Old Scribbles Help Me Write New Scribbles

For the last few days I have been getting comfy in my "writing room" and re-reading my huge stack of journals. Opening up one of the journals that I began filling when I was a teenager is always a risky venture. I often get distracted from whatever I was looking for in the first place. 

Sometimes I will go to my journals when I want to know what year we took the boys to Disneyland or exactly what date we moved into this house. But then I get caught up in reading stuff I do not recall and I forget why I started the hunt in the first place! 

But this week I have a distinct and focused purpose for my step into the past. I have a green marker and a black ink pen and a yellow tablet at my side as I open the next journal. I am methodically going through them day by day and marking important personal moments that I may use in a book that I would love to write. I make a green dot next to the journal entry and also record the date and main theme on the yellow tablet. 

It is a weird sensation to spend multiple hours immersed in your own history and then come back to the present. I come out of the room with a dazed and far away look in my eyes and Hubs asks if I'm okay. I say that I am so happy to be in the here and now and done with the "good ole days". I miss some of the cute kid days but would never choose to go back in time and I figure that I still have some cute kid stuff in front of me when I become a Grandma someday! 

I am so glad that I am a natural journal-keeper. It was never a chore for me. I looked forward to my stolen moments to sit and record my thoughts about my life. Some entries are one paragraph but most are a page or two. I realized that my boys would not always be little boys and I knew that their funny comments and goofy mischief would not last forever. My own inner questions and beliefs grew and changed as I lived my life and I have never stopped filling journals and probably never will.

Tomorrow I will dive into my past once again and who knows what treasures I will find.

Living Wholeheartedly

I keep trying to write about other things but my mind and heart are so full of my mother that I guess I will just go with the flow and see where it takes me. We did not talk on the phone every day or even every week, but we did talk daily in my head. Mothers are more powerful than they feel or know. I feel her "votes" on everything I do. Sometimes I agree with her and sometimes I do not, both are valuable lessons. 

Here are the words I shared at my mother's memorial on May 28, 2011...

...My mother had a great gift for going overboard. It used to embarrass me as a kid and teenager. But in later years I came to realize that the better word for her was “whole-hearted”. She did nothing just halfway or half-hearted.

When my mother became interested in painting ceramics, she took ceramic classes, began buying the molds and then for several years taught her own ceramics classes and 'fired' her student’s creations in her own kiln in our garage! She also loved to oil paint and so for as long as I can remember there were numerous oils of great old barns around our home.

She loved card games, we often found ourselves sitting in a circle late into the night for hours and hours when visiting. There is an entire drawer in the dining room full of playing cards! I have played Shanghai for many hours while longing for my bed!

My mom loved to garden. Did she just do some pretty yard planting and leave it at that? No way! She went to classes and became a Certified Master Gardener and displayed a garden scenes at the fair, she also created and sold some beautiful planters called Hypertufas, for several years. Her yards are a lush and inspiring place to walk or sit and enjoy the scenery. My mom's yards have "rooms" divided by greenery that have distinct themes and colors and moods. 

When Mom became interested in photography, she again attended classes and my first-born is embarrassingly THE most photographed kid in the world! This was 28 years ago, before the digital age and everyone's phones included a camera. She would show me pictures of him in outfits I had never seen because she had her own little fashion shows when she babysat him! 

But her best time for going overboard was the holidays. The boxes and boxes of decorations were brought in from the garage and "Decoration/Craft Room" and the house was thoroughly transformed top to bottom. Curt still talks about his first Christmas in our family. Walking into my parent's home had him wide-eyed and a little dis-oriented! No room was left without holiday cheer and adornment. I remember him coming to me and quietly saying, "Umm, there is a Christmas Tree in the bathroom!” My response was, "Yah, so?” 

But my mom did not confine her decorating to the house and yard. Every job she held in my growing up years was another opportunity to "brighten the place up". At the hospital jobs, the dry cleaning and office job, and our home church; her holiday decorations changed the atmosphere for the better. And I would not be surprised to hear that she has been decorating for her church functions and women's clubs here.

Mom’s gift of doing everything with her whole heart will be missed.... 

Another thought that I will add here but was not appropriate at the service is that my mom made me crazy and she also kept me sane. That gives me great hope for my own children's sanity!


PS If you're not tired of hearing me blather on go here and vote me to the Top Posts! Thanx.

Do You Have Old Kids?

