That little guy I wrote about just over 6 months ago really is a fighter. And now he is a happy, chunky little boy who smiles almost all the time. He just keeps getting better every day!
So here is Asher this past week and at Easter.
A few new changes in my room are creating even more space — I think! I’ve been busy, at least the time I have been awake. I think I’m catching up on several months of lost sleep.
My TV was mounted on the wall today, opening up a little bit of space on the sewing table.
The top photo is the half cleared sewing table with the pictures to be hung still waiting. They have promised Monday for sure. Waiting impatiently now for Monday.
The bottom photo has the walking stick my brother carved for me as a Christmas gift. Check it out! He said his original idea didn’t work out so he had to start over. I think for a mistake it sure looks great. He hollowed out the top of the stick and poured epoxy in to fill the space. The most impressive thing is that he poured in the right color. Unless of course he thought it was red or green. JRG is colorblind. He can only see the color gold. No reds or greens or blues. I can’t imagine not being able to tell one color from another, but who’s to say I see them the same way others do? I’ve never looked through another person’s eyes.
Things just get better and better here. Just one exception — rain, rain and even more rain. I have to keep reminding myself it IS March, after all. Oh geez, it really is March! What happened to January? We had Christmas at the right time, complete with snow and below zero temps, then the silly groundhog saw his shadow here where the sun finally made an appearance, and now the calendar says it’s March. We were also under a tornado watch yesterday. Is March the one that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb? If so I hope it goes by as quickly as February did, I’m not fond of tornadoes.
Most of the damage done by the Christmas morning water pipe burst has been repaired, but they are still not completely finished.. I’m not completely finished with putting things away though, so that’s okay by me. We had a movie and popcorn afternoon with one of the old movies that always makes me cry like a baby! Fortunately I had finished the popcorn before the waterworks began so it didn’t get soggy during the final part of the movie. Hey! you gotta find some way to laugh in this world today, right?
I think I am now going to watch a movie on my newly hooked up TV now. For the first time I have Dish Network instead of cable and just want to see if I can turn it on. Stop laughing! I have a “smart” TV and have to admit it is smarter than I am. I looked for a dumb one but they don’t seem to have them any more, I knew how to change the channels on the dumb ones. Sigh!
Admittedly I did more on Sunday than I should have, but mostly I slept. Woke up, ate their delicious food, slept. Woke up, rearranged some fabric shelves, slept, woke, ate. No kids to take care of, no waiting in line for anything at all, no pressure to produce anything for anybody, but best of all, NOBODY ASKING ME TO DO MENDING OR MAKE THEM A QUILT AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT! I had never before found so many people basically asking me to spend months of my life and tons of money making things for them as I found in my former residence. In this one I have found several quilters and been invited to see their collections.
Today we had two concerts. I went to both of them. The first one was a sweet man who sang more off-key than on but I loved it. He comes every month and having done that in my own past I could understand the desire to help others in the only way he knew to do it. Everyone who attended his concert applauded loudly for him, a contrast for the ones at the other place who would walk out if it wasn’t great.
The one tonight was Randy Lanham and a group of very talented kids he has been teaching. Randy doesn’t have a big name, but after the plane crash that too the lives of several of Reba Mcintire’s band members Randy joined her new band and toured with her for almost a year. He’s a small town boy though and as much as he liked the audience he came back home before the first year ended and rejoined the band he and his brother had formed, giving concerts in the area rather than going to distant places to entertain. At one time he was director of the Bluegrass Museum, located here in Owensboro. His first love though, is teaching children to play several instruments and stand in front of a microphone and sing their hearts out.
I’m sitting here in my room now at a few minutes after 9 pm, full of the early dinner, a snack at my fingertips if I get hungry, half of my dinner sandwich waiting in my fridge for when I wake up from my next nap, (the first one before dinner, second after the evening concert) trying to compose this blog post, with a quilt I want to finish beside me, and knowing that even though I have not taken a single stitch since I got here my intent is to at least take one stitch tonight just so I can say I’m working on it. I have never had an experience like this in my entire life. I think I can get used to this.
A few of my friends have asked about photos of the new room and I took a few last night. Please bear in mind that some things remain to be done before it is completed, but here they are.
