Happy Halloween
No philosophy, no history lesson. It’s all ugly and negative. Rather, nostalgia.
The photo album on the right is a group snapshot of some of the fun we had with the kids when they were short adorably little. At least 3 times, maybe more, we were invited to a house party or a party at the church and dove in with them in costume.
Poor Brenda did have to wear the devil suit 3 years in a row. One, we couldnt’ go out and buy seasonal stuff for four, maybe one, not four. The suit was given to us, and our Raggedy Ann and Andy costumes were borrowed, the pinstripe suit and hat were borrowed. Two, I wasn’t the mom who could whip out the sewing machine and create a fire breathing dragon that moved its tail. I SOLD that rotten machine and danced about the house for the joy of it.
Poor Randy never did like my one and only attempt at creativity, the bee suit. We have his face captured on film to prove it. He too had to wear it more than one year.
Pass the torch, kids. Teach your young tolerance and give them space to improve their Halloweens with their kids!
Why, In My Day — Halloween always caught Mom by surprise. I could never figure that one out. She had and used her sewing machine on other occasions but slipped up on that one. On more than one Halloween, I wore a sheet, a paper bag, a hobo stick and bag, or a plastic Pluto the Dog suit. The best one was 5th grade. I begged, I pleaded and at last Mom caved and let me dress up as a gypsy. We had the skirt, the scarf, bracelets, the works. The part she didn’t like was
A. I looked too grown up and
B. the look required makeup. (Noooooo, not makeup, not the evil lipstick, not the trashy nail polish!!!) YES!
I won first prize too, a silver dollar!
So click on the album and share in a time when we were young enough to participate with our kids and capture the magic.
Parkinsons
He was known as Russell to his friends, Elmer to the Army, Sweetie to his honey and wife of 49 years, Dad to his kids, Dat to his son-in-law, Grampa and Poppy to the descendants. No matter the many names, he was known as My Brother to Jesus and My Child to God.
His humor was simple but legendary. He cheered all in his path and those who were forced to listen to the same one liner one more time didn’t stop him due to the victim’s listener’s deep respect for him. He was passionate about his faith and his family, equally passionate about his politics, being a “laborin’ man,” and would defend the underdog even if he didn’t agree with him completely. Being an underdog was enough.
He died of a low grade infection that slowly shut down his worn out vital organs in 5 days, too soon for out of state children to rush to his bedside to say good-bye. The infection killed him but the Parkinson’s wounded him to his core. He watched it ravage his body for about 10 years. The muscles he’d built into tremendous strength in his youth were weakened by the constant motion and twitching. No longer cheerful, no longer a source of humor, he would sit in his recliner and hold his one big hand with the other but the shaking was relentless. It couldn’t be stopped.
It ’s a cruel, debilitating demon that never lets up, doesn’t let go. Medication can make it crouch in the corner only for short periods of time. Take too much, the symptoms exaggerate. Take too little, the same. Take nothing and it’s out of control. The perfect medication balance is a relief until the disease increases in intensity at which point nothing works. You shake. And shake. And shake. Cruelty in one of its ugliest forms. It’s a slow, slow death if indeed it is fatal after a thousand years of suffering.
When Mom died on May 27th, Dad was left alone in the room until December 23rd when we imagine Mom calling to him “Russ–sell! It’s Christmas time. Get up here!” For those months he wordlessly sat all day and slept in his recliner. His only complaint besides the disease was the flashing 12:00 on the VCR. We would reset it over and over but the power was turned off every night. The next morning it would flash again. He lit up only when his kids came to visit.
He lost interest in movies, his Gunsmoke tapes, the news, the radio. His hearing was so poor if he wasn’t permitted to turn it up to 300,000 decibels, it wasn’t worth the effort to turn the “dad-blame thing” on. So he sat. And shook. When he quietly went Home in his sleep, the demon beast at long last let go.
Imagine for a moment that he was still alive, still in his house in Cameron and saw Michael J Fox, a famous and therefore, informed man on TV, also a victim of Parkinson’s talking about a cure. Not being a man of science, being hard of hearing and consistently missing key information, what would the man I once knew do? I know precisely what he’d do …
300,000,000
All media is making a big deal of the number. Sounds crowded, doesn’t it? Currently, Fox & Friends are asking the money and lifestyle questions. That’s safe ground as the answers are pretty much the same, no big surprises. As long as they stay away from ethnic, color, and age related demographics, they’re safe.
