The Eve of Destruction

Another one that is just as relevant today as when it came out during the Vietnam war. This is Barry McGuire who popularized the song written by P. F. Sloan and recorded in 1965.

I wanted to add the lyrics to this song but it is protected by copywrite and I do not use any material that isn’t my own and is not in the public domain. If you want to see the lyrics, go to a search engine and ask for them. You will find several places, some less strict than others, but again, I don’t knowingly intrude on copywrites unless I have permission from the person holding it.

Sunday Musings

I seem to muse a lot lately. I’ve caught myself talking out loud to myself lately too. I do have an answer for that — sometimes I need advice from an expert, but then I remember the definition for expert. EX, former, SPURT, a drop of water under pressure or a drip, so an expert in this case is a former drip under pressure.

At this age there is a lot of pressure too. Behind the eyes a pressure headache, in the left shoulder severe pain, nothing in my feet but that’s probably because it’s been a few years since I could feel them, pressure on my one remaining half of a brain cell adding up to more headaches. In fact, name all of the different headaches known and right now I think I have all of them.

Okay so back to my musings. Not sure why this memory came up, but probably due to the time change. My kids were at the beginning and end of the bus route for school so mornings they had to be waiting at 5 a.m. It was the country and there were a lot of miles to cover. That was bad enough when we were on standard time but daylight time? They rode to school and waited for it to open in the dark, then rode home in the dark as well.

My older son created a mother’s worst nightmare one afternoon. I met the school bus so I could get a little bit of exercise and watched the kids get off. The neighbors daughter, Gina, Mike and — and– now why wasn’t that kid getting off the bus. The driver got out and told me he wasn’t there when she was loading the kids, she had waited but finally someone told her he had gone home with a boy in his class, so she went on. Okay, we ran home that day and I got the car keys and broke all speed limits getting to the school and from there to the home of the boy Don had decided to spend the afternoon with. His mom came out and told me she had sent him back to the school to wait for the bus. He wasn’t at school when we got back there, no one was there except one of the staff who remembered him getting on another bus with his cousin, totally different route! So we broke another speed record getting over to that farm, arriving in time to see him getting off the bus with a huge smile on his face. I hate to say it but the smile didn’t stay long. First I hugged him and then kinda asked in a less than loving voice what he thought he was doing! By the time we got back home though I was over the panic and just wanted to put it all behind me.

In those days I baked a lot of cookies. I got a recipe book from the library and decided I would try every cookie recipe in that book. And every day I would make at least two kinds of cookie, a tried and true one and a new one, this way discovering a lot of delicious cookies I ordinarilly wouldn’t bake. And every day each kid took a huge bag of cookies to school for sharing with the rest of the class, as well as a bag for the teacher. What else could I do? Some recipes made 6 dozen cookies and I had to clear them out so I could try a new recipe.

For some reason I started thinking about dumplings this afternoon. Not sure why, but there it was in my head. My grandmother taught me how to make her dumplings when I was barely able to reach the stove top and I became the official dumpling maker in the family. With 4 brothers all clamoring to be the official taste tester it sometimes was difficult to have enough to put on the table since they all said they had to taste each batch. Yep, I said batch. I know most people cut them and dump them all into a pot of boiling broth and stir them until they are considered done. The result looks and tastes more like boiled dough to me. Our way was to put only a few in the broth at a time, leave alone for a couple of minutes and then carefully turn to cook the other side, resulting in a puff of what looked more like a biscuit inside, a bit thinner than a biscuit and tasting like the broth, whether chicken, turkey, beef or vegetable. And now I really, really want some dumplings! Our family kind though, thank you.

I seem to spend a lot of time remembering those days on the farm. I loved it then and sure miss them now. But things have changed out there too. The boys tell me the roof fell in on the old house we lived in and it’s not there any more. I think those were some of the best and worst years of my life, raising children, raising a garden, canning and freezing everything I could pick out of that garden. Sweet corn was frozen, at least what remained after the cows got out in it every year, usually during the night before I planned to pick it. They were watching for it to get just the best kind of ripe, and sometimes just wouldn’t budge when I would try to chase them out of my corn patch. Fortunately we always planted enough to feed an army so there was always enough to go around. It was just the principle of the thing.

Now I’m feeling nostalgic as well as hungry for dumplings. A lot of stuff was still in that old house. Old LP records, books I didn’t have space to take with me when I left the farm. A closet full of canned fruit and vegetables, all on shelves Edd built for me, but turned around the wrong way for ease of use. Since the suit I made for him one year had the buttons on the wrong side I guess I can’t complain about the shelves. I wonder if they are still there in the rubble. The house has been empty since shortly after I left there in 1995 because his second wife refused to live in a broken down house that couldn’t be heated in the winter or cooled in the summer. But I loved it there. And an interesting aside about that house. Wendell Ford grew up in it, before Edd and his brother bought that as their first farm. Ford was once a Senator from Kentucky, probably the last good one we had.