On review it looks like nothing at all has been done, but try to picture all of this stuff covering the floor from the door to the window and maybe you can envision how much better it looks now. And remember. this is a very small room.
I’m sitting here at 3:50 a.m. Sunday morning, wide awake and thinking about the old days when the world looked so much larger than it does today. Of course, I was so much smaller then and had never been outside the small environment of Highway 81 and the childhood that now seems to have been a magic time. Just one old woman thinking back to days that now look perfect at a time when there is not much perfection in this expanded world we live in.
Our radio played only the good things back then. “The Shadow knows, heh, heh, heh”, Bobby Benson as the young (and I was certain HANDSOME) star of our favorite show, B Bar B. In retrospect I can remember that the world that looks so perfect and small back then wasn’t really all that small or all that perfect. This country was engaged in a “Police Action” called Korea at the time, but since we only listened to the radio when our favorite shows were on we were sheltered from a lot of the world news.
I did hear some of the news at selected times when the family was together and we all listened to the radio. TV wasn’t around this area at the time so we listened to George Burns and Gracie Allen, Abbot and Costello, Jack Benny, still some of my favorite people who remain alive to me via the now seemingly necessary television, on now and playing some of the old songs that came along after I was grown and more in tune with the news of the day.
I have found a TV channel that plays some very old shows with George and Gracie, Jack, and on Saturdays even Abbot and Costello. I still find the first two fun, but the slapstick of Abbot and Costello seems a bit extreme now. There is too much real violence surrounding us now to get the same laughs at two men hitting each other with what would be called lethal weapons these days. The difference is that back then there were no school shootings, no daily reminders of brutality against everyone that is not just exactly like us. Back then I had no idea that one day I would be typing on a computer, a contraption that wouldn’t fit in anyone’s home back then, a very large contraption that filled entire rooms and had to be kept cool to prevent fire and explosion. Now I use a laptop or a tablet, small, compact, easy to use when it is working okay. This is something that was not thought of back then when my world outside the Highway 81 environment was delivered by radio.
I know I gripe a lot about the frequent breakdowns of all electronics. I’m fussing right now because my early morning clumsiness has my fingers on the wrong keys and typing nonsense pages while my brain is trying to tell my body that it is morning albeit a very early morning, and I shouldn’t put so much pressure on the keys. The TV is a Fire TV, also known as a “smart” TV, and I’m listening to John Denver singing “It Makes Me Giggle”. My life seems to be oriented around all of the “smart” electronics around me and I don’t always like that. It’s difficult for me to depend on electronics that always seem to break down. I now read books that I don’t even hold in my hands, but can read on my phone or mainly on my Fire tablet. I used to turn pages by using my fingers to turn the page. I usually had to lick the fingers to get traction on the page I was reading so I could turn it more easily. Now my hands have problems holding on to those wonderful books, so they are all loaded on my Amazon Fire tablet. To turn the page I simply tap the screen with my finger and the next page appears. If I fall asleep while reading the tablet turns itself off, saving my page until I turn it back on. Incidentally, while writing the above paragraph i had to delete rows and rows of “r’s” that my finger tapped accidently. Didn’t even have to lick my finger to make those lines and lines of r.
Oh, for those good old days right now. Memories partly faded by the ravages of time, typing keys so sensitive that I can fill several pages with the wrong stuffrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr — case in point, but caught before it went very far. I’m going to stop while just a little bit in control. And I’m going to look for photos from those old days, if indeed I can hit the right buttons to look for them!
And today will be the good old days 20 years from now! Imagine that!
Asher Blake Wink was born Monday morning, weighing in at 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 23 inches long. He is a beautiful little boy but! And there always seems to be a “but” in this little boys life, he has yet to breathe on his own. Meconium Asperation Syndrome is a horrible way to start life but at least they now have some ways to treat this once fatal disease. He was put on 100% oxygen and sent to Norton’s Hospital in Louisville. They are equipped to perform miracles that other hospitals are not able to do.;
Today we were told he is improving but slowly and there are so many problems now and possibly for a long time to come, but I believe in miracles and a miracle is needed now. But he has a chance and that was missing in 1970 when his aunt, Jennifer was born with the same problems. They couldn’t save her. She lived 17 hours. This little boy is still fighting after almost five days and that, in my opinion, is a miracle.
