Hygiene & chores update (4)

Trust me, I'm bored with it too, but "give the people what they want," eh?

Since you are all bored with it I'll give you the quick recap of the afternoon/evening.

Ironed B's shirt and pants.
Cloroxed toilet seat in one bathroom.
Prepared my own dinner (a small cold plate).
Cooked rice and added fresh avocado.
Cooked the one piece of chicken and carefully split it in 2 for the owner and tenant.
Discovered owner had no chicken or rice, found tenant with entire bowl, and suggested a wiser division.
*sigh*
Enjoyed a good whacking rain and thunder storm with window open in my room.
Worked on my religious cross stitching.
Had lots of little "pee"s, I think like 3 of them?
Just a tiny poo, sorry, nothing grand to report.
Did a little more neatening up of my room, mostly in an attempt for more elbow room.


Exciting huh? So much better than my borrrrrrrrrring Bible commentaries, no?

Hygiene & chores (part 2)

Updated chart on my door with the following activities:

Read news on Internet.
Sent a family email about concerns of drug abuser nearby.
Take clothes out of dryer, fold, and place near B's room (he locks door so I can't place them inside).
Washed my hair (simple cheap cleaner and conditioner). Letting it air dry.
Washed two drink mugs left in sink.
Drank a small glass of juice.
Read more on the Internet.

I'm going to sign off soon so let me give you the likely activities so you are totally in the mix.

I will probably shave my legs. I shave my legs mostly because I have a slight skin condition (keratosis pilaris) and I find that shaving helps prevent roughness of the skin surface.

Work on cross stitich while listening for post office delivery to arrive. Will then sort the mail.

If I decide I have enough money I will put a gallon or so of gas in the car and have a slice of pizza at the mall. Sometimes I then sit after the lunch in the mall and work on a religious cross stitich, as kind of a silent witness.

I will probably then return to this boarding house where I reside and do the usual afternoon activities, such as preparing dinner, working on my sewing, etc.

Oh, and I'll probably be ready to "pee" soon!!!!!!!!!!!

My hygiene & chores schedule

People near me continue to be more interested in how much I sleep, shower, do chores, etc and other stuff that there's no point in listing since I sure don't and won't be having any intimate "fun". So here's this morning so far. I've posted the active list on paper on my boarding house room door too, to answer any "in person" questions.

5:30 AM Wake when I hear one of the tenants start his motorcycle to go to work.
7:30 AM Wake up proper. Turn on radio to prepare for 8:00 talk show.
Take a shower and use the toilet (number one only).
Gather supplies to wash my hair later (I use the kitchen sink because I have long hair).
Spray cleanser in the shower.
Get dressed.
Wash a few kitchen dishes & water bamboo plant.
Put lining in trash can since previous user did not do so & put their trash in it.
Checked B's laundry status; it is still drying.
Phone rang but B is home so he has the handset & answered it.
Thinking about someone's desire to have book written & how to handle it, and also thinking about someone who has a severe prescription pill abuse problem (did some research about that last night on the Internet).
Opened curtains in my room so people can peer in on schedule. Actually, I always have them open as I really need a glimpse of the sky & outdoors, even if not so great a view.
8:54 Moved some craft supplies back into my room (I had moved them out when cleaning past two days).
9:00 AM Doing this blogging & ready to tweet some.

Hope you find this helpful! People have "voted" and prefer this info to my Bible teaching!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;-)

I could give my opinion on the Franklin Graham thing, but I know people are much more interested when I will next be IN THE BATHROOM!

Meanwhile, I wish I was in China to help

Although I am there with the greatest spiritual attentiveness, I feel a great frustration and urge to be there in physical person to help with the earthquake recovery. People who are very child oriented and deeply love their families have gone through a terrible, terrible thing, something I, of course, deeply understand.

I also pray that those in China who have grown up in atheistic surroundings and who now experience this terrible loss can derive comfort from the knowledge that the tragic death of even one child surely does not end in nothingness. There is a heaven, there is a loving God, and all children there are treasured. Those who died to protect and save children are heroes in heaven, for Jesus said that no greater love is there than one who lays down his life for another.

Anyway, I continue to read the fine news coverage, praise the Chinese government leaders for their hands-on management and condolences in this tragedy, and pray for the best that can be achieved in rescue and recovery.