I am trying to find the words to explain the pleasure I get from having my grown kids in my home. Even though my sons are 24 and 28, this is a new sensation for me. Twenty-four year old Rocker Son has only started coming around now that he has a new girlfriend and has cleaned up his life a bit. Writer Son is newly married and I think my enjoyment about his presence is that we are not always nagging at him about job, money, car etc. That's his wife's job now! Ha! Actually, being married has transformed him into a grown man taking on real responsibilities and that is totally a kick to watch!

I remember my mom talking a lot about how much she loved having us all home for visits. We could never stay long enough to please her. "Don't go home yet, spend the night!" I did not understand it. But I do now.

Well, I'm not sure that I really understand it, like I said at the beginning, I am having trouble putting my finger on why it brings me so much pleasure to have them around. After all, I am basking in the wonderfullness of the empty nest!

The empty nest is glorious for hubs and me! I have waxed rapturous about it way back here and several other posts as well. So what is it about sitting on the couch and watching my sons and their ladies laughing and jostling in the kitchen that warms my heart so much? Hubs and I will catch each others eyes and share a smile as we hear the loud laughter erupt, even if they are laughing at us. Which they definitely do. 

It may have something to do with watching them become grown-ups right before our eyes. Where did those messy, bumbling, noisy (well they are still noisy) little boys go? We can still see them very clearly in these handsome men that fill our kitchen up with their huge feet and tall bodies. 

Or it could be the joy in seeing them look at the girls they love! Oh my goodness! That is a truly amazing sensation to watch that happen! To listen to the cute, flirty banter and even the married bickering is funny to us.

I am so thankful that both my sons live close right now. I do not take it for granted, it could change in a moment. I intend to enjoy every minute I can while they live close enough to drop by if they happen to be passing by on their way to something else, or they want to watch a show we all love. 

And someday.....they will take a while to get in the house because they are busy unloading baby seats and grabbing the diaper bag! Someday, but for now they are more than enough!

Back In Time? No Thanx!

I love the gorgeous old iron work!

Thank you, Dear Bloggy Friends, for all your good wishes on our wedding anniversary this last week! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when I read sweet words from people whom I've never even met! But we do feel like we know one another don't we? In some cases we are sharing more about our lives and inner thoughts than we have to very many others so maybe we do know each other in a real way!

Hubs and I celebrated our 33rd married year by spending the day in the city of our beginnings together. It's only an hour away but we no longer have any human connections there so we seldom return. It was a cold and rainy day so the car was our transport back into time rather than the motorcycle on this trip.

We left our hometown in 1992, so there have been many changes to the old neighborhoods and shopping centers. When returning after that many years, the truly FREAKY part is that even the houses and stores that came in AFTER we left are looking old and done with their prime time! There was an empty field that I used to ride my bike over to get to school, now it is an old and beat up looking neighborhood! What?! How can this be? The former FIELD is now old homes!! Crazy.

Antique architecture has been protected in our town.

One sad stop was at our favorite house. The little 1940's home that we poured ourselves into restoring with lots of love and care. Rocker Son was born two months after we moved in and Writer Son learned to ride a bike in the long driveway. Back in 1992 I had a difficult time saying good-bye to this little place with the cozy bay window kitchen nook.  This last Friday it actually made my tummy feel bad to slow down in front of our little love nest and see the cars in the yard and the paint we had brushed on it was now peeling off. 

But our tour through town was still a sweet one, filled with stories we hadn't laughed about in ages. Names of favorite grade school teachers came flowing back as we passed my school. The high school where hubs and I met brought back all the angst and longing of those years. As we turned a corner and went by a knot of teen boys on a corner, the look in their eyes said that not much had changed in that area!

About a block from our high school is the small conservative church we had attended with our families. The sign in front made me gasp out loud. It is now an Islamic center! wow! Times change. Our next stop was the shoe store we had worked in together at the beginning of our relationship. Read that story here , at My Reflections, where I Guest Posted last week.

Used to be counter to ceiling shelves of shoes!

The yellow mustard always remind us of our wedding!

We have visited the store many times over the years and have been unhappy to see creepy new stores take the place of our high end quality shoe store. But this time we smiled to see that it is now a beautiful art gallery with all new paint and fixtures. I told the owner that we used to work there years ago and she pointed to the one remaining ladder that had been saved. It used to have two huge red ladders that took us up to the high shelves to retrieve shoes for our customers. The ladders rolled along the counter and were great fun after hours! Hubs likes to tell people how he loved to position himself just right to enjoy watching me climb them! 