Okay, just began and on the sidebar there is a note about how to get rid of toenail fungus. Really? Are they trying to tell me something? Okay, just got rid of that and for the record, I don’t have toenail fungus. I have some pretty long toenails but they are all my regular ones with no fungus. I just know you all want to know about that!
Well, now the toenail fungus thing is gone but replaced by the weather outlook. I can look out the window and see what the weather is doing and my advice to a cousin recently to not depend on what the weather experts say but go outside and look at the sky and the ground and be your own forecaster stands. If you are standing in a puddle of water it is probably raining (I’ll refrain from mentioning the other possibility), if you are standing in a bank of white stuff it means snow, or possibly you might need to call Ghost Busters, and if the sky is bright blue with a big yellow ball in it you are having a sunny day. I admit the sun has been very scarce around here lately, but I do remember that it is big, round and bright and will blind you if you stare at it. What I wouldn’t give to see the sun and feel some warmth from it right now, but it seems gray is the color of the day lately. Oh gee, I just looked at what I’m wearing and it is gray pants, gray shirt and gray sweater. Tonight I’m going to find all my red clothes and put them all on for tomorrow.
At least this weather is giving me time to sew more. I’m doing the machine sewing now and have a bag filled with things that need hand stitching for later after I put the sewing machine away again. Or after I manage to get a room in the nursing home. Whichever comes first.
This weather has me remembering January of 1978. My first and only blizzard, I hope. While it was kinda fun I sure don’t want to see another one of those and sure feel for all the people stuck in blizzard conditions right now. That year it started the first day the kids went back to school after the Christmas break and lasted into early February, with the kids being sent home from school at noon. The old farm house we lived in had very little insulation so I brought the mattresses from the beds into the living room, hung quilts at the doors and windows, shutting that room off from the rest of the house, and making it a cozy place for us all to ride out the storm. I had the crock pot in that room bubbling away with the stew I had started for supper and a stack of books to read to the family, board games for the kids, tomato juice I had made during the summer for my scratchy throat, candles for possible electric outages which never happened, and space heaters in the necessary room just off our living area. The snow continued a few days and with the wind blowing we had 15 to 20 foot drifts outside the house. I loved that time. It lives on as one of my favorite memories of all times. Not one I want to relive in real time, but one I enjoy thinking about once in a while. Probably when I have a high fever, but at the moment I don’t. Just feeling nostalgic I guess.
I think it’s time for another nap so will say goodbye for now. Stay tuned for Title Five coming soon.
In the meantime, I’ll look for more photos to make things prettier next time.
can spring be far behind? The sun has come out today, a sight we had lost track of lately with first the frigid weather, then rain, but now it’s big, it’s yellow, it’s in the sky and it’s radient. It must mean spring, but lately, who really knows? While most of the country east of the Rockies had snow we had ice, sleet, black ice and finally a couple of inches over it all, just to make walking out there challenging, I don’t think anyone in the building fell and broke anything this year, but really I can’t say for certain because I’m stuck in my apartment observing the quarantine while so many are out running around sans masks, acting like nothing on earth is bothering them. Now that I think about it, they really aren’t bothered by it all while the ones trying to stay healthy are all locked away and out of sight.
Not a lot has been happening. Or maybe it has and no one noticed. Kinda like taking your guitar to a party and not being asked to play back in the old days when we went to parties, I don’t think I would remember how to act at a party these days. Now that I think about it, I’m betting I would not be able to host one again. My social skills have redeveloped into something more akin to staying home and watching TV while my hair and waistline expand a bit more every day. Hopefully the waistline is tapering off now. I know this because I had to change my jeans back one size this morning after pulling up the larger ones for the dozenth time.
It’s really late in the day now and I’ll bet no one noticed I was gone. So glad I didn’t have my guitar with me all day waiting, LOL. I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and get some groceries before I ran completely out. I’m happy to say I can now make a chicken sandwich, but not much else because I focused mainly on getting the ingredients for caramel candy. And now I’ve just finished making that, poured it in a pan to cool and time will tell if I have to crack it with a hammer or eat it with a spoon. I’m sure it’s too much to hope that it will be just right. At least the taste is there, and for me that’s the best part. I have plenty of spoons if it comes to that. It’s just hard to send it to people thru the mail when it runs like the first batch of the year.
