In Everyone's Life a Little Rain Must Fall...and Flowers will Usually Follow

The moon was high and pale, almost full. The sky was still black with wispy clouds hurrying by on their way to somewhere else.

The wind cut through  my coat as I stood waiting by the car for Husband to lock the door so we could leave.

It was our anniversary and we were headed south. I was beginning to get hungry.

We had decided not to spend a lot of money; no gifts, only eating at a  nice restaurant to celebrate. We'd had some extra expenses lately, and being as we were dumb enough to get married a month after Christmas, our pockets were a little empty.

I had anticipated the day, being with Husband of thirty-one years, just us, just 'doing', not rushing or anything.

Then at 4:45 a.m. the phone rang and it was Other Brother saying to "Put your britches on and get down here."

Mother was sick again.

Of course, we were all afraid it was another blockage and the ambulance hurriedly took her away, with all of us in tow.

Turns out she has a U.T.I. and maybe some other stuff, the tests will determine what that might be. She's losing blood somewhere as her count as gone from 12 at the doc's a few weeks ago to 10 when she was in the ER yesterday to 8 a little while ago.

But she is feeling better this morning, after fierce antibiotics given I.V. 

So, our anniversary didn't turn out exactly like we'd planned. Most of the day Husband was in the E.R. waiting room and I was in the E.R. with Mother.

We did get to eat out - if Wendy's gobbled down in the hospital counts.

When we got home though, we had flowers. Daughter had written in a card words sweet enough to make a grown man cry and had spent part of her meager money on a bouquet for us.

Older, younger, all the generations surround us.

Troubled or celebratory, they are the tapestry that makes our lives rich.

Thank God for what you have.

Another Goodbye

The older I get, the more goodbyes there seem to be. 

My elders, folks that still make me a child (okay, in my mind only), are slipping away.

The other day, someone who had been very close to me all through my childhood passed away. I knew she'd been quite ill for some months, diagnosed, I believe, with kidney cancer. She declined treatment from the very beginning, being as she was 94 when diagnosed and felt it foolish to make herself sick and suffer from a treatment that in no way would enhance her life and certainly not prolong it. 

Eventually, of course, she began the decline and died last week at the age of 96. 

She was a huge part of my childhood. She camped with us a lot, hunting and fishing with the best of them. She was a real outdoors person, and after she retired stayed in blue jeans and shirts unless it was Sunday.

She was the school truant officer back in the day. Today, to be more politically correct, I guess, they are called social workers. Think about it: you are laying outta school; you get caught. Who are you most concerned about visiting you, a truant officer or a social worker?  Pffffft.

Anyway, when I was very small she would buy me things if she saw I liked them. I still have a small plastic elf that sits on my mantel every Christmas and a five inch, cast iron, pot bellied stove she found for me after searching everywhere, because I'd fallen in love with the one she had at her house. 

She had funny stories about stuff I said, just like my parents did.

I called her "Meanie" and she called me "Meanie". The reason is now lost to time. 

When I quit school in the third grade (look it up, I blogged about it a long time ago), she was the truant officer and had to visit our home. 

I wasn't nervous, she visited our home a lot. It was a little strange because she was in her school clothes; a skirt, blouse, hose and loafers, instead of her weekend clothes, blue jeans. Plus, Mother and Daddy left the room for her to talk to me alone.

I have  no memory of what was said, or what she did. But I bet she felt just as helpless as all  the other adults I was driving crazy over this.

No one should be shocked when a 96 year old person dies.

Yet, I was, sorta. I mean, if someone has been around all your life and you are 61 years old, shouldn't they stay around the rest of the time? I know the logical answer.

I've felt rather sad for a few days.

I  haven't really seen her much in years - only if I ran into her somewhere - and not at all in the past two or three.

But I knew she was there.

And now, she's not.

Just Another Day at the Hill House

If you live on this side of the United States, you know it snowed.

We got a good three inches, if not four. Fat, fluffy snow that makes the yard looked quilted. Stuck to everything, so it is lovely. It didn't get above 26 degrees today, so we still have it with us. I think the wind chill factor in the morning will be ten degrees.

