The Cherokee Talking Stick

Repost this if...

2011-02-21T17:06:00.001-05:00

Yep, I'm fed up with all of it. I've never been fond of politics, but I especially hate it now. In fact, I'm so fed up that I may never vote again. That's because this constant fighting between the two parties has invaded my life like never before. Seems that at least half of Facebook consists of those expounding their political views, resorting to name-calling and half-truths. My Facebook friends and family constantly bombard Facebook with their rhetoric and links to websites they think is going to change somebody's mind about what party to belong.

However, on Sundays the political poop on Facebook changes to poop about Football and now NASCAR--not much better in my opinion. On Monday, it all swings back to politics and name-calling, interspersed with requests for hearts or vegetables, or the usual copy/paste "Repost this if" garbage. I might even write my own repost, "If you're sick of unsolicited political announcements, repost this". But as most Facebookers haven't figured out yet, reposting is not going to cure cancer, help diabetics, stop child abuse, bring back your dead father, or change anyone's mind about politics.

...but then there's that Egypt thing...

I grow weary.

Has it Really Been this Long???

2011-02-07T17:54:00.000-05:00

My buddy Graybeard lists me as "moribund". Yep, I have been gone awhile. Like many others, I've gotten addicted to Facebook and just a whole lot of sitting around. I sit all day at work, writing tech manuals and system documentation, then come home and sit some more. I knew it wasn't good for anyone to be as sedentary as I've been, but it all became a vicious cycle. Bad habits lead to getting out of shape, gaining weight...and all that led to knee surgery and a back that constantly hurts.
Two weeks ago my friend Jennifer and I joined a gym. We both needeach other to push us to take an hour or so of our time every day and do some bicycling and work the machines down in the weight room. So far, we've both lost a few pounds and feeling a little bit better already. I've recently had a stress test done, and the old ticker is in good shape. I saw a cardiologist today, who seemed to agree with me that my old blood pressure medicine just ain't doing the job. He's switched meds, and hopefully that will bring my pressure down 20 points or so. He thought I was on the right track with joining a gym, and said my stress test didn't indicate otherwise.

I know this isn't the most exciting or funny blog I've written, but the pain in my back is forcing me to quit for now. I still have lots to say...I just need to put down my iPhone and pick up my laptop. And I'll do that after I get home from the gym at night.

Stand Him Down

2010-08-04T19:58:00.000-04:00

Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court

Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say. His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his 'allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah,' defiantly stating, 'I think I will not apologize for my actions' and told the court 'I am at war with your country’.

Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:

Judge Young: 'Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you.

On counts 1, 5, and 6 the court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General. On counts 2, 3, 4, and 7, the court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutively. (That's 80 years.)

On count 8 the court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years again, to be served consecutively to the 80 years just imposed. The court imposes upon you for each of the eight counts a fine of $250,00--that's an aggregate fine of $2 million. The court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines.

The court imposes upon you an $800 special assessment. The court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further.

This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.

Now, let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether the officers of government do it or your attorney does it, or if you think you are a soldier, you are not. You are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I've known warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and the TV crews were, and he said: 'You're no big deal.'

You are no big deal.

What your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?

I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing? And, I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom, so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.

We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. The day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.

Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America . That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.

Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.

She Was Asking for it.

2010-07-15T17:43:00.002-04:00

There are some pretty ignorant people out there. As soon as I heard this chick speak, I knew she was just plain ignorant, and it wasn’t the religious garb she was wearing that tainted my opinion of her. Afterwards, I got the lowdown on this idiot, and what happened to her after I left. I wish I’d stayed around to see her being hauled away in a police car.
As far as I’m concerned, they need to give her a blindfold, cigarette, and a brick wall to lean against. What she did a few years ago was tantamount to treason.

Bird in the House, Ma...

2010-07-08T20:15:00.000-04:00

After work today, we were in the kitchen when my husband noticed what looked like small wasp nest hanging on the soffiting over our deck. I thought it looked more a small hornet's nest, so I went out to investigate. As I got closer to it, I saw that it was a tiny little bat, all curled up into a ball.

I motioned for my husband to come out, and as he did, he grabbed the wasp spray. I told him to put it away, and to get out there fast. He thought it was a cocoon of some sort. I had to tell him it was a bat. I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos of him...macro, so I had to get really close.

The bat reminded me of one of those hilarious events that happened when my kids were small. We were at Mom and Dad's, sitting around in the family room--except for Dad. He liked to sit at the kitchen table, smoke his cigs, drink a beer, and watch the little portable TV. At one point, he looked up at the kitchen ceiling, and without missing a beat, he very dryly said, "Bird in the house, Ma...".

I ran into the kitchen, telling Dad not to hurt it. When I got close, it swooped past my head. It was a bat, and that's exactly what I yelled, "BAAATTTTT!". That set up a huge round of chaos. Everyone started running around. I went berserk. I kept picturing that bat being rabid and getting tangled up in my hair. I grabbed my two little hysterical kids and ran from room to room, with the bat right behind us. It never occurred to me to take the kids to a bedroom and simply shut the door!

My husband never moved from his couch-potato post on the sofa. Picture a houseful of screaming maniacs, and then Mr. Smooth not even flinching while in his reclining position. At one point Dad had a fly swatter and was whapping the poor little guy (the bat--not my husband), but he managed to escape Dad and continue his reign of terror on the family. Finally, the bat flew out the sliding glass door to the enclosed back porch. I hurried and shut the door, then locked it. At least he was out there where he couldn't get to us! And I was fairly sure he couldn't get through a locked door.

A minute later, a scream came from the other side of the sliding glass door. Mom had been out on the porch, unbeknownst to us! And since I locked the door, she couldn't get back in. I unlocked the door and Mom scooted in before the bat could fly back into the main part of the house. We were finally able to get the bat back outdoors by opening the outside door off the porch. Whew!

For the next few minutes, the house was still noisy--but this time with the sound of laughter. That would've been hilarious on video, but few people had video cameras back then. Later, my son told me that he never thought bats were real, because they turned into vampires...and vampires weren't real. So when he saw the bat, his thinking was that bats ARE real and this guy was going to turn into a vampire!

I just checked on the little guy, and he's still hanging from the deck soffiting. I hope he's not sick. It's starting to get dark, and he should be out looking for supper. Funny that a bat scared the life out of me 30 years ago, but not today. I must be getting brave in my old age.

Sick of Being Sick

2010-06-15T21:37:00.001-04:00

I don't know how people who are chronically sick stand it. It's just been a few weeks for me, and I'm losing patience real fast. Seems the strong antibiotic I took to get over pneumonia has killed off a lot of good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria. You know what happens when all the nice folks move out and leave their homes wide open...the riff-raff moves in.

And the riff-raff has moved in--on my tongue at first. It started with the black tongue that is common when taking an antibiotic. I thought it would clear up after I was done with the meds. Nope. It merely evolved. It became a "hairy tongue", and now it's become a full-fledged case of "thrush". Sunday night, my tongue began hurting. I thought maybe it was a taste bud gone bad and as the Bible says, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out". Well, I located a swollen taste bud in the central part of my tongue, and thinking "maybe if I just got rid of it"...I grabbed my small needle-nose pliers, latched onto the elongated taste bud, and pulled the stupid thing right off my tongue.

Who would've thought that a tongue with a dismembered taste bud would bleed so badly? I tried to yell at my husband to grab a wet wash cloth. He came in to see what I was blathering about, and found me trying to talk with a really bloody tongue. What a stupid thing to do.

Yesterday morning I woke up to sore tonsils and throat, and my tongue still hurt. I felt generally sick again. I ended up going to the doctor, who gave me the diagnosis. This stuff has spread to my throat and also my intestines. I didn't tell her about my self-surgery. I learned my lesson. And in case you're wondering, the photo is NOT of my tongue. I just tried to find an example of "thrush tongue" that wasn't horribly gross.

From now on, I won't sever anything other than skin tags.

My Turn

2010-05-18T10:33:00.001-04:00

I didn't get to attend my little brother's first communion because I was sick. Yep, that's me in the chair all covered up. And missing one of the few times my little brother Mark ever sported wings.

Forty-nine years later, I'm still laying around in a big chair all covered up...and recuperating from pneumonia. This started coming on a week ago, but got really bad Thursday night. I think that's when the pneumonia set in. I missed making 14 batches of strawberry jam, but thanks to Mom and the hubby, it's made and in the freezer. It's a funny feeling to be laying around like a slug while others are doing your work. I had the same feeling when, as a kid, I'd hear the vacuum cleaner running early on Saturday mornings. That was all the alarm we needed to tell us to get up and help Mom clean up the house. (To this day, I can't stand to hear the cleaning lady at work vacuuming--I feel like I should be dusting or something.)

I think today's the turning point. My temperature's down to my normal 97.something. I can breathe a little deeper, even though the wheezes, squeaks and rattles are still there. My mind is coming out of the fog I've been in, and I no longer feel like I'm halfway between this world and the next one. The doctor's orders include staying home from work for the rest of this week. I'm hoping I'll feel good enough in a day or two to tackle some housework (ok, now you KNOW I'm sick).

Mom just called to see what I needed from the store. All I need is a loaf of bread and some vanilla ice cream. Thought I'd make a strawberry shake since I still have some berries in the fridge. My little bro Mark said he makes his shakes with our strawberry jam, and that sounded pretty good. I'll just claim I have a sore throat and need the shake to soothe the ol tonsils. Nobody will call me a liar, since I'm sick.

Thankfully, I had my mommy to take care of me while I was sick. I don't know why it is, but no matter how old a kid gets, when they're sick they want their moms. I guess that's because it's mostly the moms that took care of them when they were little. Mom was always there, no matter what time of the night. My dad slept through all those kid illnesses, and so did my husband. Just nature's way, I suppose.

Thanks, Mom. I love you.

A Shocking Turn of Events

2010-05-03T16:35:00.000-04:00

Friday afternoon I was sitting in the waiting room of my chiropractor when I got a text..."Is Mom with you?" I texted back to my little sister, "No". Within a few seconds, the phone rang. Occasionally I have a sixth sense about things. I know the phone call did not carry good news; but I knew it would be ok.

First there was some small talk, then silence. I knew that silence would be followed by some jarring news. With her voice cracking, she said, "Mark's on his way to the hospital". She told me he was having problems with his heart; that it wasn't beating correctly and the doctor sent him to the hospital. I told her I had several friends with the same problem and it would be ok.

Mom and I headed north Saturday morning. At the hospital, Mark seemed pretty good--even with his chest thumping in crazy rhythms. The lines on the monitor zig-zagged with no regularity. When he stood, his pulse would go up to around 150. He was having some pain in his shoulder blade radiating to the front. And he was having problems walking without being able to catch his breath.

He admitted to having this problem for the past 15 years. About once a year, his heart will go out of rhythm, but will return to normal after four days. This time, the doctor wasn't messing around, especially with Mark's lightheadedness.

Sunday, Mark's heart was still not beating correctly so it looked like the "shock" would be a go for Monday. His doctor came in to see him and I asked if we could watch, or even hit the button for the big shock. No go. We'd have to sit in the waiting room. I even told the doctor of my experience shocking Mark with our electric fence. Nope. That didn't even work.

This morning, Mark had just been taken back by the time we arrived at 8. We'd been there earlier if we'd known, but they couldn't seem to be able to tell us what time they'd come for him. So we kept Mark's wife and daughter company for a couple of hours.

Finally, an Indian doctor came and told us that he did great. No blood clot, and it only took one shock to get the ol' ticker beating in rhythm again. He took us back to see Mark, who was being wheeled back to his room. Mark started in with his usual sick humor, telling everyone within earshot that he was clinically dead for five minutes and expected to go to Heaven. Instead, he went to hell and was greeted by Saddam Hussein. I asked if he saw the 72 virgins. He said he did, and there was a good reason they were all virgins.

Typical Mark.

In wrapping this up, I need to thank The Big Man above for watching over my little brother. Looks like we'll have him around a good long time to torment and tease. We'll expect the same in return.

Just like old times...except no more knock-down drag-out fights that were common between me and Mark. Now it's just hugs and "I love you's" between teasings.

Love you, little brother!

My Big Debut

2010-03-26T15:29:00.000-04:00

I don’t know why she did it, but for some strange reason my sister volunteered *me* to speak at an an African-American Southern Baptist church. I’m not a speaker. I tend to stutter and talk very fast in front of groups of people. I don’t have a clue what they wanted me to speak about. But if my sister had this much confidence in me, I was going to do it. I got busy and wrote a mediocre speech. All I had to do was print it and rehearse it a couple of times.

My plan was to wait until Sunday morning to shop for an outfit, but I had in mind what I wanted to wear. I was going to buy a real pretty dress and find one of those big fancy hats to wear. I wanted to fit in and look like the folks I was going to address, even if I did have another skin color.

I headed off to Indy, wearing a loud floral matched pantsuit. I wore it all day Friday and then again on Saturday. I looked really skinny in it for some reason—like it had removed about 60 pounds from my frame. Sunday, I headed off to the mall to find that perfect outfit. Much to my chagrin, none of the stores were open at 8am on a Sunday morning. I went from store to store and kept finding great outfits and hats on display in the windows, but none of the stores were opening until noon.

I finally gave up and decided I had to wear my pantsuit for the third day in a row, and I hoped no one in the congregation would notice that it was beginning to stiffen up from the constant wear. But the really weird thing was, the slacks somehow turned into a skirt. Still, I didn’t look too bad considering my bare legs that I hadn’t shaved in weeks. But then I remembered I needed to put on makeup. Trouble with that was, I suddenly was sitting in a wheelchair and wasn’t capable of putting on my own makeup. Someone wheeled me to a table set up in the mall, and some kind girls were powdering my face and applying blush.

More interruptions…I had to find a place to hook up my laptop and print my speech. I found myself being pulled from place to place and not getting anything accomplished. And it was getting close to the time of the service.

I got out of the wheelchair and walked around a wall. On the other side, there stood my dad! I nearly passed out from the shock since Dad died over 18 years ago. Then I ran over and hugged him. He told me he hadn’t died 18 years ago, but was lost in Iraq for all that time. He looked so healthy and hadn’t aged one little bit, which only seemed a little strange. I was still mulling over how I could remember being with him when he died, but yet he didn’t die. And what was he doing in Iraq in the first place? He worked at Sears!

Still being dragged all over the mall, I gave up on printing my speech and decided to ad lib it. I would talk about my crazy preparation I was still going through. I would finish up the speech by talking about how there’s a lesson in everything and how even good things come from bad things. I was going to wow them, for sure. All I had to do was to keep my ideas in some sort of order and not start talking a mile a minute. So with half my makeup on, a dirty floral suit, and bare legs, I found myself in a beautiful large church. One of the church leaders met me and was walking me up the stairs to the stage. I was about to inspire a thousand African-American Baptists. They were going to love me—I just knew it!

Then I woke up. What a weird dream.

What Has This Got to do with Work???

2010-03-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

I try...I really try to NOT listen to all the BS around me. I have noise-canceling headphones, but there are days that I really don't feel like listening to music or white noise while I'm working. Just today, here are just a few of the less-than-intelligent comments I heard from next door...

"Your hair looks cute!"

"It was all wobble-jello and bouncy."

"I'm leaving early today." (So what else is new?)

To top it off, I heard all about her labor of 32 years ago when she was telling a male co-worker all the gory details. He said it was because of the way she was built...you know...small hips.

Why does every workplace have one or more of these useless employees? Beats me, but they all do. Once in awhile, I could put up with this, but this talk goes on all day long, every day. I'd find another job, but it would just be the same thing.

Tired of complaining...it's time to go get a Margarita and forget the Doublemint Twins for awhile.

For Once in my Life

2010-02-20T21:09:00.001-05:00

She had just addressed and stamped the letter, and it would be headed to Muncie the next day. The phone rang as she walked past. It was the mom of her best friend telling her that their friend Mona was in the hospital and might not make it. It didn't make sense. The letter she just finished was written to Mona...how could she be in the hospital fighting for her life?

Bonnie said that Mona had spinal meningitis. She had complained of illness, a headache, and pain in her neck, so she didn't go to class. Her roommates came home to find her unconcious. She was on a respirator and in a coma. The letter never got mailed.

38+ years later, Mona steered her motorized wheelchair down the aisle of a small chapel. The aisle was strewn with pink rose petals. Once she reached the groom, also in a wheelchair, a very scratchy and slow rendition of "For Once in my Life" came out of the sound system. The groom asked, "Is that you singing?". She said it wasn't, but then the familiar lyrics kicked in. She said, "Oh my God! It is!".

The tears had already begun for the three "girls" standing up for her. Then Mona joined them. She buried her face into the back of her little dog, who was poised on a pillow on Mona's lap. We all cried for the three minutes it took for the song to play.

The wedding ended in a few minutes. Then it was time for congratulations, hugs, and lots more tears.

Two of those four girls have lived fairly normal lives in the past 38 years. One girl was handicapped at age 18, and the other was a widow at age 19, left to raise a six-month-old baby boy. For one reason or another, those four girls hadn't seen each other in many, many years.

I wished I had kept that letter. I would've given it to the bride last Monday when we went to her wedding and stood up for her.

Why?

2010-02-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

One teenage boy is in a hospital tonight getting radiation for a brain stem glioma in hopes of adding a little time to his short life. Another teenage boy is hell-bent on destroying his life when he has it all and just can't see it. God, please put peace in both boys' hearts. Help one boy sleep tonight and help the other one wake up before it's too late.

Men...

2010-02-05T17:44:00.002-05:00

I heard the other day that our new contract with the new company might not start until March 1st. That would mean from February 17th when the old contract ends until the 1st, we'd all be off work--with NO pay. That would be fine with me. A few days off would be nice. But it would suck for those whose money runs tight.

I emailed my husband and told him the rumor, and that I might have a week or so off. He emailed back and said that if that happened maybe he might come home to a clean house, a hot meal, and a smiling face. I emailed back, "Does this mean I can hire a maid, a cook, and a prostitute?"

His buddy said that a good woman would be all three.

...men...

What Just Happened???

2010-01-29T19:41:00.000-05:00

Today was my RDO--that's "Regular Day Off". I work nine hour days, Monday through Thursday, then one eight hour Friday and one Friday off. I was really enjoying my RDO--until my work buddy called me up to tell me "the contract was awarded". I knew our portion of this huge contract was up for a re-compete.

But my buddy told me that our company was no awarded the contract. Ironically, the company that my current company won this contract away from was awarded the IT contract. That means in mid-February I will no longer be employed by one company, but will hopefully be picked up by the new company.

Funny how all these hard-working (well, not ALL are hard-working) folks that manage to score perfect ratings from their customer for several years in a row are just kind of tossed up in the air. Where we'll land, who knows? I've got a feeling they'll take one look at the fat old woman and tell her to "hit the road". I think my days as a tech-writer were numbered anyway. The software I work with is going away in less than a year, thanks to a less-than-smart move on the Navy's part. That's ok. I'll expect the worse, and if it's anything better I'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe not completely happy, but it's been a long time since I was completely happy anyway.

And at this point in my life, I really wouldn't mind staying at home. I'm tired of working and coming home to a messy house that I don't want to clean. At the end of a long work day, I just want to kick back and NOT HAVE to do anything. I've got my little dog to keep my company and lots of unfinished projects at home. And I wouldn't mind doing housework if I didn't have to work too.

If the "worst" does happen, come springtime I'm having a clothesline installed. I always loved to hang out my laundry. I can take up sewing again and I can even finish that quilt I started for my son ten years ago. I can pick up and just go stay with my granddaughters any time I want. They need and want me now--ten years from now they'll be teenagers and have much more important things to do than hang out with grandma.

I'll have lots of time to walk and get exercise. I can drive up north a couple of hours and hang with my old classmates. When I get caught up with my housework, I might even do some spring-cleaning at my son's house. I could never be bored staying at home--not at this stage in my life.

So any way this falls, I'll make the best of it. The worst part is leaving co-workers that I've grown fond of. I won't miss the boring work. I won't miss the politics. But I would miss some of the folks I've worked with for the past 3-1/2 years.

Things have a way of USUALLY working out for the best. And even if something bad comes from all of this, there's still something good to be gleaned out of it. I may just have to look for a while to find it...but I will.

What????

2010-01-24T21:39:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago last Thursday I made a last-minute unplanned trip to take care of a four-year-old with a stomach bug. My daughter could not get off work, and my son-in-law was in training. I had Friday off anyway, so I threw a day's worth of clothes and my meds into a sack. Rudy had already sensed the phone call from my daughter meant a road trip and he was driving me crazy with his constant jumping and barking. I went ahead and put the little guy into the car to keep him out from under my feet so I could finish getting ready to go.

By dark I was at my daughter's hugging two seemingly healthy granddaughters. The youngest had lost her breakfast that morning, ran a temp, but seemed her normal self. She even had some crackers and Sprite and kept it down. So the next morning, the three healthy ones went to work and to school, and Kaylee and I did a little housework. I decided to cook a nice supper later on, and since Kaylee seemed fine, we took off around 10:30 to do some shopping and grab something to eat for lunch.

Kaylee told me without even giving it any thought that she wanted to eat at McDonald's. When we got to the counter, she asked if she could tell the girl at the counter what she wanted. Sure, I said. She did a fine job telling the girl that she wanted chicken nuggets, apple dippers, and a chocolate milk. I ordered, picked up the tray, and we took a seat in a booth.

Kaylee was her usual talkative self. She asked question after question. And invariably I had trouble hearing what she was asking me. Probably after about the 20th time I asked, "What???" Kaylee looked at me and loud enough for half the restaurant to hear proclaimed, "YOU need a hearing aid!"

I had NO trouble hearing that remark. I also had no trouble later that night when she told me my neck was like a trampoline.

Another Bright Move on my Part

2010-01-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

I must be at the point in life where I have no feelings in my legs due to poor circulation. How else could I have not known what I did until it was too late?

At lunch today, I had brought in a couple packages of Eckrich Grillers and some buns to have for lunch. Not all for me...but to share with the less fortunate. You know, the co-workers who were relying on the roach coach to bring them some food. Due to the snow, the roach coach didn't run today. But lucky them...I had 16 grillers and was cooking them for anyone that was hungry, didn't have a lunch with them, or didn't want to get out in the snow to run to Subway or the caf.

I microwaved both packages to bring them to room temperature to speed up the process a bit. Then I threw four at a time into the little sandwich maker I keep at work. I keep the sandwich maker on top of one of the lunchroom microwaves. Ever so often, I'd turn the grillers to get a nice even brown on all sides. As I stood near the microwave, I backed up a little so my coworkers could use the microwave.

Against the wall near the microwave is a five-gallon bottle of water with a pump/spigot attached to the top. The bottle sits on a chair, for lack of a table to put it on. The room temp water is used to make coffee. I knew it was there.

After a minute or two, I began to feel something slightly cool, but very wet on the back of my left foot. I turned around to find the entire back of the left leg of my heavy knit slacks completely drenched with water. I had backed up a little too far, opened up the spigot, and soaked myself. I mean, the floor behind me was even wet.

The room was full of people, and I was at the far end of the room. Besides, I was the chef for the multitude. So I made an announcement and turned around to show them my soaking wet leg. It was the laugh of the day.

It wasn't too comfortable sitting around all afternoon in wet pants, but they eventually got dry before I had to head home. And it still wasn't as bad as the time I sat down on a huge cup of iced tea, then had to go teach a Windows class with a soaking wet behind.

Good move, Helen

Just a Good Ol' Boy

2010-01-01T21:16:00.000-05:00

About 37 years ago, I heard a knock on the door. Newly-married and not used to having anyone knock on the door of our home, I peeked through the glass to be on the safe side. On the porch stood a local policeman. I knew who he was, but just barely. I couldn't imagine why Joe was there.

With a big smile on his face, he held out a check. "Ma'am, would you sign this?" I looked closer at the check. It was the one I had written for my water bill, and apparently didn't bother signing. I signed the check, handed it back to him, and thanked Officer Gee.

I've talked to Joe a few times in the 37 years I've lived in Loogootee. I can't recall ever seeing him without that familiar smile. He had a way of putting a person at ease and making you feel like you've known him forever. After a few years on the police department, and serving as the chief of police, Joe ran for sheriff of Martin County--and won.

During his tenure as sheriff, Joe would bring the "chain gang" from the county jail to the post prom setups and teardowns. We loved it when they showed up. Without complaints, they did all of our heavy hauling and high-climbing for us. We always bragged on their efforts, and they always smiled back. You could tell it was a pleasure for them to get out of jail for a few hours and do something besides sitting in their cells.

