Have you ever found yourself laughing in a totally inappropriate setting for laughter to occur? Like loud laughter with potential snorting? And nothing you try can stop your laughter. With tears streaming. You might manage to stop but then right away have a trigger that starts it up all over again. The struggle is real. Continue reading “Unfortunate LOL. And 911 Humor.”
Category Family stories
You might laugh, you might cry.
A Father’s love
Once upon a time in the land of my childhood, there was an alley running between our property and the neighbor’s property. You don’t see too many alleys anymore, especially in big cities, but in our small town they were a significant part of life. Kids could congregate there, learn to ride bikes without traffic, play with their friends. And trash was collected in large steel drums generally placed near the alleyway. Periodically you could light a match and revel in the pleasure of watching your trash burn.
Not gonna lie, I miss burning the trash. Continue reading “A Father’s love”
The fluff of stuff. And the power of a photograph.
A few months ago I was in my mom-in-law’s house with her. My eye caught sight of a vase I’d not seen before and I said, “Wow, that is gorgeous. I love it!”. To which she immediately and without hesitation emphatically said, “Take it. It’s yours. I do not need all this stuff.” And she waved her hands around the room.
So, I took it home. Continue reading “The fluff of stuff. And the power of a photograph.”
The worst everything.
Thanksgiving. Time to make the list. The “what I’m thankful for” list.
You know the drill. Most lists have the same items on them year after year no matter who is writing the list. “My family. My friends. Food. Shelter…”
Gratitude is a good habit to practice. One time several years ago I sat down and quickly wrote 100 things I was thankful for. All the wonderful good things in my life I could think of. It was good medicine for my attitude and kept me happy for, oh, maybe 10-20 hours. Continue reading “The worst everything.”
Young. And Old. And Future.
Sixty three years ago on this day, my 15 year old sister loaded up my pregnant mom and my two other sisters in our old car and drove to the hospital 25 miles from home. My sister’s skills included driving a tractor and she could drive a car, too. Dad was working, driving a road maintainer for the county. Probably far out in the country on a dirt road and there weren’t cell phones in that day. He was probably clueless that the whole hospital thing was happening. I don’t think I was quite due to be born yet. The first and last time I was early for anything. Continue reading “Young. And Old. And Future.”
Recreational Vehicle? Depends on your definition of "recreation".
As I’ve mentioned countless times, we are campers. Outdoorsy folks. With limits, of course. You will never see us riding a mountain bike up a 20% grade through thick forest and jumping the bikes over large boulders. Or rappelling up a vertical slab of rock above a river of whitewater below. We like to walk around on easy paths and occasionally flex our muscles in order to hoist up our smart phones and take a picture of some beautiful scene. Yeah, that’s our style of “outdoorsy”. Continue reading “Recreational Vehicle? Depends on your definition of "recreation".”
Home
How many different houses did you live in as a child? I lived in one. Only one. For all 18 years of my childhood. That’s probably pretty rare for the average person.
 |
| this picture was drawn by a friend of mine from a photograph. |
To Hear Him Sing
Music. It’s really everywhere around us. Radio. You tube. Movies aren’t movies unless there is a soundtrack. TV advertisements couldn’t exist without a catchy tune. Elevators, subway stations, restaurants….. we are surrounded with song. Continue reading “To Hear Him Sing”
A Flush to Remember.
Tuttle Creek Reservoir, circa 1964. Brand new beautiful lake. Summertime. Most of our family loved to fish. The few who didn’t (MOM!!) at least loved to be outdoors. My sister had a super nice red ski boat that she had recently purchased.
So it just seemed natural that the whole bunch of our family should take a fishing trip to beautiful Tuttle Creek lake near Manhattan. We could fish, we could ski, we could just have a grand time.
Passing time and snapping fingers
Her name was Elnora Christina Borgen Reed… Nora was her common name. I didn’t know her, but she knew me. For the first six months of my life I believe she may have held me, maybe sang to me, definitely prayed for me. They were the last six months of her life. Continue reading “Passing time and snapping fingers”
The flip side of beautiful.
Are you familiar at all with 45 RPM records? Side A generally held the recording of a popular hit song that received a lot of radio air time. Side B was typically lesser known, less popular, sometimes never-played music.
