Happy Holidays - Summer Style!

Maybe some of you thought that I had dropped off the Earth. I have been to North Carolina during July to visit my family. I had such a great time! Usually I come back ready to be back. This time was different. I had so much fun, first off traveling down there with my daughter -Kora, her husband - Jonathan, my granddaughter - Korinne and Jon's mother - Nancy. We stayed together for the week in my sister's house (which once belonged to my parents). I loved it! At the end of the first week, they came home and I spent the rest of the time visiting my sisters and brothers. I'm homesick. When I hear my sisters talking about getting together to go to the pool, I am soooooooo jealous!

I guess that you noticed the holidays theme with the opening photo. Santa, shopper girl, a snowman bell and a little touch of glitter stars. Well, my friend Ruth and I were talking several months ago about how we can't get jazzed up to make Christmas crafts until after Thanksgiving. After that crucial time we both go at gift making like crazy. So I told her that on July 25, I am officially starting my holidays. I am playing carols and looking at Christmas stuff - ornaments, glitter, tinsel, etc. Which brings me to bears. For some reason, I am wanting to make some teddy bears but with a paper mache bear head. Here's a picture of where I'm at in the process.

And now for another North Carolina moment. I was walking up on the hill with my sister to check her water line for lizards. She has a spring and a spring box but sometimes lizards get in the tubing and really stop things up. As we were walking back down the hill, I noticed what a great garden my brother has out this year. You should see his cabbages - my favorite vegetable!Anyone who knows me knows how I love gardens. So I'm including a garden view from the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains - my home away from home.

A Little About Hope

I try to avoid the political on my blog because I am not overtly political. Yet, I can tell you this about myself.... I am a dreamer! I have a vision for what I think the world should be. What brought this up? Well, last week I was driving to work and some guy on the radio started talking about the Israel -Palestinian conflicts. And he started the "If this -then that" dialogue. Each time he gave an "If this -then that" scenario, the "then that" got worse. I found myself getting more and more stressed by the guy so I reached over, turned off the radio and took a deep breath. Who needs to listen to a joy kill?

Trouble is they seem to be everywhere. I hear people freaking out over gas prices, the environment, the war, the other war, pedophiles, celebrities, the mortgage crisis and the economy. And these are just a drop in the bucket. But I will tell you something I learned in grade school. If you go in to take a test and you're stressing over failing the test there is a good chance you will fail it. We need someone to start talking possibilities to us. For goodness sake, this country has landed a man on the moon, several times. I feel like we need to shut off all this panic talk and start getting solutions. Hope is a powerful thing but it often has a small voice and can be drowned out by "If this -then that." Yet hope can also be tenacious and will grab on and keep coming back even in the toughest time. Have you ever heard of the concept that the breeze from a butterflies wings is the action that ultimately makes up the power of a tornado or hurricane? So I am mentioning hope here in this little blog on the internet. Maybe someone else will mention it too and on and on to the point that it is the main thing we call for in this nation. Give us hope and then let's get to the solutions!

AFTER

Hello again! I have finished....for now, on my landscaping in the hosta bed. It did not take but a couple of days and only a few hours on those days. Yet it feels like forever since I blogged anything. My son... Dr. L.A. said I should post more often and that is going to be my goal. However, next week and the week after that, I will be in North Carolina visiting my family. So I should have gobs of stuff to tell you after that. As for the AFTER photo, I need more mulch but I am waiting to see where the poison ivy is actually coming up so that I can get to the root of it.

BEFORE

Recently, I was listening to a book on tape by Dr. Phil McGraw....Life Strategies. He spent most of the tape on who you are and why you are the way you are. Blah, blah, blah. I suppose that if I were looking for a quick psychological encapsulation of my essence this would have been important. And maybe it is important but for the life of me, I can't remember a thing from that part of the tape. However, during the last 20 minutes or so of the tape the good doctor began talking about goal setting. This was the meat of the book! He made the point that in goal setting it is important to be specific. Thus this lovely picture of an overgrown hosta bed. I have a lot of landscaping on about a dozen garden beds around our home. To some this goal would seem overwhelming. Yet by being specific and concentrating on one task at a time the over all goal can be accomplished. So I took a picture of this one bed with it's 13 hostas and I'm concentrating on it. I'll post the AFTER by the end of next week.

MY LITTLE WREN!

Did I recently mention that I just became a grandmother? On March 11, 2008 my daughter gave birth to Korinne Ray and she is wonderful and more wonderful! I do believe that she has the power of magnitisim. I pick her up and even though I need to leave, I can't put her down. Last night I drew this little picture of her as I probably won't be posting any of her photographs. I get nervous when it comes to her.