But they promise a better afternoon, highs in the forties.

Of course I nagged   encouraged Husband to build a fire in the 'real' fireplace. It's been so very nice as we have taken down all the Christmas decorations today.

Right now the house looks like someone ransacked it, but it will take less than half an hour to have it looking pre-Christmas again.

During all this, we had company. He forgot his pants and left them in the living room.

You'd think as cold as it is outside....

AND

We had another mouse!

Have we become a mouse motel and no one told us? The drama ended when all three cats surrounded the tiny thing, Frost hissing at it (!) and all of them going in for the kill.

Husband jumped in the middle, caught the trembling half inch long mouse in a paper towel and took it down the road, into the woods on the other side.

I am sure neighbors will thank us profusely.

What a day!

Guess I'll go clean up the kitchen now.

Better that than help with the rest of the Christmas stuff.

Plus, I gotta find a place to put his pants.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After waiting all day, it finally started snowing around 4:50 p.m. Big, fat, wet flakes, some stuck together as big as silver dollars. Within five minutes everything outside was white: trees, roof, cars and ground.

Beautiful stuff, snow.

Immediately our lights started flickering, one big brown out.

We all hollered, "NO! Don't do it." The lights stabilized and so far, so good (or I wouldn't be blogging, would I?)

I've watched it as long as I've been able, but now it's dark.

I wonder if we really will get eleven, eight, five, three inches. Heck, I was beginning to wonder if we were gonna get a flake.

Dog is fascinated, and Husband has gone back out, for the third time, with her. I think he needs to learn how to say no.

Daughter waited until the last minute to come home. I was getting antsy before she pulled up in the driveway.

Motherhood is hard.

Anyway, we are all home now, and safe. Except for husband, stomping around outside.

Wonder what the morning will look like?

Oh, the Weather Outside is...uh....

I don't know about ya'll, but I'm 'bout done wore out with this weather business.

You can get any prediction you want, if you look long enough.

This front that's coming may bring us up to 8 inches of snow - or more!

OR: Freezing rain and terrible winds!

OR: Rain (at 22 degrees, I didn't really get that part)

OR: A little ice, mostly sunny.

I ain't making this up.

But it is driving me crazy.

So I took a poll on facebook, and had a good time. Funny answers.
We made fun of the meteorologists, the weather and even the president.

I'm not sure how the president got involved, but right now I'm not sure of anything.

We are hunkered down, ready for anything, as long as our house stands and the generator runs.

I don't know about you, but I got my snowsuit, bathing suit and raincoat lined up, right at the front door.

I'll let ya know how it all turns out.

If I have electricity.

Which I doubt, unless we get a bunch of nothing.

GREAT!

Daughter is still a single gal, so I have no grandchildren to brag about. As far as I can tell, that is what grandchildren are for.

My nephew, however; (my first, practice child) has two children, a boy and a girl. I call them my greats, as they are. My great-nephew and great-niece. Plus, they are pretty great, period.

I thought this was rather clever, until I started thinking back.

The few aunts and uncles I had, for some reason, were addressed by their first names only. 

The folks I called aunt: Aint Mindy, Aint Minnie, Aint Hattie and so forth were really my grandparent's aunts (uncles, too, but not so many, as the women outlived the men).

So these ladies were oldern dirt. All of them were little old women with buns, glasses, thick cotton stockings, long cotton print dresses, black lace up shoes and canes. My great-aunts. (great-great, but go with me here, okay?)

I am now a great-aunt.

I froze in fear. I looked in the  mirror. No bun. No cane (yet.) No long cotton dresses. Glasses? check. And I'd kill for some thick cotton stockings about right now, it's very cold.

But...

You don't think I'm old do you? I mean as in great-aunt old.

Then I saw where a woman my age - we went to school together - had just become a great-grandmother. 

Granted, she married after eighth grade, I think. Musta started having younguns right away, and her children musta had kids young, and then their children must have started young.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Meanwhile, I thought I better blog today, as tomorrow I may be too old to even get to this new fangled machine, much less remember how to turn it on.