Cici’s no more. Adventures in grandparenting chapter 1
If you enter the doors of Cici’s Pizza in Topeka, Kansas there may well be a “Wanted” type poster with mugshots of myself and my two oldest grandchildren hanging at the entryway. Probably with some sort of large orange bio-hazard symbol on the poster somewhere near our pictures. I can’t verify the existence of such a poster, but considering the events of my only trip to this restaurant back in probably 2010 it stands to reason that there should be one.
The grandson was around 4 years old and the granddaughter was 2 and a half years old if memory serves me. I decided to treat them to a wonderful meal at Cici’s followed by a trip to the park.
You can’t go wrong with pizza when it comes to my grandkids.
Or can you?
We arrived at the noon hour rush and the place was packed with people. After finally making it through the buffet line with plates loaded with pizza of the pepperoni and cheese variety we found one place to sit in a very crowded area near the back of the restaurant.
I managed to get the table all set up with plates and drinks and a couple napkins. The kids sat down right away and took their first few bites of pizza.
At this point somehow little T girl wiggled around in her chair enough to cause the chair to fall over backwards with her in it. Her head hit the tiled concrete floor with a bit of a thud which of course immediately elicited loud screaming from her and terrified horror from the other folks dining nearby. VERY nearby.
The place was packed and we were the center of attention. Oh happy day.
I picked her up and put her on my lap right away and examined her head for bumps or bleeding of which there was none. Her eyes looked fine and she was far from lethargic. And she continued to scream at incredibly high decibel levels.
Folks all around the entire restaurant ceased eating, staring at us to see if T was okay. I was sure she was but I held her close and kissed her little cheeks and wiped her tears. And whispered gently in her ear. To the onlooker it probably appeared that I was whispering stuff like “poor baby girl”. And yes, those were my initial words of comfort. Followed quickly by the quiet but firm plea: “please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up, please don’t throw up”. T was famous for vomiting every single time she had a crying spell, with or without injury.
Her crying subsided a bit and she got off my lap for me to help her back into her chair. And as she stood there by the table waiting for me to get her chair, suddenly, of course, she hurled her tummy contents all over the table. All. Over. The. Table. Dripping onto the floor.
At this point big brother N, seeing the large pool of nastiness on the floor, jumped up to stand on his chair and in the process of doing so he tipped over his large glass of soda onto the already flooded table and floor below. Then from his lofty position standing on his chair he proceeded to scream at his sister “T why did you do that, now you’re going to stink. I’m not sitting in the back seat with you on the way home.” And I firmly instructed him to be quiet and sit down right now.
Do I need to tell you that we were still the center of attention there at Cici’s?
A man at a nearby table felt sympathy for us and brought me over a couple napkins to help clean up the mess. It was a generous and kind gesture, but, yeah, I needed so much more.
Somehow the restaurant employees hadn’t really noticed the debacle that was occurring in our neck of the woods. A nearby customer watched the kids for me while I made my way quickly to locate the store manager and told him we’d made an epic mess and asked if he could get me a mop so I could clean it up. He was very kind and told me they were professionals at handling messes of this nature and he right away headed in our direction.
We stood nearby as he efficiently cleaned up the mess. By that time T was feeling much better and N had returned to his normal delightful self. Remarkably none of the onslaught of fluids had soiled any of our clothing. Or hair. Or shoes. So, yeah, there’s the silver lining in this little fiasco. No wardrobe changes required.
What did we do next? Well. Uh…we were still hungry. So we went back through the pizza line. We sat down at our same table which had been all cleaned and sanitized. We made it through our meal without further incident. And then, as happily as we’d entered the building, we walked on back out and went to the park.
Pretty sure management was quite relieved to see us leave the premises. Pretty sure I’ll never go back. Even though we probably no longer resemble the images on the potential “Wanted” poster from that day in 2010…. It’s just a risk I’m not willing to take.
Unfinished business. Call NOW.
If you live in our part of Kansas and you’ve ever watched anything on TV there is 100% chance that when you hear the phrase “call NOW” you think of one person. Jerry O’Neal. Continental Siding company. You may not remember his company name but you cannot forget, no matter how hard you try, the sound of his voice saying “call NOW“. Continue reading “Unfinished business. Call NOW.”
