Such wise, heartfelt words...

Such wise, heartfelt words...

"My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment, and in this time, and with all of the Internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us, we teach our kids and I want to remember, just refuse hate. Don’t hate anybody. I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are Black or white or LGBTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian.

Anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the wall. Stand in the middle ’cause that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle. So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground,”   Tyler Perry… April 25, 2021 at the Oscar awards event…

 

Thank you, Mr. Perry..  I could not say it better..  My prayer would be to have this carried forward..  if we can do the BLACK LIFES MATTER..   WHY NOT…    “MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE”?

 

 

OH HOW THE MIGHT DO FALL…..

OH HOW THE MIGHT DO FALL….. 

Or better known as … OH HOW EMBARASSING…

 On Friday I went to my daughter’s. We were going to go to town to get some more supplies.. I opened the door, step my left foot into the car, and just as I did that, I felt my right leg quiver… and

DOWN I WENT.. I rolled over on my side and then on my knees and doing a push up… got ahold of the nearby counter leg and pulled myself up..   All while my daughter’s boyfriend, is..OH MY GOSH, ARE YOU OK.. my daughter jumped out of the car and she too.. MOM, ARE YOU OK.. I was trying to reassure them as I was getting up.. Telling them all is good… I was ok… Everything is ok. Are you sure?..  Yep, just embarrassed.

I did this once before. Was stepping up to go on to the deck at home.. and in front of my husband, his brother and his wife, I did a 4 point landing. I had stepped up with my left leg.. felt the quiver in my right leg, as I put it down, collapsed. And there I was.. flat on the deck. 

This has happen only the two times in 2 years..  so hard to go see the dr. and say, well, it does this… Kind of like telling the mechanic, my car is making  this noise but it isn’t doing at the time you are with the mechanic.  

So hope those are the last ones of that.. but some how I don’t think it will be.   But at least when I feel the right leg quiver, I know it isn’t going to be pretty. As the warning isn’t long enough to correct my support. 

Sad thing is.. the left leg is my problem child. I have a area of my left thigh, midway, that comes and goes with severe pain. Never knowing when it will be… so once again.. how do you go to the dr. and say Look at this Doc.?  But at least that one does it almost daily.

 

Surprises can sometimes backfire and surprise you…

Surprises can sometimes backfire and surprise you…. 

I have a sweet niece.. Barbara. She has a heart of gold. She is very special.  And for some reason she seems to like me. An old buzzard like me.   See Barbara came in to my life, late in her life. As I didn’t get to know her mother until I was 50 and her mother was 55.  By that time Barbara was married and had a daughter. And she lived in a different town than her mother, so when I went to see her mother, she was not there. 

Guess I should explain that her mother is my half sister Sandra. Because of family dynamic I never knew about Sandra until I was 13… and did not get to meet her until… like I said .. I was 50. Too much to tell why, and it doesn’t matter anyway.

But out of the deal .. I got this sweetheart of a girl.  And she has a sweet daughter too..

Well, Barbara is always doing little things.. the kind that is … you know..  the kind that means the most.   And lately she sent me a birthday card with the sweetest heart felt (on my part at least) words… She is the best..  So I thought..  I will send her some surprise flowers… After all, the best flowers are that are for no reason.. no holiday… just because…  So I went on line and I put in the order… Then later found out that a package had been delivered to our neighbor that was for me.  I could not figure out what I had ordered… especially that big… I open it, and there on top was a shopping bag with NEWPORT R.I. on it.. then I knew it was from Barbara.. like Christmas.. so many goodies…  Dang.. I thought I was going to surprise her and here she goes and surprises ME.  

So I wrote to her and told her thank you.. and fessed up to my going to surprise her that Tuesday, she was getting a surprise from me… … telling her that we wicked have minds that run in the same canal… lol..  IT WAS THEN.. she told me.. oh, no Auntie…

She says… we are leaving for Florida on Monday…. OH NO….

Long story short, I was able to get ahold of the flower shop and have them deliver not on Tuesday, but May 5^th..  WHEW!!... so be careful how you surprise someone.. lol.. it might backfire on you…

 

 

 

A change….be careful what you ask for…

A change….be careful what you ask for…

 I figured last week, that I needed a change.. Mix things up a bit. And I told myself… change is good… never to old to change things.

So I did it..  I went to a beauty shop (that is kind of a funny name, in itself… I guess because we are suppose to be beautiful when we come out)   I decided to get my hair trim again.. Going short again.

What?  that is a change?  Nope, but getting my hair colored is… and that is what I did.. 

I had asked for steel grey… that I was tired of the white. But my hair is actually about 3 or 4 colors naturally.  It is white in front. And then the sides and back can be… grey, light and dull,  and dark grey, and silver. At any given time, no real rhyme or rhythm  to it.  So I thought the dark grey was steel grey. So we went for that…  The King told me as I was leaving.. have her put in some highlights… Highlights with grey? Well, can ask.  Also went for daring… black underneath in the back…

She said sure, we can use your white hair for highlights and color the rest.  2 hours later, it was trim and colored.. And she turn me around to see. OH, MY GOD… LOL LOL… what a shock. The steel grey was darker than I thought.. And there was black underneath.. on the sides…. But I thought .. it is ok.. I will get use to it..  Went home and found a small problem, but the gal had me come in and took care of that..  it is just now trying to live with darker hair… from stark white to very dark charcoal grey. 