Very tired of yelling and seething

Dear brothers and sisters. (And a special hello to my Muslim friends. I've not been able to address many of my blog postings your way recently, but you are not far from my thoughts and best wishes).

I am so tired of the decades of wasted opportunity. I am so tired of the spiritual combat, and the day to day degradation of the human experience. If people had asked me the simplest of questions at any time during the past forty plus years, so much misery could have been avoided by so very many people. I am here "with portfolio" and so far what I have to offer has been totally wasted and ignored.

Here is what I should have been doing:

o Sitting in a house with a garden, instead of living on credit in garages and apartments.
o Speaking to family and friends in normal truth talk, instead of being isolated and having to tolerate the cult script and symbolic agenda driven talk that anyone who does speak to me uses.
o Teaching people how to be good parents, and how to raise their children with God in their hearts.
o Refuting heresy by reconnecting people with their true origins and understanding of God's greater plan for their joy and dignity.
o Being able to enjoy the company of many people from all walks of life.
o Showing people how to design a real plan for recovery of the health of the earth's environment.
o Showing people how to design a real plan for recovery of the economy.
o Showing people how to design a real plan for the remediation of poverty worldwide.
o Showing people how to design real plans for urban and rural communities.
o Restoring people's understanding, trust and love for God.
o The sacramental life in the Catholic Church, where I can actually attend services without being stalked.
o Having pets and interaction with wildlife and the outdoors again.
o Showing the way to a fullness of understanding between Catholics and Muslims.
o Promoting the unity of the Christian community, which has been tragically fractured.
o Working on my arts and crafts without having to dodge spiritual paint balls.
o Restoring the spirits of those who are on the front lines in so many battles, such as against child abuse, abortion, rescue workers, the military, police and fire fighters.
o Reminding doctors to become life savers again, instead of deadly tools.
o Showing people how to restore traditional capabilities and sources of joy.
o Being around babies and children.
o Being able to enjoy music, sports and good entertainment again.
o Traveling and meeting new people, dining out, dining in, having real friends.
o Having more and more days go by that I don't have to read the news and say, "Didn't I warn you of this? Will you ever listen to me?"
o Flower arranging and Christmas shopping year around.
o Having friends and family who I can shop for, make gifts for, tuck away birthday gifts for. The "symbolism" of the few people I do have in my life, family, who refuse to acknowledge the cards and gifts I do send them has been a stupid and arrogant waste of years of my time, not only of my time, but disrespectful toward God.
o Helping those who are severely traumatized and lost to reclaim their lives in authentic ways full of goodness.
o Being able to think of more and more people and how normal they are, instead of my thinking, "Wow, they are on the path to hell, and they don't even realize it." Hell is packed already, but there sure is a long line of people wasting their chances to get out of that queue.

That, and more, has been my portfolio, and all I've received to date is spiritual and financial attack, punctuated by loneliness and physical abuse.

And people wonder why I can cuss like a truck driver.

You should hear what the Lord God thinks of this waste of my time.

Severe storms today February 05

Several southern states are very hard hit with violent storms and tornadoes. I just read that Jackson, Tennessee was hit hard. I stayed at the Doubletree Inn there in 2006, when I was having to move back to my mother's house (forced to live in her garage while my stepfather was dying in a nursing home... it was him I returned to try to help). Anyway, while driving there I stayed one night in this luxury hotel. After a year of sleeping on the floor on a mat in my apartment the bed was great. Dinner was excellent and they even played some of my favorite songs like the Moody Blues "Tuesday Afternoon." I arrived at this Doubletree Inn as they were hosting the "Lions Club."

Wow. I hope everyone is that nice area is OK after this terrible storm.

More family laundry ha ha :)

Here's another crazy loon "reincarnation" story. My cousin, rest his soul, died just over four years ago. He was much older than me, and raised by my dad because my cousin's dad drank and deserted his wife, my dad's younger sister, when she had the baby. He was one of the kindest men I ever knew, my cousin, and his nickname was "kissing cousin." When I was a toddler I'd hide under the kitchen table when I'd had enough kissing from him! He was the first in the family to go to college and I still remember and can picture so vividly my being a little one crawling in my onesie flannels and getting under the table when he'd stop by after class in college, rushing to hug me!