My Aunt Margi used to cook for the county jail, and her good home cooking coupled with Sheriff Gee's gentle ways and smiling face, I imagined it to be real similar to Aunt Bea's cooking and Sheriff Taylor's jail in Mayberry.

Joe Gee died on December 23rd. His last wish was to come back home to die. I heard that he hadn't been home from the hospital very long when he passed away. But at least he made it back home and was in the loving arms of his family. I personally know how important that is. It's hard to imagine Loogootee without Joe Gee. He's been an integral part of this town and this county for many years. How's the saying go? "A pillar of the community"? Yep, that was Joe.

Everyone knew him, and apparently everyone thought the world of him. I stood in line two hours to pay my respects to Joe, his wife, and Joe's kids. It was worth the wait to see Joe once again in his sheriff's uniform. That was the way he'd want to be dressed for this occasion.

Thank you, Officer Gee, for the many years of community service...from driving unsigned checks around town to rehabilitating members of our community that needed a second chance. I'm sure Loogootee will look after your family just like you looked after us.

Rest in peace. We'll miss you.

Things that Strike Me Funny...

2009-12-28T08:09:00.002-05:00

I rarely laugh at jokes. Very few of them are funny enough to me to even earn a smirk. What I think is funny are life's little embarrassing moments, even when they're my own.

Some years back I had taken a job at a publishing company just to get off unemployment. We were forced to take a full hour for lunch, so every day I'd run to a fast-food restaurant rather than eat a sack lunch at an old kitchen table in the same room as a noisy printing press. I frequented Arby's much of the time, and always sat on a padded bench that ran the entire width of the place. When it was time to leave, I'd scoot on the bench until I was between tables, then unceremoniously get up, pick up my trash, throw it away, and go out the door. Simple, huh...

After six months of typing boring 4-H results and "what happened 25 years ago" (like anyone in Washington cared), I got a job in Jasper on an IT team. Before I conjured up lunch buddies, I still went to lunch by myself. One day I headed to the Jasper Arby's. It was set up just like the one in Washington...benches along the far width of the restaurant with tables.

I headed to the spot I usually occupied at an Arby's--the old dependable and comfortable bench. I really didn't notice the one big difference between the Washington Arby's and the Jasper Arby's--that is, the bench at Washington was one solid bench. At Jasper, they had benches--not one single bench. There was about two feet of space between benches.

I scooted in and started eating, noticing the place was empty except for me and a table with two ladies about 20 feet ahead of me. Once I consumed my roast beef, fries, and drink I loaded the trash onto the tray and scooted down the bench to the area between the tables.

Thinking I was on the solid bench, I scooted my big butt right into the space between the benches. Down I went. In a desperate attempt to not hit the floor, I grabbed for the table. And as pedestal tables do, it tipped. Due to the nature of gravity, everything on the table came sliding on top of me. I was trying to catch salt, pepper, trash, and the cheesy bud vase with the cheap silk flowers.

It worked. Although I was sitting on the floor, I did manage to keep everything from landing on my lap. I shoved everything back onto the table, stood up, and looked around to see who witnessed my clumsiness. The two ladies were still eating their lunch, oblivious to me...or that's what I thought.

When I walked past the two ladies, I heard snickering. I looked down to see both of them trying to stifle their laughter. All I could say was, "You saw that, didn't you?" The girls could hold it in no longer. The snickers turned into full-fledged laughter. And that's all it took to give me my laugh for the day.

...and I never forgot that the benches at those two Arby's were different from each other.

All I Want for Christmas...

2009-12-14T16:42:00.002-05:00

A few years back whenever someone would ask me what I wanted for Christmas, I'd always say, "You can't buy what I want for Christmas"...funny thing was, nobody ever asked me what that one thing was. Maybe they knew. All I wanted for Christmas was to have my Dad back.

I guess I've gotten used to him being gone, but I won't quit missing him--ever. I suppose I'll be back with him soon enough. Time goes mighty fast these days.

This year I have two Christmas dreams coming true. I've wanted to be a grandma for a long time. I finally saw that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and after 9/11, I was fine with it. I didn't want any more kids brought into a world that has people on it that can do something so despicable. Too scary. Too awful.

But God had a big plan for our family. There were two reasons I never became a grandma. God saw that two little girls--sisters--were living a life far less than perfect. He needed to rescue these two; and a year ago, He found a home that had plenty of room for romping and giggles. That home belongs to my daughter and son-in-law.

Wednesday the State of Indiana will declare my daughter and son-in-law the parents of these two sweethearts. Our hearts declared that a year ago--we just had to wait for the paperwork to catch up.

Welcome to our family, Stasey Renee and Kaylee Rose! You've completed our lives!

Love,
Your Grandma

Thanksgiving (or "Thank Heaven for Little Girls")

2009-12-01T20:06:00.003-05:00

My first Thanksgiving as a grandma. For some reason, the song "Over the River and Thru the Woods" comes to mind. It's my favorite holiday--all the food there is to eat with none of that gift-giving getting in the way of eating. The day started a little sunny, which just isn't a typical Thanksgiving day in Indiana. But before we ate at 12:30, the skies were gray and the windows steamed up from all the cooking and baking. Perfect. Just like Granny C's Thanksgivings, where we'd arrive to find noodles drying on a TV tray on the screened porch, and the windows all steamy from the morning of cooking. It was always gray and dreary outside, which made for a wonderful entrance into Granny's warm, aromatic home.

We had all the traditional food...turkey, dressing, Rita's homemade noodles, two kinds of sweet potatoes, real mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, Waldorf salad, cranberry relish, garden corn, and rolls. I made my famous pumpkin pies and peanut butter pies for dessert. The entire family was there, except for my husband who was joining his family. Mark said "Grace" and added his usual prayer for our troops.

The granddaughters enjoyed their first Thanksgiving with their new family. The youngest thinks nobody compares to Uncle Bobby, and the oldest has a special bond with Aunt Rita. But if you ask them whose girl they are, invariably they'll say they're everyone's girls. Such sweethearts. I can't imagine how hard their young lives had been up until the time they arrived at my daughter and son-in-law's. I can't imagine how children can be so resilient. Sure, there are times in everyone's childhood when things aren't what they should be. A little of that is fine--it teaches you that life is what it is--a mixture of good and bad. But it shouldn't be all bad.

So this past Thanksgiving for the first time ever...I thanked God for steering these precious girls our way.

Center Grove High School Class of 1971

2009-10-21T16:36:00.004-04:00

I've been too busy to write.

Thanks to Facebook, I'm getting reacquainted with my old Center Grove classmates of 1971. That's right...get out your calculators and do the math.

Last Friday night I made a quick trip to Greenwood to meet up with two 1971 classmates and several 1972 and 1973 CG graduates. I took my yearbook to help me remember. I'd get the name of one of the younger classmates, then look it up. Then I remembered--well, most of the time I remembered. One of the "under" classmates needed no introduction. I'd have known Jan anywhere.

The Riley kids rode Harry Featherston's first busload to the school. Since we arrived at school super-early, we sat in the gym and waited for the rest of the students to arrive. Jan rode Harry's second busload. An hour or so later she arrived with the rest of the bus, and she looked pale as a ghost. I asked her what happened. She said that Harry died. They had pulled into the CG front parking lot, headed towards the old middle school when Harry just "went". He evidently never knew what hit him since he never had a chance to brake. The bus kept heading toward the middle school. A 12-year-old farm kid pushed Harry out of the way and got the bus stopped.

Harry was not only our bus driver, but a neighbor. In the country, a neighbor might live a quarter mile down the gravel road--just like Harry. The day we lost Harry was sure a sad day. Back then bus drivers didn't have to have buses equipped with cameras. We respected Harry and our school bus. We respected our school. I can't always say we respected each other, since my little brother and a goofy kid named "Gopher" nearly got into a fight on Harry's bus once. I stepped between them and stopped the fight before it began. That wasn't going to happen "on my watch".

Back to the three-class reunion...my two classmates looked way younger than me. They still had their figures and the same personalities they had as teenagers. I was so glad to see both of them. I used to be self-conscious about weighing twice what I did in high school. To heck with that--I've finally realized that nobody cares...at least nobody I graduated with.

This weekend I plan on meeting another couple of classmates. We've missed out on many years, and I am not missing out on any more. I haven't seen my best friend in 25 years, and that's a rotten shame. I hope God gives us many more years to enjoy each other's company from here on out. I won't let anything else stand in the way of a friendship again.

I also plan on a road trip to Arkansas to see another old friend and classmate. Life hasn't been too kind to her, but her old classmates are resurfacing to let her know she's always been loved and never forgotten.

We've found out that several of our classmates have passed on, and several others are not well. That makes me feel even more determined to make sure the rest of us get together as often as possible.

Thank you, Facebook.

Double Standards

2009-09-24T21:49:00.006-04:00

A co-worker mentioned that she never sees me or hears anything out of me, even though we work in the same room. I told her that's because I was working. She's got things figured out. Sometimes I think she says this to me to see if I'll fess up my real feelings. Nope. I know I can't say a word. I just roll my eyes. She knows what I mean even though my words don't convey what I really want to say.

A Prophet or a Phony?

2009-09-14T20:55:00.009-04:00

Back in 1993, I found myself unemployed and hating it. The company I worked for lost its contract with Crane back when Communism died and the government was too short-sighted to see that terrorism was our worst enemy.

After four months of unemployment, I took a job at a nearby publishing company typesetting, writing, editing...general weekly newspaper stuff. I was making the same amount I did in unemployment, but I couldn't stand staying at home any longer. A few short months after I was hired, I was asked if I wanted to do a side job after hours. I would be typing a small book from the author's hand-written notes. Sure...I could use the extra money.

So after putting in my eight hours every day, I'd open up the author's notebook and begin typing. It was all religious stuff, and I don't consider myself a religious person. The author claimed that the Virgin Mary visited her almost nightly, and she held conversations with Mary. The farther I got into the book, the more boring it got. The conversations were pretty much the same thing over and over. The woman would ask Mary what she should tell everyone and Mary always told her "Pray! Pray the rosary!" I mean, how many times did it bear repeating?

Ho hum...this was worse than typing up the 4-H fair results. But it paid well, since I type fairly fast. It soon became apparent to me that someone other than the author had hand-edited the woman's writings. One interesting tidbit that I found was a conversation the woman had with Mary where she asked about the big earthquake that was predicted to happen on a certain date in the Midwest. Mary verified it, and said there would be great devastation and so-on. Famine, pestilence, thousands dead...the whole bit. And I was typing this some time after the earthquake prediction. The earthquake never happened.

Guess what...whoever edited the writing before I saw it crossed that part out. It didn't come true, so why make the woman out to look like a fool. Another time the woman asked Mary about a friend of hers who had cancer. Mary said the woman would be cured. That too was marked out. No doubt she died, or it would've made the book. But the final straw was the one where Mary told this woman that SHE (the woman--not Mary) would do more fantastic works and miracles than Jesus. That part was left in the book. I'm still waiting for this woman to walk on water or bring someone back from the dead. It hasn't happened yet.

After I finished the book and it was printed and distributed, I purchased a copy to give to my mother-in-law, who had heard this woman speak and thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. A couple of weeks later, I asked my mother-in-law what she thought about the book and the author. She kind of rolled her eyes and said, "I don't know about her anymore". Then I told her what was left out of the book.

I'm not saying the woman is a bad person, or that she set out to run some sort of scam. But what I am saying is not to take everything you hear or read as the truth. Maybe she was telling the truth as she "saw" it, for whatever reason. But then someone covered up the prophecies that didn't come true.

Guess the editor should've done the editing in a thick black marker so I couldn't read what didn't come true.

Go Rest High

2009-09-02T19:10:00.006-04:00

The one thing I remember most about her is her smile. I can't recall ever seeing her NOT wearing a smile--and then there was the laugh that almost always accompanied that smile. I worked upstairs from her, but saw her nearly every day for almost ten years--and she was always happy.

Tonight Heaven is shining a little brighter because of her smile. She passed away late last night after she was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. Janet's had it rough during the past several years. She had lymphoma a few years ago, but got through it. The trouble was, the treatment weakened her immune system. Two years ago, she came close to dying several times with a bad case of MRSA. I think she was in the hospital about six months. But by gosh, she came back. God gave her a couple more years before He took her Home to stay.

The last time I saw her, I gave her a hug. I couldn't believe how this woman could have been so sick so many times, and now she looked great. Her old smile was back where it belonged--in the office of Kimball Hospitality. Although I haven't worked at Kimball in 6-1/2 years, my husband and son still work there. They've kept me up-to-date on her illness, and eventual recovery. Today my son emailed me with news of her death. I knew she was sick again and in the hospital, but I fully expected her to recover from this too.

Just last Saturday night, another co-worker happened to be at the hospital in Evansville where Janet had been admitted. He popped in to see her. She was sitting up in bed and told him they were running some tests on her. Three days later she was gone.

My husband said it was awfully hard to walk by her desk, see her name on the cubicle, and photos of her two sons sitting all around. I pity the person that has to remove all of her belongings from her cubicle--such a sad chore.

Rest in peace, Janet. And thanks for all of those smiles.

Sorry....Wrong Number

2009-08-26T18:01:00.006-04:00

4:00 am. The phone rang, jarring me from sleep. I ran to answer it with a sleepy "hello?" and half-expected to hear bad news. No good news comes at 4am. A craggy, old-woman voice whispered, "There's someone walking down the highway..." Great...it's that stupid old woman again. She can't seem to dial the right phone number. Our number is one digit from the local police phone number, and we hear from this old gal once in awhile.

She always speaks in a whisper. I don't know if she's trying to keep from waking someone up, or if she thinks the man walking down the highway can hear her. Again I told her she is not reaching the police department and to please dial the correct number. I hate to think how many times she called me right back with the same complaint. And why does she think it's against the law to walk down the highway at 4am?

We've gotten calls many times over the years from people thinking they've reached the police. Almost always it's something stupid that they're calling about. If that's the caliber of calls that our police get, I feel sorry for them. I don't think I'd last too long as a dispatcher. I'm afraid I'd yell, "Get over it!" one too many times when I heard their petty problems.

Our neighbor's phone number is real similar to the phone number of Daviess County Metal. He was constantly receiving calls from folks wanting to know how much something-or-other was. One day he'd had enough--a man called wanting a price on how much garage doors were. So he gave the man a price. I hope it was close to the actual figure.

I once was called by the sweetest old lady. She was trying to reach the Waltons, if I remember correctly. When I told her she had the wrong number, she started fretting. It must've been terribly hard for her to make one call, much less two. "Oh dear!" she said..."Would you call them for me?". What else could I do? I took the woman's phone number, and the name of the people she was trying to reach. I hung up and tried to call, but no one answered--and no answering machine picked up. So I called the poor old soul back and told her no one was home. She thanked me for trying, and hung up.

When I was a teenager, I got a call from a guy. I didn't recognize his voice, but he never did ask to speak to anyone. He thought he was talking to the person he wanted to talk with. After a few minutes, I realized that we didn't know each other...but I kept on talking to him. We must've talked for a half-hour and really had a good time talking. But after a while he asked me a question that I couldn't possibly answer, so I told him that he had actually called a wrong number. He was surprised, but told me that he really enjoyed talking to me. I'm amazed he never called back.

But doesn't it irritate you when someone calls you and then in a demanding voice asks, "Who is this?"? I always asked them the same question. Invariably they hang up on me.

I've gotten calls from babies too. Somehow the baby hits just the right number and gives me a call. That's always good for a laugh or two.

In this day and age, we are able to hit *69 and get the number of the person that just called us--that is, if we don't have Caller ID. I don't get enough calls to warrant having Caller ID. So sometimes I'll just *69 and write down the number so I can call them back and be equally as rude. That's always been my plan anyway. Some day I may actually do it.

You know, we haven't heard from the whispering old lady in a couple of years now. She's either passed on, or in the nursing home...or maybe the man walking down the highway stopped in and did away with her in retaliation for her calling the cops on him so often.

Where's the Ice Cream?

2009-08-08T00:07:00.003-04:00

Something I just read on another blog reminded me of some of the funny things my kids said when they were little. Thought I'd better commit some to paper before my mind completely goes and I forget them.

When Brian was maybe around five, I was outside in the neighbor's yard visiting. Brian poked his head out the sliding glass door and yelled, "MOM...WHERE'S THE ICE CREAM?" My reply? "It's in the oven."

About a minute later, he came back to the door and yelled, "NO IT ISN'T!"

Then that reminded me of the time when C&C...aka Mark...came to our back door on Rural Street in Indy. He was about the same age. We were out playing in the snow with Mom. Well, Mark stepped almost completely out the door...and he was stark naked! He yelled, "Mom, where's my clothes????"

Carrie had a unique way of measuring the amount of food she consumed. She always asked for a "patch" of ice cream. And she loved my aunt's cole slaw. One day she said she was so full because she ate "two loads of slaw". She was a good eater, which was great after having such a picky eater (Brian). But as soon as she was full, she'd hold her plate up to be removed, and would announce, "I don't like this anymore."...what a kid.

There's tons more, but I suddenly got sleepy. Guess the 1/4 dose of Ambien kicked in...and it IS after midnight. Got to hit the sack.

We Remember Moments...

2009-08-06T19:28:00.009-04:00

How many of those special little moments of your life can you recall? I'm not talking about something big like our recent trip to Italy. I'm talking about something that seemed so small at the time that it might not even be worth remembering. But that moment in time lives forever in your memory.

Some small little moments in my life...

The time a sweet nun offered me a quarter to spend at the school carnival.

"Ode" Perry sitting in his old easy chair, singing hymns while my little sister sat in his lap.

Burning popcycle papers in a hole in our concrete steps on Rural Street in Indy.

Me telling my dear Grandpa Cissell "Don't put pepper on my leg" while he fried chicken on the front porch of his house.

I witnessed such a moment when my two new granddaughters had their nails (fingers and toes) painted a beautiful, bright red. The "nail artists" were my sister and my niece. Both of the little girls loved the experience. They both sat very quietly and patiently while their nails were being done. And they did a pretty good job letting the nails dry too.

We were just finishing up a big weekend. My "adopted" son from India was visiting, and he wanted to have a big get-together to celebrate my daughter's birthday and to welcome the new nieces he now had. The girls met cousins, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors. And they loved everyone they met. They now have a pretty good-sized family, and took it all in stride. You would've thought they'd known us all of their lives.

I'm not sure what actually started the nail-painting spree, but that's exactly how treasured memories are born--something simple, something not planned. Capturing the moment digitally is nice, but unnecessary for those that were there. You can't capture the smell of the polish, the tickle of the toes, or the feel of the soft little fingers in your hand. But who knows...sometime many years from now, just the smell of nail polish might bring this sweet memory back to life for these girls.

So don't be surprised when some tiny little hint brings back a treasured memory, or looking into the beautiful blue eyes of a teasing four-year-old reminds you of your father's blue eyes.

Again, welcome to the family girls. All of us have been waiting for you for a very long time. Thanks for bringing your sweet sunshine with you.

We love you very much.

Grandma and Grandpa

It's Only the Trunk!

2009-07-27T20:21:00.005-04:00

I'm telling you, this sleep issue is causing problems.

Well, that's what I'm going to blame for this bonehead move. On July 20th, I went to an allergist in Bloomington. I tested positive for molds/mildew, several weeds, grasses, and trees, and corn pollen. When the doctor first came in the examining room, the nurse asked where me I get my prescriptions filled. I told her and then the doctor started drilling me on everything concerning possible allergy symptoms. She gave me a nose spray to use right then--even before she did the tests. Once the allergies were confirmed, she told me she was going to give me a prescription for Allegra. I was given a folder with my test results and some general information on allergies, and was sent on my way.

A few days later, I opened my purse (yes, I tend to only open my purse every couple of days or so), and found the nose spray. Then I remembered the allergy Rx I was supposed to get filled. I snorted a couple of sprays in each nostril and carried on with my work day. Sometime over last weekend, I opened my purse again and found the spray. I decided I better look for that prescription before I forgot again. It was nowhere--not in my purse and not in the folder. So I just thought I'd look for it later; it was a very busy weekend. I had more important things to do.

Last night I remembered the nurse asking me where I got my prescriptions filled. CLUE!!!! Today I finally remembered to call the drug store to see if the prescription had been phoned in. SUCCESS!!! They had called it in, and the drug store filled it the same day as my doctor visit. Sometimes I just need to be smacked upside of the head for something to sink in...but really, the nurse should've said "We will CALL this in".

I asked my little dog Rudy if he wanted to go to the store. (Yes, I really do ask him questions like this and he always answers.) So Rudy and I jumped in the car, hit the garage door opener and moved the PRNDL to R.

I guess I'd been better off if Rudy had been driving. Suddenly I heard a big SMACK. I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see the garage door attempting to continue its upward journey. I put the PRNDL into D and inched forward a couple of feet. The door from the garage to the family room opened and my husband poked out his head. "Whaddya do????" came out of his pie-hole and in a most accusatory tone. I fessed up my sins and he proceeded to read me the riot act.

"You tore up the garage door frame! Look what you did to the trunk!"...I shut off my ear drums. I didn't want to hear any more from Mr. Andretti. But I did tell him that at least I managed to knock off a couple of mud dauber nests from the garage door. (Where is a man's sense of humor at a time like this?) Well, he kept it up until I leaned up against the car door and started crying. Men can be such turds at times. Did he think I freakin' did this on purpose? Hell's patoot...my vision is going downhill, my brain is fried from no sleep, and for God's sake I'm 56 years and ready for the nursing home!

I marched into the house and tried to compose myself. I still needed to get to the drug store and pick up that prescription, and the mere thought of crying puffs up my eyes and turns them scarlet. I took a quick peek in the mirror, and thought that maybe the folks at the pharmacy would just think it was allergies.

I went back to the car where Rudy was waiting patiently to go on his ride. The husband was trying to get the garage door's metal wheel back into the track, but at least the door was fully open. I told him to move, or I'd run over him too. He moved pretty fast for an old fart--must've been the threat of bodily injury.

By the time I got back home, the door was back in place. The husband quit his bitching and decided he better be nice to me. Heck, he even said that he's come close to doing the same thing a time or two. Too late. That ploy is not going to work.

I managed to do some studying online for a project management course I'm taking, and then decided to take my phone to get a fast photo of my trunk to send to my son-in-law (who also happens to be my insurance agent). When I sent the picture, I sent it with text that read, "Garage door too slow--or car too fast". In just a couple of minutes, he called back. I found out that since I "collided" with something, this would be considered "collision". Since it's been less than three years that I've had the policy, it would raise my rates. Who wants to insure an insipid old woman anyway; especially one that backs into her half-opened garage door? The car is seven years old and is already dinged and scratched. What's a few more? I'll drive it until it's a piece of crap anyway.

For now, I think I'll use my husband's guilty conscience against him and see if he'll run down to McD's and buy us a couple of $1 hot fudge sundaes. Then I think I'll call my son-in-law to see if this falls under my homeowner's insurance. I was not the only one moving at the time. The garage door was also moving. Maybe it collided with me, making it the house's fault--not mine.

Gotta run and hit hubby up with the sundae idea.

Monitor Code = Z...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2009-07-23T20:47:00.006-04:00

If you're one of my two or three loyal readers, you know I am an insomniac--a life-long one. But for the past couple of months, it's gotten really bad. I can't make myself go to bed before midnight and many times it'll be 2am. Then I get up at 4 or 4:30 to go to work. The trouble is, I seem to have my days and nights mixed up now and can't function up to par until 4pm--that's quitting time.

I find myself sitting at my desk trying my hardest to stay awake. I need to find some test data, so I open up good old Toad and run a query to knock out all records in a table with a monitor code of Z. Next thing I know, I'm the one with a monitor code of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It's a miserable situation and each day seems to last 24 hours. It's hard to think, much less write boring stuff all day long.

I had a doctor's appointment last week and he put me on Ambien. I hate sleeping pills. Every one I've tried has left me groggy the next day. But with this one, I was already groggy. So I don't know if it's a natural sleepiness or it's drug-induced. The last two nights, I've cut the pill in half. Still sleepy, even though I'm taking the pill much earlier. Last weekend I actually slept until 9:45, thanks to the little pill. I'm sleeping more than I have in years, but still find myself nearly comatose until 4pm.

A couple of weekends ago, I was trying to study the online course I'm taking in project management. After ten minutes I gave up and actually went to bed to take a nap. I never take a nap, but just felt like I really needed to listen to what Mother Nature was trying to tell me. I slept from 2pm to 7pm. Now that's a nap!