My good friend, Beck called while I was stirring the candy and we talked the entire time. She lived here at one time, came down with COVID, and now has moved out of this place, something I plan on doing as soon as I can find a place with wheelchair accessibility. I’ve seen some of the virtual tours of a few places that are so nice, but no ramps or elevators. I actually have never tried to drive up a flight of stairs but the little bit of common sense left tells me not to try that stunt. Seems like with all of the stair climbers they make these days there should be at least one affordable way to get a power chair up steps without an elevator. Maybe in someone’s lifetime, just not in mine.
It’s well after dark now, but according to the clock it’s not very late. Not sure if Daylight Savings Time is to blame or not, but it darkness continues well after I get out of bed in the morning, so it must be a cloud settling over me, like that kid in the Peanuts cartoon. I’m just not going to hold my breath waiting for spring to pop out. Blue faces just don’t look too good with my hair color.
Had a few more words written up there but they suddenly disappeared so my resident poltergeist must be at work. I think I’ll go rescue the candy before he gets a chance to make it disappear. I can do that myself. Make it disappear, that is. Of course I would never make it through the door again if I do that. Okay, I’m gonna stop rambling now before I get so lost in a thought someone will have to draw me a map to get back.
Well, I managed to find some of my photos but not exactly the way I had planned. So sorry about that, but I couldn’t find a way to erase them or to crop them. I guess I still have a lot of work to do to learn how to manage this crazy format. I sure don’t like it any better now than I did when they first came up with forcing it on me.
I’m trying to finish some of my drafts, even though when they were lost the first few times I can’t remember! I do remember the acute frustration of wondering where they went and which planet they were living on after fleeing this one. Maybe they foresaw what we are going thru now with this pandemic taking center stage. And in April, when I first tried this it was all only beginning. There was talk of opening the churches again by Easter, and since I can’t remember the date for yesterday — or today for that matter, I don’t remember if I finished something or if this is one I simply put on the back burner after four attempts failed.
So, today I followed a new friend’s example and cleaned out my spam folder. Since I’ve found other friends had wandered in there by some twist of fate or help from my resident poltergeist — I just now had to look for this draft again! Might have made a discovery though. This time I added that it might have been aided by a visitor from Mars just before I lost the link. Now if this one disappears again I’ll know that we’ve been invaded by Martians and make myself an aluminum hat just to feel safe. Oh Lordy, what next? First I have to wear a mask because of the pandemic and now I might have to wander around wearing aluminum hats? I think I’ll just look for the flying saucer and climb on board. Too bad about my fear of heights. I have an even larger fear of being lost in space, flying in general (you know, the old “if I was supposed to fly ….wings?” thing. Maybe that’s why I began blogging as Kentucky Angel.
Okay, back to the subject. Anybody remember at this point what that subject was? For that matter, anyone care? In light of all that’s happening in today’s world it’s not of much importance except as my small attempt at humor. Oh yes, I remember humor. Just not sure how or where to find it lately. Things that once seemed funny are now frustrating. Like knocking over the container of straight pins after carefully placing them all in one container and placing it where it looked safe from even my worst ________ (and now more frustration. I forgot what I was saying so just fill in the ending yourself this time. But please let me know what word or words you added. I might be able to keep them in a notebook for future reference).
Now that last statement is a real joke! I have four notebooks for memos, passwords, notes about different things, and when I need them, any one of them they are nowhere to be found. And KLUTZ is the word I forgot above. Or some derivative of that word. I’m beginning to wonder if I can still speak actual words. The only time I  see anyone lately it’s one of the Physical Therapists and we are more concerned about how I can balance and walk than how or if I can speak. Gracious, now I might be mute and not even know it. What a thought! Maybe I’m already on Mars and just haven’t figured it out yet. Oh, just remembered that I sang a few songs lately. I know the dog next door heard me because I could hear her howling in disharmony with my song. “Mama Mia, here we go again”. The irony is that when I was singing and playing my guitar years ago I could never remember all the words but yesterday I reeled them off along with several other songs without any problem at all.