Mother's Day 08 part 2

When I was a young girl, I never imagined myself as a mother. When my sisters and my cousins and I played house, I was always the Dad. I was sort of bookish / mad scientist / save the world girl (at least in my own head). My grandmother once told us kids about this thing she did as a young girl where she and her sister sat in a dark closet and lit a candle and looked into a jar of water in front of them with the candle behind them to see the man they would marry and lo and behold she saw my grandfather years before he showed up to be her husband. A miracle of sorts. Well, when I was a girl I didn't have any idea about the miracle that was coming my way and I felt like it was useless to climb into a closet to check what was coming. I didn't think anything was coming.

Then I met Phil. He had the bluest eyes and that was the first thing that I noticed about him. The eyes were followed by a wonderful smile. If ever there was love at first sight then it was love at first sight. He has been my friend and love ever since that day over 35 years ago.

And if that wasn't enough of the miraculous, after we got married, we started having children.

Well, God must really like me because he sent me 4 of his best creations. Good ones everyone. I know that on Mother's Day we're suppose to kiss the feet of the women who brought us through and if my Mom was here, I'd gladly do that, but I take this opportunity to mention my wonderul children. You make me what I am today, a better person for having known you.

Mother's Day 08 part 1

It is Mother's day and I am thinking of Mama. She died in August of 1989 and I miss her. So I decided that I would just write about her. She was a good mother. She made me feel like I was her very favorite child out of 9 children. And I'm pretty sure my 8 siblings felt they were each her favorites. Mama had dark hair and eyes and I have dark hair and eyes. My brothers and sisters are various shades of blond, and all but a couple have china blue eyes. This made me feel like I was more like Mama's people. Mama was steady and calm. She had insight that often ran up against my Dad's stoic, tow the line attitude. She knew when to slacken the line and that is not always an easy judgement for a parent especially when she knew she'd have heck to pay. And I use heck there deliberately because Dad wasn't an oger, he adored Mama. Dad just thought he was "the Man!" and everyone else got to live in his world. So when Mom made a different call, Dad saw it as a coup on the kingdom.

Anyway, I am thinking of Mom today. She made the best macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and green beans in the whole world. Her sense of humor endeared her to everyone who knew her. She was brave too. I'll give you an example. She use to work on the third floor at Smokey Mountain Hoisery Mill in Marion, North Carolina. She would put a card of socks in a plastic bag and then stick the open end of the bag under a searing hot, sealing machine which sealed the open bag shut. One day, Mama accidentially got her hand caught in the bag sealer. She couldn't get the machine to open and neither could anyone else. The hot metal seared into the four fingers of her hand like a branding iron. The women around her started screaming. Several came close to fainting. My mom sitting there with her hand in the hot mouth of this machine, had the presence of mind to look about her work area. She spotted a screw driver sitting near by and with her free hand grabbed that tool and shoved it into the sealing machine. She pryed her hand free of that contraption to the relief of the entire 3rd floor. She had to have painful skin graphs but I never heard her complain. To Mama, these kinds of happenings were just part of the experience called life. She once told me, in speaking of a tough time in my marriage, that I'll have tough times and I'll have good times and the hope is that the good times outweigh the bad times. I think this was her outlook on life. She looked for the good in people and in her experiences and I don't think she left this world with many regrets. I sure do miss her.

Baby in a box 2

I was on my way to work one day last week and I saw the sign... "Yard Sale "... and, well, I stopped. I really didn't have that much time so I gave the sale a quick scan. I picked up a little what-not and headed for the money taker. And then I saw her sitting across the covered tent. A baby doll all alone in a box. She sat by herself as if the seller was not sure that this doll was part of the sale. So I asked "How much for the doll?" The seller thought a while and said "$1.00" and I started scrambling for the loose change in my pockets and my car. A dollar for a doll who obviously has a ton of history coming with her. The seller said that she has had this doll for almost 50 years. Fifty years! Can you imagine? This doll has that woman's childhood written all over her so it amazed me that she could let her go. Yet, the good thing is, she is probably a doll that I had as a child as well. None of my childhood dolls survived the journey so I am laying claims. This baby is my baby and one day she will be my new grand daughter's baby. She can tell everyone how this was her grandmother's doll from way back in the dinosaur age. And that is all she will need to know. And when I found this doll, I thought that I would try to clean her up and make her a pretty dress but nah, I've got a life and I love the history that covers this sweet doll. How many times have you seen those guys on Antiques Roadshow point out that if the lovely antique item had it's original patina it would be worth ten times what it does now that the owner has restored it to like new condition? So my baby can just lay on top of that little pink jump suit and pile of tissue paper in her Hush Puppy shoe box and feel the love. And if one day my darling, grand daughter wants to take my baby doll out and drag her around the room, that's fine too....more history added.