I hate being this way. I've always been a morning person, but not any more. I'm worried about falling asleep while driving--even on my 20-minute drive to work. In the morning when I wake up, I stagger to my recliner while my husband brings me my cup of coffee (complete with just the right amount of creamer and sugar). The coffee no longer helps to wake me, but it sure tastes good going down. Hopefully, after a couple of weeks, the Ambien will get me on a more normal sleep cycle and I can quit taking it. Life will return to normal and my usual four or five hours of sleep a night will return. I will be able to keep my eyes open at work...unless I'm stuck in a boring meeting. My concentration will return and I'll be more productive at work and at home.

But for now, it's time to take the pill and get ready for bed in hopes of a decent night's sleep.

Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

2009-07-22T20:45:00.004-04:00

As I attempt to document the 16 new reports, it becomes painfully obvious to me that these reports have "issues". The new reports have all been copied from the first one created, and evidently each programmer assigned to each report didn't see the "hover" messages above date fields that say "Defaults to the first of the month" and "Defaults to the current date". So maybe three of the reports really do default those dates, but the rest do not. So either really do default the dates or get rid of the damned "hover" messages.

OK, I can work around that problem by checking each report and documenting whether or not it really does default the dates. I could ignore the entire situation and pretend I didn't notice the hover messages. After all, they only show up in a bright yellow box when you happen to move the cursor over the fields. But worse yet is after I run these queries, about four of them have math problems when I hit the Print button. The report generates into an Adobe Reader format, BUT on the screen with the search results, a field that shows an 'average' lists that average as 67%. That part is correct. However, on the generated report, that average shows up as 50%. Now how is that possible? I note these issues in our tracking software. The analyst then sees what he missed when he QA'd the reports. He calls the programmer. She's not happy.

This morning I ran into her in the hallway and was greeted with a "Since when are you an analyst?" statement. You know...sort of kidding, but sort of NOT kidding? OK, I admit...I'm a mere lowly tech writer. But how can I document what doesn't work or what doesn't add up? I'm a whiz with the screen capture software...I can fake a screen to make it the software look like it can save the world. But is that the right thing to do? My choices are to:
1. Fake it to look correct.
2. Document it "as it is", mistakes and all.
3. Skirt the issue and just give a generic "here's what we did"--no screen shots.
4. Bring the problem to the attention of the analyst, even though he's already passed it onto the customer to look at (and chances are, the customer doesn't test it very well either).

So maybe next time I'll do the screen shots complete with all the nice little Oracle errors that pop up, or the totally blank reports that are generated. Maybe I'll leave the simple math errors for the world to see. Wonder what they'd say to me then..."What...are you an idiot? You can't see that this thing doesn't work right? Why didn't you say something?"

...and I'll just say, "What am I???...an analyst????".

Miracle Girls

2009-06-16T20:46:00.003-04:00

I've been lucky enough to spend two Saturdays in a row getting to know my beautiful new granddaughters. This weekend they're visiting Grandma's house for the first time. Hopefully, they'll get to meet some of their many girl cousins on my husband's side of the family. I imagine I'll hear a giggle or two.

The strange thing is to NOT hear or see siblings yelling at and fighting with each other. I've yet to hear, "She's looking at me...She's touching me", and all those other crazy things my two used to get upset about. But I think these two little girls somehow sensed that they needed to stay very close to each other. The older one is like a little mother to her little sister. She even told me that she loves her little sister more than anything else in the world. I'm amazed at their resiliency.

This weekend I plan on making some gelato, chocolate of course, for these two little miracles. I'll wait until they get there so they can see how ice cream is made. I know they'll love it. They also have two great-grandmas to meet. Last weekend the oldest asked me about my mom, then my dad. I told her about their new great-grandma, and explained that my dad died some years ago. I handed them my dad's driver's license and told them that this was their great-grandpa. Stasey said, "He still IS our great-grandpa". Hard to believe coming out of a seven-year-old. I wish Dad was still around to meet them, take them to the candy store, and tease them about little boys. He sure loved his grandbabies.

In closing, I'll just ask God for the opportunity to be as important and "teaching" as my grandmas were to me. As I've said before, I want to be as sweet as my Grandma Riley and as fiesty as my Granny Cissell. Thank you, Grandmas, for all you've done for me. Please guide me in the right path as I gladly undertake this new role in life.

The Texan Transplant

2009-06-12T22:49:00.003-04:00

He's a life-long Hoosier, but living in Houston at this time. His entire family is back in his small hometown in southwestern Indiana waiting for him and wishing for the day when he'll get to come back home. His friends want him back home too. And he wishes that day would come real soon, but he's still not sure when that day will come. That's because my friend Kenny is staying in Texas fighting a huge battle with leukemia.

Kenny's had several rounds of this in the past. In fact, he had leukemia and went into remission before he even found out he had it. It was found during a routine pre-surgery blood test when he was about to have his shoulder worked on. After a year or so (best as I can remember), it did come back. Kenny seemed very calm about the whole thing. He'd go get his treatment and come back to work. He always looked well, too. The leukemia would go back into remission for awhile, and then surface again.

I guess the leukemia has gotten too smart for Hoosier remedies and now it's going to take a bone marrow transplant. So Kenny is staying in Houston getting treatments in preparation for his BMT, which was donated by his sister. Kenny will make the fifth person I know that has had his life saved by a bone marrow transplant. That's pretty amazing. A few years ago, I didn't know of anyone that had a BMT. Just last year a generous donor gave my 15-year-old great-nephew a new lease on life. Today he's back in school and on his high-school football team once again.

So please, if you're healthy and under 60, consider registering to be a bone marrow donor. Even if you have to open your wallet and pay for the registration, it's worth it to possibly save someone's life. If you watch, you can sometimes find blood drives that also register you for bone marrow transplantation. The Navy, pioneers of bone marrow transplants, also has a grant in place that pays around 50 percent of the cost of registration. For more information, visit www.marrow.org.

And if you're pregnant or know someone who is, look into saving the baby's cord blood. You can get information on that at the same website.

Kenny, you're still in our prayers. We love you, buddy.

My Blonde Hair

2009-06-07T21:14:00.003-04:00

I finally got to meet my new granddaughters yesterday, and I'm already crazy about them. They call me "grandma", and I love hearing it. It's amazing how good those two little girls are, and how fast they warmed up to us.

On the way to the zoo yesterday, we had lunch at McDonald's. The youngest wanted to "sit by grandpa". My husband admitted that he nearly "lost it" when she handed her chocolate milk to him and asked, "Grandpa, can you help me open this?". Later at the zoo, "Grandpa" was about 20 feet ahead of us when she took off running and yelling for grandpa. He's so unused to hearing that name that he just kept on walking. So I yelled for "Grandpa". He stopped and turned around just in time to see her reach out her hand for him to hold.

When we'd first arrived at my daughter's, the oldest girl must've been inspecting her new grandma. She was kneeling on the couch beside me checking out my hair. Then she said it. "Grandma, your hair's so blonde that it's white"! Now that's pretty durned funny considering I'm (used to be) a natural brunette and I don't dye or bleach my hair!

I can't wait to see what's in store for us as "Grandma" and "Grandpa"!

Floater Friends

2009-06-02T19:04:00.005-04:00

How can such good things happen in a week, and bad things happen in the same week? How are you supposed to feel? Happy and sad all at the same time? Or do you flip-flop back and forth between happy and sad? Maybe it just evens out so you're just in a "whatever" state of mind.

My neighbor of 35 years had a serious stroke a few days ago. We've spent the last 35 years tormenting and teasing each other. This afternoon I told his wife that I didn't plan on stopping either. Hopefully, he'll be able to tease me right back real soon, but it's affected his speech, and his left side is not working at all. I pray God heals him real soon.

On the other hand, visitation with my new granddaughters has begun. The new little family is having a great time together, and can't wait until the girls move in. They're already part of our family, and no one has even yet met them except for the "expectant" parents. But I did get to speak on the phone to the oldest girl last night, and it was great. This weekend I get to see them too, and take them the new clothes I bought for them.

Then on the other hand again, I made another run to the ophthalmologist due to some "sparks" I saw yesterday in my left eye. The vision has also become worse, and now my right eye is joining in the fracas. So the doctor dilated both and had a look inside. Maculas are good, lenses are clear. But there is a very small retinal hemorrhage in the left eye, plus the old blood, plus the huge floater. And she verified that the right eye was doing the same thing, but it was bound to happen. She also said that it takes about six weeks for the vitreous to detach and then my vision should get better. So I've got six weeks to "wait and see". Until then, I've got to put up with the blurry vision and the swinging floaters/distortions.

I told the doctor it was like having windshield wipers flapping back and forth. And it really does make it hard to do my job. But at least she's given me some kind of idea what to expect and how long this process takes. I really shouldn't complain. Lots of people don't have it this good and would give anything to have just some sort of vision.

...and at least I'll still be able to look at the beautiful faces of my two new granddaughters this week. Thank you, God, for eyesight! I won't take it for granted again.

God's Phone Number

2009-05-28T22:46:00.006-04:00

Just some funny things that I used to think when I was a kid...

I remember being in first grade at St. Francis de Sales in Indy and attending mass every morning. That was back when the masses were in Latin and telephone numbers began with a word--but shortened to two characters. Our phone number in Indy was Melrose 92736, but dialed ME92736. During every mass when we said, "Et cum spiri tu tuo", I thought that was God's phone number.

Whenever I'd visit my grandparents in Newton Stewart, I'd usually go see my Uncle Carl and his family since they lived just down the road from Grandma. Although Grandma didn't have running water, Uncle Carl did. It came into the house from a location just outside their kitchen window. To insulate it, the water line came out of a large metal barrel/drum that was filled with sawdust. I'd stand at the barrel and just stare at it and try to figure out how they got water out of sawdust.

I thought I had it figured out how to keep from getting killed in a plane wreck. Just before hitting the ground, jump! I didn't see why that wouldn't work. Then years later, I heard George Carlin saying the same thing.

I've already written about the tiny little skeletons that lived in our staircase like they were little bitty coffins. They came out at night, walked up and down the stairs and made them creak. And I've already written about Mom telling me my embryonic little sister was in a sac in her stomach. I pictured a brown grocery sack.

I know there are more, but they'll have to wait until I get some sleep. Before I turn in, I think I'll give God a call.

The Magician

2009-05-27T23:07:00.003-04:00

The magician asked for volunteers from the crowd and selected a little girl from all of the kids holding up their hands. She walked up to him and waited for instruction. He asked her name and thanked her for helping him. Then he had her turn and face the audience while standing in front of him.

As he flourished "The Magic Wand", he began to explain to her that he was going to use his magic to turn her into a rabbit and asked if that would be ok. She grinned and nodded her head. Then he began the "hocus pocus", "abra cadabra" talk while circling the top of her head with the magic wand. Just as he'd get to the point where he was going to complete the transformation, he'd stop and tell a story. One of the stories was about a little boy he had turned into a rabbit, and the rabbit ran off never to be seen again. He asked the little girl to please not run off after she was turned into a rabbit. She nodded and promised to stay put.

After about the tenth iteration of "abra cadabra", he dropped the magic wand in front of the little girl. A large sheet of paper rolled out of the wand, and the magician held the paper in front of the little girl. Painted on the paper was a rabbit with the face cut out--exactly where he positioned her face. After a round of applause, she returned to her mom.

The little girl really thought she was going to be turned into a rabbit. But I had already transformed her--my little girl--into a rabbit a few years earlier. I had made her a costume for Halloween; she's the white bunny on the right. I also turned my son into Batman. (By the way, I had no trouble getting him into the traditional "Batman Blue" (girls) tights.) Also pictured is "Robin"--my nephew Chris and the gray bunny is my nephew Pat.

All four of these "kids" love seeing the photos from that Halloween. I can't believe that I took this photo almost 30 years ago.

Enjoy the memories and the photo, kids. I love you.

I'm a "Grandma in Waiting"

2009-05-22T22:01:00.006-04:00

Finally! I'm about to become a grandma to two very special little girls--sisters! My daughter and son-in-law are fostering, then adopting, two sweethearts. I can't wait until the first time they call me "Grandma". As far as I know, they've never had a grandma or grandpa in their lives. That's about to change.

I've already bought a pattern for some summer clothes, along with fabric. Making clothes for little girls again should jump-start my sewing. Years ago, I made nearly all of my daughter's clothes. I loved to sew, but haven't really sewn much of anything in years.

Funny thing about all of this is that God seems to have played a major role in making all of this happen. There's just no way all of this could have worked out by chance. And the oldest girl is the spitting image of my daughter.

I also need to pick up my knitting needles to make a couple of baby afghans. That's because I'm not only getting two instant grandkids, but in a few months I'll be a grandma again--to twins! My "exchange daughter" from Spain has just made the announcement, and as far as I'm concerned, the twins are also going to be my grandkids. After all, their mom was my daughter for nine months or so (and still considered my daughter).

Now if I can just talk my Indian son and daughter-in-law into this grandbaby thing, I'll have grandkids all over the world. I have plenty of hugs to go around--I've been saving them up for quite a few years.

So please, God...continue to hurry this little project along. I have cookies to bake.

If Thy Eye Offends Thee...

2009-05-22T17:28:00.016-04:00

"Just great!", I thought, "Another floater." And it was a big one. I've had floaters as far back as I can remember. Some people are born with them, and I'm pretty sure that was my case. But this one was especially bothersome.

At least it was hanging around off the outside of my direct vision, in my left eye. I hoped it would hurry and break up. Then I remembered on my return to work after vacation a couple of weeks earlier, I kept seeing shadows behing me. This went on for days, and I thought it was people walking behind me. It was just then that I realized those "shadows" I was seeing was this stupid floater--not shadows of people.

Tuesday at work, as I was flipping my eyes from one wide-screen monitor to the other (yes, I use two monitors at once), this distorted, blurry thing began swinging across my center of vision. It would always move the opposite direction that my eyes moved. Since my left eye is my dominant eye, it was really bugging me and making it hard to do my job--which is writing. This was not an ordinary floater. It was like it was attached. It didn't sink like normal floaters eventually do (maybe they should've called them "sinkers").

I knew better than to put this off, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to call my optometrist. I wasn't seeing sparks or flashes of light that signal a retina detaching. I wasn't losing any part of my vision field. But there was definitely something wrong with my left eye. Wednesday, it was still there and seemed worse. I gave up and called to make an appointment, hopefully for Friday since it's my regular day off. But when I explained to the person on the other end of the phone, she pretty much insisted I come in that day. She made an appointment for 2pm.

As soon as I walked into Dr. Buechler's office, he asked what was going on with my eye. I told him I couldn't figure this one out. I explained my symptoms, and he reached for the dilating drops. After fifteen minutes, he pulled over the slit lamp biomicroscope to have a peek. No comments, so I hoped that was a good sign. But then he got out the artillery.

After giving me more drops to dilate my eye even more, Dr. B. pulled out this contraption to wear on his head. I knew this was the test where he used those horrible magnifying lenses. Those lenses intensify the light coming out of his head contraption to the point where they temporarily blind you. He was especially showing too much interest when my eyes were pointing down and to the left.

He told me he saw changes in the gel of my eye. He asked me if I'd ever heard of a vitreous detachment. I hadn't. He said it appears to be a vitreous detachment, but it looked slightly different than they usually do. He said there could be a retinal tear behind it, and he wanted me to see an opthamolgist. Not wasting any time, he picked up the phone in his office and called Dr. Flannagan's office. I was to come in immediately. Dr. Buechler put another drop of dilation juice into my eye so I'd be ready to go when I got to Dr. Flannagan's.

Luckily it was only a five-minute drive, since the sun was out full force and my eye was dilated. Dr. Flannagan's partner did the same tests on me as Dr. Buechler. She said she saw "old blood" and a large floater. She also told me that she wanted to check me again in two weeks, and until then I wasn't to do any "jarring" activities in case the retina was getting ready to detach. She said if there were no new bleeds and the retina looks ok, I'll be good to go. The eye should eventually absorb the blood and my vision should improve. Let's hope. This thing is about to drive me mad.

If this doesn't go away, I think I'm doomed to a life of watching this thing swing back and forth . So far, it only seems to be getting worse. Today it's darker.

I've learned that vitreous detachment happens to 50 percent of us over 50, and it normally doesn't cause a problem with your eyesight. At any rate, there's nothing they can do to fix it. If it causes a retinal detachment, that can be fixed, but since the vitreous detachment is caused by a shrinkage of the "gel" of the eye, that's just something I'm going to have to get used to.

Another wonderful side effect of "getting old".

Riley's General Store

2009-05-19T21:01:00.003-04:00

I wish I had a real photo...

This is a photo I took of a painting of my Grandpa Riley's general store. It's pretty accurate, but lacks some details that I will carry in my mind for the rest of my life. It does spur some good memories.

Somewhere near the front door was a Sunbeam bread sign--it may have even been on the screen door. On the far right, there's a small white rectangular sign. That was the sign for the Masonic Lodge, which was on the second floor of the store. I'd never been in the lodge at the general store, but I heard it was pretty fancy like most Masonic Lodges.

The gas pump did sit exactly where it is in the painting, but when I was real little Grandpa had the old-timey gas pump that had the clear glass tank on the top that filled up with gasoline. There was always an old car or truck parked where this one is parked in the gravel parking lot. On the other side of the parking lot in front was Patoka River and the bridge. Grandpa kept old cane chairs on the porch and anyone coming by was welcome to pull up a chair, sit, and talk.

I loved visiting Grandpa and Grandma, but my favorite thing to do while in Newton Stewart was to coax my dad into giving me a nickel or two. Then I'd run down to Grandpa's store. Once I entered the door, I could smell the old wood. To this day, visiting an old store that smells of old wood takes me back to the general store.

Just after entering the door and to the right was the candy and toy counter. And I knew how to make a nickel go a long way. I'd first buy a packet of fake toy money in bill form. Then I'd use all that play money to buy all kinds of candy from Grandpa. Little did I know then that this was called counterfeiting and punishable by going to jail for a few years. Thankfully, Grandpa never called the law on me. He just let me purchase candy with my fake money.

After having my fill of candy, I'd walk across the width of the store to where Grandpa kept the "dry goods". There was a tin wind-up carousel I loved to play with...and I'd give my eye teeth to have that carousel today. Towards the back of the store were a few chairs--the kind of chairs with the small round seats and the curved iron backs. The chairs were located around the pot-bellied stove that heated the store in the winter and gave the old men that gathered there something to sit around and tell their tall tales.

To the right of the stove was a counter with bar stools where folks could get some of Grandpa's good bologna and crackers. Across the aisle was the Coca-Cola cooler--the kind with the two lids you lift up. It was always full of the small glass bottles of soda. Folks would just grab a soda, open it using the opener on the cooler, and then leave the nickel on the counter.

Customers would come in and tell Grandpa what they wanted. I remember the cereal was behind Grandpa's counter, along with most of the groceries. Grandpa would grab what the customer ordered. If they wanted some bologna, he'd cut it with a large knife and weigh it on the old scales on the counter. I can still taste that bologna today. In fact, there's a local meat locker that makes and sells bologna just like Grandpa's. I'd be willing to bet the same family makes it with the same recipe. Some day I'll ask them how long they've been in business.

Grandpa even had a post office in his store. I don't know how many people lived in Newton Stewart, but there couldn't have been more than 20 houses. Neighbors would come by and get their mail and usually end up talking. Back then they mostly talked about the reservoir that was coming in someday. I can remember hearing them say the reservoir would take their land and their houses, and they would all have to move away. It seemed a long way from happening, but 20 years go by very quickly.

Grandpa died when I was around 11 of an aneurysm, a trait he's passed on to a daughter, son, and one grandson. The reservoir was built after the town of Newton Stewart was purchased for peanuts and all of its townsfolk moved away. I remember hearing talk of an old small graveyard near Grandpa's house that was "moved". They said all they have to do is take a shovelful of dirt from each grave and move it to a new location; and that constitutes "moving" a graveyard full of ancestors.

The construction of Patoka Reservoir was halted for a time when Native American artifacts were found while they were digging and grading the land. We could've told them that before they started. Back behind what I remember as a blacksmith shop was an area where we'd go to scoop up handsful of "Indian" beads, which were actually small fossils. I don't know why they were piled up behind the blacksmith shop, but we kids always imagined the "Indians" put them there.

Once Grandma moved to French Lick and the reservoir finally finished, she'd always tell me not to go see it; that it would make me feel bad. After Grandma died, I did finally go. I found Newton Stewart. The new store built next to Grandma's house was still there and utilized as a garage or storage. The footprint of Grandma and Grandpa's house was still there, with even a few hand-carved foundation stones. A herd of deer were laying in the grass right where the house sat. The trees still overhung the road, and I could walk down the road just like I did when I went to Grandpa's store. The pavement had been taken up, but no trees had grown where the road was. As I walked down to the water's edge, I could tell the water began just before the spot where Grandpa's old general store had been.

Other than Grandma's cinder block store, Newton Stewart had been scraped off the earth where it had been since its establishment.

Angels and Demons

2009-05-16T22:53:00.010-04:00

I just got home from my sister's house near Indy. We held our Mother's Day a week later than normal due to our trip to Italy to celebrate my sister's 50th birthday. You don't turn a half-century more than once, and we did it in style We flew to Venice where we were wonderfully surprised by my Indian son Saumil. After staying three nights, we took trains to Cinque Terre for another three nights. Then a train or two to Pisa to pick up a rental car so we could travel to Volterra in Tuscany for three nights. After that, we drove back to Pisa to turn in the car and catch a train to Rome for six nights.

It was an amazing adventure for my son, my sister, and me.

Today we held an Italian Mother's Day, complete with spaghetti and meatballs made by my brother Mark and spaghetti carbonara made by me. After lunch, we doled out the gifts we got for everyone. Necklaces made of art glass for our nieces...Hard Rock T-shirts from Rome for our nephews. My brother Mark, spaghetti-maker extraordinaire, received an Italian spaghetti apron and chef hat. Mom got a rosary, and my brother Mike received a Fiat shirt. And my great-nephew Kyle was given a "cut-away" book on Rome that illustrated how the buildings probably looked when they were in their heyday.

On the way home, my son decided we'd stop in at Bloomington and watch "Angels and Demons". We saw it advertised in Rome like crazy. My friend Rick said I have to go see it, after just getting back from Rome. I must admit...I'm not a movie watcher. I fall asleep nearly 99 percent of the time, and that tends to make any movie boring. But not this one. It was a great movie and I recommend that everyone go see it.

I also recommend that everyone take that one adventurous vacation before something happens that makes it impossible. I couldn't tell you my favorite place of all we saw--I loved them all. And don't go to a country merely to stay in some chain motel, or a fancy five-star place. If you do that, you might as well stay in the states. To get a more realistic "flavor" of a country and its people, stay where they stay. In Venice we stayed in an apartment on one of the canals where we were serenaded awake about 9:30 every morning by Italian musicians on gondolas passing in the canal we were located.

We stayed in Manarola in Cinque Terre in a studio apartment. It was quite a climb to get to our apartment, which was located near the top of a cliff on the ocean. Hauling two heavy suitcases didn't help matters any. But we made it, and the view alone made it worth the dozen rest stops we had to take to catch our breath.

In Tuscany, we stayed at an agriturismo--which was a 1,000-tree olive farm. The food, cooked by our hostess, was out of this world. Volterra was wonderful too. I can't wait to return.

We stayed at a B&B near the top of the Spanish Steps, and Anna's place was not only gorgeous, but comfortable. Anna made us a really nice breakfast every morning. We sure hated leaving there.

Details later...I just needed to touch base for now.

Crack Addicts

2009-05-08T21:49:00.005-04:00

OK girls...what's so cute about your butts that you draw attention to them with a hideous tattoos, then wear pants that are specifically cut to show the cracks of your butts below your hideous tattoos?

Sorry, kids...this look is NOT attractive. And you never know when some old lady fed up with cracks and bellies might be right behind you, armed with a camera, and not afraid to use it. This photo is one I snapped while in Italy the last half of April. I was walking down the Spanish Steps and this is what confronts me. It was bad enough to see the tattoo and the crack, but she was also sporting black undies and something white stuck in the crack. (If you can enlarge the photo, you can see it, but I don't know why you'd want to.)

At the last Mellencamp concert I attended, we were on the side of the stage and close enough to touch Mellencamp when he came over to our area. In the first row, just before us, a young lady took a seat. The chairs were the folding kind that had the lower back open. And of course, there was her crack. I had my handy-dandy cell phone, so I took a crack photo and sent it to my brothers with some smart-aleck caption. A few minutes before the concert began, a father and his son--who looked to be about ten--sat next to us. And right in front of that young boy was the girl with most of her butt visible to me and him.

