Little Wonders

Like A leaf In the October Breeze

noweaps — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:04:33 +0000

I was thinking of my father-in-law today and decided to repost

this.

He sat next to the picture window in his chair, his once plump face now gaunt with a tint of yellow to his skin. He pulls his sweater around his frail shoulders and watches the last of the fall leaves, loosen their grip from the branches, fluttering slowly in the cool, gentle, October breeze.

“Why does every thing have to die?” he says to me. I can’t give him an answer. The words won’t come out, blocked by the growing lump in my throat. So I sit next to him and watch the leaves, hoping that will comfort what words cannot.

Phil was a man with a kind, giving soul. He loved to fish, camp, and bike with his wife. He donated many hours to the community, working at the senior center, the community center where he helped families in need, played Santa Claus in the Christmas Parade, mixed the pancake batter and cooked pancakes for the church breakfasts, and countless other deeds.

Every fall when we would visit, our tradition was to dry apples. Phil would have a bushel of Harrelson apples waiting, he had purchased them at a nearby apple orchard. We would spend a day peeling, slicing, and drying apples. It was time consuming but it was time spent talking and bonding. We ate as many apples as we peeled. By afternoon we were sticky from the juice of the apples and dry jello that we shook the slices in before drying. We loved it!

Phil loved to play games with the grandkids Uno, Rumikube, Sorry, and when they would get wound up and noisy he would scold them, like a grandpa would.

It was Oct. 1993. The leaves were falling. He had fought the battle with cancer for over two years. Beating it once, so he thought, only for it to take over his body again. His time was limited. He knew that. He insisted on taking Bev and myself for a drive to visit his younger brother. On the way he stopped at a small grocery store and purchased vanilla ice cream and root beer. At the farm we sat in the small kitchen while Phil made everyone a root beer float. Seemed Odd for ten o’clock in the morning. I slowly ate mine with a spoon, letting the ice cream melt on my tongue. It had been years since I had a root beer float. I don’t remember them tasting as good as the one I had that morning.

That afternoon I sat on the back deck and watched as Phil showed his wife how to start the lawn mower and the snow blower. He then showed her how far back she should cut the rose bushes in the fall before covering them with straw. He showed her how to keep the water softener maintained and how to light the furnace. He had done all these things over the years and was worried she wouldn’t know how to do them.

That night Phil sat out in the camper and played cards with the grand kids. They played for hours. At the supper table he drank his can of ensure while everyone ate baked pheasant and mashed potatoes with pheasant gravy. His favorite meal.

Later that night Phil fell asleep in his recliner. It was the only place he was comfortable enough to be able to sleep. He never got out of that chair to do anything with any of us again. The cancer had broken him. He was awake for short periods of time after that but didn’t know what was going on around him.

Phil died on a cold November morning. I had lost not only my father-in-law, but my friend. He went peacefully, just like the fall leaves fluttering in the cool, gentle, October breeze.

Breast Cancer, Have We Forgotten The Other Cancers?

noweaps — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:15:39 +0000

So October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Every where you look there are pink ribbons, pink bracelets, pink shirts, and someone even mentioned they saw, at a liquor store, a bottle of alcohol with a pink ribbon on it. Really? Not to take anything away from the sadness and fight of breast cancer, but from the publicity and the attention that is focused on it, you would think that Breast Cancer is the only cancer that strikes millions of people each year.

Was anyone aware that last month was Thyroid Cancer awareness month? That cancer strikes millions of people each year, myself included. How about colon cancer? I never hear of a month dedicated to that cancer yet how many people die from it each year? My father and father-in-law did. Lung cancer? Is there a month set aside for that? Sure you probably think, oh those people smoked they had it coming. My brother-in-law never smoked yet he got lung cancer. None of those cancers get the attention of Breast Cancer, why, I don’t know and this is very sad.

Breast cancer hasn’t cornered the market on the right for an awareness month and all the fund raising. Don’t get me wrong. I have had relatives who have had breast cancer. It’s a horrible thing to deal with but so are the other cancers out there, the cancers we don’t dedicate a month to.

While you are out there this month doing your part in bringing awareness to the plight of Breast Cancer, don’t forget to mention those other cancers that your fellow Americans are suffering from, those cancers that everyone forgets.