Uncommon sanctuaries
Some children grow up spending most of their leisure time with siblings or cousins or next door neighbor kids.
I did not. No siblings even close to my age made me a bit of an only child. Ditto cousins. I had a couple very good friends, but play time wasn’t all that frequent.
My dad was my fishing buddy and my favorite person to spend leisure time with. But of course time with him was limited because he had that pesky 40+ hour/week job thing going on.
My mom also had that pesky full time employment scene happening from the time I was eight years old.
Blessed by simplicity.
Someone really special will be celebrating her 80th birthday this month.
She was born January 27 in 1938, my parents’ first baby. Sharon Kay.
Nothing about this baby girl’s life would be as dreamed by her mommy and daddy. Starting with the day of her birth. So many questions and concerns. So many fears for my mom and dad. Continue reading “Blessed by simplicity.”
Do you know? Have you heard?
One of my favorite rooms in our home is an unfinished room in our basement that contains the furnace and hot water heater. Ductwork is visible through the unfinished walls and ceiling. A single lightbulb is affixed to a ceiling joist. It’s also our “office” of sorts. A real cozy place with random pieces of carpet on the cement floor and our grandkids’ artwork taped up here and there. My husband’s desk and our printer are down there as well as file cabinets full of all manner of stuff that probably has very little significance. And there are several shelves of books, MANY MANY BOOKS, that we’ve collected over the years. Continue reading “Do you know? Have you heard?”
Time well spent
This is what’s left of a gift from my dad. He bought me the entire set of encyclopedia books, but this is the only thing I kept after Google came into being. Partly because I’m a word geek, but mainly because of the inside note you see here with his handwriting. 1968. These items will never be found in a landfill. Treasures. Continue reading “Time well spent”
I just have to wonder about that day.
Consider this scenario for me please: A woman in her late thirties finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy. The details surrounding her situation are sketchy. She does not choose to keep this baby for reasons that are only hers to know. And not ours to judge. The known facts are that is she is in this country illegally, has no money, no health insurance, an unplanned womb occupant, and has had no prenatal care. Not an easy situation for anyone to be in.
At twenty-four to twenty-five weeks gestation the baby is delivered by emergency c-section. The third trimester begins in week 28. This baby…. aborted fetus…. you get the picture. Eyes fused shut, skin so delicate that he can’t be touched by human hands without harming him, APGAR score is 2 (TWO) and by 5 minutes is all the way up to 4 (FOUR). If you are a little vague on the meaning of APGAR scores, google it. This baby was in deep deep trouble. Weight was 1 pound and 10 ounces and he was about a foot long.
Imagine you are in that surgical suite looking at this fragile tiny piece of humanity who for all practical purposes is about to leave this world without immediate medical intervention and even then…..?? There is no insurance, there is no money to pay for heroic medical intervention or even a baby aspirin.
But decisions were made and this baby was quickly transported 150 miles by medical helicopter to a NICU. Whisked away from a womb that couldn’t keep him, struggling to survive, needing a miracle in the worst way….. even though he had no one with him at the time who called him their own. No one. Alone. I have to wonder if the doctors and emergency personnel on board that helicopter had at least a fleeting thought that this trip was not going to end well, if the phrase “waste of time” entered their minds, if the fact that the cost of saving this life was going to be astronomical and there was no one to pay for it except the taxpayer dollar. I hope not, but I can’t help but wonder what went through their minds on that late-night trip.
Cookie-induced nostalgia. What? Yes.
So as you may or may not know, we have a new family member. Another “J” for the J, J, and J family. J # 4. I’d call him Tiny J but seriously, he weighed 10 lbs 13 oz. I’ll just call him adorable, sweet, precious. It’s safe to say I’m pretty much saturated in grandbaby bliss at this moment. It’s real. It’s ethereal. It’s indescribable. Continue reading “Cookie-induced nostalgia. What? Yes.”
Nurturing. And waiting rooms, part 2
So it all started here. 1976. My first baby, tiny little blue eyed girl. Stole my heart and introduced me to a new experience: Nurturing. Prior to this moment, as the baby of my family, my nurturing experiences were limited to furry kittens. AKA Smelly Cats. This baby girl taught me a lot about being a mommy and loving someone more intensely than I’d ever loved anyone before.
Simply B 