What did I do? I happened to have some paper with me, and two Bandaids. I took the Bandaids and taped the paper onto the back of her chair. That way, I didn't have to look at her butt all night, and neither did the kid.

I'm certainly not a prude--I'm just sick of this look. The girls went from wearing "home boy" clothes that completely covered up their shapes to completely uncovering their shapes. I don't know how fashion made such a radical jump in one year.

Not to leave the guys out, I have some big complaints about how they dress too. I really have an issue when I'm forced to look at one foot of your boxers sticking out of your pants. To top it off, your pants would definitely fall to the ground except you're holding them up by grabbing your crotch and hanging on for dear life. Ever notice how many of those goobers on COPS wear these too-big pants, and then try to run from the cops?

It's bad enough when they wear the boxers, but a few weeks ago I saw a young man wearing "tidy whities", with his jeans down as low as the ones shown. I mean, if you're going to show that much of your underwear, you might as well not wear pants at all. Just strut around in your undies. What's the diff?

And I'm aggravated at myself for spending time writing about cracks and boxer shorts when I've got tons of Italy photos to document and write about in my blog. I planned on writing two blogs tonight, but I need to hit the hay to try to fight this awful cold I contracted from someone in Italy. I'm too sleepy to write anymore. Please excuse any typos. I'm gone.

Back from Italy

2009-05-03T20:59:00.002-04:00

I just returned home after a wonderful vacation in Italy. I had no problem with jet lag, and slept like a log the entire time I was there. Maybe I just live in the wrong part of the world. I even had dreams and talked in my sleep. I dreamed about Mussolini twice while in Italy. In one dream, he was going to have lunch with my neighbor and in the other he had a large paper clip on his nose. I thought that was so funny that I woke myself up laughing.

Italy is a wonderful place to visit. I would recommend it to anyone. Got to see Prince Charles and his "lovely" wife come in to see the pope, and also got to see them leave. I've had some delicious Italian food and am going to take a shot at making spaghetti carbonara.

Photos and stories to come. Right now I need to put my stuff away from the trip. Got the last load of laundry in the washer, so at least I'll have some clean clothes to wear.

Happy Bunny Cake to Me!

2009-04-12T16:16:00.008-04:00

Way back around 1961 my little sister's April 2nd birthday fell on Easter. Mom made her a very special bunny birthday cake. That made such an impression on me (at nearly eight years old) that I just couldn't wait until my April 12th birthday fell on Easter so I could have a bunny cake too. I waited around 30 years for that to happen! Needless to say, that year I reminded Mom that my birthday was on Easter, and I wanted a bunny cake. And I got one.

Today my birthday fell on Easter again! And my sweet mama made me another bunny cake covered with coconut and jelly beans. We had a good laugh because it looked more like a dog than a bunny. We think that is due to not having quite enough room on the cookie sheet to put the ears in a bunny-like position. So the ears were placed a little differently than the average rabbit wears his ears. Luckily, my daughter took a phone photo so you can check out my cake.

It's simple to make a bunny cake. Just use two round cake pans. Leave one round and cut two football-shaped pieces out of the second layer. See the illustration. Load on the frosting and coconut. Decorate it bunny-like and then eat it up.

I spent my birthday doing a lot of cooking for my husband's family's Easter lunch. I baked a turkey, made a ton of sage dressing, my famous mashed potatoes, yeast rolls, garden corn, some good ol' Merkley's ham, and some giblet gravy. Other members of the family brought dishes as well. We had an absolutely delicious meal. Everyone that wanted took home leftovers, and I've still got a ton of dressing to take to work tomorrow to share with my lunch buddies.

Thursday, we leave for Italy. I hope to have the mess from my cooking cleaned up by then, but it's going to take one heroic effort. Before I get started, I think I need to heat up some of that good dressing.

Hope everyone had a blessed Easter!

BINGO!!!!

2009-04-03T23:08:00.004-04:00

I've made a fool of myself on several occasions, but luckily have nearly always been able to laugh at myself. I can do that when among people I know, but when it happens in front of strangers, that's a different story. Here are the medal-winners, and they all happened on the same day, same place.

Before I worked at Kimball with my husband, I would always attend the company picnics at the fairgrounds. The food was good, the prizes were worth the trip, and there were activities for everyone. My husband always had to work at one of the booths after lunch, and the kids would play the various carnival games. But me? I hated roaming around trying to look like I belonged.

But one year was especially bad. The lunch buildings were always crowded, but we got there early and stood in line, then sat down. Leroy's a fast eater; I'm a slow eater. He wolfed down his food in five minutes and I had barely started. Then he said, "People are waiting for a table". Then he signaled to a man looking for a seat. I started to ask him to please sit and let me finish, but he was gone in a flash. In his place was a complete stranger, one of a thousand more. Embarrassing, to say the least.

I was hurt that some stranger looking for a seat was more important to my husband than sitting with me for a few more minutes, so I picked up my food and pitched it in the trash on my way out. After roaming around an hour, I decided to try my hand at Jarts. Even though my softball pitching sucks, I could at least come halfway close at Jarts and I didn't have to worry about hitting someone with the Jart if I should have an errant throw...or so I thought.

I stood in line and waited my turn. There was a large crowd waiting to play and many others just watching. The first Jart landed fairly close to the target. Not too bad. The second one was a little closer. Then I made the mistake of picking up the third Jart. It wasn't until I released the Jart that I noticed it was extremely sticky--no doubt the work of some little mongrel fresh out of the cotton candy booth. Because it was sticky, the Jart didn't release from my hand until a split-second too late. And because I was taught to "follow through", the Jart released directly above my head!

It went straight up and of course due to the law of gravity--straight down again and headed for me. I had to duck and run for cover! The crowd roared. That was the second embarrassment of the day.

Number three at the same company picnic.

I decided to pass the time playing Bingo. I could win $5 for a regular Bingo, $20 for a coverall. I headed back to the lunch building, which was transformed into a Bingo hall after the eatin' was done. I took a card and a seat. In just a few minutes, I had a Bingo. A thousand people in that place and I bingoed--what luck! I yelled the obligatory "BINGO!". The caller bellered, "HOLD YOUR CARDS!....Ma'am, this is a coverall". A thousand people turned to glare at me for interrupting their game. That was bad enough.

About fifteen minutes later, I had another Bingo. Again, I yelled "BINGO!" Only this time, those one-thousand people gave a collective groan. Ever hear a thousand people groan in unison? It's pretty darned loud. Again, the announcer admonished me. This time I left, much to the amusement of the crowd. At least now being a stranger came in handy. Nobody knew me. Nobody recognized me--except for Karl, one of Leroy's co-workers.

To this day, over twenty years later, I can be at the local grocery or Wal-Mart and hear someone holler "BINGO!". And I know it's that crazy Karl, who is now my mom's next-door neighbor. Over the years, the Bingo story has become funny to me; even to the point where I am the one that yells "BINGO!" to let Karl know I saw him first!

Food Fun

2009-04-01T19:46:00.004-04:00

We've all done it. We've all done stupid things that caused us to end up wearing food. I can think of a few times, but I think it happens so often that I only remember the really outstanding food-related accidents.

I had at least two of these when I worked for Kimball. One was during lunch with my friends at a local Mexican eatery. This pesky fly decided he liked Mexican cuisine as well; as he kept flying around our food. I hate flies. I just know they've landed on some "poop de jour" just before landing on my food. I kept shooing this thing away with my hand, but he kept coming back.

I shooed once too often. Just as my friend DeeDee was lifting a fork to her mouth, the fly returned. As he flew in front of her fork, I did a back-swat. Of course the fly just flew away, but I ended up hitting DeeDee's forkful of food with the back of my hand. That swift move neatly deposted all that nice red Mexican food onto DeeDee's chest.

I had to laugh. It was always a running joke that either DeeDee or I would end up wearing some of our lunch. For some reason we had not yet slopped any food on us, so it was inevitable.

One other time I was getting ready to give some Windows classes to some of our folks at the 30th Street plant. I went to lunch; and as I usually did, got a refill of iced tea before leaving. I had just enough time to make it to the class. I got into the car and put my huge cup of iced tea in the seat beside me. When I grabbed the seat belt, I realized I had sat on it. So I lifted my rump to pull the belt out from under me. As I did that, the iced tea fell on the seat right where I was sitting. When I sat down, the lid popped off and I was drenched.

I was a half-hour from home and class was due to start in five minutes. All I could do was tie a sweater around my soaked butt and teach the class. I did explain to them why I was drenched, but these guys knew me and nothing I did ever surprised them.

After Kimball, I went to work for a small technology company in the same town. On my second day there, I was sporting a new ivory sweater. At lunch, I went to one of the downtown eateries where they were serving meatloaf. When the waitress served the meatloaf special to me, I grabbed the ketchup and squirted a very generous supply of the red stuff on my meatloaf. Then I saw my utensils on the other side of the table.

Instead of doing the smart thing and getting up to retrieve my eating tools, I simply reached over the table to pick them up. This swift move deposited my...well, you know...right in that big pile of ketchup. I had a huge circle of ketchup on my chest in the worst spot possible. Again, I was more than a half-hour from home. All I could do is slump to hide my spot until I quickly finished my lunch. Then I took off to the other side of town to a clothing store. I explained to the clerk what I had done and she let me wear the replacement out of the store (after paying for it, of course). Since it was basically the same color of my other sweater, no one even noticed.

...and now I'm queasy from thinking about meatloaf and Mexican food. I guess this stomach bug IS still with me. I've gotta run.

I Might Just Make It

2009-04-01T19:43:00.002-04:00

Just a note...I think I'll live, although still running a fever, queasy, and all the other fun stuff. The Good Lord saw fit to keep me alive despite my pleas for death. He must have plans for me. I hope they involve winning the lottery.

Lord, Take Me Now!

2009-03-31T00:29:00.003-04:00

It wasn't a typical Monday. I had a long, tiring weekend and was looking forward to just sitting and writing all day. But by the time I got to work, I was so sleepy, I didn't know how I'd make it through the day. I managed, but there were times I really felt like I could just pass out. I attributed it to the rough weekend, forgetting to take my meds today, and the constant insomnia catching up with me.

As the day progressed, it became apparent what the problem was--one of those stomach bugs. I made it home, but just barely. Mom had fried some chicken, but eating was the last thing on my mind. I spent the next few hours dozing off and on, and finally trudged to bed about ten. After about an hour, I had to get up. I hoped playing a few computer games would take my mind off of the inevitable, but that's not happening either. I go from being chilled to being hot. I feel like every bone in my body has dissolved. And I'm nearly to the point where I say, "Kill me NOW".

Death has to be better than my stomach doing cartwheels. Now I'm going to have to take off work tomorrow, which is NOT what I want to do. I've got a lot to get done before April 5th--my first subrelease deadline of the month. Right now I really don't give a hoot.

This isn't looking good, folks. If this is the last blog I ever write, you'll know the Good Lord has finally granted my wish of entering the Heavenly Gates rather than praying to The Porcelain God all night long.

So long...it's been real.

Lettuce Pray...

2009-03-25T22:51:00.007-04:00

I was reminded today of a funny story about my neighbor. I've done stuff like this too, and always find it hilarious.

Marianne had gone grocery shopping that day. As usual, she pulled into her garage, unloaded the groceries, and put them away. A few hours later, she went out to the garage and found two heads of lettuce sitting on the step between the garage and kitchen door.

Puzzled, she picked up the lettuce, went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator to put the lettuce away. That's when she found the shoes she'd worn to the store, in the crisper drawer.

Nicole

2009-03-21T06:50:00.010-04:00

I swear to you, it was just yesterday when I took this photo. Time isn't marching...it's running. This little girl is now a young lady, on her own and somewhat independent. I've got to capture some of those "Nicole" moments in time before they rust away in the cobwebs of my mind.

"Cole" was always a happy little girlie-girl. The color pink suits her very well--if people do indeed have an "aura", Nicole's would definitely be pink. As families tend to do, we have our favorite stories of each member. Here are my favorite Nicole stories.

When she was just barely out of toddlerhood, Nicole's daddy was left to take care of the two kids while mommy was out. Mark made a trip to the bathroom to "take care of business" and when he came out, he found Nicole in the dressing area of the bathroom having a good ol' time with her mommy's makeup Mark yelled, "NICOLE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? Nicole knew how to get out of this mess. She turned around, and with bright red lipstick smeared on her lips and the surrounding area of her mouth, she sweetly asked, "Am I so purdy?"

My favorite was the time when Mark and family were on their way home from church, and my brother accidentally ran over the kids' kitten. Markie and Cole didn't see it happen, and he dreaded having to tell them about the little cat's untimely demise.

Steeling himself, he gently explained to his two little kids how their kitten had been run over, died and gone to some sort of "kitty heaven". Markie, the older of the two, started crying. And evidently, Markie has a much more tender heart than Nicole. As Markie was quietly crying, Nicole piped up and as cold as ice said, "Did it suck its brains out or something?".

When Nicole started school, she soon attracted the attention of little boys--there's just something about a little girl with long blonde hair and big blue eyes that little boys like. She came home from school one day and told her dad about a little boy giving her "the date look". The date look? Mark had never heard that expression and wasn't sure what she meant, so he asked her what "the date look" was. Matter of factly, she answered, "You know..."low eyes". She demonstrated by shutting her eyes halfway. I think she had watched too many soap operas. Oh, and the photo demonstrates "the date look, aka: low eyes". I'm pretty sure the person giving "the date look" wouldn't be smiling, but would have a sultry curl of the lips.

Living in the boondocks of "Martins-tucky", wild creatures often visited their place. One day a possum decided to meander into their yard. Nicole came running in, all excited and out of breath. "Dad! Dad! There's a hippopotamus in our yard!" Mark told her, "Quick! Go get my elephant gun!"

After reading this post, Mark reminded me of the time we all went to Spring Mill State Park. Nicole was about two then. About the last half-hour of our picnic, Nicole had been playing with a wooly-worm. When we were all getting ready to leave, Mark told Nicole to put the wooly-worm down because they were going home. Nicole, with her little bristley friend in her hand, bent over the kissed the worm goodbye.

I'm not even going into detail about the time she projectile-vomited on a fat lady in their church, but I would've given anything to have seen it.

We Want a Pitcher (not a belly-itcher)

2009-03-18T17:52:00.005-04:00

It's about softball time in Indiana. As far as sports go, I always liked baseball, softball, and volleyball. I've played softball since I was a kid. After I got my glasses in seventh grade, I could actually SEE the ball--but until then I sported a few black eyes due to line drives that I couldn't see coming at me.

When I got into high school, I took phys ed during the summer so I could play outdoor sports. We joined up with the boys phys ed class and played softball for a week of our summer school. I was the catcher for our team and pretty good at it for a skinny girl. But one day while I was catching, a big strapping football player was barreling towards home plate. The ball was coming to me even faster. Just before home plate, I squatted into a catcher's pose to catch the ball, which was coming in low. It was going to be close, but I was in the path. I had to tag the runner--not just catch it on the plate.

I had it! All I had to do was tag him. But Jim had other plans. I guess he didn't see the 100-pound girl that was about to spoil his plans to score a run--or maybe he did. He plowed into me with everything he had. When I landed, my crumpled body was about 15 feet towards first base. My glasses were another ten feet farther. Stars and little birdies were flying around in circles around my head.

Jim must've realized he played it a little too hard for a sandlot game. We never had any safety equipment--not even a helmet. He ran over to me (after scoring his run), and got down on his knee to take a gander at the damage he'd done. Still swimmy-headed and blind without my glasses, I weakly said, "You're out!" Jim said, "No I'm not...you dropped the ball". Great...all that pain for nothing. I ended up with a huge bruise on the calf of my leg that left a scar for years. But worse than the bruise, this made me gun shy.

About 20 years ago, we formed a co-ed league at the naval base I worked at. The guy I carpooled with was our captain. I played shortstop. I never was a great player, but I always got a hit. Rarely was it a double, but I almost always got a single. Fielding was a little rougher for me. Still gun shy from my high school days, I hated to see a line drive coming at me. The dirt on the field at Crane was horrible--kind of a mixture of razor sharp sand and small cinders. One day someone hit a very fast grounder right at me. I ran up to the ball and got down to stop it. At the last minute it took a bad hop in the dirt, then it hit me on the tendon just above my foot. The ball had a wicked spin on it, so it climbed up my shin and skidded all the way up my face.

Since the ball was embedded with the sharp sand and cinders, it was like sandpaper. I not only had a goose egg on my tendon, I had a huge skid mark from the right side of my chin all the way up to my hairline. My new glasses had the same fate.

During that season, I did have one really good catch. While playing my shortstop position, some guy slammed a line drive right towards me, but way above my head. I involuntarily jumped as high as I could, closed my eyes, stretched my arm out, and the durned ball landed in my mitt--and stayed there. When I landed on my feet and felt the ball in my mitt, my jaw dropped! I looked around and said, "It was an accident!". Everyone cheered--even the opposing team. And after the game, everyone told me what a good catch it was. Gee...wish I'd had it on film. No one was more shocked than I was that I actually caught that ball. I didn't mean to.

Once during the season, coach Danny had what he thought was a bright idea. He turned to me and told me to get out there and pitch. What? I don't pitch! I started protesting. I told him I couldn't pitch underhand, but he didn't believe me. I could pitch just fine overhand, so why wouldn't I be able to pitch underhand? Seeing that the protesting fell on deaf ears, I hit the mound. At bat was another big strapping male. I caught the ball from the catcher and poised myself for my first underhand pitch ever during a real game.

Follow through...follow through--all I had to do was swing my pitching arm behind me, swing it forward, then turn loose of the ball at just the right time...and remember to follow through. I threw the ball and it arced perfectly towards the batter. Good arc, but the pitch went BEHIND the batter--not in front of him. I turned to Danny and yelled, "I told you I can't pitch underhand!". He just chuckled and said, "Get outta there"!

Unfortunately, Danny hadn't seen the time I had to pitch to very young Little Leaguers when my husband the coach had to work. None of the assistant coaches showed up either. Typically me, I felt responsible to fill in. How hard could this be? I didn't have to be scared of line drives coming at me--not from these little kids. So I began pitching--and I beaned every kid that came to bat. And when I'd bean one, I'd say, "Sorry, kid!". Finally a father came out to reprieve me.

I still love baseball and softball, but at this age I'm just content to watch from the stands. And I still can't pitch underhand.

Yesterday

2009-03-13T06:30:00.007-04:00

Yesterday was a good day.

In the past couple of weeks, we had a visitor--a Navy reservist from North Carolina who was only going to be with us for a couple of weeks. I knew he was staying on base and probably wasn't getting much of anything good to eat. So I let him and my lunch buddies know I was bringing in homemade tacos and all the fixins for our Thursday lunch. I think I ended up feeding a dozen people with enough left over to feed the sailor and my buddy Julius for lunch today.

Right after lunch, I had my annual review. I hate those things...always did. I never know what to say, and neither do the multitude of bosses I've had over the years. Just do what we have to do and get it over with. Pretend everything's fine so you can get out of their office and get back to work. I've never had a bad review, but I've had reviews where I know I was graded lower than I deserved. Oh, they were good reviews...but does a boss truly know how hard a person works (or doesn't work)? That happens rarely.

Yesterday was an exception. This year I have taken over the duties of another co-worker on top of my already overloaded job. I'm now doing nearly all the work of one coworker and about half the work of another coworker who has gone to another position--and that's on top of the job I already had. The thing is--the way this job is, it makes sense for one person to do it all--unless you have two people with the same knowledge about the software that I document and the same work ethic. And they would have to be able to work very closely together.

In every job I've ever had, all I've gotten for my hard work was somebody else's work. I don't know if it's a sub-conscious thing that bosses do or what. But they seem to know who to assign work to when someone else can't or won't do the work. It's easier than trying to train someone or change their work habits. It's not fair, but just a natural thing to do. I've always expected that my work will speak for me, but have come to realize that the rewards go to those that just know how to work their mouths--either to give excuses, lay claim to someone else's work, or just double-talk their way through it and make it sound good.

As I said, yesterday was an exception. I finally got something for my efforts--and it wasn't more work. Part of the reason was the fact that we reorganized a bit and I now have a boss, his boss, then her boss. The two new bosses are more familiar with my work since they, like me, work in the trenches. My immediate boss is two cubes down from me, and knows my work and sees that I'm there at 6:30 every morning without fail.

Yessiree...Thursday was a good day.

Granny C.

2009-03-09T17:03:00.004-04:00

Lately I've been trying to tackle an ever-growing mound of old photographs that need to be scanned, cleaned up, and stored digitally. This project will take me the rest of my life, I think. But it's conjured up all kinds of good memories.

My memories today center around my Grandma Cissell. As she got older, we began calling her Granny. She's shown here with my mom and my Aunt Rita.

Granny was a feisty ol' girl and for the most part, a lot of fun. I loved staying at her house when I was a kid. She was a great cook. Over her 92 years, she's provided her family with a lot of love and a lot of funny stories. Some weren't so funny at the time, but the passage of time caused them to be funny.

When my grandpa was still alive, I was staying with them a week during the summer. Grandpa died in 1972, I think...so I was probably 17 when this happened. My cousin Scott and I were sitting on the front screened-in porch with grandpa. Granny had just been to the beauty salon and was sporting a curly, but stinky, new perm. She stuck her head through the door between the living room and the porch and spoke to us briefly. Then she disappeared for a few minutes. I heard the back door, so figured she went out to do one of her daily chores.

A couple of minutes later, we heard a huge explosion. My first thought was the nearby Navy base blowing up old ordnance, which they did on a regular basis. But a few seconds later, I heard Granny screaming my name at the top of her lungs. We both reached the kitchen at about the same time. Granny looked as if she'd seen a ghost. I knew immediately what she'd done.

Her face had a red flash-burn. But the worst was her hair. That new perm was melted probably 1/4 inch on the ends. The hairs were curled up and even melted to each other. Her eyebrows were gone. And boy, did she smell!

Granny had gone out to burn her trash, but apparently wasn't happy with the speed it was burning. So she threw gasoline into the trash barrel. I guess she didn't quite understand how dangerous that was. Luckily, she didn't spill any of the gasoline on herself. I spent the next hour or so trimming the burned hair from her new perm. She didn't even blister from the flash burn, but her skin was red for a few days. As far as I know, she never tried that stunt again.

Speaking of fire, during one of my Uncle Bob's visits from Alabama, he and Aunt Nancy had bought Grandma and Grandpa a home fire extinguisher. He explained how and when to use it to both of them.

About six months later, Uncle Bob and Aunt Nancy were visiting again. At Granny's house, visiting always took place at the kitchen table for family and close friends. As Uncle Bob was sitting there, he looked around and didn't see the fire extinguisher. So he asked Grandma where it was.

In typical Granny-fashion, she told him, "Oh we never used it, so I gave it to Virginia". Uncle Bob nearly split a gut laughing at her.

Granny thought of herself as a very accurate weather forecaster. She would call me AFTER it started raining, and would always say, "I told you it was going to rain". That way, she was always 100 percent accurate. She loved to watch the weather and any good tragedy on the news. I don't care if the weatherman was predicting a blizzard in the Rockies, to my granny, that was the weather in Indiana. There was no such thing as national news and national weather--it was always local to her. She would've loved cable TV, where news and weather plays 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Her favorite thing to do was to walk through the living room as you were watching a TV show. She'd reach over, flip the channel, and walk out of the room. It didn't matter if you were watching something. It was her TV and the only thing that should be allowed to air on her TV were "her shows". And it was just easier to wait a couple of minutes after she left the room to flip the station back to the show we were watching.

We loved Granny dearly, even though she could be aggravating at times. She never held back an opinion, and always spoke her mind. It didn't matter if it upset anyone--if she had something to say, she was going to say it.

More granny stories later. I have a ton of them. Miss you, Granny C.

Then and Now...a 52-Year Journey

2009-03-07T05:31:00.004-05:00

Back at our duplex in Indy, we three older kids were usually in a constant state of "grubby". That was a result of getting outside and playing the typical kid games. Our favorite thing to do was to take our Matchbox cars out in the back yard and make a system of highways out of the dirt that was our back yard. Like a bunch of wallowing piglets, we worked that yard to the point where grass didn't stand much of a chance of growing. But boy, did we have a good time.

