That’s it!
Earlier this year I returned home after a girl’s weekend with Sue and Lennie with 2 of these.
While visiting West End Salvage in Des Moines (you may have heard of them from their short run on one of the cable network Home improvement/turn junk into cool stuff shows). I had my eye on a stain glass window and Lennie said her sister who was downsizing and had moved into an assisted living facility had a couple of stained glass windows she was selling and they either had an N or an H on them. I interpreted this to mean that if it was an N, it was meant to be and if H, well, Hmmmmm. The even more exciting thing for me was that her sister got them from her son who took them out of a house in Kansas City when he remodeled. They had to come full circle and return to Kansas City!
Since then, I’ve several times pulled them out of their safe hiding place in the basement to figure out what to do with them. Finally, He and I figured it out…my ideas….his handiwork ability.
A frame to hold button lights….and a beautiful glow on my mantle.
Until next time….
…..and since then, his pies have been coveted by the family for the pumpkin pie holidays. It was simply the difference between evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk. This year he added to the pie count with a butterscotch with meringue.
Delicious…and I’m not terribly embarrassed to say I ate one full size slice of each in one sitting.
We had the family for Christmas Eve Day Bunch and gift opening on Sunday and the second head cold of the month finally wore me down Sunday night so I didn’t go to the Brown/Faircloth/Callaghan Dinner on Christmas Day and while it just seems like a total bummer to be alone on Christmas, it was a little lonely with a slice of depressing, but doable. I ate brunch leftovers and watched movies for several hours. Remembering with gratitude all of the Christmases before helped me to remain positive seasoned with thankfulness!
Onward and Upward!
Until next time!
Just seems like a strange thing to feel in light of past Christmases when actually serious things have happened. Interestingly, I haven’t had my one wrenching Christmas cry this year, rather it has been chopped up between a range of emotions that have made the tears slip from my eyes from pure utter delight to all encompassing rage. I was actually sitting on the floor earlier in the week and thought…oh holy crap…maybe I’m just old and it has caught up to me? Then, I’m really not THAT old.
Fast forward to this morning, when I broke down looking at historical pictures of a shopping mall in the town I lived in for 35 years that had closed down in 1994 and the tears started flowing. This is not normal.
…..and then it hit me. This is the first holiday season in 16 years that I haven’t had anti-depressants numbing me. I’m feeling usual holiday cheer with just a little more delight, I’m feeling nostalgic now in my heart rather than just my head, my sorrow of the absence of past friends and family has hurt me in little bursts rather than all at once producing that sobbing Christmas cry.
I don’t know how or why this realization has given me peace of mind but Understanding seems to have made it reasonable and doable.
Until next time……
I’m one of those lucky grammas….retired, I live close to my grandkids and get to spend quality time with them several days a week…and through the 4 year old, I’m opening myself up to life..love…acceptance…joy and sadness for what it is…right now…it is what is happening right now at this moment. There is no perfection in crafts, there is no horror about a little paint on the table, there is no hurry, there are no rules.. it just is what it is!
During my child raising years, I turned inward with guilt because I wasn’t building ginger bread houses out of graham crackers, I wasn’t playing Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, and while I was helping force a Barbie leg into a Barbie outfit, I was not engaged in child’s play very often……that’s not to say never. But my girls and I, as children, had Aunt Frances. she was childless and never too tired to play a game, teach us to knit, take us to movies and just mindlessly play with us. We didn’t appreciate it at the time….and these memories are hitting me today because I feel the annual Christmas cry burning my nose.
Parents just don’t have time to be a co sibling or an Aunt Frances no matter what TV or internet posts tell you. Parents are working outside the home, worrying about the money, cooking, cleaning, attending school events, doing laundry, trying desperately to share adult time with their partner and just trying to be an adult. I’ve heard so many times that we wish we would have had our grandchildren first…I understand this. What a joy to see life through my grandchildren’s eyes. To live simply and to love until your heart bursts.
Until next time….
We live in Missouri….we “don’t need no stickin’ humidity” as a furnace attachment…..and of course, I was wrong. It was pre summer and my biggest concern at the time was to have a high efficiency unit with cold cold in the summer and warm warm in the winter…and my myopic vision didn’t allow me realize I would still be alive and living in the House November through February when it is cold.
So, let’s do what we’ve always done, let’s just put one of the old pans on the stove and keep a light flame going under it…with that scenario the light flame under the kettle causes the water to evaporate into the air and I become totally anxiety ridden that I will forget about it and set the house on fire.
I’ve got an idea…let’s just get a small vaporizer with auto shutoff to run all day in the kitchen on the counter by the living room door to keep the humidity in the house at a comfortable level…I no longer feel the need to buy the best because there is no guarantee it will last and I can buy two cheap ones for the price of one if I’ve made the wrong decision.