Goodbye Old Friend

noweaps — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 01:28:46 +0000

I’m sitting at the computer listening to the rain outside the open window. An occasional cool breeze blows through, brushing the curtain across the accordion box on the table standing just to the left of it. It’s a slow soaking rain, one we’ve desperately needed since March but has somehow passed us by since then. It’s dripping through the branches of the maple tree and pinging onto the metal roof of the carport. A distant rumble of thunder comes from the south as stronger storms approach. The rain is washing the seven months of accumulated dust of this summers drought, from all surfaces outside. A fall cleaning.

A month ago I went home to Nebraska to do the final cleaning of my childhood home. My mother is now in a retirement apartment and my Dad is no longer with us. We had been trying to get this done for over a year. Seven of twelve gathered for a three day weekend to get this task done. My parents had taken most of their belongings to their new assisted living apartment, so what was left were things they could no longer use themselves, or wanted. We were left with the decision of what to keep, to donate and to throw away. After deciding amongst ourselves what to keep, we set the rest on our parents front lawn and put at a sign that said “Free, Help Yourself”. People came from all over and help themselves they did. Many had a kind word to share about my parents as they looked through the treasure trove. I think my Dad would have liked that.

Going through what was left after forty-two years, we found all kinds of little mementos of things from when we were kids. “Look what I found!” Someone would say, or “Oh my God, do you remember writing this?” Diaries found in the bottom of a chest of drawers, letters in books, even a Country Western song my Dad once started to pen. These more valuable than the actual material belongings of the house. As we emptied the house the mood became more melancholy. The final day, there were few of us left. We loaded the last of the heavy items in my sister’s and brother’s pickups. We carried out the last trash bags to the dumpster and did a final sweeping. I walked through the house and took photos of every room remembering how much life was lived in each. Rooms bare, like the first day, forty-three years ago when my Dad moved us in. It was when I took the photo of the stairs that led from the kitchen to the bedrooms upstairs that I got teary eyed. As I stood at the top looking down the twelve steps, I could hear a faint rumble of the feet of ten kids running down those steps on Christmas morning.

We gathered our purses and cameras and looking back one last time, walked out the front door and closed and locked it. My sister began to cry when I asked to have a picture taken of us in front of the house before we left. My brother, sister and I all stood for pictures and smiled through tears.

I was there the day our Dad moved us in and I was there the day we said goodbye to the house. We were done with it. I’m glad I was the last to leave, and glad we took that final picture. As I was walked away I believe I heard that old house whisper “Thank you.”

It Is OK Once Again In Oklahoma

noweaps — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:37:48 +0000

…the wind, heat, and drought, seared the earth for sixty one days and nights. Swarms of locust and grasshoppers invaded the fields and devoured the crops leaving the livestock little to eat and gardens little to produce. The waters in the rivers and streams dried up. There was great hunger and thirst amongst the Peoples. On the Sabbath God sent a cold front. The wind blew from the north. Rains fell from the skies. The temperature plummeted and drove away the swarms of vermin. Villagers danced in the rain. God raised his arms to the heavens and proclaimed, “This is Good.”

Menopause, Where the Hell Is It!

noweaps — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 23:06:26 +0000

I’m bitchy today, it’s that time of month, AGAIN!!! I’m 53 years old. For the last ten years my Doctor has been promising me I would be going through menopause but noooooo! Every month the demon curse not only knocks at my door but comes bursting through like the ocean surge from Hurricane Katrina, lapping up every super, overnight express, surplus pad I have in stock. Those lying bastard doctors!

When I was thirty-eight I was experiencing difficulties with my monthlies, and I’m not talking about magazine subscriptions. I was having longer than usual punctuation marks, (get my drift), accompanied with hot flashes, day sweats, and more than my usual bitchiness. My doctor at the time told me that I was beginning to go through my change and it would take about ten years to get through it. I was hoping it would go as quick as the seventy-five cents of change I actually had on me. Anyway, I believed him as my mother had my two youngest sisters while going through her change. He put me on hormones to get me regulated and after a couple of months of taking them, and coming up with hundreds of ways of offing the old man, I decided I should stop taking them and tough it out. Needless to say eventually my grammar became regular again and everything was fine but the monthlies kept coming for the next thirteen long years.