My brother Mike tended to drool and leak from every orifice he owned. Couple drool with dirt, and you have created mud--and it usually coated him on every wet spot. My youngest brother Mark could be seen on any given day with a circle of mud around his mouth. He must've been lacking a mineral or two (and a brain cell or two), because the kid ate dirt. I imagine his guts are still teeming with worms and parasites.

...and me? My drooling/leaking days were over. I was smart enough to NOT eat dirt, or chew sidewalk gum, or smoke discarded cigarettes. At this age, I was just happy to sport a pair of undies and run around topless in the back yard in front of the next-door neighbor kid Ricky.

Ricky is shown on the far right of the above photo. His mom Ginny was my mom's best buddy. I've written about Ricky in the past, so I won't go on about all the toys he had. Ricky and I were good friends--except for the time I set him up. He was in his side of the garage (we also had a duplex garage), and had gotten into a can of bright green Rustoleum paint. Ricky had just begun painting the center wall of the garage when I walked in. I said something to him about getting in trouble, and he just blew it off, saying he could do what he wanted.

So I decided to egg him on and test his claim about never getting into trouble. I bragged about how good the paint looked on the wall, and told him to keep going. When he got the wall about halfway done, I ran into his house and told his Mom. She came out and yelled at him real good. That was a good day, and I've never felt one speck of guilt for setting up Ricky.

The photo above is me, Mike, and Ricky--taken at Mike's surprise 50th birthday party nearly five years ago and standing in the same order as the first photo. We've grown up a lot since that first photo was taken. Ricky's toys are gone, and he no longer paints garages. I have quit running around topless, setting up people, swallowing nickels, and sticking my fingers in electric light sockets. Mike has quit smoking discarded cigarettes, drooling and leaking...

...well...ALMOST.

Call Me Little Miss Muffet

2009-02-28T22:26:00.005-05:00

I hate spiders.

I'll face a diamondback or a cobra before I'll face a spider. Snakes don't scare me...I wouldn't want to sleep with one, but not afraid to pick up a non-poisonous one on the smallish side.

But spiders are a different story. I know why I hate them and you'd think I could conquer my fear just because I can remember the exact moment I developed it. I was maybe around four. Mom always planted morning glories in front of our porch, training them up a twine lattice she'd make. Down on the ground in the morning glories, a huge web appeared overnight. I knew it was a spider web, but no big deal.

Then as an experiment, I found a large black ant. I mashed him just slightly so he could still wiggle, then I picked him up and dropped him in the middle of the spiderweb. It was an especially sticky web, so he couldn't go anywhere. I swear, that poor ant barely had time for one wiggle when this huge spider came out of his lair. He grabbed the ant and took off with him to his hideout. That's when I lost my mind.

I took off running inside the house, begging Mom to go get that ant. Of course, she couldn't save that ant's life and she had better things to do than try. So I've been apologizing to the ant kingdom ever since (well, I will admit to also cooking a few with a magnifying glass a few years later). And so it began...my nearly lifelong hatred/fear of the eight-legged varmints. When I picked out the clipart for this story, I had to go with a cartoon ant and not one that looked the least bit realistic. I won't even look at pictures of spiders.

A couple of years ago, I was in my favorite spot--my recliner (aka: "tuffet"). I'm a barefoot kind of girl, so no shoes or socks. I reclined my chair, picked up the remote, and just happened to look down at the footrest about the same time this freakin' HUGE spider climbed over the horizon of the very bottom of the footrest--right by my bare foot! With no husband in sight, and nothing to hit him with I figured I had two choices. It was either kick the spider with my bare foot or have him crawl on me. So before I could think too much, I whacked that spider with my right foot--not mashing him, but sending him flying. He hit the wall on the other side of the room and made a very audible *THUD* when he hit. Then he high-tailed it down the nearest register.

He "bought the big one" a couple of weeks later when I found him in the bathroom as I was getting ready to go to work. Then his corpse went for one of those "swirly" Viking funerals. I don't know for a fact that it was the same spider, but I've got to pretend it was--or burn the house down.

My son called me at work one day to tell me about how he'd put his shoes on that morning and felt a wad of lint in his sock. So instead of taking his foot out of his shoe and removing his sock, he just mashed his foot down to flatten out the lint. It helped a little, but he could still feel the lint after he got to work. You guessed it. It wasn't sock lint--it was one of those huge wolf spiders. And Brian's foot and sock were wet with spider juice.

That story made me so sick that day that I couldn't eat lunch. Maybe I should've taped his story to play back before every meal. Before long I'd be down to my 98-pound high-school size.

A Dying Man's Name

2009-02-25T19:03:00.010-05:00

I was only a few weeks past kidney surgery, but just had to get back to work as soon as possible. So five weeks after surgery, I was back at my desk. A week later, I had a doctor's appointment in Odon.

On my way back to work from the doctor, I saw something up ahead that took a couple of seconds for my brain to digest. In the southbound lane I saw a large round bale of hay bouncing down the highway towards me. At the same time I saw a farmer on a small open tractor headed down a deep ravine at a 45-degree angle. Then I saw the car come into my lane, swerving around the bale of hay.

The woman driving it sped by me, just making it back into her lane before hitting me headfirst. Just at that moment, I knew what had happened. I don't remember if the car was dented, or if it was just a coincidence that my brain spit out an answer as she barreled by me. She had hit the tractor from behind, and the old farmer got sent into the ravine. I drove a few hundred more feet and stopped on the side of the road to help. I was the second person there--a man was already down there with the farmer. He yelled at me to call an ambulance.

Nineteen years ago, nobody had cell phones. I ran to the nearest house and pounded on the door. Luckily, someone finally answered. I had to try very hard to control my hysteria as I told him to call an ambulance--that there had been a bad accident. Then I took off running again. I knew I shouldn't be running because of my recent surgery, but that was just a passing concern. As I approached the old farmer and the other driver that stopped to help, I knew it was really bad.

The farmer had the "death rattles". I've seen enough pets do this when they had been hit by a car, and I knew it wasn't good. I knelt on the ground by his head. He had beautiful blue eyes--just like my dad's. But they were open, staring at nothing, and full of dirt. He had dirt in his mouth too and was slightly bleeding from his mouth. I started to take off my coat to cover up the farmer, but the other man told me to keep it on. He knew it wasn't going to help.

I wasn't trained in first aid, but I did feel for a pulse in his wrist. There wasn't one. So I felt the jugular vein in his neck. His pulse was there, but very weak; and each time I checked it, it was more faint. All I could do was hold his hand. I wish then I had taken a CPR course.

After a few more minutes, the man who stopped said something about "she's really upset". Then he pointed. I looked in that direction and then I saw the white car that had hit the old man. She had driven the car into the next driveway, which was quite a bit from us--at least 500 feet. It looked as if she was trying to drive to where the old man was laying, but stopped just after getting out of the driveway. She had gotten out of the car and was laying on the ground; and was screaming, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry" over and over.

I had been so intent on the farmer that I had completely blocked out the screaming until now. There was an older couple with her, who I found out later were her grandparents. They had been in a car behind her. It was everything I could do to keep from running over there and giving her a few swift kicks. She wasn't hurt--just upset--and evidently too stupid to realize if you see a large bale of hay going down the highway, you better expect a tractor to be in front of it.

After a few minutes, this old couple joined us. The old woman had an afghan with her, and she kept saying "Chuck! Chuck!". I asked her if she knew him, and she said she did--that he was their neighbor. I asked her what his full name was, and she told me. If I was going to be with this man as he died, for some reason it was important to me that I knew his name. She gave us the afghan and we covered him up.

I continued holding his hand and taking his pulse, but could tell everything was slowing down, including the death rattles. After about 15 minutes, the ambulance arrived. I remember one of the EMTs taking one look at the farmer and making this funny moaning sound. That sound told me the EMT knew there was no hope. They loaded him onto a stretcher and started to climb the ravine with him.

I was handed an equipment case that belonged to one of the EMTs, and tried to get up the grassy side of the ravine. It was a little slick due to some light snow and I wasn't sure if I was going to make it or not. But then I saw two hands reach out, take the case and help me up. It was a truck driver who had stopped to see if he could help.

I got back in my car and cried all the way to work. I worried about the old man for the rest of the day; so when I got home from work, I called the sheriff's department and told them I was a witness to the wreck. They told me the old man died of internal injuries, but they took my name and phone number in case they needed it.

I went to the showing two days later. The old farmer was wearing a brand new pair of denim bib overalls and the casket had a sheath of wheat embroidered on the lining. I thought that was very fitting. A man like that wouldn't want to be put to rest wearing a new suit--he'd want to wear something he'd been comfortable wearing all of his life. I was hoping to meet his wife, but she had left for a few minutes. I spoke to his nephew and told him I had witnessed the accident and was there while his uncle was dying.

Later on, his widow found out about me through people at work since she worked on the same base I do. She called me and we talked. I told her I wanted her to know that her husband was with people that cared about him and that he didn't feel a thing.

A few months later, a lawyer called me. The woman that had hit the old farmer was suing his widow because the tractor didn't have a slow-moving vehicle sign on it! The lawyer was "Chuck's" widow's lawyer. I told him the story, and offered to testify any time they wanted me to. I was more than ready to tell a jury how stupidly this woman was driving. I had been that direction many times since then, and had counted down the seconds she had to react if she'd been traveling the speed limit. 17 seconds is way longer than she needed to slow down when she saw that large bale of hay.

I was never called to testify, even though the widow was sued twice by this woman. The driver lost her lawsuit both times. Why she thought she should sue is still not comprehensible. She wasn't hurt, and her car had very minimal damage.

A year later, I would again see very similar beautiful blue eyes "staring at nothing"...and I was taken back to the day when I saw another pair of beautiful blue eyes belonging to a dying farmer. Only this time, the sky-blue eyes belonged to my dad as he lay dying of cancer.

Maybe God was trying to tell me something a year earlier.

Rumors...

2009-02-22T15:50:00.007-05:00

Mom just wasn't the type to be able to comfortably tell us about the birds and the bees, so she just never did. Sooner or later we all learned, probably from our friends. When Mike and Mark were young teens, Mike still didn't know the facts of life--and he was the older brother. Mark, being the more "worldly" one of the two, decided to enlighten Mike about the mechanics of men and women, and what all that equipment was for.

Mike said, "Oh, that's just a rumor somebody started at school."!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What do the above two objects have to do with each other? Can't figure it out? Neither could I. I was ten at the time, and being the oldest and a girl, Mom thought it was her duty to tell me about the birds and bees. One night she kept me up after the other three kids were sent to bed. I could tell she was nervous, but didn't have a clue why.

She began by saying something about Jesus Christ, and then moved on to light sockets. She held up two fingers on one hand and then inserted them into her other hand--you know, in an kind of obscene gesture! And then she moved on to Jesus Christ again. I thought the woman had lost her mind. After about ten minutes of "Jesus and light sockets" and my puzzled looks, she gave up and told me to go to bed.

Six months later, she decided to try again. When she started with the Jesus Christ and light sockets speech again, I let her off the hook. Since the first speech, I had figured it out for myself and told her that. I'll never forget her reaction. She put the palm of her hand to her forehead and said, "Oh Thank God!".

Hot Fun in the Summertime

2009-02-20T21:52:00.005-05:00

Living in Smith Valley, we created our own fun most of the time. But during the heat of summer, we had no air conditioning and we weren't able to get to Center Grove Lake very often. So one day, my brother Mark decided to make his own swimming pool. At least this time he checked with Mom before beginning his construction project. Obviously, Mom wasn't really listening to what Mark asked, or she just didn't understand the extent of the project.

We owned five acres. A couple of acres were always set aside for a vegetable garden, but the back portion usually had tall grass growing on it. Mark decided to dig his pool in the back near the barn. That would give him some privacy should he decide to go skinny-dipping, I guess. Mike tried to warn Mark, but Mark wasn't hearing any of it. After all, Mom said he could. By the time he pooped out for the day, he had a good sized hole dug. Probably within a couple of days, he'd be ready for the concrete trucks to begin pouring--or so he thought!

When Dad came home after work, for some strange reason he didn't stop in the driveway. He drove straight out into the back of our land. The boys watched as he headed straight for Mark's swimming pool. Because the grass was tall, Dad didn't see the hole--but he sure felt it when his truck went into it! The boys had been outside watching Dad overshoot the driveway and head towards the hole. When he hit it, Mike said you could see the front of the truck dip down while the taillights went up! The hole was deep enough that Dad had some problem getting the truck out of it. But when he got it free, he launched that ol' truck back towards the house. I'm sure Dad knew as soon as he hit that hole who was responsible.

Mike sized up the situation, and told Mark, "We better go get Mom!".

Scarlet Ribbons

2009-02-19T22:29:00.009-05:00

I had planned this moment since she was a baby.

As her daddy put her down for a nap, he'd lay her down in her crib, remove her high-top baby shoes, and massage her pudgy little feet. As as he rubbed her feet, he sang a song to her. It was the same song every time, "Scarlet Ribbons". He never knew I listened, but I did...and I swore then that this would be the song they danced to at her wedding.

At the reception, Carrie and Nate danced their dance, and then it was my turn to speak. I had kept this whole thing a secret from everyone, except for telling Carrie that I was picking out the father-daughter dance song; and if she wanted to pick out her own song, she'd just have to dance with her dad twice. She decided to go with my surprise.

It was my mom's idea to have this special person sing the father-daughter dance song, but she had another song in mind. I told Mom it was a good idea, but it would be another song, "Scarlet Ribbons". The special person we asked to sing the song was my husband's 88-year-old father Charlie. So after a lot of secret practicing, we were ready.

I took the microphone and told the story about how Leroy sang this song as he put her down for her nap, and how I had decided that would be the song for their special dance. Then I announced who would be singing the song. Charlie came up to the dance floor and I handed him the microphone. Carrie immediately started crying.

Charlie sang the song with no accompaniment. He said that's how Leroy sang the song to her, so he was going to sing it the same way. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. I believe it was the most touching father-daughter dance I've ever seen. Luckily, we captured it on video and I still cry when I see it.

Last June we lost Charlie. He peacefully passed away in his sleep at the age of 92. He was in his own bed in his own house, and I'm sure this is just the way he wanted to go. I'm so glad that 150 people got to witness this sweet man giving such a special gift to his granddaughter and his son.

Bless you, Charlie. We miss you.

Sister Nasty

2009-02-18T20:04:00.008-05:00

My brother Mark nicknamed her two years after I had her as a first-grade teacher. Her real "nun" name was "Sister Ernesta", but "Sister Nasty" fit her so much better. All three of us stairstep kids had Sister Nasty in first grade. We had moved away by the time Rita got old enough to hit first grade, so she missed the warped teaching we received in first grade at the hands of a deranged nun.

We didn't use pencils in first grade. We used these big, clumsy Eversharps. Sister told us that we were never to turn them (advance the lead) ourselves. She said we'd go to hell if we did. Honest to God...that's typical of the things she told us. And six-year-olds pretty much believe everything they're told by someone wearing a habit.

I did as I was told concerning the Eversharps, but then my friend Gerarda Edwards showed me how to "turn it" and talked me into doing it. I was doing a great job advancing the lead. Then one day I dropped my Eversharp on the floor and what little lead was left in it fell out onto the floor. So I took it up to Sister.

She took one look at it and started screaming at the top of her lungs at me. I remember backing all the way to my seat. I wasn't about to turn my back on her--hard telling what might happen. Oh, she also told us that if we stuck our Eversharps in our mouths we would die.

There was one girl in our class that had obvious "issues". She flunked everything. She would get up from her desk, lift her uniform over her head, and walk up and down the aisles. Looking back now, I'd say she was mildly retarded. We didn't know what was wrong with her, but we did know that she couldn't help it.

One day Mother Superior came to our door and said something to Sister Nasty. Then they both came and got this little girl up from her desk. They took her to the back of the classroom and gave us strict instruction not to turn around. Well, you tell me not to do something like that, and of course I'm going to turn around. I was just lucky they didn't see me or I'd have been next in line to get what that poor little girl got.

What I saw was the little girl standing between the two nuns. One nun would slap her in the face, and then the other nun would turn her around and take her turn slapping her in the face. This kid hadn't even done anything that day, but for some reason those mean ol' nuns were physically abusing this kid. Once they finished with her, they took her out of the classroom and we never saw that little girl again. I assume they either kicked her out, or her parents removed her from the school.

The only good things I can remember from her class was being the best one at flash cards and Catechism. As I remember it, our Catechism book was chock full of Catholic doctrine questions and answers. We had to memorize word-for-word every answer in those books--and I had mine memorized. Some of the answeres were a big paragraph long, but some just had a sentence or two. An example of a question/answer would be:

Q: Was anyone ever preserved from Original Sin?

A: The Blessed Virgin Mary, through the merits of Her Divine Son, was preserved from the guilt of original sin, and this privilege is called Her Immaculate Conception.

Sister always held me up as an example to the other kids, making me stand and flipping flash cards at me as fast as she could "flash". Then she'd ask me Catechism questions and I'd answer them without blinking; every word perfect. Nowadays I can't memorize squat, but back then I was a whiz. I'm surprised that she would use me as an example, since I was going to hell for turning my Eversharp; but I suppose I was so good at flash cards and Catechism that she plumb forgot where I was headed, without so much as a stop in Purgatory.

About the only thing I loved in first grade was my angel. Each one of us had a beautiful paper angel and when we did something good, like a perfect test score, we'd get one of those lick-em, stick'em metallic stars on our angels. My angel was absolutely full of colorful stars. But one day in church, my rosary got tangled (yes, Leslie...the rosary you now have). I couldn't get it untangled, but my friend Roseanne Rogers untangled it for me. Then we sort of forgot we were in church and started talking about our dads for some reason.

After a few minutes, Sister walked by with this ominous look on her face, and up came the index finger to her lips telling us to shush. After church, she called both of us up to her desk and told us to bring our angels. She took both angels, retrieved a black permanent marker from her desk, and drew a big black blob on them. I was devastated. It was the only neat thing I had in her class and she ruined it because we were being kids.

Sister always hated this one boy we had in class. I think his name was Dennis and his special trick was turning his eyelids inside out. Sister hated that. But one day she told us a little bit about "pagan babies". Sister told us that if we brought in a quarter for the pagan babies that when we died and went to Heaven (even me???) that our pagan baby would come up to us and tell us "Hi...I'm your pagan baby". I was hooked. I wasn't too sure what a pagan baby was, but if I could have one when I got to Heaven; then count me in! I did know it was some sort of a baby--it was the "pagan" part that kind of had me confused. I guess I didn't understand how a baby could or could not believe in God. But still...at a quarter, it was one heck of a deal.

As soon as I got home, I started hounding Mom for the quarter. She wanted to know what it was for. I told her that if I brought a quarter to school, I'd get a "piggit baby". I tried explaining what a piggit baby was, but she was stymied. She had no idea what kind of varmint I was going to bring home, but she gave me the quarter. I took it to school and gave it to Sister Ernesta. So now when I die, I might not be able to take anything with me; but for sure my piggit baby will be there to greet me when I arrive at the Pearly Gates.

But Dennis...the one that Sister hated because of his inverted eyelids, brought in $5 for the pagan babies. After that, he could do no wrong. He could play with his eyelids all day long and that was fine. So when Dennis gets to Heaven, he will be greeted by 20 pagan babies! Wow! I sure hope they're pottie-broke or he'll spend his days changing pagan baby diapers.

One of Sister's really nasty tricks was something she did to control us when she had to leave the room for a few minutes. She never, ever explained this, but I knew what it was due to my Catechism and my love of Saturday afternoon sci-fi movies. Sister would very quietly go to the blackboard and pick up a piece of chalk. Without saying a word, she would draw a large triangle on the board and then draw an eye in the middle of the triangle. Then she'd put the chalk down, press her right index finger to her pursed lips as if to tell us to "be quiet". Then she walked backwards out of the door.

Well, that ol' nun could've left for the day and we wouldn't have made a sound or moved at all. I don't know what the rest of the kids thought, but Catechism taught me that the triangle was "The Holy Trinity" and the eyeball belonged to God. And I just knew that if I even twitched, a beam would come out of that eyeball and zap me into vapor. I saw it happen too many times on those sci-fi flicks, except the beams came from aliens.

One day during Sister's absence, as usual we all sat like little stones at our desks staring at the triangle. The little girl next to me was so scared that she peed while sitting at her desk. And since our lunchboxes were stored right under our open seats, all that pee flowed into her lunchbox. I did look out of the corner of my eye when I heard the noise, but it was luck that God's eye didn't see me or I'd been dust. That little girl ate her lunch as usual. We didn't have Ziplock sandwich bags either. Our moms wrapped our sandwiches in waxed paper.

Speaking of pee, one day Sister found a puddle of it on the boys' side of the classroom (we were segregated--boys on one side and girls on the other). She asked who did the deed, but no boy in his right mind would own up to that or face a slapping in the back of the classroom. Since no boy confessed, she asked for a volunteer and of course some dumb boy stood up. Sister had him go around and sniff each boy's butt to see who the culprit was. After about three or four boys, the snitch pointed and said, "It's him".

If you think that's horrible, when my brother Mark had Sister Ernesta, she walked by one of the boys' desks and smelled something putrid. It ended up being human feces in an absent kid's desk! How that kid pooped in his drawers, dug it out, and placed it in his desk is beyond me. And evidently it was beyond God's sight and the nun's. Again, Sister asked for a volunteer. My brother Mark stupidly raised his hand hoping to make some brownie points, and was assigned the duty of cleaning the poop out of the kid's desk. A few weeks later the same kid pooped while standing in line on the stairs and it fell out onto a couple of the stairs. Good ol' Mark was assigned poop detail again. That year before Christmas my Aunt Rita said she was going to get Mark a "super-duper pooper scooper upper" for a Christmas gift!

Not all the nuns at St. Frances de Sales were like Sister Nasty and Mother Superior. There was one nun that taught one of the higher grades that shined with God's Love. It was something you could just see. But unfortunately, she didn't teach first grade and I didn't have her for second or third grade either.

I'm sure Sister Nasty died many years ago. She might not have headed straight for hell, but I bet she's still hoping someone prays her out of Purgatory!

Space...The Final Frontier

2009-02-16T21:49:00.003-05:00

I've always loved anything dealing with science--even before I had heard of the word. I must've been five at the time, and had listened to the local newscast about something we had not heard about...a sonic boom. They explained it well enough that I basically understood what a sonic boom was. The news guy also said we would hear a sonic boom in Indianapolis the next day.

The next day, I happened to be out in the back yard playing in the dirt when I heard a loud BOOM! I knew what it was, but evidently the neighbors hadn't listened to the news the night before. Mrs. Keyler from next door came out and so did the Clouses--asking each other what that noise was. I piped up and told them, "Don't worry...it's just a sonic boom". They probably figured I was talking silliness.

Probably around that same time, the boys and I were watching the news--you have to remember...back then we only had three channels and at 6:00pm that's all that was on! Anyway, the news was showing the test launch of a rocket. The boys were three and four at the time; and I was five and more "worldly" than those two. They were sitting there watching that rocket getting ready to fire and then we heard the words, "FIVE... FOUR... THREE... TWO... ONE... LIFTOFF!". The rocket successfully launched. As soon as it cleared the launchpad, both boys took off like a flash. They ran to the window and looked up!

Dumb ol' boys. I had to explain to them that they couldn't see that rocket. Heck, it must've launched clear from Cape Canaveral--probably in preparation for the Mercury missions.

A few years later, 1962 to be exact, Telstar was launched. Soon afterwards, The Tornados launched a hit instrumental to go with it. I remember going out on the front porch at night to see it, and thinking what a cool thing that was--to be able to see a satellite. Wow! Later came the Gemini and then the Apollo missions where we lost our very own Gus Grissom and his crewmates during a simulation for the Apollo I mission.

It's hard to believe that just seven years after Telstar came Neil Armstrong and the first moonwalk. Mom woke us up in the middle of the night to watch it live on TV. Back then, stations weren't on 24/7 like they are now--so it was amazing just to watch something so important that the TV stations would "stay up late" to broadcast the moonwalk.

Following those missions, came the test piggyback ride for the Space Shuttle, then all of the shuttle missions--including one mission that had a horrible start and one that had a horrible finish. Now a shuttle launch barely makes the news.

Stop and think of how things have changed since we came on the scene. As a kid, all I used to see in the sky were airplanes--and occasionally a biplane. Then came that sonic boom that seemed to signal the start of something big. Things haven't been the same since.

