I was around for the 1976 flu scare. It was the last time I bothered to get a flu shot. I think I’ve had the flu only once since then. But anyway, that isn’t what was on my mind today.
I was wondering; does anyone else see the name H1N1 flu as Heiny flu? Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.
I was surprised to find how few pictures I had of projects I’ve made. Only recently have I begun to keep a record and even then it is sketchy. So my latest inspiration has been dish towels. I love working with cotton. They work up quickly and are such fun to give as gifts. Here are a few of them.
This fall I also made an afghan for a friend’s wedding. This is a large throw, almost bed size, from an original pattern. The colors are actually a beautiful gray and blue, but the picture turned out yellowish and I am not good enough at photoshop to fix it.
Our two youngest went to Texas A&M as did our nephew. This was the third Aggie afghan. This one is crochetted. I wanted it to look retro, like a grandmother made in the ’50s.
It seems unfair that tax time and Easter are so close together. My husband is self-employed so that tax time is a time of organizing, bookkeeping, and lots of paperwork. I began weeks ago, but somehow it is taking longer than I thought it would. I am actually getting a headache from the paperwork. I think it is because of my eye trouble. Everything seems to be taking a LOT longer!
Knitting pictures will come later for those of you who asked. Right now my mind is full of numbers!!
On a better note: Happy Easter to all of you! Easter is a time of renewal and hope for me. I am reminded that even those things that are hopelessly dead can be resurrected by God’s power and given new life. Roll away the stone! It is time to step into new life!
I always wanted to be a writer, but sadly I am not. I love the perfect phrase that brings to life and to light those shadowy perceptions or emotions that we know are there, but don’t have the words for. I love to read the posts of those of you who are so articulate and so open. I admire you! I thank you for your insights, your talent, your honesty and your discipline in writing it all down.
Even though I would love to be one of those great writers who inspire or provoke or encourage or entertain, I don’t think I will be. At least I don’t think I will ever consistently keep up my blog. I want you to know that I read yours though. I don’t always comment, but I enjoy learning so much from you all. I am a better person because of your work. Thank you and please keep it up!
No, this isn’t goodbye. I am still here, and I will post a blog soon. I want to show off my knitting. I have begun knitting socks. I am working on my 4th pair. I have three afghans in the works. they are in the planning stages, but soon I will cast on and be on my way. I love the serenity of knitting. But that is another story for another day.
Thank you, all you wonderful Xanga friends. I am still here, just going through a quiet spell.
Sunday evening: I am torn between a desire to frantically finish all the chores I needed to do this weekend, but for one reason or another did not, and the sanity of allowing this day of rest to actually be one. It happens almost every Sunday evening. So tonight I am trying to reach a precarious balance of relaxing and finishing the laundry.
Nick calls them my slaves: the washer and dryer. I sure appreciate them. There was a time when Elijah was a toddler that we lived in a log cabin backed up to the national forest in Colorado. It was build by the work corp during the Roosevelt years. There was no running water, but we were the lucky ones who ended up with the hand pump closest to our cabin. The cabin was owned by an attorney who lived in Denver. His family had bought two of these cabins and only used the larger one for their family visits, which were very rare. We lived there two years and saw them only once and only for an afternoon. So in this cabin we had a big cast iron Majesty wood-burning cook stove in the kitchen. To wash clothes when we had no money for the laundromat, I would haul buckets of water up from the hand pump and heat them on the stove. We learned that we had to remove the covers from the stove to get the water to heat up quickly. Once the water was hot, we put the buckets on the floor. One had detergent in it; the other was for rinsing. I could only wash a few items at a time, but I did have a hand-crank wringer that we put on the sink. When I had a pile of wrung-out clothes, I would rinse them. Then we hung them outside to dry. In the winter they froze as soon as they were put out. It took several days to freeze-dry, but they smelled wonderful, like fresh snow.
Just a bit of reminiscing as the clothes cheerfully slosh in my washer that makes life so much easier.
100 Random Things About Myself.
1. I was born on Easter Monday, and I absolutely love Easter. It is by far my favorite holiday.
2. My mother died on Easter Sunday morning before sunrise. When my time comes, I hope I do too.
3. I love to travel. I want to see it all, the Andes Mountains, the Pyramids, India, Alaska. I want to walk the Appalachian Trail and swim in the Hawaiian surf. So I taught Geography for 9 years.
4. I’ve only had one traffic ticket in the 44 years I have driven. It was a speed trap about 6 years ago.
5. I always wanted long hair when I was a child. Once when I was 5 years old, I climbed a tree and refused to come down until my mother promised not to cut my hair that year as she did every spring. It was the only time my hair was below my shoulders until I was a teenager.