Three years ago I went to a new gynecologist for my yearly subscription and she saw that I was fifty and asked me if I had stopped having punctuation marks. I told her unfortunately I still had good grammar. She said my grammar would stop when I was fifty-two. Well fifty-one came, still punctuation marks. Then I hit fifty-two. I skipped a month and I was elated! The next month, punctuation marks. I wanted to cry. The next month, no punctuation, yippee!! The next month, punctuation with a punch! Son of a bitch those lying bastards!! Now I’m fifty-three and I still have to dot my I’s. I’m going to be one hundred years old and standing in line at the checkout with boxes of commas. What does a person have to do to get an F in grammar?

So I must forge ahead and trudge through the mire of punctuation for all of woman hood to come. I am the example of devout punctuation at it’s best. No one does it better than I. I am the exact balance of perfect punctuation and grammar, just like you would find in the book, “There Will Be Blood”.

Hell On Earth With A Dash of Sweetness

noweaps — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 15:43:27 +0000

What can I say about the summer of 2011 for someone who has lived in Oklahoma? It’s been hotter than a dancing, bible waving, crying, Southern Baptist on a hallelujah jag, during a ‘Fire and Brimstone’ sermon by the local Baptist preacher. I’ve seen it happen, it’s a sight. Where does all that sweat come from.

It started the last day of May, 100* temperature. A little out of place this early in the summer. The next day another 100* and another day and another day. Okay so this was just a freak week. But it didn’t stop there. For the next three weeks it continued, 100* with a occassional 90* thrown in just to make you think God was having a good day. Plus, absolutely no rain, none for months. All the beautiful flowers I painfully bent over to plant, throwing my back and hip joints out of place, the lovely flowers that survived the litter of eleven hellish lab pups thrashing through them, began to wilt no matter how much water I drowned them with. Then the temperature began to rise even higher the end of June. 103*, 105*, 108*, now we’re breaking records from the 1930′s and still no rain. We are in an extreme drought, we’re talking no rain since February. All we’re missing is a dust storm and some sharecroppers traveling across the state in a beat up old model-t with all their worldly possessions stacked on top and eight kids packed in the back seat along with grandma.

As expected, up come the Fire Works stands in the middle of an extreme drought. A week before the Fourth of July the State declares a State wide burn ban , NO FIRE WORKS, except at public displays. July 1st, 109*, July 2, 111*, then the biggest local moron goes to the county court-house and says the burn band was put out illegally, not enough notice was given to the fire works venders. An even bigger moron in our county government agreed with him and lifted the burn band through the fourth. Does anyone in Oklahoma have a brain?

Now we’re at the end of July with over 40 days of 100+ temperatures. As you drive down the highway you can’t help but notice everything is a dark golden brown. No green foliage anywhere. The trees have begun to lose their leaves. There’s very few birds if any to be seen, no butterflies, the hummingbirds are gone, even the piss ants that have invaded my kitchen all summer carrying off everything including the kitchen sink are no longer a problem. Going outside is like walking into a big oven that’s set on broil. I’m tired of sweating, tired of keeping my house so dark it’s like living in a cave, tired of keeping the dogs in because they’ve even put out an alert that it’s to hot to leave pets outdoors.

Alas, vacation has arrived. Let’s get the hell out of here, and so we did. To the Rockies we went and what a wonderful relief it was. No temperature higher than 70*. At night it was in the low 40′s. Cool crisp mountain air that you could actually breath without the feeling of suffocation. Hummingbirds and butterflies everywhere, ice cold lakes and rushing streams, deer, chipmunks, and wildflowers everywhere. Beautiful snow topped mountains. It’s like we died and went to heaven. A little bit of sweetness to a long hot miserable summer that still hasn’t ended.

Nook Update

noweaps — Sat, 21 May 2011 23:49:29 +0000

Since I purchased my Nook at the first of February I’ve read four to five books a month. Now that things have slowed down some and with the onset of summer, the garden is planted and well on its way, I have more time to read in the evenings. I have read some really good books. I thought I’d share some titles, however I will not try to write my own review because I am terrible at it.