Life After Forty

2009-02-15T20:43:00.008-05:00

Granny C. used to tell me, "Oh, Helen...don't get old". I'd always ask her if she would rather I died young. (She always ignored that question.) Although Granny was feisty, the last ten years of her life were more or less spent looking at the sour side of life. On a beautiful Spring day, she'd complain that Winter was right behind it. And it is sad when all of your family and friends on your generational level and up are gone. As members of my family pass on, I feel like each life is a chapter. And when I finish that book, that final chapter will be mine.

If we're all lucky, we'll live long enough to have the symptoms of aging. You young "whippersnappers" think these things won't happen to you...and they won't if you die before you hit 40. It's better to just realize most or all of these things will set in one of these days. Here's a list of things I've noticed, starting at around age 40 and going up to my current age of 55--soon to be 56. I've also listed some symptoms and possible "cures".

~Presbyopia (arms getting too short to read the paper...get reading glasses.)

~Graying hair (don't pluck the gray hairs--you're going to need them. See next.)

~Thinning hair (yes, girls--not just the men...don't dye your hair a dark shade, and do experiment with your hair to see how best to cover the thin spots; ie: do a comb-over. Women can get away with this a little better than men.)

~Thinning eyebrows (draw them in, but use a shade lighter than your hair color--natural or not).

~"James Whitmore" eyebrows (as your good eyebrow hairs disappear, long, white, wiry obnoxious ones come in. They won't stay in place and are hard to cover. If they're "keepers", meaning in the area where you want eyebrows, trim them instead of pulling them out. Pluck the ones that stray outside of your eyebrow line.)

~Drooping eyelids (if it gets to the point where they block your eyesight, have surgery; and whatever you do, do NOT wear shimmery or frosted eyeshadow. If you wonder why, slap some on and while in a darkish room have someone take your photo with flash, but if you like that "road reflector" look, go for it! You can also have your optometrist fix you up with a pair of "ptosis glasses". Ptosis glasses have a metal "eyelid-holder-upper" protruding from the frame just below the eyebrow. I kid you not--they do have such things for patients that have severe drooping eyelids, but actually using them was said in jest.)

~Clown eyebrows (this happens when women mistakenly think that if they get rid of any remaining eyebrow and draw real high eyebrows, their eyes won't look so droopy. That's not what happens. Put your eyebrows where eyebrows belong--not halfway up your forehead!)

~Growing hair where you don't want hair (men get gross, hairy backs and shoulders, and women get whiskers. Girls, offer to wax your hubby's back. It's a good way to pay them back for never lowering the toilet seat. As for those pesky whiskers, tweezers never worked for me. I use a pair of small optical needle-nose pliers--ask your optometrist to order a pair for you.)

~Pallor of your complexion (by all means, add some color to your cheeks, but take it easy on the blush!)

~Thinning lips (use a "lip plumper" and a not-so-dark lipstick. Do not apply lipstick where you don't have lips! That means the skin around your lips AND your teeth.)

~Warty growths (after a while, your skin gives up trying to stay smooth. All those free-radicals have had a lifetime to wreak havoc with your epidermis, helped along by all of the suntans and burns you've had in your life, smoking, and poor diet. Know the signs of skin cancers and get to a dermatologist if something looks suspicious. Other than that, deal with the fact that your skin is no longer the skin of a 20-year-old. And dressing like a 20-year-old does NOT make you look younger!)

~Brown spots (hormones and sun...use a bleaching agent for your hands if you have the ability to stick to it. Smear a concealer on facial brown spots, but watch that you don't make them more obvious by trying to conceal them. I hear there are also laser treatments for facial brown spots.)

~Stiffness and soreness (due to arthritis, inactivity, old injuries...walking and exercise! Wish I had the gumption to do some...because when I do get on a regular walking program, I do feel better. My back is not nearly as sore, and it gives me a better outlook on life.)

~Ear lobes starting to drag the ground (gravity...what it does to your chin(s) and boobs, it also does to your ear lobes. Heavy earrings won't help the situation either. Other than having your lobes trimmed like a doberman or growing your hair long enough to cover them, I don't know of an easy way to disguise 'em.)

~Darkening teeth (due to staining foods/drink, smoking, thinning of enamel...ask your dentist! I tried over-the-counter whiteners and they helped, but had the best luck with a tooth-whitening system from my dentist.)

~Wrinkles (I find that layers of fat help to plump out wrinkles. It's the same concept as putting on a pair of wrinkled slacks. If you MORE than fill them out, the wrinkled fabric is a lot less noticeable! All of my skinny friends my age look way more wrinkly than I do, so eat up, girls!)

And if you're interested in seeming young after menopause...

Keep a sense of humor
Try new things
Have an open mind
Don't talk incessantly about your aches and pains unless you are speaking to your doctor
Learn something new every day
Work puzzles to keep your brain sharp
Know current events to give yourself something to talk about
Don't just talk...listen!
Walk!
Be a friend and have friends of all ages
Volunteer to do something for someone
Think of others
Get a pet
Have fun
Don't be nosy
Laugh
Give thanks for what you have and don't worry about what you don't have
Hand out candy at Halloween, but please...no Circus Peanuts or apples!
Smile--a LOT

Now, if I can just mark a few things off of that list.

The Only Constant

2009-02-13T20:43:00.004-05:00

I was the first of our group to arrive at Schnitzelbank today, about 12:15. I had an appointment to keep with eight or nine very important people in my life. But I haven't seen some of them in six years or so. We had all been members of an IT team at a division of Kimballs, and although we had a lot to learn starting out, we learned. And we ended up with a top-notch IT team.

The guy that hired me, Rich, was indirectly responsible for this lunch meeting. He was my boss, and to this day, the best boss I've ever had. Rich retired ten years ago, and a few years ago got a virus in his heart. He's had to give up everything he loved to do, including fishing. Rich emails "forwards" once in a while, but has never answered me if I reply back to him and ask him questions. But last week when I received a "forward" from him, I asked him if we could have lunch. To my surprise, he quickly answered "yes".

I managed to contact most of our old IT team. We're scattered to the four winds now. I'm at Crane working for a contractor. Don invested 32 years at Kimball when they saw fit to release him during a layoff frenzy. After all, he was getting close to retirement age. Ever notice that companies never lay off one of the many VPs they have? Nope...they tend to get rid of the "Indians" and not the "Chiefs". The work then gets pushed to others, who are already overloaded.

Stan, who was my boss after Rich, is a plant manager, I think--and still at Kimball. Other than some gray in his goatee, he hasn't aged a bit. I actually made a couple of confessions to him during dinner--things I had done during my tenure as a network admin. Hey, when you have that kind of power, why not use it to pay back someone truly "deserving"?

Steve, the tall one of the bunch, is still with Kimball and even in the same building we worked at. Like Stan, his kids are growing up and each has a son in college. When we worked together, Steve would bring in scraps that his little kids left behind. If you entered his cubicle in the morning, he'd have a sandwich bag full of Pop Tart pieces. That year for Christmas, I bought him a couple of boxes of Pop Tarts for his very own--unbroken ones that hadn't been grubbed on by little runny-nosed kids. I used to cut my sandwiches in half when I went to lunch, and boxed up half for him. I never could eat a whole sandwich. And today, I ordered chicken livers. For old times' sake, I boxed up the leftovers and made Steve take them.

Lisa now works for OFS in a town close to Jasper. She was the scheduling expert on our team. She learned the scheduling portion of the software we were implementing, and she knew her stuff. When Kimball pulled her off our our IT team for SAP implementation, it put a big hurt on us. She still looked the same. Actually, other than a few gray hairs, no one has aged a bit--except for me.

Diane sat next to me. I hadn't talked to her since I left six years ago. She quit her analyst job at Kimball and went to work for her church. She loves it. Her daughter is now grown and teaching elementary school. Diane was taking the afternoon off to go help out her daughter's class for a "presidents" program they were doing. Diane didn't look a day older than she did six years ago.

That leaves me. I left Kimball because things were getting bad business-wise, and I didn't agree with the stupid decisions that "management" was making. I loved my job there and hated to quit. But at the time, I was offered another job by another company. The goober we had as a manager at the time was getting rid of people that had been there for years, replacing them with his friends from the defunct unit they came from. When he replaced our HR manager with his old HR manager that couldn't hit her butt with both hands, that's when I left.

So none of us work together anymore. Only two still work for Kimball. We've all moved on--some on purpose, some against their will, and then there's me--who left to make a point. I guess things can't stay the same forever, but I'll never quit missing our IT team and my old job there. It was great seeing everyone and we really need to do this once in awhile.

...the only constant is change, I guess.

Golden Threads and Silver Needles

2009-02-09T17:44:00.014-05:00

Lately I've been into doing some research to see how much I can find out about my ancestors. I've been on ancestry.com using my free trial to see how much is out there. I've run across a few interesting things--some I had already found just using a Google search--and some things I have not seen or known. My brother Mike originally found our great-great grandparents, shown above. It appears that Mary is in a wheelchair. She looks like she could just pull a corncob pipe out of her pocket and start puffing away. Both of them look severely malnourished. I can't imagine how hard their lives must've been.

William R. PREWITT was born on 2 March 1847 in Orange Co., Indiana. He was married on 11 October 1866 to Mary HAMMOND who was born in 1843. He died in September 1928.
Mary Hammond was the daughter of Elijah Hammond and Nancy Crook

William R. PREWITT and Mary HAMMOND had the following children:
John Thomas PRUITT
Nancy E. PRUITT
Davis PRUITT
Amanda Caroline PRUITT
Alice PRUITT (Granny Apple)
Elijah William PRUITT
Charles Edward PRUITT
Levi PRUITT

Notice how the spelling of the name PREWITT became PRUITT. Our great-grandmother was their daughter. Her name was Alice and she married Eli Jackson Apple; hence she eventually became "Granny Apple".

Granny Apple lived in Newton Stewart, Indiana--just a few houses down from her daughter and son-in-law (my Grandma and Grandpa Riley; Mary Dana and John Riley). Granny Apple's house was a little one-room home. As you walked into her house, her bed was on the left just to the side of the front door. To the back was her kitchen and I think her little dining table was on the right wall. Granny always had a candy dish full of lemon drops. And her favorite great-grandchild was my brother Mark. That was because Mark had a loud mouth, and Granny could hear him even through her deafness.

Granny died when we were little kids, but I can still remember her very well. The first time I ever saw my father cry was at Granny's funeral. She lived to a ripe old age, and even made my dad a quilt when she was 92.

Depicted in the photo is my dear Grandma Riley, Granny Apple's daughter. I can't recall ever knowing a sweeter woman than Grandma Riley. She was quite a quilter too. And when my Uncle Doyle was near death in early November 08, first he said my dad was in his room. Later he said his mom was sitting in a chair in his room. I imagine both of them showed up to take Uncle Doyle home.

A few weeks ago my cousin showed me the photo below. I immediately knew who the lady on the left was because she's the spitting image of my Grandma Cissell. I knew this had to be her mother--my great-grandma Kidwell. She died when my grandma was 12 years old, leaving behind several children including one-year old Rosemary. Granny Cissell often told the story of how Rosemary took her first steps around her mother's coffin.Knowing my grandma was born in 1898, and she was 12 when Frances Anna died, I figured this photo had to have been taken sometime before 1910. I imagine the children left behind didn't have a pleasant life. My great-grandfather Basil Kidwell was a mean old coot, from what I've heard. He ended up living with my grandparents and their children, and didn't treat any of them very well.

Granny C. is shown enjoying a glass of wine, but her drink of choice was a highball every night--and probably more than one. The embedded photo is Granny as a young girl. Granny outlived all of her siblings. She was 92 when she died. Granny C. was as feisty as Grandma Riley was sweet. I hope when I get (if I get) to be an old lady, I'll have Grandma Riley's sweetness mixed with Granny C's feistiness.

Both of these wonderful ladies helped to shape me. I have Grandma Riley's penchant for quilting and putting housework dead last on my list of things I like to do. And I got my cooking and baking abilities from Granny C. I make my pies from scratch, just like she did.

I sure do miss these old gals, but I imagine right about this time Grandma Riley is using golden threads to piece a gossamer quilt. And Granny C. is having her nightly highball as usual.

Michele

2009-02-07T05:51:00.010-05:00

My niece Michele was the second grandbaby of our family. She was born after a frantic trip to the hospital, which was just ten minutes away. My brother had even gotten stopped by a policeman for speeding, given a police escort to the hospital, and then passed the police car in an effort to try to keep her mother from giving birth in the car. They made it, but just barely. I think Michele must've been eager to start experiencing life. She hit the ground running.

Michele's the quiet one in our family. She gets that trait from her dad. Like the rest of us, family means a lot to Michele. She's married to one heck of a good guy, and both of them are doing a fantastic job raising their son.

After Michele had her son, she decided to go back to school to get a degree. She graduated a couple of years ago, and has a very rewarding job as a radiation therapist where she gives radiation therapy to men fighting prostate cancer. Her heart is in this job.

Michele has a nickname. She got that nickname when she was still a kid and like a good family, we never forget anything. She was curling her little sister Christen's hair with a hot curling iron, and as all good beauticians, she kept talking to her "client". Michele went on and on about how good she was at doing hair, and I think her last statement was, "Christen, when you get older maybe you will be able to do hair as good as me!"...and family, please correct me if I have any of this story wrong.

Well, it ended up that Michele got Christen's long hair hopelessly tangled in the curling iron. She finally had to give up and take Christen and the embedded curler to her dad. Even he couldn't get Christen's hair free until he completely dismantled the curling iron. OK, ready for her nickname? "Miss Clairol"!!!

Michele, you know your family is very proud of the girl you were and the woman, wife, and mother you've become!

Goin' Creekin'

2009-02-06T20:24:00.009-05:00

Nothing felt better on a hot summer day than to put on your swimsuit and "swim" in the creek. This is probably about the deepest our creek ever got unless we were in the middle of a flood. To introduce you to the gang; Rita, Mike, and Mark are my siblings. Penny was my neighbor and tough friend who could whoop up on boys older than she was. Robin is Penny's little sister. She was pretty tough herself, ending up as a state champion arm wrestler. "Beetle" was also a neighbor. She came from a family that none of us were too sure about. Her real name was Carolyn, but her folks nicknamed her "Beetle" after a dog. That alone makes a person wonder. Beetle ended up getting married at 13, and it wasn't a "have-to" sort of thing. Heck, we didn't even know she was dating at the tender age of 13; then suddenly she got married. One week we were playing with our Barbie dolls, and the next week she was a wife. I doubt that she ever went back to school.

The creek (It was either called "Sugar Creek" or "Honey Creek") bordered our land. The creek was spanned by an old iron trestle bridge. Later on, it wouldn't have been safe to hang out around the bridge. Besides the pollution, drug deals went on there. Once in a while, we'd go creekin' up-creek. At a certain point this crabby old man would come out and tell us he owned the creek and he wanted us out of there. Once when Mom was along, the crab came out and started yelling at us about it being his creek. Mom yelled back and told him "his creek" kept flooding our property. Then he yelled back that he doesn't own the water--only the land under it!

Speaking of flooding, our creek flooded a few times a year. Normally, the water was probably ten feet below the bottom of the bridge. If it flooded enough to start coming over the bridge, snakes would slither up on the bridge pavement from the water. If it got that high, we'd expect within a few hours it'd be on our property. At one time the water got so high that it flooded clear up to Mary Sutton's place, probably a quarter mile up from the creek. For some reason, we never really worried too much about it--not even when one flooded night we heard a knock at our front door. When we answered the door, we found two men in a boat who said they'd gotten a call that we needed to be rescued. "Not us!" We were fine, and flooding up to our front step was something we were used to. So they backed up and left.

Our side of the creek always flooded because the other side of the creek had a levee. One year the levee broke and the "lower" neighbors got all of the water (I say "lower" because the land was quite a bit lower than the bridge, where our side was level with the bridge pavement.) A few of our neighbors ended up having to fill in their basements due to that flood. I don't think the levee was ever fixed. I don't remember any flooding on our side of the creek after the levee break. They may have even dredged the creek to alleviate the flooding.

The old iron bridge was eventually replaced by a non-descript concrete bridge. There was nothing wrong with the old bridge, based on how much effort it took them to tear the old one down. I haven't been near there in fifteen years or so, ever since Mom sold the place a couple of years after Dad's death. I don't think there are too many of our old neighbors left in the area--they've either passed away or moved.

We have a lot of good memories of our place on Paddock Road and the creek. I don't recall ever being bored growing up. You don't need a lot of toys when you have five acres in your back yard and a creek in your side yard. There was always something to do, and many times it would involve the creek. We'd take our dog there to cool off, and a couple of times a day we'd walk our ducks to the creek for a swim.

Kids, dogs, and ducks need a simple pleasure like a creek.

Anything Can Be!

2009-02-05T20:20:00.010-05:00

"There's too many kids in this tub.
There's too many elbows to scrub.
I've just washed a behind
I know wasn't mine.
There's too many kids in this tub!

~Shel Silverstein

I can remember these triple baths just like yesterday. In the photo, Mark was maybe one or less. That would make Mike two, and me three years old. We grubbed around the back yard of our place on North Rural Street with our Matchstick cars until there wasn't a blade of grass anywhere. I imagine we were pretty grimy during warm weather when we could stay out and play. I can remember how my own son looked after a hard day at play and we had grass. Sometimes I could only recognize him by his smile!

But the main purpose of this entry isn't about bath time or my life on North Rural. It's to pay a small tribute to a very talented man that we lost in 1999 to a heart attack.

I loved Shel Silverstein's work even before I knew who he really was. Remember "The Unicorn Song" by the Irish Rovers? Shel wrote the song--lyrics and music. He also wrote "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "A Boy Named Sue". Besides being talented at writing songs, he also illustrated his books of poems. I've got two of his CDs--one is the songs of Shel Silverstein and the other is a CD of Shel reading his poems. He just doesn't recite his poems--he puts his wonderful personality into it.

Check out Shel's website at http://www.shelsilverstein.com/. And here are two more of my favorite Shel poems.

Listen to the MUSTN'Ts, child
Listen to the DON'Ts
Listen to the SHOULDN'Ts
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'Ts
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -
Anything can happen, child
ANYTHING can be!

All The Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' In The Sun,
Talkin' 'Bout The Things
They Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Done...
But All Those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All Ran Away And Hid
From One Little Did.

A Sorry Cat

2009-02-04T21:04:00.013-05:00

Another Mark story from our Smith Valley days...

Alley Cat had just delivered another litter of kittens. We found that beer cases--the old-fashioned kind that the glass bottles came in--made great cat-having-kittens boxes. You can close the cat up with her kittens, pick up the box by the handles, and carry them anywhere. (But take the dividers out first...those tend to be uncomfortable for the cat!) That day, Alley Cat was on our concrete back porch in her beer case cat house nursing her kitties.

Our Uncle Carl, Aunt Marie, and cousins Steve, Jimmy, and Danny Joe had just arrived with their dachshund. As dogs will, the dachshund went over to the beer case and stuck his head in to check out the kittens. Our dog Rebel was very protective of the kittens and didn't like that other dog checking them out. He lunged at my cousins' dog and attacked him.

We knew the little dachshund wouldn't stand a chance against Rebel, who was a fairly large dog. Rebel had one big weakness--he was petrified of gunshots and firecrackers. My little brother Mark ran into the house and grabbed a firecracker and a lighter. He ran back out, lit the firecracker and threw it onto the concrete porch in an attempt to break up the dog fight. My dad poured that porch, so it wasn't exactly level. The firecracker rolled directly under our other cat's butt and KABLOOEY! It couldn't have been timed any better.

Fru-Fru (yep, that was the cat's name) went straight up into the air about five feet. All four legs were stretched out and up. Every hair on that cat was standing on end, and she really did look like the illustration to the left. As Fru-Fru was in the air, she let out this horrible wail. And at the same moment, Mark said, "Sorry, cat!"

"Sorry, cat"??? That's all he could come up with after nearly blowing the poor feline's rectum to smithereens with a firecracker? You know, that cat seemed to hang in the air forever. But as soon as that cat's paws hit the ground, it was off like a streak of lightning. We didn't see that cat again for several days.

I bet I have some "toothpaste" that would've healed that cat pretty darned fast.

Read the Labels!

2009-02-03T21:05:00.017-05:00

As Britney sang, "Oops...I did it again".

Last week I was thick into my morning routine. The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth. Due to some medication I'm taking, I have an extremely dry mouth. So a few weeks ago I found a toothpaste that is supposed to help fight the bacteria that loves to grow in a dry mouth. That morning, I picked up the toothpaste, opened the lid, and squeezed about 3/4" of the stuff onto my brush.

Something seemed a little strange that morning. I didn't remember the opening to the toothpaste being smaller than a normal toothpaste's opening. I nearly had the toothbrush into my mouth, when I picked up the toothpaste tube and turned it over.

Another half-second and I would have been brushing my teeth with hemorrhoid ointment. That's not the first time something like this has happened to me...or rather, I caused it to happen to me.

As a teenager, I stayed at my cousin's house quite a bit. One morning, I grabbed a tube of their toothpaste, squeezed it on my brush, and started brushing away. "Gawd!", I thought..."What in the heck kind of toothpaste do these folks use?" It tasted absolutely horrible, with a greasy feel to it. I picked up the tube--I sure didn't ever want to buy this stuff. Well, folks...again, it wasn't toothpaste. It was Groom! Groom was men's hair cream. And it sure made a nasty-tasting toothpaste.

When I was bike-riding age, I had hopped onto my bicycle to take a ride. I don't remember the circumstances, but this bike had a couple of spokes that were broken on one end. I ended up having a bike wreck in which I wouldn't have even gotten hurt except one of those broken spokes somehow completely punctured my right Achilles tendon. That left me with two holes on either side of that tendon. The first thing I thought about doing was running into the bathroom to get some Mercurochrome or Merthiolate to hopefully keep the wound from getting infected.

I grabbed the little brown bottle out of the medicine cabinet and quickly applied the stuff to the two punctures. AND THEN I YELLED! I expected either one of those antiseptics to sting a little, but not like this. When I looked at my foot, I didn't see the usual red of either one of those antiseptics. What I saw was the medicine thickening into two waxy lumps over the wounds. I grabbed the bottle and THEN looked at the label. I hadn't used either Mercurochrome or Merthiolate. What I used was Compound W--the wart remover! I think that stuff was eating my flesh from the inside out!

Some years back, I took a shower (and washed my hair) using dog shampoo. I wondered why it didn't lather very much. Needless to say, I didn't have fleas for a couple of weeks, and my coat was soft and shiny! And, yes, it was an accident.

Probably 30+ years ago, we were visiting Mom and Dad. My little sister was still a teenager, so she was also still living at home at that time. Before she got home, I had found an unlabeled bottle of nail polish on a kitchen shelf. Just to see what the color looked like, I painted my toenails. After a half-hour that stuff hadn't even began drying! So when my sister got home, I asked her what kind of nail polish that was on the kitchen shelf. She told me it wasn't nail polish--it was her lip gloss!

I try to be very careful with my medicines, but even as careful as I am, I sometimes mess up. The last time I did this was a few months ago when I took my usual morning dose of blood pressure medicine, Verapamil. By the time I got to work, I was so sleepy that I thought I'd fall asleep at my desk. When I got home, I picked up the medicine bottle from the kitchen counter to put it away, and happened to glance at the label. What I took that morning was not Verapamil like I thought. It was Hydrocodone (acetaminophen and codeine). The dosages of Verapamil and Hydrocodonee we have are identical unless you look close enough to see the imprints. So now I keep the Hydrocodone buried deep into the cabinet and my Verapamil in a separate location with my other meds.

I'm not the only one in the family to not be careful at times. My granny was famous for her homemade pies. She made a couple of pies for my uncle and aunt who were coming to visit from Alabama. As always, she sprayed the pie pans with Pam and finished making the pies. After she got them baked, she realized she had not sprayed the pie pans with Pam, but had instead sprayed them with Lemon Pledge! I suppose that might not taste too bad with a lemon meringue pie.

There is one thing I make sure I check each time. I usually keep a bottle of eye drops on my nightstand since I have very dry eyes (especially at night). I always, always read the label to make sure I'm not putting Super Glue in my eyes.

A Grandpa of the Heart

2009-02-02T18:28:00.018-05:00

Probably the first people we met when we moved from the big city of Indianapolis to Smith Valley were Olen "Ode" and Katherine. The Perrys were the sweet old couple across the road from us. Little did we know how much they would come to mean to all of us. It wasn't too long after we moved in that the Perrys became our "grandparents". We loved going to Ode's house. Katherine crocheted beautiful bedspreads; and Ode's passions were woodworking and gardening--both vegetable and flowers.