6. I rode on the back of a motorcycle when I was in high school, 80 MPH with no helmet and my long blond hair blowing in the breeze. When I got home, about 4 inches were whipped into dreads and had to be cut off.
7. When I left home, I didn’t cut my hair for 12 years. I still prefer it long, but Nick likes it short, and honestly, it is easier to care for.
8. I once played violin and loved it. In 7th grade I was in the San Antonio Junior Symphony. It was wonderful! The next year we moved to Japan and I had to get rid of my violin. I have never played again.
9. I took piano lessons for 3 or 4 years. I can read music, but I am not good on the piano.
10. I broke my left femur just before my 4th birthday. I spent 4 months in a body cast and had to learn to move, sit, and walk all over again when I got out. I used a cane for a year. (Picture a five-year-old blonde girl with a cane!) I still drag that foot when I’m tired.
11. I broke a vertebra that never completely healed in that accident. It wasn’t discovered until years later, but if I am not careful, it can slip out of place and cause amazing pain.
12. I’ve been married twice and engaged only once. I didn’t marry the man I was engaged to.
13. When I was in high school, I was in 4 choirs, two at church and two at school.
14. I played in a bell choir, too.
15. I shot a gun as a girl, but I killed a barn swallow and cried for a week. I would love to know how to shoot now.
16. I worked as a telephone operator for two years at a time when we used a switchboard, cords, plugs and a head set. I answered the calls with “Operator”.
17. I was part of a union strike and walked off my job.
18. When I first saw Peter Pan with Mary Martin, I was sure I could fly. I climbed up on the garage roof, thought my happiest thoughts and jumped. I guess they had something better than glitter for fairy dust.
19. I found out that China is on the other side of the world when I was in third grade. I was so sure you could dig through that I dug a hole behind our garage. It was about waist deep before my father found it mowing the lawn. Needless to say, I never made it to China.
20. I learned to drive in my boy friend’s car, a 1948 MG midget with a right side driver’s seat and standard stick shift.
21. My first car with a 1950 Buick Eight with a Dynaflow transmission. I got it with the stipulation that I take my 4 younger brothers and sisters anywhere they needed to go. I drove to cub scout meetings, piano and violin lessons, swimming lessons and even took 10 five-year-olds to the zoo for a birthday party in that car.
22. I went to drive-in movies in my Buick with 3 or 4 people in the seats and at least 5 in the trunk.
23. I believe in love at first sight, but I don’t advocate it. It just happens.
24. I met my husband and announced to the 30 or so people living in our commune that I had met the man I would spend the rest of my life with. We are doing pretty good, 38 years so far.
25. I’m still in love. Sometimes I can’t stand what he does, but I have never stopped loving Nick. He’s the greatest!
26. Elijah and I lived in a hippie commune in Denver for the first 7 months of his life.
27. In the 1968-69, I hitchhiked with my first husband to California and on to Seattle, Washington twice and back once. The other time back was by bus.
28. I have slept on the side of a highway in California, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and under a bridge in Arizona.
29. I hitchhiked with my two-month-old son from Denver to San Antonio with another girl so my parents could get some pictures of him. His father, my first husband, forbid them to take pictures when he was born.
30. I’ve been to a Jimi Hendrix concert, Jefferson Airplane, the Beach Boys and Jethro Tull concerts. I was working for a “head shop” in San Antonio, and we got free tickets for most of them.
31. I hitchhiked with Elijah from Denver to northern Wyoming and back with he was 4 months old. That was my last long distance hitchhiking experience.
32. I planned to be a veterinarian when I was a child. I studied everything I could about it and then was not able to attend A&M, the only veterinary school in Texas, because I was a girl.
33. At 16 I spayed my own dog while I was working for a vet. He assisted.
34. I absolutely love being a teacher!
35. Nick and I felled dozens of trees for firewood with a two-man saw. After three years he got a chain saw, but I still have the saw we used.
36. For 12 years we only used wood heat. At that time we lived in the mountains of Colorado above 8,000 feet so it was really cold! We cut and chopped a LOT of wood.
37. I lived for over a year with only what could fit into a backpack. Well, part of that time I had a extra bag of cloth diapers and baby clothes, too. I am grateful to my parents for holding on to a few treasures during that time.
38. For about 6 years in Colorado, I canned every fall. The second year, I had over 300 jars of fruits and vegetables, and I canned more over the next few years but didn’t count. When we moved to Texas, I quit canning.