Here are some that are worth checking out. You can go to any book store web site and find an overview and readers reviews to see if you might like them.

1. Heaven if for Real “ by Todd Burpo a very good true story

2. “The Day the Falls Stood Still” by Cathy Marie Buchanan, just finished it and loved it

3. “Life is Short But Wide” by J. California Cooper Excellent Book worth checking out, I loved it!

4. “Closer Than Blood” by Gregg Olsen very good murder mystery

5. “A Reliable Wife” by Robert Goolrick very good read

6. “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen Loved it!

7. “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by Lisa See Loved it!

8. “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet” by Jamie Ford Excellent book, loved it!

These books I listed below, I have down loaded samples because the Overiews were interesting, but haven’t checked them out yet.

“Half Broke Horse” by Jeannette Walls

“The Year We Left Home” by Jean Thompson

“What Happened to Goodbye” by Sarah Dessen

“Something Borrowed” by Emily Griffin

“Heart of Ice” by Gregg Olsen

“Her Last Letter” by Nancy C. Johnson

“Same Kind of Different as Me” by Ron Hall

“The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls

I am currently reading “The Dry Grass of August” by Anna Jean Mayhew, which so far is very good. I think I will have enough books to last me a while.

Seeing is Believing

noweaps — Sat, 07 May 2011 00:21:15 +0000

I purchase a lot of bedding plants every spring to plant in my flower beds. Many plants are repeat offenders, promising to bring tons of blossoms to my flowerbeds, only to be a huge dissapointing mound of dried up, blossomless shruberry. A few of the drab favorites always pull through for me though, Marigolds, Vinca, Zinnias, yawn….. While out looking at bedding plants this year I came across an interesting little vine. I pulled the card out of the pot and looked at the pretty orange flowers that covered it. Then I read the name, ‘Candy Corn Vine’.

I had never heard of this plant. The description read, “fast growing, easily trainable to climb a trellis, fence or other shrubs. Blooms resemble pieces of candy corn. If planted in pot, may trim back and bring in over winter.” Well I thought, resembles candy corn. For $5 I might as well buy one and see what it does.

I brought it home and planted it in a large pot with some miracle grow potting soil. It came with a small tripod of sticks that it was wound around and climbing. I filled the pot to just above the crown of the roots and watered it well. I sat it out on my board walk next to my porch where it would get plenty of sun. The card said it needed eight hours of sun a day. Now the wait was on. I had my doubts. Like all the other plants I bought over the years that made the big promises and reneged. I have been watering it for a month. I hasn’t grown much taller than when I brought it home. What a joke I’m thinking, another waste of money.

Tonight I went out to water all my flowers and when I got to my Candy Corn Ivy this is what I found. Only one bloom so far but it looks exactly like a piece of candy corn.

Easter Explosion!

noweaps — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:41:06 +0000

“Here Comes Peter Cotton Tail, Hopping Down the Bunny Trail.” Or something like that. You think of Easter as a new dress and hat, patent leather shoes, white gloves, dress suit and shiny black shoes, a sunny day, off to Sunday service at church, easter egg hunts, big family gathering with the feast of all feasts. This Easter was different for us however.

The day before Easter started out hotter than a clam bake in hell. To top it off, the wind was blowing stronger than hurricane Katrina in the middle of the dust bowl as we haven’t had any rain since last fall. Since it wasn’t the Month of May yet, I refused to turn on the air conditioning, just call it the stubborn German in me or whatever but I WILL NOT turn on the air conditioner before May1st. Zoey our yellow lab has been expecting a litter of pups any day and she decided now would be the appropriate time to have them, during the clam bake in the dust bowl hurricane. So we got out her whelping box, which is actually a child’s wading pool with an old soft blanket in the bottom. Zoey knows the routine, she hops in and slowly commences to go into labor and over the next twelve hours pops out eleven yellow lab pups.

Easter morning arrives and the hurricane force winds and dust bowl have ended, so has our drought. Hallelujah! Unfortunately this puts a damper on the Easter festivities. After getting soaked running into and out of church services, I now looked like a drowned rat. I returned home to a proud mother laying in her swimming pool, eleven sucklings attached to her. *Sigh* “Better you than me, Zoey” I towel off, patch my face with powder and take the blow dryer to my hair, when I’m finished I find it was all hopeless and say “Shit, I’ll just have to go with it.”

