, poof, there went my new best friend.

Needless to say I have a bit of a problem trusting people, so when I do put my trust in one of the friends I make, and they disappoint me, I am crushed.  I am learning lots of little lessons here on this big world of the Internet.  I am learning that as well meaning as people are, and as sincere as they appear to be, it is not the same as setting down at Starbucks and having a conversation face to face.  Eye contact means a lot to me.  I have made friends (?) with several people on the Internet and had gut wrenching conversations with at least one of them, laughed hysterically with another, been advised in business by one, know an other's grand kids by name and thought about a quasi affair with another.  So, why am I sad when one of these faceless figures disappears on me?  Hell, I don't know!

But in my favor, I must say, I still have my secrets.  The key to whether I trust you will be whether I share my secrets.  So far there is no temptation any where.  Like I said I almost told that one guy, but lips are sealed and it turned out well that I kept mum.  I set down to write this blog and things come out of me that amaze me.  You people probably know me better then the people I deal with on a regular basis!  You are my Internet friends.  Some of you are actually family and friends that I know.  Some of you are faraway friends that I have met.  Some of you I will meet at a later date, but the one thing you all have in common is you see the honest, forthright side of Lou.  When I meet a stranger the first thing they say is "I feel I have known you all my life."  I, myself, have never met a stranger! 

The people I meet on the Internet are faceless friends.  Sometimes I have a picture I can put with a face, but there you go.  Is that face the face that actually goes with that name?  One of my friends is apparently a bull dog!  One will not tell if they are male or female.  I have a closeup of Amy's mouth.  I met Jacci in Blackwell, Oklahoma and Ely at the bottom of Missouri.  My son has raised his voice at me more than once over what he refers to as my insane behaviour, but he does not understand.  I do not just run around and meet people wily nily.  I first have a connection with them.  Then I feel their vibes.  And I always say my prayers.

OK, I am willing to bet I have strayed from the topic again.  I know one thing, I am getting hungry so it must be supper time.  I am going to run my spell check (I love that feature),  read this over and see if it makes any sense at all, and if it does I will hit the publish button!

Hey, I understand this and that is scary in and of itself!!