One Tin Soldier

Hopefully this will work. This is a song from 1969 that I fell in love with back then and never stopped loving. I think it is worth listening to and watching, with a message that holds truer today then even back then. A story about peace and greed. I hope it actually works and you can listen and really hear the story behind the words and music.

Totally Frustrated

How is it possible that something that worked like a charm yesterday doesn’t work at all today? After trying for months to get my Brother printer to work I finally invested in an HP printer. It came in, I set it up and enjoyed printing off a lot of information, but then the building WiFi went down cutting that off.

So, this afternoon I had a signal again, opened the laptop and the printer, made sure both were on the same network and tried to continue the printing. Now the printer is in error state according to the laptop but working properly according to the printer. AAAaarrrrggghhhh! How on planet Earth is this continuing to happen? At least I can still send this one back, but what do I try next? I WANT TO PRINT OUT MY INFORMATION. Consider that last line my shouting at the world of electronics even though I know it is a futile attempt.

There have been a few other frustrations lately. Well, not as serious as losing the WiFi last night and again temporarily this afternoon. How on earth did I get so hung up on the Internet? Probably has a lot to do with all of my books being on my Kindle and unavailable wihout the Internet. Especially when in the middle of an Agatha Christie story. And Miss Marple at that!

Fortunately I do have other interests, like quilting. So when I was almost finished with the latest quilt, I pulled a bottle of OJ out of the fridge and shook it up because of settlement, began opening it when it began to fizz out all over the place, including the new quilt. Huge Sigh! Now how does orange juice that is still supposedly new manage to ferment in the refrigerator? Use by date was still a month away, bottle previously unopened, but fizzy OJ anyway. I give up on that one. Frankly I didn’t know orange juice WOULD ferment.

Looking inward now to find something good about today. It was the candy sale day and for $3 I got 30 mini Hershey Bars, Heath bars and 3 Musketeers bars. And I was able to pay for them by unloading a bag of change that had been weighing me down. The ladies who were selling the candy helped me a lot by sorting out all of the small change leaving only the quarters for the most part behind. That was good. And my bag doesn’t weigh a ton now.

Next week I will begin Physical and Occupationel Therapy once again. That usually does a lot of good as far as my efforts to stay erect while attempting to walk are concerned. The OT will be for that pesky left shoulder that I had the replacement surgery on. It hurts more now than it did before the surgery 11 years ago this month. Big sigh! I’ve heard it helps for some people but not for others. I guess I’m one of the others but at least I can still use my left hand. Just have a few problems washing my hair and getting into a coat or flannel shirt. If I forget and start in with my right arm I have to take it off and start over putting the left arm in first. And to think I started dressing myself as a very young child with few problems.

Speaking of dressing myself, when I was working for Hospice I got dressed in dim light one morning, no problem that I could think of except the pants felt wrong. Went on to work, Monday morning staff meeting, back to my desk and tried to put something in the pants pocket. Couldn’t find the pocket! Stood there for a few, looking down at the pants and finally noticed the sewn in pleat in the front was also missing. Yep, I had them on backward. That answered the question of why they felt so strange when I moved or sat down. My very helpful grandson told me later to look for the label the next time because that always goes in the back. Thanks E! You should have told me that earlier.

I think I’ll attempt a few photos. Hopefully no frustrations this time. I kinda remember how to do that.

But before I try, I found a quote on Pinterest that really hits home. “It’s not the forgetting that bothers me. It’s the remembering that I’ve forgotten to remember what I’m trying to remember that makes me crazy!”

And one more frustration before I look for some photos. I just tried to find some photos after checking my “comments” page but WP kept me bouncing back to a paid subscription page. Sorry WP. Been there done that a couple of times and was pirated both times. Not interested in trying it again, especially since you refused to help me get my pirated blogs sites back.

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Photos are another frustration, but the one with the sailboat is the latest quilt, almost finished, the one the OJ erupted on. The violets were taken here on the grounds — last spring. Lousy weather prevents looking outside lately. The doll dress is one of the Barbie dresses, and the last photo, which I’ve probably published already is the tomato vine I grew in the window while at the Roosevelt House. I had a fairly good harvest by the time it finished, grape tomatoes that were soooo good.

I THINK I’M HUNGRY

No, not so much for food. I’m hungry for some good news. So tired of all the political rhetoric in the news, in my email from people running for office from other states wanting me to send them some money. Why on earth would I want to send money to help elect a Republican from some other state? Or even a Democrat for that matter.