I’m not sure I want to preview this because I think it’s really jumping around the page for sure. Not sure I want that part of my insanity to show, but then again we all have to take the bad along with the good so here you have it. Almost.
Oh yeah, I began something about knocking my container of pins over. They were all over the floor (except for the ones I grabbed with bare hands. Not sure it was quite the same as being stuck like a porcupine but it took some time to get them all out. Not quite as long as to remove the ones I stepped on later since I have no feeling in my feet and just can’t seem to keep shoes on when socks are so much more comfortable and at times when I step on a pin or nail, another dropped item, it remains imbedded for a few days. Has to get to a certain stage before I stand up and then sit down in a hurry to see what’s making the feet hurt like that. I might have to invent a way to stick magnets on my feet (or sew them in my sox!) just to stop getting my feet stuck so often.
I’ve probably posted these photos before but things are getting boring around here and with pins and needles stuck in my feet I’m slowing down on taking photos lately. The nature ones were taken from a window and the dolls from wherever they landed after change of clothes periods, I now have over two dozen dolls and each of them have a couple of outfits I have made. More cut out so some will get more changes, but fabric is among the items I’m having problems replacing. But this too shall pass. I’m just not sure I want to know what will replace it all.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately musing about a lot of things. Like right now I’m wondering what happened to the first draft of this post? It was finished and ready to hit “publish” when I hit something else and made it disappear. I felt like a magician for a minute — right up til I looked for my missing draft and didn’t find anything at all but a blank screen staring back at me. That seems like a bad way to start something on a cloudy, frigid day.
For some time now I’ve been thinking that someone should have given me an IQ test before allowing me to begin using the “smart” phones. It’s kinda sad when the phone is smarter than the person trying to use it but that seems to be the case with me. My cell phone is proving to be my downfall and leading to my turning the atmosphere around me rather blue st times. For example, this morning I attempted to place a call to one of my siblings. Simple enough thing, right? Nope! It rang two times and then nothing was happening. I pulled it away from my face to see if it could tell me anything about what was wrong and discovered I had him on hold along with two other people who are in my phone book. Have no idea how this happened and not sure I ever want to know but I think the poltergeist who lives in my apartment is hard at work again.
Speaking of my poltergeist, he/she has taken my remote again. It was in my pocket where I could find it and now it’s not. I’ve written about my ongoing problems keeping up with my remotes before but this is getting ridiculous! How on earth and in the universe could a remote control to my television jump out of the pocket it was in? And just where in this building did it take that big jump? Oh, it will turn up some day and I certainly know how to walk over and flip a switch to turn the tube on and off it it becomes necessary, but I’m spoiled by some of this modern technology. Go ahead and laugh folks, it doesn’t bother me. I’ll probably laugh harder than any one else could if I find it hiding in the fridge or sitting somewhere in plain view yet constantly overlooked by me. Life can be amusing in these so called golden years. Maybe I should have said frustrating since at times it is, but mostly just funny. Come to think of it, these things were a lot funnier when they were happening to my parents and grandparents. There is a warped sense of humor working here so I’ll slap my own hand and move on.
I have managed to find some gold on that dirt path I travel though. It can be found all around if you open your eyes and look up from the dirt. In fact, I looked up while attempting to walk in the hall outside my apartment door and then by focusing on something higher up managed to walk the entire distance of the hall!  Not bad for an old lady who has fallen as many times as I have lately. I may not ever win a marathon but I can now walk the length of this hall and back now. Sure, I fall into my chair as soon as the door closes behind me but the biggie here is that I walk!
I’ve put these photos up before but now seems like a good time to share some of my gold. Here goes!
And here are some of the quilts that keep me occupied lately.
Have a wonderful rest of your day!
Just checking out how a new background is going to fly here. Can you tell how bored I am at the moment? I only do this when I’m bored and that can be dangerous. I’ve erased my entire hard drive before when I’m tired and/or bored.
So, here are a few more photos of my current projects.
And here are a couple of photos my daughter took a couple of weeks ago out at the farm. I remember this field so well — used to gather arm loads of daffodils that are growing wild all over the place.
I still miss this place.
Ya’ll have a great night — something I should do myself here. G’nite all.
KYAngel's Reflections On Life 