Who knows?

Goes back to the mirror to look one more time before it gets too dark to see.

Cat + Wings = Angel?

It all started when Daughter and I were browsing in a department store. She and I saw, at the same time, a figurine of a cat. It looked almost porcelain, but when picked up was pretty chunky. It was a white cat, it's face lifted up, as though feeling sun on its face. 

And it had wings.

We burst into tears.

You may ask why.

Well, that's what I'm here for, to tell the story.

For years we did not have a cat. I know that's hard to believe, but the reason was Sam. 

Sam was our Boxer and she hated cats. We purchased her when she was 18 months old, right after we moved into our house. We loved her, and I resigned myself to a catless life for a while.

Daughter came along, and all she knew were dogs. For by then, we had another Boxer, Buster.

Buster died when  Daughter was five. Sam died when Daughter was eight. 

The day after Sam died, one of the women I worked with called me and said, "I know you can't have cats, but do you know of anyone who might want one? I have this white cat..."

My mind froze. I could see the cat as if she'd shown me a picture. I knew that cat would look like my cat, Scooter, that I had owned many years ago. I had no doubt in my mind. I called Husband, he said yes, and the next day the cat was delivered to my office at closing. 

Her name was "White Sox". Why in the world someone would name a solid white cat that, I do not know. But I knew her real name: Angel.

She was smaller that  Scooter, by a lot. She never weighed more than ten pounds. But other than size, she looked very much like he did. We thought she was maybe half Maine Coon and maybe some Angora. She had long, silky white hair, and a presence about her that said royalty.

She'd been badly scarred by having to leave the only home she knew, an elderly woman dying of cancer. She'd been taken away and put in a garage with a tom cat, terrified.

Another family took her in, but they had a dog with puppies, and she cowered in the corner all the time.

It took her a while to cotton to us. 

Daughter was playing in her kiddie pool on the screened in porch when we brought the cat in. The cat was in a carrier, and Daughter at first thought we had brought home a rabbit.

Angel was truly a mesenger from God; a comfort for our grief over Sam's death.

She lived to be just over fourteen years old. Kidney failure, deafness, and seizures got her. But we loved her and she loved us.

So when we saw the angel cat statue, we were comforted again. Heartbroken, too.

Of course I purchased it. She sits up on top of the chifforobe, sweet face to the sky, a slight smile on her face.

Angel was a good cat; I miss her still.

Kefir This and Kefir That

Raise your hand if you like the taste of Kefir.

Now, log off. You have no reason to read this blog any further today.

I have a feeling no one left.

Why? Well, have you tasted Kefir?

It has the consistency of paint, it even smells like paint. It is lumpy and thick. 

It is alive, which squicks me out, as I mentioned in a previous blog.

I am mixing it with strawberry yogurt and graham crackers in an attempt to get it down every morning. That works pretty well if you like your yogurt tart.

At  night, I've started just chugging down a couple of ounces, then chasing it with cold water and a spoon full of yogurt.

I never knew I could be so brave.

And, it is  making me better. I am probably 90% better; looking forward to being well.

So, if you have tummy troubles of any kind, find someone who makes kefir at home. The grocery store kind has been pasteurized, and isn't very strong, and to top that off, it still tastes horrible. 

You remember Little Miss Muffet? She was eating kefir. Yep, it's curds and whey. I can't believe a spider frightened her if she was sitting on a tuffet (what the heck is a tuffet?) eating kefir. She shoulda just dumped the bowl on that big boy's head and kilt him dead.

Anyway, I think I'm gonna enter the tough  man contest. 

Can't be any worse than this.

Accidents Happen

Like brown hair.

My hair is brown. Oh, the agony.

My hairdresser was talking to her hairdresser about the white on each side of my head. My hair is not blonde there, it is white. What do you expect, I'm sixty-one years old.

Anyway, her hairdresser said to use a stronger tint; which she would supply, and that would cover up the white.

I reckon so.