I’ve always heard that money is the root of all evil, and so far a few people are proving that. Take the former idiot President, for example. I read a few days ago that he has all the earmarks of the anti-christ. I had to agree with that, although there have been others in the past that made me wonder. None as bad as the present one though.

I’m hungry for the touch of a human hand, held out in friendship on days when the sun refuses to shine and my mood reflects that. I grew up in a large family but always seemed to be the one who was alone. Probably because of the asthema and sinus infections I had as a child, and in the case of the sinuses still have. It’s not fun having to stay inside while all the other kids are out playing and learning to interface with each other. I never had that experience and as a result was alway shy around other people, never knowing what to say and with a voice so soft that nobody heard me when I did think of something.

Don’t think my life has been terrible though. I found a life in books and music that I otherwise might never have known. The books almost got me in trouble one night though. I was taking a page from my mother’s book and reading with a flashlight under the covers. The book was “LIttle Women” and I was at the part where Beth was dying, and being me, crying right along with the March family. Mother thought I was having another sinus or asthma attack and came in with some medication while I was hiding the flashlight and the book under the pillow. Since the one thing she used that always made us feel better was a hot toddy I drank it and then settled down to finish the book after she left the room.

I probably would never have thought to do that if my mom hadn’t told us about having to read “Tale Of Two Cities” in high school. She was a boarder and the school library only had two copies of the book. As luck would have it, she didn’t get the book until the afternoon before the report was due, so she read it by flashlight after lights out. She always talked about how much she hated that book so I was aprehensive when I was a boarder at the same school and it was on the required reading list. Since I got the book early on and loved it so much I read it in an afternoon, I couldn’t understand why she had not liked it, but after she told about the flashlight I could understand better. Dickens is not an author to be read under wraps, so to speak. And of course now having remembered that, it’s time to dig out a copy of that one and read it again. I have to admit I wore out several copies of “LIttle Women” over the years, but it’s now on my Kindle and safe from dropping —I shouldn’t have said that. Fortunately the Kindle is in a good case and dropping isn’t as dangerous as it would be without that case, but it’s also old and beginning to act up by going black on me at times. I have discovered that by resetting it to factory default it will come back for now, but have had to reset it several times lately.

Whew! That took some time to write. I used to be able to type faster and more accurately, but that was when I thought I wanted to be a secretary. It didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t what I really wanted. After watching the nurses taking care of my dad when he was dying I decided I wanted to work for Hospice some day. Happy to say that mission was accomplished a few years later and was the most fulfilling job I ever had. I might have said most fulfilling time of my life, but that still belongs to the days when my babies were little and still needed me.

Oh gee, I’m hungry for an arm filled with a baby now. Maybe it’s because today is my baby’s birthday and I kinda wish he was still the cute and cuddly little guy from 14 birthdays ago. He’s still cute but not so cuddly these days, but he really does act 14 around me most of the time. It’s hard to believe that grown up responsible man is still the baby I remember when I remember the past.

I’ve mentioned before that I love quotations and have a few notebooks full of them. Tonight I found a few that seem to relate to my mood, so I’ll share a couple of them. You can stop reading if you are bored. I mean really, how would I ever know?

“No one needs to paint himself into a corner: no one needs to be completely hemmed in by circumstances; no one needs to be the victim of his biography.” — George Kelly

“The essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” — Jerome Bruner

Several have hit home for me in the past, but those two just stuck out in front of my face tonight.

And now I’m hungry for a snack and there is a container of yogurt screaming my name, so I think I’ll just close this off now. After the yogurt I might just try something creative before my one hour of sleep drops me into a stupor.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Some Bemused Musings

Now I have to look up the word “bemused” again. Or I could change it to “amused” which I remember the meaning of. Oh gee, I just kinda remember what bemused means and it works, but at the same time most people would find my thoughts more amusing than not.

Like, okay, I wonder sometimes what my life would have been like if I had been one of my cousins instead of myself. So many of them seemed to be so much better off than I was, but then after talking with one of them a few years ago I discovered she had wanted to be me. On reflection, I realize I’m not so bad most of the time but then again, there are always “those” days we all dread.

Good heavens and heavens to mergatroid! It’s after 4 a.m. now. Seems like it was only a few minutes ago when I woke up from my usual hour of sleep. And “mergatroid” is a word I think I made up several years ago, but then again, I might have heard someone else say it and just think I made it up. I should check a dictionary but that requires a little bit of energy that I don’t have at the moment.