Within a year or two of moving to Smith Valley, we had come home from visiting our grandma in Loogootee. That was early on a Sunday morning. We had no sooner gotten into the house when we heard a knock at the front door. It was Ode. All he could manage to say was, "Katherine's gone". He started to break down, so he turned and headed for his home. Katherine was Ode's second wife. (Ode had also lost his first wife Dessie, but that was long before we knew him.

After Katherine died, the only things I wanted to remember her by were her crochet hooks, thread, and instruction books. She didn't have much in the way of crochet supplies, but that was all I needed. I was given her crochet supplies, and I taught myself to crochet. I was probably in fourth grade about that time. And to this day, when I see pastel variegated crochet thread, I think of Katherine.

Over the next few months, I would run over to Ode's and cook for him. Of course, we had him over to eat with us, and we always took leftovers to him as well. But I still enjoyed cooking for him too. I can distinctly remember frying chicken for him; and looking back now, I hope I got it done! Within a few months, Ode didn't need for me to cook for him any more.

Ode had a new ladyfriend. And the first thing he did was introduce us to Romanza. It was important to Ode that we liked Romanza and approved of her. Although Romanza was as different from Katherine as night and day, we soon came to love her as well. She was from the hills of West Virginia, and it was nothing for her to trap a raccoon and fry it for lunch. Romanza was a salty old girl who spoke her mind and cheated at her favorite board game Aggravation. If you went over to Ode and Romanza's, most of the time you would get talked into staying to play. And if you did something during the game that didn't quite suit Romanza, you knew you would be getting a little kick to the shin!

Ode loved singing hymns. We three older kids would sit at his feet, and my little sister would sit on his lap. To this day, I don't care for the new Christian songs that are popular at a lot of the new churches. I love the old standard hymns that Ode sang to us. Ode always wore coveralls around the house. He had a cow to milk, pigs to feed, and a garden to tend. But every Sunday, he would wear his best Sunday-go-to-meetin' suit to the EUB church in the valley. Many Sundays he sang his hymns in front of the congregation.

Ode was a water witch! He used two metal rods, bent to form "L" shapes. Ode held one in each hand pointing straight out and simply walked. When he passed over water, the rods crossed (or moved out--I can't remember). Everyone said he was good at it too.

When we came home from school, we always had our bus driver Harry drop us off at the corner down the road so we could get home sooner. Our dog Rebel would meet us there every day and walk us home. One day as we were walking home, we heard Romanza calling us from the garden. All four of us ran to her garden to see what was wrong with her. She was sitting in the middle of the cabbage right where she had fallen hours earlier and broken her wrist. Because she had bad hips and the broken wrist, she couldn't get up on her feet or even crawl for help. We got her to her feet and into the house. Before the night was over, she was sporting a cast.

When we were in high school and again walking home one day, there was an ambulance in Ode's driveway. They had Ode on a gurney and were putting him into the back of the ambulance. We ran home and watched from the front door, all four of us sobbing like babies. Thankfully, Ode was released that night. He'd had a seizure, but was ok. It sure scared the heck out of us kids.

Ode ended up in a nursing home after I got married and moved away. I did a little research tonight and found out that he died in October of 1977. Census records indicated he was born in 1889, so he would've been around 88 when he died. After his death, Romanza moved back to West Virginia. Mom and Dad made a trip to see her at the nursing home. She died in West Virginia in October of 1981, four years after Ode.

Following is what my little sister wrote about Ode. I couldn't top her story, so I chose to write a few facts about our proxy grandparents.

I Believe

It’s going to be rainy tomorrow. The date is in some unknown time in the early sixties. How did I know it would be rainy? Because the weather dog told me. The weather dog sat on the window sill in Ode and Katherine’s house and changed colors according to the weather. I remember looking at the weather dog one day when one of his “weather specks” came off in my hand. I carried it back to my house so I would always know what the weather would be. Katherine died when I was very young, but I still remember one thing about her. When I would go across the road to visit them, she would say, “Olen, go get her a candy bar.” I can still hear that voice to this day. They kept Mr. Goodbars in their refrigerator.

Ode was the “old man” across the street. I loved him. By the time I arrived on this earth both sets of my grandparents had way too many grandkids to care much about me. To be honest, I probably wasn’t the easiest little girl either. I remember being much too whiny and sensitive. And my grandparents lived over an hour away. Ode lived just across the road. I don’t remember Katherine dying, but I know she did and Ode married Romanza.

Also on the window sill was a small white church. I remember also loving that small church. I don’t really know why, except that it embodied everything Ode was. He was a good Christian man, the old fashion kind. As a very small child I loved going over to their house. As I remember it, there were only four or five rooms in the house. One of the bedrooms was actually a hallway into their kitchen.

What I remember most is that I would sit for what would seem like hours with Ode on the couch. He had old spiral hymn books and he would teach me the songs. Old-fashioned hymns that I had never heard in the Catholic church. “I’ve got a mansion, just over the hilltop, in that bright land where we never grow old. And someday yonder, we will never more wander. But walk on streets that are purest gold.” I loved Ode and I loved those old songs books.

Most of the songs that we sang together were from those old songs books. “As I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within. Sinking to rise no more. But the Master of the Sea heard my despairing cry. From the waters lifted me, now safe am I. Love lifted me. Love lifted me, when nothing else would do, Love lifted Me.”

I can still hear Ode’s creaky voice singing those last few high versus. He taught me those and the old time song, “Oh do you remember a long time ago, two poor little babes whose names I don’t know. Were stolen away on a bright sunny day, and lost in the woods, I’ve heard people say.”

I don’t know why or how, but there was an evening at EUB church where Ode was a member when he and I got up to sing in front of everyone. I couldn’t have been six at the oldest. I still remember the two of us getting up and singing in front of that church. I was a little nervous, but I also felt safe with Ode leading the way. I was proud he wanted to have me sing with him.

In hindsight, I can just imagine what the people in EUB church thought. I mean, really how cute to have an old man and a six-year-old singing old songs that he taught her? I would give anything for video cameras back then so I could have that memory forever. I suppose the memory I have inside my heart is better than any video could have been anyway.

When I was a teenager, they took Ode away to a nursing home. I probably hadn’t visited for years and I felt bad. My mother would go to see him and tell me how “out of his head” he was. I could not force myself to go (today, I would know better). I believe he was in the nursing home for a few years and I never visited him, I justified it by saying he wouldn’t want me to see him like that. I believe he died when I was 17 or 18. I was all full of myself and thought that in my mind he had already been gone for years, so I also didn’t attend the service either. How sad.

He and Romanza really didn’t have a lot. They had lived a simple life in that tiny house. But when he died, it seemed that relatives came out of the woodwork wanting the simple things they had in the house. I remember feeling so upset that these people who hadn’t bothered with either of them for so long were now raiding their house while Romanza was still alive, and just grabbing what little they had.

I think about those song books and the white church and weather dog. I would have given anything to have had them. They meant something to me. Ode and the song books formed a significant part of my life, my faith. I knew those small items were not worth anything and probably ended up in the trash. It’s the “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” truth. The songbooks were my treasure. They were something I shared with a man who was significant in my young life. His grandkids lived just next door, but they were busy being kids and didn’t realize how special it was to have your grandparents right next door.

I miss you Ode. Thank you for teaching me a quiet faith—one that doesn’t require looking down at people “lesser” than you. Thank you for showing me that while some families are created through blood, other families are created through the heart. I’m sorry for not visiting you in the nursing home or attending the service. I was young and selfish and I regret not getting to give you a proper goodbye. Thank you for giving me some of the most pleasant memories of my childhood and for politely sharing your amazing faith with me. What I wouldn’t give now to be able to tell you what an impact you made on my life. You will always be the grandpa made from my heart. I loved you so much.

Crazy Things We Did as Kids

2009-01-28T18:39:00.012-05:00

If you have read my blog, you know that I spent my early childhood in Indianapolis, and moved to Smith Valley in 1962 when I was nine years old. Compared to what kids have today, in quantity and technology, we were in the stone ages. But I'm sure we had just as much fun with our simple toys as kids have today with Wii, Xbox, and that entire class of video game systems.

During my really early years, we lived in a duplex on North Rural Street in Indianapolis. On the other side of our duplex lived Ginny, Pinkie, and their son Ricky. Ginny had some neat stuff that we couldn't dream of having. She had an oven that had a glass door! Back in the late 50's, we had never seen such a thing. When Ginny baked a roast or anything, and one or two of us happened to be over playing with Ricky, we'd actually pull chairs up to the oven window and watch food cook! How's that for excitement?

She also had a deep fryer with an engraving of a chef where the temperature lights were. When the grease reached the desired temperature, the chef's eye's glowed red. Honest to God, this fascinated me to the point where I would sit near the fryer and watch the red eyes glow. A few years ago, Mom and I went to Illinois to visit Ginny--she moved there to be close to her sisters. I told Ginny how, as a kid, I loved that deep fryer because of the eyes. She went over to her cabinet, pulled out that same fryer and gave it to me. It still works like a charm, with the exception of the chef's red eyes. They no longer work. When you consider the fryer is over 50 years old, it's pretty amazing that it even heats up.

In our own home on North Rural, we had a place in the ceiling of our living room where a light fixture had hung. The light was gone, but the decorative "thing" it hung from was still on the ceiling. Something about that decorative thing caused us kids to place ourselves directly below it, look straight up at it, twirl around, and make this guttural sound as we twirled. Don't ask me why...it was just something to do. And if I'd been Mom, it would've driven me crazy.

Mom was great at keeping us entertained as well. She would put us (one at a time) in a pillowcase, gather up the opening, and then swing us around in a circle. Now that was a hoot! At times, she would hang us on the doorknobs by our shirts. What fun! Kids today have never been swung around in a pillowcase or hung from a doorknob. Today either one of those activities would probably be grounds to call CPS.

She also would get on the floor onto her back, lift her legs up (don't worry...this is clean), and one of us kids would "belly up" to her feet. She held our hands, then lifted us up in the air by straightening her knees and bending her legs at the hips at a 90-degree angle. Then we'd all yell, "Tra-dant!". And although I never swung my own kids in pillowcases or hung them on doorknobs, we did do Tra-dant quite often.

Another activity, probably dreamed up by my mom, was "The Quiet Game". That consisted of one kid yelling "QUIET". After that, the first one to make a peep lost the game. It kept us occupied for a few minutes.

Both of my brothers had hobbies that were horribly gross. (Kids, don't try this at home.) Mike liked to sit on the steps in front of our house and wait for a smoker to go by. If he threw his cigarette butt down, Mike picked it up and smoked it.

Now, if you think that's gross--hang on. Mark's hobby was to take one of Dad's big screwdrivers and walk up and down the sidewalk. When he found a *somewhat* fresh piece of ABC gum, he scraped it off the sidewalk with the screwdriver, stuck it in his mouth, and chomped away! To this day, I can still hear the grit in his mouth as he chewed! Mark must've had a mineral deficiency or something. Our back yard was nothing but dirt due to us kids grubbing around in it all day long. It was nothing to go out into the back yard and see Mark with a mud ring around his mouth. Yes, folks...the child ate dirt!

And for those of you that don't know what ABC gum is, ABC stands for "Already Been Chewed". Speaking of chewing-sometimes on a Saturday we'd walk through the alley to our alma mater, School 81. Since it was Saturday, we could walk through the alley to get to our school. We'd search the parking lot for some tar, scrape it off, and chew it! That was some pretty nasty tasting stuff. Luckily, we didn't do that often.

I know you're thinking that I must've been a more normal child than my brothers. But although I didn't smoke used cigarettes, chew sidewalk gum, or eat dirt, I did have my bad habits too. On a daily basis, I would stand up on my bed and stick my finger in the empty light socket attached to the wall. Heck, yes...it hurt! But now I could probably get struck by lightning and not blink an eye.

I also had a habit of swallowing nickels--no other currency--just nickels. It's not that I had a nickel in my mouth and accidentally swallowed it. Nope, I did it on purpose. A couple of days later, I would hear a *clink* and knew I had gotten rid of the last nickel I'd swallowed. I don't have an explanation why we did any of these weird things, but I guarantee you that your kids did some pretty weird stuff too--or if they are still young, they're still doing weird stuff. You just probably don't know about it. And no doubt you did too.

We three kids and Ricky formed a club. We voted on the name and decided on "The Dingbat Club". I imagine it was pretty close to being a perfect name for our motley crew. Our dues were ten cents a week. The main goal of "The Dingbat Club" was to beat the heck out of Marvin and Kenny, who lived a few houses down the alley from us. Marvin and Kenny were brothers, and if I remember correctly, their mother seemed to have a weird arrangment with someone the boys called "Uncle Cal".

When Marvin and Kenny) invaded our turf, that was reason enough to launch a full-scale war. Those two had no reason to be in the alley behind our house. They were just asking for it, and we gave it to them. After a sound whooping, they'd run home crying. If Uncle Cal was "visiting", he'd come out and yell at us. We didn't beat up Marvin and Kenny merely for being in the alley behind our house--we beat them up because they were creepy kids.

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Mom always said yes. I'd go get my PJs and head over to Ricky's. Ricky's mom and dad had a little bit of money and only one child at home. Ricky had toys lavished upon him. He had it all. I can remember a Hi-Ho Cherry-O game, a nice set of Lincoln Logs, a horrible stuffed chimp that I absolutely hated, and a very cool chemistry set. One day, I succumbed to temptation. On Ricky's chest of drawers was the coolest thing I had ever seen, purchased from a penny gumball machine. It was a silver plastic skull with red ruby eyes. That treasure would be mine before night's end.

Before I went home, I took the silver skull with the red ruby eyes and stuck it in my pocket. I didn't dream that Ricky would miss it--he had so many toys. But miss it he did, and it didn't take Ricky and Ginny very long to come over and ask for the skull. That was the last time I took something that didn't belong to me.

It's just a good thing that I haven't ran into another one of those silver skulls with red ruby eyes. I don't think I can take the temptation.

Some Things Just Aren't Meant to Be

2009-01-27T18:37:00.005-05:00

When my husband and I were in our early 30s, we were asked by his brother if we'd like to go canoeing down the Blue River. Heck, why not? We never did anything like that, and we needed to do more things together. So we packed up our 11-year-old son and took off. We left Carrie at home with a sitter--she said she was a wimp and didn't want to go.

So after an hour or so we arrived in Milltown and got signed up for the canoe trip. We decided on the seven-mile run, since we've never done this before...and for sure we didn't want to go on the 14-mile trip. The "launchers" loaded up our canoes, we jumped in their van and off we went. My son got a partner, so it was just going to be Leroy and me in the canoe.

At the launching site, the "launchers" put the canoes in the water and got everyone into the water. The couple ahead of us made it in the canoe, but when it came time to actually "go", they both leaned sideways in the same direction. They and their cooler ended up in the river. That was funny enough, right?

When it came our turn, I climbed in the rear of the canoe, facing downriver. When Leroy climbed in, he sat down facing me--and facing upriver! I looked at him and said, "I'm not turning around!". The launchers cracked up!

He finally got turned around and we were off...and at least we were still dry. We spent the next seven miles zig-zagging back and forth. For some reason, I just naturally paddle harder than Leroy--or could be he was holding his paddle sideways in the water. He kept griping at me because we weren't catching up to the others in our group. The way I saw it was...he should paddle harder to match my paddling--or hold his paddle correctly in the water.

Halfway through the trip, we found a landing. All of us "parked" the canoes and had a little picnic. After lunch, we climbed back in and began the last half of our journey. At least Leroy faced downriver this time! At the very end of the canoe trip, the water got pretty deep, and then flowed over some sort of concrete dam. You either got out or ended up over the dam. My sister-in-law was the first one out of the canoe. For some reason, my brother-in-law John couldn't wait ten more seconds to light up a cigarette. As he lit up, his wife (not noticing John's lack of attention) bent down and pulled the canoe farther onto dry land.

That was just enough to throw John overboard, lit cigarette and all. Luckily, he managed to make it back to shore, but wasn't too happy about getting soaked. We drove back home and were sore for days. But all in all, we had a pretty good time.

A few years later, we were asked to go canoeing again. Little did we know, this would be our last canoe trip. We launched ok. Nobody got thrown into the water. But early on in the trip, we still had issues with me paddling too hard, or Leroy paddling too soft. He started griping at me again. That did it.

I threw down my paddle in the bottom of the boat and folded my arms. I told Leroy, "Fine...YOU paddle". And paddle he did. I sat in the back of the boat like some Navaho chief, my arms crossed and a fierce look on my face. About every mile, Leroy would ask me to pick up my paddle. Nope......PLEASE pick up the paddle! Nope.....

He paddled the entire trip, with me still doing my "Sitting Bull" impersonation. After that, we realized that this is just one of those things we should not do together. In fact, I've come up with a list of things we will not even TRY to do together.

Repelling
Mountain climbing
Tandem bicycling
Pairs ice skating
Ballroom dancing
Trapeze
Bungee jumping
Parachuting
Snowboarding
Synchronized swimming
Curling
Eyebrow waxing

And here's one activity we CAN do together.

Snow Day

2009-01-27T06:30:00.011-05:00

Looks like I won't be going to work today. I hate that. It's not the same as when we were in school and school closed for the day due to snow. This costs me. I have to either take leave (which I'm trying to save for a trip to Italy), LWOP, or make it up on my RDO (regular day off) this Friday.

I really don't want to do any of those. I prefer to go to work, but if I can't--then I want a free snow day. Just give me the day off and pay me for it too! I certainly work hard enough that I've earned it. Give me the same feeling I had when I was a kid and in school. Call the local radio stations and have them announce that work is closed due to snow. Yay! No work! I promise I won't waste the day!

When daylight hits, I'll put on my snowsuit, hat, and boots. I don't have gloves so Mom will put socks on my hands. If the snow's a wet one, Mom will put breadsacks over our socked hands to try to keep them dry.

I'll go outside and throw snowballs. If the snow's real wet, I'll make a snow wall to hide behind to keep from getting smacked with the snowballs my brothers are throwing at me. When we tire of that, we'll make a snowman. Then we'll grab the sled and take a few rides down the hill. We might even grab a few bites of the white stuff, avoiding any yellow patches of snow.

Hey, the Waltman boys are making an igloo again! You'd swear Nanook from the North lives in their yard because their igloos are just like the real thing. "Mom, can we go to the Waltman's and play in their igloo???? Puh-leeeeaaaase???" We knew the answer would always be "no", but we still had to ask. Mom was scared it would collapse on us (they never collapse). Maybe one of these days she won't be paying attention to what we are asking and she'll say "yes".

When we get cold and our fingers turn numb, we'll track all that snow inside the house and begin throwing off breadsacks, sock mittens, boots, hats, and snowsuits. Mom will make us some hot cocoa and we'll sit by the oven and warm up....

....Reality check. I stayed home and switched a doctor's appointment so I could work this Friday to make up the nine hours I missed today. Nobody's giving me the day off without a cost to me. There are dishes and laundry to do, but that's not what I want to do. I'd like to go outside and take some photos, but that seems like a lot of trouble. And then I'd end up tracking snow all over my new carpeting. The kid inside me would love to go out and play in the snow, but the lazy adult in me says to stay inside and do some housework.

The sleet is starting back up again. They said we'd have two waves of this stuff. The first one's over and sounds like the second one is beginning. The weather guys say we will have nine inches of this stuff before the end of the day. Hope I can make it to work tomorrow. I've got lots to do before next month's software subrelease.

Sometimes being an adult sucks.

Valley Days

2009-01-25T10:28:00.012-05:00

Lately my sister and I have been in blog contact with some fellow "Smith Valley-ians", and the chatter has conjured up a ton of memories from the days we lived in Smith Valley. One of the places they mentioned was "Effie's". Effie was a sweet little old lady that lived in the heart of Smith Valley in one of the older houses on Old Smith Valley Road. Out of her house, she ran "Effie's Variety Store". There were two rooms in the store; the first room had a counter full of candy bars. That's what attracted all of the kids from "The Valley". If you had a nickel in your hand, you had to go to Effie's to buy a candy bar.

I think this house is the one that used to be Effie's. If I'm wrong, hopefully a fellow Smith Valley-ian will let me know.

Very close to Effie's...maybe even next door...lived an older woman that had three thumbs. Her right thumb had a smaller, but perfect, thumb attached to it. She kept it perfectly manicured, just like her other two thumbs. Any time one of us kids had a reason to visit her, whether it was Halloween or selling something from the school, we made sure we hit her house so we could see her third thumb. It seems like she always bought whatever we were selling.

You would think she would've had the thing amputated years ago, but I supposed if I had something as cool as a third thumb, I'd have kept it too. I wonder if she had to pay more for a manicure since it involved 11 digits instead of 10. But back then, people weren't so concerned about themselves that they felt the need to spend $50 for a manicure job.

We had friends that lived in the heart of the valley--the Goodwins, the Branhams. Then there were the Watermans--not friends, but not enemies either. One of the Waterman boys was maybe a year or two older than me and always wore cool Dingo boots. When he got on Harry's school bus, he sauntered on and even had a cool way of sitting on the bus. It takes a cool guy to invent a cool way to sit on a school bus. He was a "Fonzie" kind of guy, for sure. The younger Waterman boy was quite a pistol.

Farther "up" the valley was the EUB church. Our neighbor "Ode" went to church there. I was good friends with Vicki, who's father was the minister there during high school. Nice people.

At the end of Old Smith Valley Road where it intersected with Morgantown Road, was the Beehive Restaurant. When we had enough money for a Chocola, we walked to the Beehive. Chocolas were great drinks on a hot summer day, but the best reason for getting a Chocola was to watch the owner, Ron, shake the drink by bouncing it on his biceps. Those were the days of glass bottles--not cans--and you had to shake the drink to mix the chocolate syrup. Ron's mom owned the restaurant as well. I can see her face, but can't quite remember her name. Maybe it'll come to me before I finish this story. Oh, wait. I'm pretty sure her name was Doris.

Coming back home from the Beehive, we usually stopped in at the Community Center to play on the playground equipment. With any luck, we never ran into the "Valley Gang" during one of our valley trips. I'm not sure what they called themselves--it was just a group of valley boys, and I think one of the Watermans was included. The Valley Gang liked to ride around on their bicycles and when they saw a car coming, they would block the road and not let the car through.

The gang tried this once with my mom. Little did they know Mom's old car was equipped with diesel horns that could rip the eardrums right out of your ear canals. So just north of the old iron bridge on Paddock Road, the gang blocked Mom's car. Heck, Mom had four little hoodlums herself. Did they think THAT was going to instill fear into her? Mom slowly brought the car right up to the boys. She got real close, and then blasted them with the diesel horn! Those boys were falling all over themselves trying to get the heck out of the way!

I don't think they messed with her any more.

There was a very interesting man that lived in the Smith Valley area. I never knew his name, but he was always dressed in a black suit and flat, wide-brimmed black hat. He looked like he just stepped out of the old west. We always called him "Bat Masterson". I never heard of him hurting anyone; I think he was a little strange, but harmless.

Then there was the creepy old coot that lived in the house at the corner of Old Smith Valley Road and our road, Paddock. Somehow we always knew we needed to stay away from him. I'm not sure what the rest of the valley called him, but we called him "Old Man Stayton".

One day, my brothers and I were playing hide and seek on a foggy day. Mike and I were hiding, and Mark was looking for us. I'm not sure where Mark was, but it seems like he was up in a tree. Out of the fog, Mike and I could see Old Man Stayton walking towards the bridge next to our land. We did not want to be in the area when Old Man Stayton got to the bridge, so we hid in a ditch. We had a vantage point where we could see the old man, but he couldn't see us.

Mark couldn't see much of anything from his vantage point. He knew Mike and I were hiding and he couldn't find us. He did not know Old Man Stayton was walking our way. Stayton walked to the middle of the bridge, stopped, and watched the creek for a few minutes. Then he turned towards his house and began walking back home. Like I said, Mark didn't know Old Man Stayton was there, but he decided to try to lure us out of our hiding spot. So very loudly Mark said, "Mon Dieu! Come back!" Old Man Stayton turned around and looked to see who was calling to him!

Not seeing anyone, he again turned and headed for home. Again, Mark yelled, "Mon Dieu! Come back!". Again, the old coot turned around. Mike and I were about to split a gut trying to keep from laughing out loud. Every time Stayton turned and started walking away, Mark would bellow out his semi-French "Mon Dieu! Come back!". The timing was impeccable. The old man finally gave up and eventually disappeared back into the fog.