It is very strange to be the "old ones". The ones that remember the old days. How can it be? When did that happen? I have found my own Tupperware and dishes in ANTIQUE stores!! What? It seems like we spent so much time being the young ones, the couple that were too young in a land of older people. Now suddenly it is the other way around and I am not ready for it at all. I'm not ready to sit down and be quiet.

Okay, I am not going off on that tangent at this time. That's another post. 

Our trip back in time was a good day that ended with the movie King's Speech, which we both loved. But I do not want to go back in time for real. I love my life and my age right now. Hubs and I are in a strange moment of unknowing. It's not real fun yet, but it is open to all possibilities! Our jobs are gone and we are working part time while figuring out what is next. Income is way down but we aren't fearful. We are just waiting. 

Our city loves these "Ladies" as they call them!

What is the next phase? I'll let you know when I know. Thanks for being here Friends!

PS. How do you like my new custom made header? I love it! If you read my tab about the blog title it all makes sense!! Thank you Jodi!!

Always Been A Trend Setter

It's late, well it's 9:30pm, but still I clicked on "NEW POST" at 9:30pm without a clue what to write about. Don't you love a first sentence like that? Really grabs you, a writer with real intentionality! Actually I stumbled across this photo just now and thought I would chat about it a bit.

My mom is looking at the camera, that's her sister in the striped blouse. And the concentrated reader is me. I was, and still am an avid & constant reader. Hubs teases me about reading cereal boxes if nothing else is around. One of my favorite things about my Blackberry is that I always have something to read while waiting somewhere without a book!

My mother and my aunt had those teased and hair sprayed styles that were accomplished by a longstanding once a week hair appointment to get it "done". At night they wrapped their heads in toilet paper or special terry cloth turban thing to sleep without messing up the poofiness! And I am just now figuring out that you really don't need to wash your hair every day. They knew what they were doing after all! But you won't find TP on my head at night!

The best and most revealing thing in this picture? Look at our clothes. My mom & I are wearing MATCHING VESTS!! Yep, that's me, always the fashionable trend setter!

OK it's 10:15, time to go to bed and read.

Ah, The Sound Of Jackhammers in the Morning.....

It's a gorgeous Saturday, about 8:40 in the morning and my wake-up call ten minutes ago brought back memories of a sound I never thought I would ever hear again so close to my house and so very early on a Saturday morning!

The horrendous sound is still vibrating though my house as I sit here in the living room with my coffee and wishing I lived way out in the country or the beachside or the desert. The sound is JACKHAMMERS pounding into cement! Yah, nice way to wake up isn't it?

Remember the post I did recently about the noisy neighbor kids screaming in their swimming pool? Well, the weather lady on the news last night said that we will be entering the triple digits in the next few days, but I guess my next door people did not see that report because they are removing their pool!

How do you remove a "cement pond"? You tear it up into small pieces, haul those pieces away and fill in the huge hole with dirt. That fill-in dirt is what I am looking at outside my living room window right now. It is in 2 large dump trucks, all ready to go into the neighbors yard. But first..........

they have to JACKHAMMER the thing to tiny movable pieces! O man, that sound!!

Who would have thought I would be enduring such a crazy sound so very close to my bed, more than once? How many people are lucky enough to be awakened by men destroying cement, which by the way, was designed to last forever and stay exactly where it was put....forever!

My flashback is taking me back to the days when we lived in a tiny house (parsonage, for those who know what that is) right next to the tiny church we were pastoring. The backyard fence was simply large sections of chicken wire and wobbly wood posts. On the other side of the fence was a large cement company and up against the rickety fence was the spot where the cement trucks were cleaned out.

What could be so bad about the place where they washed their trucks, you ask? I will answer with another question? Have you ever wondered what would happen if a cement truck got delayed or the turning cement barrel stopped turning on the back of the truck? Yah....the cement hardens inside the truck. How in the world do you get hardened cement out of a cement truck?...........

Some poor guy has to go inside the huge barrel of the truck and JACKHAMMER it out........early in the morning!! Right next to my bedroom window! Good times.

So here I am, 15 years later, listening to my dishes vibrate in the cupboard. Actually my dishes are just sitting there peacefully, just sounded more dramatic that way.

It really is sad actually. I have wanted a swimming pool my whole life. I am not sure why my neighbors are removing theirs. I know that a built-in swimming pool is a lot of work and it may have been damaged or not cared for in the past. My neighbors are new here so I have no idea how the pool looked when they arrived, but they have been using it as I complained about in a previous post. Now I feel sad for the kids and the hot, hot days ahead here in the Sacramento area of California.

But 8 0'clock in the morning?