Reminds me of when my daughter was in third or forth grade and heard the associate pastor say that when you point a finger at someone else you have 3 fingers pointing back at yourself. She and her best friend spent about a week trying to figure out how to point at someone else without pointing back at themselves, finally turning their hands so that the three were pointing down at the devil, something they eagerly showed the associate pastor the next time they saw him. Try it. Instead of holding your hand the normal way while pointing, turn it to a palms down position and point. Three fingers point to the ground, or as they put it, at the devil.

There are times when everything is quiet here that my mind plays tricks on me. At least I HOPE it’s playing tricks. I think I’m hearing voices. Now don’t call the shrinks yet. I know I am hearing the place settling, not voices, but sometimes I admit I try to listen to what the non-voices are saying. So far no luck, but then there’s always tomorrow. Unless of course I am hit by a bus and tomorrow won’t come.

A word or more about peas. While i love them raw, just out of the pod, I truly hate them when they are cooked with the exception of the sugar snap variety when used in a good stir fry. I did have problems with that at times though. I would get the peas and have everything ready to make the stir fry of choice before realizing I had just eaten the last of the sugar snap peas. But I found a solution to that — just stir fry the ingredients individually and eat them as I cooked the next batch. I made moo goo gai pan several times but don’t have a clue as to how it tastes when all ingredients are added together because I would gobble down each batch as they came out of the wok. Not sure what to call that but gluttony comes to mind. Hopefully just intense hunger from waiting too long between meals and having to taste everything to make sure it is cooked properly. I always had that same problem when making dumplings.

Speaking of dumplings, did you know there are several ways — well, two at least, of making them other than opening a can. One way is to roll the dough out paper thin, cut them all and dump them in a pot of broth all at once. Stir to separate and cook until they don’t fight back, producing the doughy rubbery things that are usually served everywhere — except in my family. My grandmother taught me to make them her way, roll the dough out as above, but cut larger pieces and drop only a few at a time in the pot of boiling broth. Give them a few minutes to cook on one side, then gently turn each one and let cook on the other side. The result is a thick bread like dumpling that is favored by my family.

I always made the dumplings for my family after learning how because my mom didn’t really like them. Our treat was her childhood reality from the days of the Great Depression. I would almost get depressed while making them though. I had 4 brothers who always wanted to be the official taste testers. By the time we were ready to sit down at the table I was lucky if there were any at all left. So finally I became the official taste testers while my brothers hovered around me begging for just one bite. Okay, so I am a pushover. They were all allowed to taste one from each batch, one brother at a time taking turns until I had a huge bowl full for the meal. Now I’ve made myself hungry just thinking about it all and not a dumpling or sugar snap pea available.

Well, now we’ll see if I have any luck with photos tonight — oops, I mean this morning.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Well how ’bout that! I finally learned how to add photos! Most of them are quilts I’ve made, but there are also photos of my mom packaging 150 pounds of sausage (in case you ever wondered what that would look like), my grandmothers house in the country, some of the doll clothes I made, and a photo I took from my 16th floor window. Oh yeah, the bottom one is one of my tomato plants in that 16th floor apartment. Planted in a huge pot and growing out of control, but only a few tomatoes. Must have done something wrong there.

Just Thinking About My Baby

It’s a few days early, but I just found this again and just have to post it again. Mike will have his 14th actual birthday next Thursday, so this seems like a good time because I found it again, as well as because I might forget by Thursday. Enjoy!

He’s One In Four Million Worldwide

More From Filosofa

Jill strikes again with this chilling bit of “fiction” that hits very close to the truth. Let’s all hope it remains a piece of fiction in November of this year.

Filosofa Tries Something Different …

Midnight Musings

I have some notebooks that I write down all of the quotes I find. Well, most of them. Some aren’t worth the effort of pulling the notebook out and writing it all down.

My collection grows a little bit every day since I subscribed to a site called “Inspirational Quotes” a week or so ago. A new set of quotes every day makes my day. I just wish I could say something that others would be impressed with enough to quote me. There is a quote I use frequently, said by my brother a few years ago when I asked him a question. “I don’t remember if I remember that or not”, one of the few things I DO remember that he has forgotten. My brother has a Ph.D in Homiletics, and taught at Brescia University for a few years before his health forced him to give up 2 of his 3 jobs, Chaplain at a convent, pastor of the neighboring parish, and professor at Brescia.

Funny thing about that brother. He had a “D” average in school before beginning High School. An IQ test there showed him to have the highest IQ in the history of the school. The former “D” student was just bored out of his skull for 8 years. He tried to teach me how to use the computer way back when I got my first one. Went through all the steps so fast I couldn’t keep up, then told me to “play with it” before leaving. Oh, I played with it alright! And ended up erasing the entire hard drive! Now that takes talent of a different kind! A kind I don’t recommend.