39. I have been told that I go through life changes like falling through a sky light into a completely new room.
40. Much of the time other people recognize my emotions before I do.
41. We lived in a log cabin with no running water, only a hand pump about 50 yards away and an outhouse up on the hill in the Colorado mountains for 1 ½ years.
42. I know how to cook on a wood stove. I cooked dinners, baked pies, cookies, and bread in one.
43. Then we lived for about 2 months in a VW van with 2 dogs and our ADHD 3-year-old.
44. From there we moved into a tepee at 10,000 feet altitude for another couple of months.
45. Then I had enough! It was going to be a house, or I was leaving. We got a house in town, and we’ve lived in a house ever since.
46. I had my first baby at home. The next was born in a deliver room, but the two after that were born in the hall on the way to the delivery room. My last one was born in a birthing center. I liked the birthing center best!
47. I love to sing! I especially love to sing worship songs!
48. In fact, I love to worship. I can get lost in it sometimes for hours.
49. I have read the Bible through at least twice and read some parts hundreds of times.
50. We once owned a VW van, the one we lived in, and a VW bug. We had one motor for both. In the winter we used the bug and in the summer, the van. Nick could change out the motor in less than 2 hours!
51. I lived for 11 years in world class ski areas, Breckenridge for 2 ½ years and Telluride for 8 ½ years, and I never once went downhill skiing.
52. I loved cross-country skiing there and knew how to wax the skis to get the best traction and slide.
53. I love bicycle riding. At one point, not that long ago it was my main form of transportation.
54. The first time I water-skied, I got right up and skied for half an hour. Although I don’t think of my self as athletic or particularly coordinated, water skiing was always easy.
55. I knit and crochet. I have knitted or crocheted dozens of blankets and hundreds of other items: sweaters, scarves, shawls, hats, dish towels, and lately, socks. I’ve given most of them away.
56. I learned to sew from my first husband although my mother was an excellent seamstress.
57. At one time my first husband and I managed a hippie boutique in Seattle. There I designed and sewed leather clothes for a living.
58. For about five years, I made almost all of our bread, seven loaves at a time every week.
59. We raised rabbits for meat for 8 years. Once we had over 50 of them.
60. We had chickens for eggs and meat at the time I baked our bread and canned our vegetables and fruit. I still have chickens most of the time now, but only for eggs.
61. We also had goats for milk and occasionally cabrito in Colorado.
62. I have butchered a deer, but I have never gone hunting.
63. Once I held a beating heart in my hand.
64. We home-schooled our kids for three years. The oldest was from 7th through most of 9th grade. The next was from 1st through 3rd grade. Our youngest started kindergarten, but I had a baby, and we moved. I ran out of energy to keep it all up.
65. I made dandelion wine. It was wonderful and very potent.
66. I was over 50 before I had my first credit card.
67. We bought an IBM 64k pc in 1981 with an amber monochrome monitor. We still have it.
68. I’ve gone to a gay wedding as an invited guest.
69. When I was in college, my apartment became a hangout for returning vets from the Vietnam War. I heard many first person accounts.
70. I sang on our church’s worship team for 8 years under three worship leaders and two pastors.
71. I walked in an 18-mile antiwar march in 1969.
72. We’ve been tear gassed at a Jethro Tull concert. The police were trying to lob tear gas onto the cliffs at Red Rocks amphitheater and missed. They fell into the audience. We had our 14-month-old son Elijah with us. We left, hiking across country, but Elijah had bronchitis for two weeks.
73. I am not afraid of snakes although I respect poisonous ones. I have caught a 5-foot-long Texas Rat snake in our chicken coop with my hands.
74. I steamed in a sauna in Colorado and rolled in the snow afterwards. You just have to scream!
75. I have had a crazy, drunk man come after me with a hatchet intending to kill me.
76. I’ve seen the stars from the top of a mountain so bright they made me cry.
77. I slept under the stars in those mountains beside a river with coyotes yipping on the other side and an owl floating silently overhead.
78. I have had to peel my bed pillows off of the wall where they were frozen from the condensation of our breath.
79. I had a friend sleep across my bedroom door for several weeks to protect me from my ex-husband.
80. I was anorexic in college and weighed only 100 pounds. I got down to 85 pounds at one point for a month or so. Then I broke up with the guy who was encouraging me, and I slowly got back on track.
81. I’ve ridden in several diesel trucks when hitchhiking and have even slept in the “dog house.”
82. I left two abusive relationship, one emotional and one physical, and lived.
83. I hang-glided for about 50 yards at 15 or so feet before the wind shifted, and we had to end our lesson. I never got another chance.