Then there was the very eccentric Mary Sutton who lived up the road from us. When Mary could still drive, she was a frequent visitor to our place. Mary deserves an entire story, so I'll save her for a later time. And all I've got to say about that is...

"Mon Dieu! Come back!"

North Rural Street Memories

2009-01-22T19:22:00.013-05:00

Dad and I were on the front porch of our duplex on North Rural Street in Indy. (Seems like no one else was home but us.) Dad didn't have kids merely to carry on his family name and DNA. He had kids to fetch his beer and cigarettes. That day, Dad told me to go down to the gas station and buy him some cigarettes. I was only five at the time, but back then a kid could walk around the block and not be worried about a drive-by or some pervert picking them up. And a kid could run down to the gas station and buy a package of cigarettes for her dad.

I got up from the porch steps, and Dad told me there was money on the kitchen table. As I walked into the house to pick up the money, he added, "...and get me a beer too". I picked up the money, stuck it in my pocket, and headed out the front door to go to the gas station. At the end of the block, I crossed 19th Street, making sure I looked both ways. Then I was in the gas station's parking lot.

I entered the station. Two attendants were at the counter. One of them leaned over to see what I wanted. I placed my money on the counter and said, "I want a beer and a package of Chesterfields!". The two attendants looked at each other and chuckled. One of them leaned over and said to me, "Honey, we don't sell beer here!". But he handed me the cigarettes and the change.

I walked back to the house and gave Dad his cigarettes. Then I told him that they didn't sell beer at the gas station. He gave me "the look" and said, "I didn't mean for you to BUY a beer. I wanted you to get me one out of the refrigerator!". Man, what a dopey kid I was. That was almost as embarrassing as the time I walked into the tavern where my grandpa bartended and sat down at the bar.

As you may have guessed, the top photo is the duplex we lived in on North Rural as it appears today. The next one is the gas station. I retrieved the photos from Google Maps, and am amazed that I was able to "virtually" walk up and down North Rural again. I was even more surprised to find that the old gas station is still there, and going a little farther north and across the street from the gas station, the old Garnett's market building still stands. It's evidently now a day care center.

The photo to the left is my mom walking home from Garnett's carrying her groceries. You can even see Garnett's in the photo. How cool is that? The cars give away how old this photo is.

Using Google Maps, I even traced my steps back to the school where I attended kindergarten. That was Public School 81. I think my teacher's name was Charity Showalter. We always walked 18th Street to the school. I remember not being able to tie my shoes for the longest time, and Miss Showalter said something about it one day. That made me determined to learn. In our classroom, we had a Fisher-Price "Old Woman that Lived in a Shoe" toy, complete with laces. I took that toy every day and played with it until I learned how to tie my shoes.

PS81 is also where I had my first crush. I was in love with David Qualkenbush, who had strawberry-blonde hair and freckles. I can still recall what he looked like--he was the cutest boy in the class. One day our teacher announced that we were going to have a field trip that day and we would choose partners. We all had to sit in a big circle on the floor to "choose up". Here's my chance, I thought. As soon as my name was called, I was going to pick David as my partner for the field trip. Little did I know until that day that EVERY girl in kindergarten had a crush on David Qualkenbush.
I didn't realize that, alphabetically, my name was way at the end of the pack--and that's how the names were being called. Sure enough, the first girl called ran over and picked David. My heart was broken. I remember hanging my head and tears going down my cheeks. Then at my deepest minute of despair, I saw a pair of shoes stop in front of me. I looked up and saw another little boy in my class. He asked ME to be his partner! Hey, maybe I was the cutest girl in the glass and every boy had a crush on ME.

I wiped my tears, stood up and took his hand. Who needed dumb ol' David Qualkenbush, anyway.

"Bird in the House, Ma"

2009-01-21T18:17:00.010-05:00

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table as usual, puffing on his cigarette and sipping his beer. He did his deepest thinking at the kitchen table. You could see the wheels turning, and just know he was devising a get-rich-quick plan. But this particular night, his thinking was interrupted.

We were visiting for the weekend. My husband was in his usual place too--in the family room laying on the couch watching television. My kids were maybe three and six. They were with the rest of us in the family room. Dad came out of his thought balloon long enough to say, "Bird in the house, Ma". No excitement. Just a statement about the bird he saw flying around in the kitchen. I hopped up and ran into the kitchen, telling Dad, "Don't hurt it!".

Then the "bird" took a swoop at my head. I ducked just in time and yelled, "IT'S A BAT!!!!". Then pandemonium broke out. I panicked. The kids absorbed my fear and they started yelling and crying. I grabbed my babies and ran from room to room, trying to keep them away from the bat. The bat kept following us through the house. I was not thinking clearly, or I would've realized that all I had to do was put the kids in a bedroom and shut the door! All I could think about was one of us being bitten by a rabid bat.

At one point, I hit the kitchen on a return lap of panic and saw Dad with a flyswatter. He had the bat down to the floor, "whop whop whopping" it with a flyswatter. But soon the bat escaped and continued his flight back and forth through the house. My brave husband didn't move from his horizontal position the entire time. No show of fear, excitement, or anything. Just typical Leroy.

Thankfully, the bat finally flew out onto the enclosed back porch. Still in my unthinking state, I hurried to the sliding glass door between the kitchen and the back porch, slid the door shut, and locked it--like the bat had the ability to open the door and come back in! Thank God...now he was on the back porch where he couldn't get any of us. Then we heard a frenzied knocking from the other side of the sliding glass door. It was Mom! I had locked the bat and her on the porch! I didn't know if Mom had found a hiding spot out there, or what. But it turned out to be the worst spot in the house to take refuge once the bat was there and I locked her out.

We got Mom back inside and Dad went to the back porch, eventually getting the bat outside. Then it was time to take a deep breath and laugh. My son told us that he knew vampires weren't real, but that also encompassed bats--since bats turn into vampires and vampires turn into bats. Bats weren't real because vampires weren't real--until that night. When he saw the bat, he was forced into a swift paradigm shift. He now had to believe that bats were real, and therefore vampires were real too. And he thought that bat would turn into a blood-sucking vampire at any time.

...and I must've watched too many episodes of "Dark Shadows" when I was in high school.

Afternote...my sister remembers this a little differently than I do, and I must admit she's probably correct. She said her husband (now her ex) was there and I was climbing his back. I don't recall him being there, but I've been trying to forget that chucklehead for years. She also said I wasn't grabbing the kids to try to take them to safety, but only thinking of myself. I guess that's what hysteria does to a person!

The Garden of Eatin'

2009-01-20T23:17:00.008-05:00

When we moved to Smith Valley in September of 1962, our five-acre plot had been planted entirely in stinking cabbage. We ate slaw. We ate boiled cabbage. We fried cabbage. We put cabbage in soup. We gave away cabbage. We were sick of cabbage.

Once you cut a head of cabbage from the garden, it leaves behind the root, plus whatever you didn't cut off when you harvested the cabbage. Those things take a long time to decompose. So we had the rotting cabbage smell around for quite a while. We don't know why the former occupants of our house planted five acres in cabbage, but they must've decided to sell when the cabbage started stinking up Smith Valley.

The next spring, we had the garden plowed and set to work planting tomatoes, potatoes, onions, radishes, and lots of sweet corn. I don't remember planting all five acres, but we did have a pretty good-sized garden---probably close to an acre.

I guess Dad thought he'd get some return on his investment on raising kids by buying us each a hoe, and enforcing his rule that we would hoe one row every day. We weren't happy about it, but we did it. I remember hoeing furiously just to get it over with. At times I would miss and hit the corn instead. So I'd pick up the cut corn stalk and stick it back in the ground real fast. Maybe Dad would think that there was some worm in the ground chomping his corn.

Every day I finished my chore before the boys. I'd straighten up, and loudly proclaim, "I'm the best hoer in Greenwood!". Nowadays, every fourth-grader knows what a "ho" is. To me, it was just a piece of metal attached to a long stick that caused blisters on my hands. Since I used a hoe and I was the fastest at it than anyone else I knew, I thought I had earned the right to call myself "the best hoer in Greenwood". (By the way, Smith Valley is sort of a "suburb" of Greenwood, so no... I hadn't forgotten where I lived--we had a Greenwood mailing address.)

Fast forward about seven years. I had taken a day off of school. I wasn't sick, but just didn't feel like going to school that day. It also happened to be my Dad's day off, so that wasn't good planning on my part. (What I wouldn't give for an entire day with my dad now!) Dad went to Farm Bureau and bought a couple hundred tomato plants. They came wrapped bare-rooted in wet newspaper strips. When he got home, he told me I was going to help him plant. Just like hoeing, I wanted to get this chore over with so I could do what I wanted with the rest of the day. So I dug holes and planted tomatoes in warp speed.

I was probably 30 feet ahead of Dad, who was planting tomatoes in his own row. Out of the blue, he started chuckling quietly. Then his laugh got louder and louder. I straightened up to look at him to see if I could figure out what was so funny. He finally said, "Helen, I have enough weeds in this garden without you planting them". Right in front of Dad in my row was a weed...in its own little spot, planted and watered. Evidently, there was a weed in the middle of my tomato plants, and I planted it right along with the tomatoes!

By the way, those hard reddish "rocks" you buy in the store are not tomatoes. If you have never eaten a Hoosier-grown tomato right out of the garden, you have no idea how good a real tomato tastes.

Mark-isms

2009-01-19T21:53:00.012-05:00

Remember I told you that my little brother Mark has provided me with plenty of stories? It's time for a few short ones.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Mom and I were hanging clothes on the line when my brother Mark (maybe 11 at the time) came out of the house with a panicked look on his face. His right hand was covering his right ear. Of course, we were thinking, "What now?"

"Mom! Mom!...I got a fly in my ear!", he yelled. Mom had the perfect answer. "Well, let it out, Stupid!!!".

Mark took his hand away from his ear and the fly simply flew out. We didn't even bother asking him WHY he was holding the fly in his ear.

BRIDGE OUT!

When we were very young, we must've been staying with our Aunt Rita. She and Mom were non-identical twins. Aunt Rita was a fun aunt, but she also loved to scare the bejeezus out of us.

Mark was just a little squirt--maybe three years old. He and Mike were in the back seat of Aunt Rita's car and I was sitting in front. We were riding around in the countryside, and came upon a collapsed bridge. It was just one of those little one-lane country road bridges and had the typical warning sign for "BRIDGE OUT". Well, Aunt Rita turned the car around to go back the other way; but then got this look on her face. She put the car in reverse and started backing up to the bridge.

We thought she'd lost her marbles. The louder we screamed, the faster she backed up to the bridge. We screamed for what seemed like an eternity, and just before we got to the bridge and the big gaping hole, she stopped the car. Aunt Rita then put the car into forward, and drove away from the bridge in a cloud of gravel dust. I remember hearing this maniacal laughter from her, so I know she really enjoyed the scare she put into us.

It took all three of us a few minutes to catch our breath and calm our hearts down. None of us said a word--until Mark piped up with, "I like being scared, 'cause it feels so good when it quits!".

Bonjour, Class!

Our music education at Center Grove Elementary was cheerfully provided by Mrs. Hunter. Although she was a very nice lady, she was a pretty bad music teacher. When it was time for our weekly music class, Mrs. Hunter would push her little cart of stuff into our class. (I don't recall that she ever used anything off of that cart, but she always had a dried sunflower on it.) Anyway, we would start the class with...

Good morning to you!
Good morning to you!
We're all in our places
With sun-shiny faces.
Oh, this is the way
To start a new day!

God, we hated that stupid song.

Then Mrs. Hunter would choose someone from the class to come up to the blackboard. He or she would be instructed to draw "100" on the board. Then we were to turn the "100" into a sunflower. She never explained the reason for this strange lesson, but it was easy and it made her happy to see that we knew what a sunflower looked like. Every week was the same. Sing the dumb song and draw a sunflower. I'm sure we must've done something else during these classes, but I don't remember what it was.

One week it was my brother Mark's turn for music class. As always, Mrs. Hunter had Mark's class sing the dreaded song and then chose someone to draw the sunflower. As she was pushing her cart out of the door, as always, she tried to give the class one last piece of culture. She always said her goodbye as, "Bonjour, class!". Then out the door she'd go.

Well, this time when Mrs. Hunter bade the class "Bonjour" in her finest French accent and turned to go out the door, that goofy brother of mine said (and in a loud gruff voice)..."BONE-JORE!!!!". Mrs. Hunter wheeled around and demanded to know "WHO SAID THAT????".

Twenty-nine fingers pointed in Mark's direction. I don't know what his punishment was, but it probably involved a principal and a plank of wood.

The Grossest Thing I Ever Ate

2009-01-18T19:05:00.007-05:00

I was about eight months pregnant with my first child. Pregnancy made me hungry all the time, and constantly craving chocolate eclairs. You can't possibly find eclairs in this neck of the woods, so the only time I got eclairs was when I was up at Mom and Dad's.

But this morning, toast sounded good. I popped two slices of bread in the toaster and pushed down the handle. In a few seconds, the toaster began to pop and crackle. "Great", I thought. "The toaster is going on the fritz."

The toast finished and I buttered and jellied both slices. Then I went outside and sat on the front porch to eat my breakfast. Boy, did that toast hit the spot. As I finished, I got up to make two more slices. Again, I threw a couple of slices of bread into the slots and pushed down the handle.

But this time, the toaster began sizzling, smoking, and smelling. And it wasn't a good smell--kind of like burning hair. I popped up the toast and removed it to have a look inside. What I saw made me violently ill. Stuck inside the wires of the toaster was a little mouse. His nose was right where one slice of bread would've touched it!

I brushed my teeth for a good half-hour, constantly gagging whenever I thought of that mouse's nose touching my toast! Then I sat outside and gagged some more. As soon as I started feeling better, I went inside, unplugged the toaster, and pitched it outside. I never, ever wanted another piece of "mouse nose toast" again.

Mark Started It!

2009-01-17T22:28:00.007-05:00

I don't remember having to take naps when I was a very young girl, but probably because nothing notable ever happens during a nap to make you remember taking one--except once. Mike, Mark, and I were in our shared bedroom. The boys shared one twin bed, and I had the other one all to myself. You could make bunk beds out of these beds, but at this time they were split into regular beds and were just three or four feet apart.

We just weren't sleepy that day. Looking for something to do, my youngest brother Mark, peeled back a corner of his sheet. There was a small hole in the mattress. Mark dug around in the hole and came out with a tiny bunch of white stuffing; then he threw it at me. I picked it up and threw it back. Mike then picked out another piece of stuffing and threw it at me; and again, I threw it back. This went on for a few minutes, with more and more stuffing being launched from bed to bed. I felt like I wasn't getting enough ammunition, so I tore a hole in my mattress and began throwing the stuffing at the boys.

It wasn't long before our bedroom looked like it was in the middle of a blizzard. Stuffing was flying everywhere! The hole in my mattress was about the size of my fist, but the hole in the boys' mattress was about 18" in diameters and was so deep that it went clear to the ticking on the bottom! Right when the blizzard was getting close to being a "white-out", Mom walked in.

Needless to say, Mom was NOT happy. I don't remember the punishment, but I do remember laying in bed for quite a while after that. And I remember hearing (and doing) a lot of sniffling. I guess Mom felt bad for getting so angry; although I can't imagine NOT getting angry when your three kids destroy two mattresses. Anyway, about an hour or two later, she walked in our room with a plate of homemade cookies.

Why do kids do things like this? It's just when you're having fun, nothing else matters. All that you're thinking about is what a good time you're having. You don't think about getting caught, or having to live with the consequences of your ten minutes of fun for a very long time.

...sort of like having three kids in 27 months, huh Mom?

Blind in One Eye...Can't See Out of the Other

2009-01-15T20:45:00.014-05:00

I remember it beginning in fourth grade. That's the year I started school at Our Lady. I sat in the middle of the classroom. Sister would always write the math problems on the board using very large numbers. It didn't matter--I couldn't see them. Somehow I realized if I pulled on my eyelids to make my eyes squint REAL HARD I could barely make out the numbers and could then write them in my notebook. It had to have taken my twice as long as the other students to get my classwork done.

I never saw anyone else having trouble reading the chalkboard, but I never thought about me having bad eyesight either. I guess little kids don't even think about such things. I got away with this trick for over three years. No one ever noticed--or if they did, they probably just thought I was being a stupid little kid.

Then when I was in sixth grade, one of the neighborhood girls got glasses. She let me try them on and I was shocked. I could see leaves on faraway trees. I could read things from a distance. It was like magic. I ran in the house and told Mom about it. She dismissed it with, "Oh, you just want glasses!" Well, I didn't want glasses, but I did want to SEE. (No doubt she heard stuff like that from us every day.)

One day while waiting for the school bus, I ran back to the house and told Mom a plane had landed in the field. She ran outside to see, but the plane turned out to be the white roof of a house. Sure looked like a plane to me. The next winter, we were sledding down at the creek. It had frozen over and there were several inches of snow on the ground. As I was bringing my sled up the hill, I didn't see that I was walking right into the branches of a tree. I punctured my right lower eyelid completely through. The boys thought it was pretty cool that I was crying blood. I went into the house, looked into the mirror, pulled down my eyelid, and picked out the bark that was left behind. I was lucky I didn't get an infection, but it healed up quite nicely. Then there was the time I was pitching a softball to one of my brothers, who hit a line drive right into my eye. I didn't see that one coming either. I sure didn't have any problem seeing that big ol' black eye in the mirror.

In seventh grade, we were getting ready to head to my grandma's house. Dad and I were packing the car in the early morning hours before sunrise. I looked up in the sky and said, "Dad, look at the full moon". Dad looked up and said, "That's a crescent moon". And stars? I could only make out a couple of the brightest planets as very blurry round pieces of light.

Dad took me inside and held a book at arm's length. "Read it", he said. Read it? I couldn't even begin to make out any words. I had to hold a book within six inches of my eyes to be able to read. That's when he told Mom that I needed to go see an eye doctor.

A few days later, the optometrist at Sears told Mom that I needed a seeing-eye dog! I picked out my glasses and began a long week's wait for them to arrive. Seven days later, I walked out of Sears sporting a very stylish pair of spectacles. I nearly sprained my neck to see everything. I could read signs. I could see people's faces. What an amazing thing it is to not see for several years and then suddenly being able to see everything!

Three of us out of the four ended up very nearsighted. I also have a moderate amount of astigmatism to go along with the myopia. When my kids were little, I knew what signs to watch for, and both of them saw an optometrist by the time they were five. I took my son when he was in kindergarten, and then again a year or two later. On the second visit, Doc told me that his eyes were fine, but he was going to be near-sighted like me.

My daughter was about three when she looked across two back yards at my neighbor. She closed one eye, pointed, and said, "Mom, Carol looks furry". At first I thought it was one of Carrie's "made-up" words when she didn't know the right word to use. But then I realized she might mean blurry instead of furry. I thought her eyesight also might explain why the child couldn't walk UP a flight of stairs without falling UP the stairs. So I took her to see Doc. Doc said that her eyes were fine, but it's easier for a kid to focus one eye rather than two eyes. So out of a DNA mixture of a very far-sighted male with tons of astigmatism and a very myopic female with a moderate amount of astigmatism, we had one myopic kid. Our daughter got off easy.

Some have asked me why I don't have Lasix to correct my eyes. Years ago, I would've had it done. But now my biggest problem is presbyopia. That's when your arms get too short to read the newspaper. I wear progressive lenses, but they don't help much when I sit in front of a PC all day (and all night). So at work, I wear single-vision lenses ground to my "near" prescription. If I had Lasix, I would lose the ability to remove my glasses and practically see down to the cellular level! There are just too many times during the day when I have to remove my glasses to be able to see very tiny print. So I'll just put up with glasses and contacts.

By the way, I ended up going to work for Doc. I took patient accuities and made glasses in our little lab. I didn't grind the lenses, but ordered them, set them up, cut them, hardened the glass lenses, and put the glasses together. I was really good at dyeing plastic lenses too. But the best part of the job was getting all of the family's glasses for lab cost, and Doc's eye care for free.

Doc moved to Terre Haute years ago and I've had lots of other jobs since then. I now go to an eye doctor in a neighboring town. He uses the same Snellen eye chart that Doc used. So whenever I have an eye exam, I really have to think if I can see the letters or if I'm just spouting them off from memorization.

If you've got kids, watch for those signs that tell you something isn't right with their vision. My grades didn't drop due to my poor eyesight, but boy, do I have droopy eyelids from all the pulling!

Mealtime Fun

2009-01-12T17:46:00.014-05:00

One of the most irritating things we did as kids happened at mealtimes. When one of us would get bored with the food Mom prepared, he or she would start stirring everything together. We coined this culinary technique and subsequent new dish "giggle soup". Each giggle soup had a different recipe. Some days it could contain Spam (not the email variety) and some days the main ingredient would be hamburger.

The giggle soup creator would take a bite of giggle soup and of course he/she would GIGGLE. That was the whole point of making giggle soup. This would then entice the rest of us to stir our food together and make our own giggle soup. The ratio of foodstuff would be different depending on how much of everything was eaten or not eaten. But the effect was always the same—insane giggling. Eventually, we would realize that all that food mixed together tasted like crap and the giggling (and eating) would stop.

Of course Mom would get upset. Looking back, I sure don't blame her. Money was tight, not to mention the time Mom invested in cooking. So to have the three older kids waste like that had to be maddening. I'm sure the initial creation of giggle soup had to be by my brother Mark. Mike and I were the good kids.

Another "meal" thing that made Mom blow her top was the day I got caught. I was a picky eater, and even on days when giggle soup was not the soup of the day, I didn't want to eat. So I would poke along, waiting until everyone else had eaten and been excused from the table. Then when Mom wasn't in the kitchen, I'd spoon my leftovers onto all the dirty plates that belonged to the rest of the family. I got away with this for a very long time.

Then one day it happened. Right when I was getting ready to dump a spoonful onto someone else's plate, Mom walked in. It didn't take her more than a fraction of a second to figure out what I was up to. I don't remember my punishment, but I hope it didn't involve telling my dad. We kids really weren't scared of Mom, but we knew right behind Mom was Dad. Dad wasn't afraid of having CPS called on him for whipping his kids' butts. Back then, kids got their butts smacked when they were bad. It didn't take us very long to figure out to just NOT do bad things in the first place.

…Well, except for Mark. Mark was a trouble-magnet and he always says that it's not that he was a bad kid, but that the rest of us were such good kids that it made him look bad. You will see a lot of "Mark" stories in the future, as he has supplied me with a lot of inspiration.

A Fireside Spaghetti Dinner

2009-01-10T08:16:00.009-05:00

I know you're not going to believe this one, but I swear it happened. My family will back me up. Back when I was maybe around 12, Mom had made spaghetti and meatballs for supper. Since Dad didn't like spaghetti, he was having hamburger. Dad was at the head of the table; I was to his right, then my brother Mike. Mom was at the other end of the table, then my brother Mark and sister Rita. That's all of us.

We were lovin' the heck out of our spaghetti and meatballs. It was a family favorite; well, except for Dad who was chowing down his burger. As Dad always did, he ate fast and grabbed his cigarettes. (I hated when Dad smoked, but especially when I was trying to eat.) Dad stuck the cigarette in his mouth, grabbed his matches, and lit up.

Suddenly, there was a loud "WHOOSH" and a flame that shot out of Dad's mouth clear across the table! I've seen Dad breathe fire with his words, but never actually shoot a flame out of his mouth! Dad got up and took off to the bathroom. All of us sat there in shock trying to figure out what in the heck just happened. After a few minutes, I started coming back to reality and could hear and see again. I looked to my right, and there was my brother Mike with his face buried in the seat of his chair. He was making this soft crying sound, like a "wooooooooo". Then I looked at his plate. In the shock of the moment, I had taken my hand and smashed it into Mike's plate of spaghetti. I had pushed down so hard that I had actually cut the strands of spaghetti between my fingers. And my hand was still sitting in that plate of spaghetti.

While we were trying to recover, Dad had gone to the bathroom to wash out his mouth. Then he came back and explained why he was "flame-throwing". Before dinner, Dad had been working in the garage. Dad always had a long-neck beer with him. He grabbed the bottle of beer and took a big swig, but it wasn't beer. It was gasoline! Some time earlier, he had put gasoline in an empty beer bottle. Then later he picked up THAT bottle instead of the one that contained beer. Don't ask me why Dad did these things--he just did.

So after Dad lit his cigarette with the match, he blew out the match. He still had gas vapor in his lungs and you know what happens when gas vapor hits a flame or spark. WHOOOOSH!

Again, I swear it happened.