Anyway, my cousin was born on St Patrick's Day, in an observant Irish family, but he was not religious in the least. He was kind and good, but had no relationship with God. Yet, incredible as this sounds, I learned that some people believe he is a "reincarnated someone" because he's related to me, was born on that saint's day, has the letters "l-a-m-b" in his name, his mom's name is Jesse (as in King David's father, but a girl, obviously) and best of all, my dad's nickname for him was boy "sprout" (which was a pun for boy scout and how my cousin was tall and thin like a sprout.) I came to find out that people have sucked up to my cousin (and still do so to his widow) because they thought they were hanging around with a reincarnated Christian heavy weight, but that he was too dumb to know it. My cousin's widow is still playing to their tune, and there's no point in my telling her, because she doesn't ever listen to anyone. The only quarrel I ever had with my cousin was about her blind "know it all" attitude... and it did come to a sad end, because both their health was ruined by living as they did. Neither knew they were being egged on in their lifestyle choices and access to money spent unwisely by people who were vampire reincarnation enthusiasts. I'm still amazed how people can think that people can die, go to the glory of God, and then be "sent back" because they didn't learn how to parallel park their chariot properly, and that they are remembering enough to be neurotic but do not remember the splendor and judgement of God. What total sinful tards who are looking at a long swift hard fall.

Cultural genealogy

Just a quick little post about ancestry because I'm listening to a talk show that is discussing this subject, in the subject of immigration.

On my father's side they were Irish (mother) and Scottish and English mix (father). They came over in the late 1800's by way of Canada, which was a gateway for many who emigrated to the USA. Apparently my great grandmother was pregnant with my grandmother during that sea voyage. There is also a great grandmother of mine on this side who came from Malta and is a descendant of the Tuareg people of North Africa.

On my mother's side they are German with also a strong Turkish ancestry on my grandmother's side. My looks show that relationship, as I was told when I visited Turkey. On my grandfather's side there are touches of French and Polish too, I hear.

I grew up with a German accent because of my mother, but not speaking the German language. In second grade I was sent to a speech therapist by the school to "get rid" of the German accent. Because I was trained not to speak anything but English at such a young age, this is why I do not speak any languages other than English, because learning them has become an obstacle. However, I find that I can learn a written language, especially calligraphy based, because reading does not trigger the "negatives" that speech "remediation" programmed me with. I tried to take an intro to ancient Greek at the New School in the late 1990's, but because they were so verbally based, I struggled, and the professor was openly cruel to me and I dropped out. I ended up teaching it to myself from books.

Good thing God has more patience and kindness toward people than they have toward their neighbor!!

The 8 Facts Internet Game Thingee

8 Facts You Never Wanted to Know About Me

"The rules are simple... Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.'

1. Sometimes I eat only condiments, usually when I need an energy boost, or have run out of the type of food to support the condiment. Examples are solo spoonfuls of peanut butter, maple syrup, honey, jelly, pats of butter, and marzipan (almond paste.)

2. The Moody Blues were my favorite rock band, except when they came out with the drug sympathetic song “Timothy Leary’s dead.” I intensely disliked and banished them for years because of that song. When they proved albums later that it was just a fluke of the times, I became their biggest fan again. I always missed Michael Pindar though, because he melded into their songs overt love and praise of God.

3. I was born with a natural knowledge of mathematics and astrophysics. In 8th grade I won a small local science fair project not with the brilliance of what I did, but because I figured out a way to take a small piece of what I already knew and come up with a methodology by which I might have “discovered” it through experimentation. Even then the judges did a little bit of head scratching.

4. When people go to the zoo and say “Phew!” at how the giraffes smell, I think to myself how great I think that they smell! That unique giraffe smell is the result of chemicals that flag a high degree of health and antibiotic action within particularly the males. So for me smelling a giraffe is like appreciating a guy who used a nice antibiotic soap in the shower! Natural Zest!

5. I know when people are lying and/or pretending to be someone they are not. I rarely let on that I do because even as a child, I realized there was no escaping it, because it has become the general societal condition. I hope to teach people otherwise.

6. When I was a little girl my mother, who is a rough and aggressive person at best, gave me my first finger nail trim and did as painful a job as possible, skipping only the bamboo shoots. No fool I, I realized that if I developed the habit of biting my nails, she’d have no cause to cut my nails again. So I cultivated biting my nails for many years as a deliberate survival strategy and she never touched my nails after that first time. That’s one reason I can give good counseling to self cutters, because I get the logic.