WRONG FREEKING DECISION.
The one gallon Vick’s brand Vaporizer was under $40 through Amazon and it requires no filter…simple…once a week you just take a couple of parts off, pour vinegar and then bleach and water over the heating unit and in 20 minutes the hard water deposits just soak off….a light brushing may be needed. False! It must be cleaned every 3 or 4 days. vinegar doesn’t remove the water deposits in 20 minutes nor 24 hours…so now I’ve had to introduce chemical in my life with CLR and use his toothbrush to clean off the deposit. Okay….the last part was a joke.
running this damn thing 24/7 only gets the humidity to hover around 40% and the static electricity causing the cats hair to stand on end is still a problem. (Small exaggeration) The vaporizer is soaking in CLR as I write, I’ve used the toothbrush on it and now I have a kettle on the stove again. 🤬. I’m ready for summer so I can complain about the humidity! On a positive note, I don’t live in a desert state. That’s something.
Until next time…
I’m not very patient….
I’ve often thought the microwave timer is just messed up….when I’m hungry, the minute it takes to nuke my food so it isn’t just refrigerator cold takes forever….much longer than a normal minute.
Getting a doctors appointment when I’m not sure I’ll be alive in the next hour and the soonest I can be seen is “we can work you In late afternoon”?!?!
My hair looked great yesterday but this morning it has grown to that ugly length and I can’t get in for a cut for two weeks ðŸ¤.
The car is so cold that the window fog over just from my body heat but it finally warms up after a 20 minute drive.
But then ….. I finally talk myself into making a dental appointment…..and tomorrow at noon is open. WHAT?!!? Not a month from now? Tomorrow? 🤬
I seriously looked at the clock a few minutes ago and thought…damn, in 12 hours I’ll be in the dentist chair.
Until next time….I suppose it will be a short night too.
Our neighbor who lives the second house down is from Des Moines. Now for those who don’t know, I’m originally from Des Moines. She’s probably a decade older than I am so we wouldn’t have the same friends…..and she went to a high school on the other side of Des Moines…interestingly enough my high school’s chief rival back in the 70s. We see each other on the street occasionally but she comes down to visit during City wide garage sales and that’s how our common geography somehow came out.
The Quality of the USPS here in small town Missouri suffers during the month before Christmas. It is actually so irritating that I could do an entire blog rant about it but Right now I don’t need to build the drama in my head. We have metal mailboxes every so often on the street. Each box contains 8 little boxes and the mail person has taped inside each little box a card with the residents name and street address. With that being said, today when I gathered the mail, there was no mail with our name in it but was full of mail for my Des Moines neighbor. I knocked on the door to drop it off and spent a significant amount of time with her taking a tour of the house, talking our like political leanings and had a wonderful visit with this fellow cat lady. On the way home, I once again had one of those “what are the chances” thoughts in my head that two women from a city of approximately 200,000 would end up neighbors in a town of just north of 8,000 people 4 hours south.
Until I saw him standing in the driveway shielding himself from the wind in his socks and t shirt….oh and he had jeans on trying to figure out if I had been kidnapped or was laying dead at the curb. I’m well taken care of …. although I did think it would be a great ending if squad cars running lights and sirens would have squealed around the corner…………..
Until next time….
I made a Facebook connection awhile back with a classmate of mine…if memory serves, we actually were classmates from kindergarten through graduation. I call him a classmate because we weren’t really friends….we knew each other and existed in the same world. We didn’t socialize or even, for the most part, share friends. So…I’m not really sure how we connected on Facebook…and the true bonus here is I also connected with his wife…a Facebook friendship I cherish but don’t understand.
The middle paragraph and middle part of this story is really a question: is there really some universe thing that connects peoples souls? some intuitive connection that brings together virtual strangers? The feeling that you have really known them all of your life….well, with Chuck, I guess I have known him for 56 years. This little mystery of human connection …. deeper human connection that just Hi, how is your day? “Have a good day” relationship. Are we brought together for a reason? It’s all such a mystery….
Bottom line…these connections, our lingering friendships and trusting others with the deepest parts of ourselves, inviting others to take a seat in our life….this the whipped cream on our pumpkin pie!
Until next time.
I remember exactly where I was sitting when I got the call on December 7, 1979 from my BFF of 4 years with the news that she had a baby girl…..and I remember the call in March of this year from my BFF of 42 years telling me Dana’s heart had stopped beating. So many stories sewn together of Dana’s short life and now we have that quilt of memories to hold onto…to comfort us each year when the calendar reminds us it is Dana’s Birthday.
Peace and Love, Gena and family!
Ninasusan 