My natural blonde is that lovely shade that they call dishwater or dirty blonde. She lightens it up by a shade, which gives me a bit of brightness around my poor, pale face.

Alas, no more. The stronger tint made my hair brown.

Not natural brown, where there are blonde, or red highlights. Just mud puddle brown. They ain't nary a white hair in sight, neither.

I will say I've washed it eleven billion times, because I read that dye fades after each wash. And now I can see a little bit of lighter hair on the tips on top, which helps some.

A lighter shade has been ordered to try to get me back to me, but who knows? I may be platinum next time you see me.

I hear there are a lot of lovely winter hats in the department stores now.

Meanwhile, I'll wear a name tag so I recognize myself in the mirror.

Mama's Boy

I'm reading a book written by an obvious Southern Mama's boy.

The south is famous for mama's boys, and it can be very good or very, very bad.

I have heard famous southerner's brag about being a mama's boy. Country music singers, I think, have to be a mama's boy.

I've always heard: look at the way the boy treats his mama and you'll see how he is going to treat you.

But that's not always true. Some mama's coddle and spoil and rule over so severely that the boy is going to expect you to treat him like his mama did.  They can't seem to grow up and move away from the mama/son relationship into a wife/husband relationship.

Husband is a mama's boy, and it is a good thing. He would call her and start the conversation thusly: "Mama, Baby."

She would giggle, she loved it.

His baby sister did not giggle. When she was around to hear it, she would of course, defend her position.

It did no good.

When Husband was working in his home town, he originally had an apartment. But he said he found himself going from work to his mama's, eating supper, visiting, and going to his apartment ten minutes away to sleep, and then repeat the same the next day.

He finally gave up, moved back home and paid his parents rent. That way, (wait for it) he got breakfast in bed every morning. And by breakfast I mean biscuits, eggs, gravy, bacon, and fresh coffee.

No lie.

The few times we spent the night with them after we married, I was treated the same way. It's rather humbling.

But with Husband, he transferred all that to taking care of me. I got coffee in bed every morning as he gently woke me up to start the day. I am not an easy riser, not a morning person and he knows that. But the sweet part of this is, neither is he.

The closest to breakfast in bed I ever got to from him was a banana sandwich on Saturday mornings. But,hey, you take what you get.

Being a mama's boy taught him well.

Unfortunately, some mama's boys are unhealthy in their attachment and it causes all sorts of disturbing qualities. ("Psycho" anyone?")

This writer that I speak of seems to worship his mama, to the point that he can't stay married. No woman can live up to her. He may gently poke fun at her, but I bet you wouldn't fare well if you did it.

I was a therapist for many years, and it is amazing how many problems stem from our relationship with our mothers. Men seem to have more damage in some ways than women, although I've seen some pretty grim outcomes from the females, too.

I know no parent is perfect, Lord knows I sure ain't. But I have prayed nearly every step of the way, and hopefully Daughter isn't too damaged by all  my foolishness.

I never had a son, so I don't know how I would have done there.

But I sure see the difference between how mothers treat their sons versus how they treat their daughters. I see it in my mother as well as hear my friends speak it.

Mother's (seem to) never see their boys as men, and they always see their daughters as the responsible ones who will take care of them because obviously, the boys just can't do it.

So, Mamas, I only have one word of advice after all these pig trails I've been running.

Don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

Eh, it's as good advice as any, I reckon.

Stuff

Here we are in a new year. Happy New Year.

Winter has finally arrived, calendars are purchased, I want a fire in the fireplace.

Last night Husband and I were coming home and a coyote jumped off the bank in front of us. We missed him (or he missed us) by this much. He was gone into the bush, obviously after something. he was running full tilt, almost on the ground. If he ever even saw the car, he didn't acknowledge it. 

Boy, howdy. It was scary, but only after the fact.

We finally have our Christmas decorations up.  HA!

I ain't takin' 'em down for a few weeks. I'll get itchy and suddenly want shed of it all, but not yet.

I'm about to embark on drinking kefir. Pray for me. If you don't know what this stuff is, let's just say it's alive and supposed to balance all your bacteria and stuff in your gut. I've tried everything else for a little over two weeks, and nothing has cured me.