7. One of my favorite things is to have a garden that yields fresh flowers for cutting every day. Carnations, gladiolas, and roses are my steady favorite flowers. I also make potpourri. I collect essential oils and design interesting mixtures of fragrances. I do ikebana (Japanese flower arranging.) Ideally, I’d like to do a new arrangement each day.

8. I always buy a house with a well.

*I tag anyone who wants to be tagged!*

A Favorite joke from Long Ago

This is from my oldie but goodie collection:

Jesus comes upon a mob of people who are about to stone an adulteress. He steps forward to save her life, preaching to them, and saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!"

As everyone hesitates a short, resolute little lady pushes her way to the front of the crowd. She picks up a huge stone and hurls it right at the adulteress.

With dismay Jesus sighs and says, "Mother!!"



(ha ha ha, I heard that one when I was a child and it's a wicked pleasure joke :)

What's in a Name? One of my favorites.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, often comments when callers to his show have one of his favorite names. That made me think of how I once told my ex, who is secular Jewish, that one of my favorite names is Mardochai (how it's spelled in my usual Bible, but it is also spelled Mordecai or Mordchai.) He burst out in laughter and just about fell out of the chair. He considered it as glamorous a name as if I had said "Morty" or "Fred." But hey, I'm not talking about anyone named today with that name, I'm talking about that mysterious realm of phonetics, of how certain names and sounds just resonate with people. Mordecai means "courage" in Hebrew and comes from the venerable man in the Book of Esther. I just think that in its fullness it is a really strong and feel good name. I've always liked it, but cannot comment on anyone of modern times and their deeds who may have borne this name!

Chit chat

Just some miscellaneous thoughts and activities :-)

I love fruit and had such a craving for a fresh variety that when I went shopping today I got cherries, peaches, bananas, dates, raisins and plums. A reminder to those who are trying to eat healthy and/or watch their weight to include a piece of fruit with every meal, and to eat the fruit first. For example, you could have three dates right before eating and have great flavor, fiber, nutrition and appetite control benefit.

I have stocked the water, tuna, and soup that's recommended in case of hurricane. Of course, it looks as though there are no hurricanes in sight! ;-)

I got to brag to a fellow shopper as we looked at the fishing gear about my stepfather, rest his soul, who used to practically attract the fish to himself. He'd catch like a dozen bass at one try!

I just learned a great solitaire game (I love playing cards and I collect them, and learned to play solitaire from my dad.. not the computer type but the real desk top type!) So I'm playing this new solitaire game over and over because I like it so much. I'm actually pretending to play with a friend who lives cross country, so I keep a pad of paper with the win/loss of each round of solitaire, and I alternate crediting each game to him and me. So far he's ahead with 1 win and 5 losses while I have 1 win and 6 losses!

Bought 2 baseball books: "The Teammates" by David Halberstam and "Pride and Pinstripes" by Mel Stottlemyre. I tend to be reading about a dozen books at a time. I've always been like that.

My Dad's Birthday

July 19 would have been the 104th birthday of my father, who died back in 1962 of a heart attack. He was an American paratrooper (101st and 82nd) who fought in the last battles of World War II in Europe, and was part of the occupation of Berlin.

One of my favorite memories of him was when we would sit on the front steps to our house. He would take one of his cigarettes and peel off a piece of thin paper. Then he would take off his bifocal glasses and using the bright sun, magnify the light and burn the paper for me. He was of that generation that dropped out of school early (8th grade in his case) in order to work and help out the family. He had a genius IQ yet he never mentioned it and it really didn't matter in his life. He was a humble night watchman and like many vets of WWII was deputized as a deputy sheriff.

One of my least favorite memories is learning that some creeps actually think they are my father reincarnated. News flash: you ain't even his army boots reincarnated.

Anyway, I know he's enjoying his room in the heavenly mansion. Happy memory birthday to him (and to others who might be reading who are celebrating their birthdays today, so long as you don't think you are reincarnated anybody.)

What is a real woman?

Here's a little true story from my life. When I was in high school, college, and then embarking on a career there was a lot of discrimination against women. I of course oppose discrimination in the area of equal pay for equal work, and in stereotypical characterization of women, as there was a lot of back then. Having said that, though, I soon found that the women who "got ahead" around me (in a major Wall Street bank at the time) were what I called to myself "female impersonators." They were very hard and aggressive women. They were miles away in compassion and common sense from the 1950's male "patriarchal" boss that they so disrespected. They would not lend a helping hand to male or female, even if they saw someone drowning in front of them. One of my employees told me that when she worked for one of those "FI's" that when the employee came down with the disease multiple sclerosis, this FI boss would not let her call for a car (instead of take the subway) to take her home as walking and standing became more difficult. This was a company that paid for personal limo service for anyone if you worked after 8 pm... but my employee's former FI boss would not find a way to get car service for her when she needed it, despite decades of service.