84. I was an artist’s model for an art class while I was 8 months pregnant.
85. I know how to pan for gold. We once had a small vial of gold I had panned.
86. I’ve walked in stocking feet in the snow at –34 degrees. It is true: the snow doesn’t melt to your socks, and your feet don’t get wet. Your spit freezes before it hits the ground, too.
87. We have not had commercial television for over thirty years. For 13 years we didn’t own a TV. Then we got one for videos when I won a gift certificate for $75 of video rentals.
88. I do not like cleaning house. I enjoy projects, but the repetitive chores like vacuuming, washing dishes, making beds and cleaning bathrooms are very hard for me to maintain.
89. I took a gymnastics class and learned some routines on the parallel bars before I found out I was pregnant with Dimitri.
90. I am pretty sure I am ADHD, but in my time they called us brats. I had a principal tell me when I was in 6th grade that if I were a boy, she would beat me. It was one of the few times I was very grateful to be a girl!
91. I have a hard time sitting still. My hands are always moving. I feel like I bother people when I sit next to them at conferences or meetings because I fidget all the time. That is why I am a compulsive note-taker.
92. When I was in high school, I raised white mice. Eighteen got loose from an outside cage. My parents had spotted field mice in their garage for the next 15 years, at least.
93. Our second son died when he was 10 hours old. It was the hardest thing I have ever experienced.
94. I was around 9 or 10 years old when I brought a small garden snake to Sunday night church service in the pocket of my dress. I had no idea how upset people would be when it got away. No one ever knew it was me.
95. I pray for people way more than I talk to them. I have had friendships that were pretty one-sided in that I was praying constantly for them and they never knew.
96. I know how to make home-made noodles. They’re really good!
97. I can’t tell right from left.
98. I don’t particularly like Christian shoptalk, but I am totally a believer in the redemption of Jesus. I have seen and felt that life-changing power.
99. I’ve experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit, pray in tongues, prophesy in church, pray for miraculous healing and have seen quite a few of those prayers answered. I love God, and I am not at all ashamed of it!
100. I’ve saved the most important thing for last. My greatest desire in life,
far above anything else, is to do God’s will.
Days roll by and turn into months. I went to the library for children’s story hour today with Alexander and his mom. We had a great time. The boy loves books. We learned that several gymnastic schools in this area have toddler times where the kids can go and just play and tumble for several hours for a by-day rate. I am looking for out-of-the-sun summer activities for this very active boy.
Over the past couple of months, he had developed an ongoing skin rash. Everyone sort of agreed that it was an allergic reaction to the ointment they had been using several times a day on his burns. Eventually, someone notified a pediatric dermatologist who offered a free checkup. It turned out to be seborrhic dermatitis which is an inherited tendency to develop this rash when the body is under stress. Armed with a few tubes of samples, his mom slathered him every day. Now a couple of weeks later, he looks great!
On a personal level, I have been spending some time in Facebook. I’ve found some old friends and even connected with a few versatile Xangans. Message me if you have an account there. On Facebook there has been a surge of writing 30 Random Things About Yourself. I don’t think anything could compare to My_HAT_is_older_than_you. He managed to write 200 things and I am sure he had plenty more. I have a list of 100 that I will put on this weekend. It is harder than it sounds, but really a lot of fun to think about all the adventures life has to offer.
My, how the days have slipped by! We celebrated our Christmas gift-giving on January 3rd. Our younger daughter came in on the 1st so we waited for her. School is in full swing again, and I find myself wrapped up in junior high dramas that inevitably come after holidays.
An update on Alexander and his healing: The skin graft has taken well, but he has developed an allergy to many of the skin lotions that the hospital used to keep the scar site moisturized. He also turned out to be allergic to silicone. Silicone is used to reduce the appearance of scars. After two nights the skin was beginning to peel. There was a mad scramble to find a skin lotion that didn’t sound like a chemistry lesson. His mom is still working on scar therapy. I didn’t even know this was all possible. So here are some Christmas pictures. 
What a wonderful, quiet day we had! We are going to celebrate gift giving when our daughter comes on New Years so today we simply enjoyed life. We slept late and had our wonderful, lively grandson visit in the morning. He and his mom went to see his dad at work and shared lunch together. Later in the evening when the sun was setting, we went to their apartment and played outside. He is not allowed in the sun at all for a couple of months so evening has become playtime.
Now we are home and getting ready to go to bed. A few minutes ago the phrase “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night” came to mind. So enjoy this video as a perfect ending to Christmas day.
<http://www.youtube.com/v/Z_
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