But I'm tied of being chained to the outhouse like a goose on cod liver oil, if you pardon the graphics. 

It's just gonna take a little getting used to eating something while it is still alive. I'm used to eatin' my food dead.

An x-ray has shown something else wrong with my back. But I can't deal with that till I fix my innards elsewhere.

I know there are  many people praying for me, which I appreciate more than anyone ever knows. May I take this moment to say thanks.

I sold thirty-four books in December, which is a lot considering I don't have a new book out. 

I am working on a book. Mostly at this point making notes because my studio doesn't have a bathroom.

I guess this bathroom stuff is "TMI", but heck, this is just between us, right?

And I have no vanity anymore. I guess the older one gets, the less one worries about what everyone else might think.

If I get any worse, Husband won't let me out of the house.

Or blog.

Oh, and speaking of that (sorta okay, not really),  I'm sure  you've already seen the headlines from last week where the woman in Wal-mart was riding around in one of their carts eating sushi, chicken and drinking wine. They finally had her arrested. I don't know if it was because she was drinking red wine instead of white with the chicken or what. 

I promise I won't do that, anyway. I ain't eatin' sushi, I am a teetotaler, and the bathrooms are too far away in Wal-Mart to be joy riding in a cart.

Plus, I really do want to keep blogging, you know.

I'd  miss you guys if I was in jail.

Christmas Day

Another Christmas has come and gone.

This one was a hot, wet mess as far as the weather was concerned.

I don't remember the weather ever being this way on Christmas, but maybe it has been and my memory just blocked it out.

We had lots of good food at Mother's, and presents to one another before then. Santa was good.

The sweetest thing was when my niece, Jesse sent a text to my other niece, Mandy, before everyone arrived at Mother's. 

Mandy's four year old son picked up her phone. He is eager now to read every chance he gets, as he's learned a few words. Seeing the text was from Jesse, he handed the phone to his mama and said, "Jesus just texted you."

I guess he isn't reading quite as well as he thinks he is.

Hope all ya'll had  wonderful Christmas, counting your blessings and thanking your God for the day.

Angels We Have Heard on High and They are Singing Bass and Tenor

This has been bugging me for years.

Why, oh why, have we feminized angels? The Bible speaks of angels, Gabriel and Michael. They are warriors, not nannies.

Raphael (God Heals),  is an angel mentioned and accepted by Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans, coming from a part of the Bible that is no longer included in the standard Bible we use at church, being Baptists.

All three of these are male spirits.

Interestingly, anything I've ever read about people seeing angels, usually near their death, they are always very large - bigger than male humans - usually blond, for some reason, and male.

So why can't I find a tree topper that is male?

And Cherubims? They (and Seraphim) aren't cute little chunky babies with wings. They are fierce animals that have many jobs; one being flying around the throne of God singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy!"

I've complained about this for years. In fact, one of the people with whom I used to work found a male Cherubim tree ornament (he had all his plumbing) and dared me to hang it on my tree, which I do every year. But he still looks like a baby, not a fierce animal with a man's face, a lion's face, an eagle's face, etc. I ain't scared of him a'tall.

I think we've feminized them for several reasons. Men are afraid of emotions, and for some reason, the word 'angel' stirs up a sweet, feminine emotional being in our heads. These messengers from God are anything but.

Don't get me wrong, women have very strong and important places in the church today, as they always have. But men are failing to do their part, fill their place, a lot. So, church is becoming more "feminine", too.

It would be just as wrong, just as bad, just as skewed, if women starting dropping out of church as men have done.

Lopsided either way ain't too pretty.

I know that God made male and female in His image. I'm as much like him as Husband.

But God has made himself a father figure because the male by nature wants to protect, provide and lift heavy stuff.

They're just made that way. That's a good thing.

Woman are different, not less, not more.
I don't want to be a man.

So, there.

At any rate, if you can find me a nice, masculine angel to decorate with next Christmas, let me know.

I'll go all girlie on you with thanks.