Anyway, after 10 years in this bank I ended up working for one of the worst of the FI's. She slandered and tortured me out of that job, and eventually out of that career track. She was married to another executive in this bank and had tons of money, power, and influence. She was very cruel to me and I left the bank with only lawyers speaking for me, if you know what I mean.

About three years later I happened to be in the area once again, planning to meet a friend at the street corner of that bank office where I used to work. It was pouring rain. As I hurried along to meet my friend to my astonishment this FI ex-boss came running up to me in the pouring rain, with no umbrella, and with a huge smile. As I stood there she rushed up to me and said nothing except, "I'm pregnant!" She was absolutely glowing and looked most human! She didn't care about her appearance, her hair was plastered down in the rain, and she just was grinning and grinning. I told her, sincerely, how happy I was for her. And then she hustled off. She never asked how I was doing, to say nothing of expressing regrets for treating me like a dirty carpet outside the door.... but that did not diminish my gladness that she had found joy is being an actual woman.

And how cool she didn't run up to me and say, "Wow, I just helped a girl procure an abortion! I'm a real woman's advocate!"

(And here's another strange irony... only a little over a year before I "lost my eggs" in unexpected surgery, which made me think back then about the very interesting timing of running into her...)

Anyway, her kid would be I think about 10 years old today, but I still think on that day in the rain.

I Don't Blog When Harrassed

For the past four years every so often some kooks stalk me by interfering with my computer. The system will hang or I'll be continually disconnected from my wireless service. I can pretty much predict when it's going to happen because it's related to some nuts that I once considered friends who think that there's an astrological connection between what I do and their luck or fate or karma or whatever. So they meddle with my computer once in a while when they think they have to spin the karma dial. All they are doing is severely pissing off St. Michael, but hey, I'm tired of explaining this and arguing, so I just sign off and work on my writing or art when it's one of those cycles. That's why I wasn't on yesterday except for Lady Bird's tribute; I would not have signed on at all except for that.

My grandparents' food and flower garden

My grandparents on my mother’s side were German, and lived in a small village on the outskirts of Berlin. So many people alive today never knew the kind of life my grandparents had, so I’d like to describe their house and their land. They had I’d guess about a half an acre, that was narrow across and ran so deep that from the house in the back you could not see the street. All the houses had high metal fences surrounding their property, with gates in the front, but this was by no means a gated community type thing. Rather it was an “old Europe” type thing where people could farm even within a somewhat urban setting. Not far down the road were golden wheat fields, with wonderful wild blue bachelor buttons (cornflowers) that would spring up within the fields.

My grandfather “Opa” was a carpenter. My grandmother “Oma” was the green thumb. Their half an acre was a veritable miniature garden of Eden. There were fruit and nut bearing trees throughout the property. They harvested for their own use and for sale on the market cherries, hazelnuts (filberts), plums, peaches, apples and others I probably didn’t notice as I was only there twice, both times during summers. There were fruit bushes everywhere, and I remember mostly the gooseberries and the currents. One of my jobs was to pick the currents each day to make bowls of them for dessert after dinner. We’d sprinkle them with sugar because they were tart. Their gooseberries were sweet, though you did not eat the skins, but you squeezed them out like grapes. There was a chicken coop with about six chickens, who were my playmates (until one of them ended up in the pot for dinner one night, ugh, the reality of pet vs. dinner ha ha.) The chickens went totally crazy for the white waxy berries from some sort of shrub that grew along one side of the property, so I’d pick those too for them as a treat. They also had two rabbits in a hutch. I liked to play with the chickens and the rabbits so much that Opa had to build a little chicken wire enclosure for me to sit in with my day’s playmates. The chickens were a rich brown color, and I still remember how soft and velvety their feathers felt. In the morning I’d go and collect any eggs that they laid. They ate a grain mix that had tiny bits of dried fish in it that they totally went berserk over… they loved those tiny bits of fish and would dive for them squawking and competing to get to the fish bits first whenever I scattered the grains for them. There was a potato patch in the front of the house, and a squash patch in the back, so I would dig for potatoes (and give away food to neighbors, to Oma’s irritation ha ha.) When the hazel nuts were harvested they filled one of those old fashioned wicker market baskets, and they’d last throughout the year, unless I was visiting, when they’d not likely make it through the summer as I munched on those highly favorite treats!