I grab my two pies, a chocolate cream and a coconut cream, shut the television off and listen to my husband bitch because he doesn’t see why he needs to go to the in-laws for easter when he could be home watching baseball. I give him a go to hell look and toss him the keys and he drags his butt out of the recliner. By now we have gone from Katrina to a tsunami. I know we were in a severe drought but this is ridiculous. We get to our destination and it is a full-blown cloud burst with lightning. Once inside there is a million people with a gazillion kids, waiting to hunt easter eggs outside, which I’m guessing ain’t gonna happen. Everyone eats, hoping the typhoon/tsunami will end long enough for the kids to get in an egg hunt. After a couple of hours my daughter calls from the weather station and tells us we are going to get hit by another whopper. The adults decided to hide the eggs indoors. That’s when we decide it’s time to go home. We say our goodbyes and wade back to the truck.

Back home in his recliner my husband reaches for his remote control and flicks on the television, only it doesn’t come on. He punches and punches and the button. “Woman come and fix this tv.” Just because my Dad was a tv repair man he assumes I know how to fix everything. I mess with it for about a half hour and I can’t figure it out. After hooking the smaller tv to the Directv box we decide it’s not the box so it has to be the tv and with the severe weather we’ve had all day, we think it may have been lightning, except everything else plugged into the surge protector was still working. Then it dawned on me, the three year warranty had just expired. Of course! Well My husband couldn’t watch baseball on a non HD tv smaller than a 42 inch, so off to Best Buy it was. They had a great Sale going on. For less than what we spent on the 42 inch we had, we got a 51 inch with a 4 year protection plan and a better surge protector. Once we got it home I had to move one of his deer heads and Bob the Bob cat out of the living room to make room for it. Darn! What do you do? Baseball or deer head?

He’s like a kid with a new toy now. I’ll never get him to mow the yard unless I hide the remote. This was definitely an Easter to remember. From puppies to dust bowl hurricane tsunami. What a combination.

This and That

noweaps — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 03:10:15 +0000

The past month I have spent what little spare time I have had reading and gardening. My Nook has supplied me with endless minutes of murder mysteries, soul-searching stories, and romantic novels. I can barely get one finished before I have shopped the thousands of titles and purchased the next, a habit I need to break.

I’ve also been working on my garden. I honestly have to say I haven’t planted one in about fifteen years. The main reason being by the time it gets to be about 90 degrees out, I no longer have the yearning to watch my garden grow into the beautiful, yielding, harvest of wonderful vegetables I had been dreaming about for weeks. It’s to damn hot and I’m tired of bending over, pulling weeds with sweat running down my back and in between my boobs! Screw it! I’ll go buy a can of beans at the store. There, plainly put! My Dad would roll over in his grave. So this year, after fifteen years, in honor of my Dad, I decided to try a garden one more time. To my husband’s dismay when I asked him to borrow a roto-tiller, “Woman, are you nuts!” After three weeks of nagging the old man, the neighbor saw me out back with a shovel, and came driving over with his roto-tiller and plowed up a modest size patch for me. After he left my husband repeated himself, ”Woman, are you nuts!” To which I replied, “Nuts are only on men, get the hell out of my way!” End of conversation. He did put a fence around my garden for me to keep the critters out.

So after breaking ground and fertilizing, I got out my roll of string and made my row marker and planted peas, carrots, rhubarb, dill, catnip, radishes, onions, and potatoes. Two weeks later I planted tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, and jalapeno peppers. I also planted marigolds around the outer edges to keep the bugs out, so they say. Everything is coming up now and looking good. I’ve had to water ever other day as we’ve had no rain and lots of wind.

Went to the eye doctor this past week only for him to tell me my eyes were worse. Duh, I could have told him that. This time I took my prescription to Eye Mart and got two pair for what I pay for one at the eye doctor’s, to which the old man said, “I’ve been telling you to do that for years.” He told me once, once! I just let him think he told me many times, he was still stinging from the nuts comment.

So life is good this month. Easter is almost here. Everything is in bloom. We just need some rain.