I began this post a few nights ago right at midnight, hence the title. It is now 5:43 a.m. at least a week later and I’m not sure what I was musing about that night, but it must not have been much since I saved the draft which included only the title and moved on to playing as many kinds of Solitaire as I could find, working a few jigsaw puzzles on the computer, colored a picture and did some word games while trying to get my brain to come up with something to write about. It hasn’t worked yet. I am definitely not a genius like my brother.

I do have 3 or maybe 4 quilts in progress at the moment while trying to embroider some flour sack tea towels for my granddaughter. Kinda too much to ever finish anything, but yet they all manage to get finished. I finally finished the quilt I started for my son’s birthday about 5 years ago, and just in time to give it to him this year — yesterday, in fact, letting him know it is for the past 5 birthdays. Fortunately he has a sense of humor.

Now I have to finish something special for my youngest kid who will have his 14th actual birthday next Thursday. He will be 56, or 14, whichever way you look at it. Since he mainly acts 14 I find it easy to treat him that way. But I still say he should have been a girl to really appreciate that special birthday. How I wish I only had a birthday every 4 years! I would be 20 again. Hmmm, 20 wasn’t all that great to be, so being a Leap baby might have a few drawbacks of its own.

The clincher is that my daughter, oldest child, has a birthday one week from the youngest. I call this birthday season, beginning with Feb. 22, ending with March 7, with all of us still wondering exactly how to say Happy birthday to Mike, Feb. 29! He wasn’t born yet on the 28th, and was a day old on March 1. I do keep threatening to call him at midnight to try to get in between the 2 days, but of all the times to fall asleep!

Okay, I’ve mused enough. I’m hungry and have some yogurt and a bag of popcorn waiting for me to dig in. It sounds disgusting as a snack — eating the 2 of them together, but some days it works. Other days it just makes me want to hurl! Oops, too much information there.

It’s another one of Those nights when sleep won’t come; or if it did it didn’t last more than an hour. So much to do and only 24 hours in a day to do it. I’ve heard that sleep is important but how do you sleep when you can’t?

t’You can lie in bed and toss and turn, but I can’You can lie in bed and toss and turn, but I can’t breathe in a bed so I sleep in a recliner with my head elevated. I also have quilts in progress, embroidery projects, myriad pillows, my cell phone, Kindle, TV remote and other items I find the hard way surrounding me. A real nest inhabited by a dodo bird.

What Is It About Saturday?

For some unknown, or maybe just stupid reason, Saturday has long been a very boring day for me. I know it’s the traditional deep cleaning day, but today I’m just feeling tired and lazy. Not to mention that I no longer have anything to deep clean with.

I suppose instead of sitting here looking at the unruly stack of fabric next to my sewing table I could get out of the chair and organize it, or, drum roll—-start sewing it into something useable. Having made 3 tote bags in the last day though I’m not too keen on making another and I have several quilts next to my nest that I should be finishing so I can move them out of here, but so tired.

I really want to sleep. I wish I could sleep. It shouldn’t be long before I crash again, but someone always comes in when that happens and tries to wake me. Doesn’t help at all to tell them berorehand that it happens at times and to just leave me to sleep until I wake up on my own. They seem to feel an obligation to wake me up.

There are times when it is fun having MS and the problems it brings. Most of the time now though it is painful and frustrating. The same holds true about getting older and older. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how we are supposed to act. Just can’t see myself doing that though. Not even sure how to sit and stare at the TV all day. Maintenance came in a couple of days ago and “fixed” my TV so it works again. Whoda thunk just unplugging it for 30 seconds would reset it and make it work again? Just hope I can remember to do that the next time it happens.

Now a few totally unrelated photos, just because I managed to find them! And a poem I wrote a few months ago and probably already posted, but not sure. Anyway, maybe that will make up for the boring beginning

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Out in the country and back near the fence
Stood an old house built in the days of yore.
Small in stature and built out of wood
With a half moon carved out of each door.

We never were a family of means
But Dad worked magic with his two hands and more.
He built us two swings and that old wooden house
And carved a half moon out of each door.

There were no lights inside that small house,
No heat in winter, no rug on the floor,
But there were two seats that he sanded smooth
And the half moon he carved out of each door.

Between the two seats a partition stood
From the top of the roof to uncarpeted floor.
One side marked "Ladies", the other side "Gents"
Beneath the the half moon carved out of each door.

There's many a thing I remember well
And miss very much from those days of yore.
Bu one thing I don't miss from those golden days
Is that house with the half moon carved out of each door.