And every inch of the garden that was not used for food plants was filled with flowers. Until she became old and invalid, Oma just worked magic (the magic of hard work and a green thumb) on planting every type of beautiful flower. I remember mounds of orange and yellow nasturtiums. There were pink, white, yellow, orange, red and purple flowers everywhere. She had flowering bushes, mounds of flowering plants, and also individual flowers throughout, often planted among piled up rocks. She, like most farming families, had great “rock gardens” along the path that led from the road to the house. For those of you who haven’t had a farmer in the family, I’ll explain that the rocks come from preparing the ground for farming. When a farmer first marks out a plot of land to plant, he or she has to go through the property and remove the stones and boulders that would interfere with farming. That’s one reason why a lot of farm houses have stone fences, stone foundations to their barns and houses, and rock gardens. Throughout the centuries in every country where there is hard and stone filled soil, you can recognize just by looking where the first farmer’s “harvest” was stones, as they prepared their site for farming and building. As an aside, one of my favorite “chores” when I had my own house was to rebuild and repair the old stone border that created a gardened terrace in the backyard, but I claim no special talent or patience with its upkeep! It was fun when I actually motivated myself to do so, though it ended up being too big a job for just one person to do well. And I should have used some dabs of concrete as erosion made that whole area unstable.

Anyway, Opa and Oma’s garden was so full that there was only a tiny section of actual lawn! Just the portion of land right in front of the house was lawn, probably about 10 by 30 feet in size. Opa had a great little goldfish pond in a rock garden, where the pond was a galvanized tub sunk into the ground. Nothing fancy but it was one of the sweetest and most enjoyable sites. Thankfully Opa and Oma did not share the craze for garden gnomes, though they did have a couple. I don’t like them at all; I’m more a “statue of a deer in the front yard” kind of person. Or a pink flamingo. Definitely not gnomes! When we visited the gnome/garden shop I bought a glazed statue of a German shepherd. I still have it and love it.

And one of my total favorite things about the house was the backyard vineyard. It mostly consisted of a few rows, and also the vines that grew over the back of the house. The windows from my bedroom opened right in the middle of grape vines and I totally loved that. I had my Barbie dolls and would sit in the window and play with my dolls in the vines. My Barbie, Ken, and Skipper dolls had to learn how to up grape vines along trellises ha ha. I missed having dogs terribly both times I was there, but especially the second time when Oma was ill and surly, and my mother spent a lot of time seeking the fermented form of the grape vines in town, if you get my drift. My dad had died before our first trip to Germany, so I missed him a lot too. He was the dog guy in the family; he just was crazy over dogs. Not a cat guy, nor was I. So when I missed my dog (who was in the kennel in the US eating pounds of raw hamburger brought by a family friend) what did they do? Get me a cat, of course. It was handy to them because there was a litter nearby. But the cat was already grown up and not affectionate to me (or anyone) at all by the time they gave it to me. We had to establish the hierarchy (one swing of the cat around inside the chicken coop did that) because being scratched up by a cat who didn’t want to be adopted was hardly my idea of fixing a broken heart about my dad and my dog lol. The cat ended up staying on and kept Opa company after Oma died, so that was fine. Just don’t pretend someone is doing something for me when it’s not for me, if you know what I mean.
My stupid brother did the obligatory locking me into the chicken coop knowing I was afraid of the big black spider that was in there. That was the first and last time I ever entered anywhere without “securing my exit” and having recourse to a baseball bat. You military folks will know what I mean.