The next morning it wasn’t so bad.. and it is starting to grow on me.  So if you know me, here is what it is like.. lol..

 

 

Hell to be old..

Hell to be old..

 

Well, it is the start of the season after all..  So no surprise that the bones and muscles are rebelling after months of solitude.

We didn’t even have a decent snow year, really out of practice. 

Have been working in the yard.. A couple days ago and a week or so ago, did a lot of digging out the plants from winter..  Chopped off straggle branches, and had a heap of a pile at the back gate.

Today was the day of hauling it to the dump. The King was not happy camper, but he did it… Told me no more cutting branches.. Yeah, like that is going to happen.

But after he clean up the pile, I went out there and saw, yea, he got the big stuff.. but there was so much more..  So raked, weedwhacked tall dry grass, that was keeping the gate from closing.  Now I have a 5 foot pile that is about 2 feet tall.  He came back from the dump… looked at it.. and then me…  Said, another day.   I agree…

I am getting too old for this stuff.  I enjoy it, but my back sure doesn’t and is telling me so…  My legs have been acting up of late. Guess they too have had enough..

But  the grass is turning green and we are probably a week out to the start of mowing again..

Yep, it is hell to get old… 

 

 

 

Floods… and floods of memory….

Floods… and floods of memory….

 Read in the Sunday paper about the big flood of the west coast in 1861 and 1862. Mostly in California. but also in Oregon … and Boise Basin in Idaho. But California got the bunt of it… Sacramento, Ca was so bad, that the Governor had to row his boat from his house to the Capital building..

It was amazing to read and they said it would return in 100 or 200 years.

It has to do with the weather. We have heard of the Pineapple Express.. Well that is where concentrated water propels a jet stream of vapor from Hawaii to the Pacific Coast line of the main land of the United States.  Usually laying low in the clouds.

Usually it is a low lying jet stream and this one was carrying water from Hawaii, it hit the Sierra Nevada Mountains and melted the snow and the water flowed down the west side of the mountain and filled the rivers and lakes and valleys, the last month of the year 1861. They said it went from British Columbia to Mexico. … but Sacramento got the worse of it..  the area was 300 miles by 20 miles they said. Drown out towns, killed people, as well as farm animals and pets… Miles and miles of it.. Only one who felt it was coming and headed for high ground was American Natives.. 

Well, that triggered my memory of when I was living in National City, Ca.. just out side of San Diego, 1961.  We lived in a alley like area that had 6 small homes at a dead end.

I remember for over 2 weeks people were passing the word of a huge flood, that was coming.. and it would flood all of San Diego County.  I forgot the exact date they thought it would happen. It was suppose to hit about 11am.   The neighbors were talking about it seriously a week before… and then on that date, I saw them putting ladders up and putting chairs on top of their roofs.  I am serious..  really… kids and adults.  At 10am, they all were on top of their house in the chairs.

For some reason Bill (my husband at the time) and I did not believe in all of this…we went on with the day, like normal.

At sundown, some came down, leaving the ladders there .. ‘JUST IN CASE”…   No water came. And life went on.. I don’t remember what all was said about it after. But some were sure it was going to happen in the future.  Now I wonder if it had anything to do with the Great Food of 1862.  

If it did and they think well, maybe in 2061 for the 200 year deal..  Well, I won’t be here.  But it might not be a good idea to live in Sacramento Valley in 2061. Where most of the damage happen.

 

 

THIS AND THAN.. from the weekend and laughs

We got quite a few cards.. and then I got a few flowers..  

NEXT YEAR.. it is going to be the 

BIG 70 for the King... 

so got to figure out what to do... 

and I got this blue mushroom from the grandkids... that lights up at night..  later got a butterfly that lights up as well..  my family knows how I love solar lights..

And then there was this strange  thing traveling around town over the weekend.

no one seems to know what it is for. 

Some figured maybe biblical..??

And someone with a sense of humor... put this up on Facebook..

now we might laugh about this.. 

BUT

if it is on a 10 acre of land....

it could be the truth..  lol.. 

 

NO DESIRES…

NO DESIRE…

 

It dawn on me, I have no bucket list.  No place I have always wanted to go… no concert I wanted to see. 

I never wanted to go to Paris, London or any of those overseas places.

Closest to travel, at one time I would have like, not loved to see some of America that I have not already seen. But now, not really into that either.

I do have a wish.. of going to see my son’s in June and watch them race each other, as they have done for the past 5 years… We haven’t seen them for 6 years .. except for a day and half for a funeral twice.  So I am looking forward to that..

But other than that..  I have no special desire. No bucket list.  How about you? do you have a bucket list?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY … HAPPY BIRTHDAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY … HAPPY BIRTHDAY…

 

HAPPY BIRTHDY TO ME.. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME..   HAPPPPPPPPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEEEEE… 

 

Because I have made it 81 years… today…  I am taking the day off… HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEEEEE… 

Last year was such a bust… so going to try to celebrate today.