Anyway, I’ve never seen a yard and garden as fine as my grandparents’, since that time back in 1962. I got to see my mother and Opa on ladders harvest the cherries and take them to market (I didn’t get to go along though, drat) for extra money. I’ll tell you, there is nothing like eating fruit and vegetables every day that is grown by your own hand, or at least locally. A lot of people who grown their own tomatoes know what I mean. Later I would grow my own tomatoes, squash, dill, cucumbers, peas, beans, and cosmos (flowers) for the dinner table. Oma had a cellar full of her own canned goods. While I never went that far I did teach myself how to make strawberry jam, concord grape chutney, pickles, and canned whole tomatoes (yum.) Everyone ought to give it a try if you have a chance. There’s so much that is to be alarmed about with the dirty food that is being imported into our country, instead of being grown on its own. When I was growing up I’d walk in the fields and see the actual sweet corn that we’d eat in a few days. You knew where it came from and you knew what was put on it, or not. We have a crisis now in this country with having surrendered the cleanest and best food production system in the world to countries with low or no standards. For example, I love strawberries and always check that they are locally grown. The ones I buy here in Mississippi are grown in Louisiana. And you want to support your local countrymen and women, do you not? Up in New York state my brother has classmates that still operate their family farms. I’d stop by and buy their produce at their roadside stands. It’s healthier, tastier, and cleaner. Remember – you are what you eat!

Jerry Lee's Southern Fried Chicken

2 pieces, very tasty, crisp and spicy.
orange juice
coca cola (in the original style glass bottles, tastes best that way!)
ice tea
Hershey's almond bar

Hey, what can I say. It's my "brain food"... I think better when I've had fried chicken and chocolate ha ha ha.

probably some ears of corn for late night dinner...

Raining here on the bayou

No thunder and lightening this time, just a nice steady heavy rain. The fresh air smells great and some birds keep singing right on through the rain.

Listening to one baseball game after the other on my XM radio.

Sewing tips, scapulars, wearing the faith

I sewed just about all of my clothes when I was school, from the 7th grade through graduation. I did it because we had no money for clothes, and I didn't like having to wear 10 year old hand me downs from when my sister in law was young. They were great quality clothes, but 10 year old out of fashion was hard even in a podunk little village that I grew up in. Cotton fabric was 30 cents a yard and I could squeeze a sleeveless shell out of a yard. So I was able to make some very cool things and keep up with the fads, and a few really strange things too. The cool things included an orange Nehru jacket, a pure white Safari jacket and skirt, and paisley "Carnaby" look skirt and matching men's necktie. I learned how to make fairly complicated outfits, such as suits with lapels. Since I had to make due with hand me down fabrics (like turquoise hounds tooth) some of those outfits were strange, and that was the reason why. My sister in law's mother gave them to me and I had to use what I could get.

Sometimes, though, I'd be able to do something really special. One of my favorite pieces was a tabard. For those of you who don't know what that is, think of those advertising signs that people wear, where there is a board in front, and a board in back, and they are fastened together and worn over the shoulders with a strap over each shoulder. There was a bit of a medieval interest in fashion when I was in school, and so Simplicity patterns had a tabard pattern, hip length, with a hood, and fastened on the side with D rings.

Now, for various reasons too complicated to get into here, in those days it was not a great idea to wear a lot of things that trumpeted my Catholic faith. I got around that by using a lot of plaid, which if you think about it, is a lot of crosses. So I made the tabard out of a gray plaid with silver D rings and a hood. Therefore it was like wearing a scapular, without being obvious at all about it.

A scapular was a devotional garment worn in the Middle Ages, consisting of taking the outer garment of a monk's outfit, which is sleeveless and shaped like a tabard. Over time the lay people started wearing small symbolic versions of the outfit, shrinking them until they were two small pieces of cloth, joined by strings and worn like a double sided necklace, on piece on front and one on back. The Catholic Church has approved a number of scapulars based on verified revelations, particularly those from the Virgin Mary.

I started reminiscing about my home sewn tabard and it's discrete devotional sign because this July 16 is the Commemoration of Our Lady of Carmel, and the scapular she granted with the approval of God, the Brown Scapular. I then thought that I might share this story because so many people, students in particular, are oppressed about wearing signs of Christian devotion to schools or the workplace. So I thought that I'd pass on my tip that wearing plaid is a way to dress in a whole lot of crosses without having to get into a knock down drag out battle over wearing a sign of faith. So far no one has banned being a sign of a Scot ha ha. Anyway, it worked for many years for me. I've colored this blog post in the colors of my original tabard's plaid design!

Notice I Don't Bother to Copyright

So much of what I've written over the past decades has been stolen and used for their financial gain that I don't even bother going through the motions of pretending to copyright.

If people were going to steal and use anything from me I wish it would be my admonishments and warnings to guard the health of their souls, which are in peril.