As I see things, safe is bland and bland doesn’t have much juice in the battery for good light. I want to sort this number down like Mom sorted laundry: lights, darks, heavy dirt, delicates, reds and pinks. None of these laundry piles are better or worse, they simply are what they are. Whites required hotter water and bleach. You don’t put the heavy dirt garments worn at the factory in with the delicates. She would inspect each garment for tears or missing buttons. After the washing and drying, she would separate which needed starch for pressing, which could be folded and put away, and which needed sprinkling.
Huh? What is sprinkling? Haven’t you seen a coke bottle and a cork stopper with a sprinkler head attached? After the articles were washed, bleached, softened, rinsed, squished through the wringer, hung out to dry and gathered back in from the outside lines, they were sprinkled — dampened — and packed into one of a few vinyl lined wicker baskets, one of which is sitting in my laundry room. A towel was laid on top, and tucked in to keep the pieces from drying out. Again, according to type, the darks and lights were not in the same basket. Hopefully, the ironing was done before the pieces on the bottom bore little mold dots from waiting too long. If so, back in the laundry they go.
After the laundry process the pieces were again blended in drawers and closets and on the owner’s body eliminating in this analogy the charge of bigotry and prejudice.
I won’t carry the analogy to the last button and zipper. However, I will point out that though the total is one big number, we are not one big happy family. The components are diverse, spanning productive to dangerous, extremely old to newborn. The total needs a breakdown to get to my point.
I’m going to push some buttons and sew some back on.
It’s not a bubble. It’s a tree.
Don’t be the chainsaw.
A bull market that just broke all records! I wish 2% or even 4% of my Social Security taxes had been working for me there. Yet it is dissed.
4.6% unemployment, Wage growth 4%, record tax revenue receipts, deficit
down to 1.9% of GDP lower than anytime in the ’80’s and ’90’s Historically, when the wealthy are taxed more, they just find new ways to shelter the wealth and we end up with the increase anyway.
Did this just happen? Are we such good citizens with our money or is this just a temporary upward movement of the natural economic ebb and flow and a serious depression is next? No to all.
Correct answer: TAX CUTS across the board including but not limited to rich guys creates higher revenue. Tax increases discourage growth through punishment. e.g. love a child and you reap loyalty and good will; punish a child for falling short after he works hard to please you and he feels abused. He shrivels into himself.
The richest guys usually own companies. We, the rabble, pay our mortgages, car payments, buy food and other frivolities with the money we earn from the rich guys for whom we work. Trust me. The unemployment benefits don’t pay as many bills as a paycheck. Plus, or minus depending on your viewpoint, the unemployment benefits run out after six months. Neither do they pay the health insurance premiums. These are not benefits.
Here’s the secret to how tax cuts for the wealthy work well for us. Listen up, I’ll try to be simple. Ready?
Church is or is not fun. Your choice.
When Honey was in the car business in Minnesota, he came home with very few, very very few funny stories. His aches and pains are a whole ‘nother entry.
We were both going through turmoil. Honey dedicated his life to Christ mere months before the family business died and he took a job as a car salesman. I, too, having been employed at the family business had to scramble for other work and ended up in the same town as he did 20 miles away. Our lives were stressed at best. I was stressed enough to attend a larger church on my own any extra night they were open just for extra strength. They implemented the new worship style that swept fundamentalist churches after the Brownsville revival — any instrument any member could play including drums and electric guitars, a team of singers at microphones, and lots and lots of new praise songs.
I worked nights, not too bad a schedule at the time. So when I drove by the dealership on my way home, shaking from the sub-zero, and saw snowdrifts half burying the inventory, I knew that about the time I crawled into bed for the day, Honey would be out there jump starting cars and rolling them to a plowed spot one by one by one, while struggling to keep the blood flowing to the fingers and toes. MN winters are not for wimps.
Then, after a lifetime for Honey, and 29 years for me, we wimped out and moved to Tennessee to thaw. Still thawing.
One of the salesmen, in fact, the only salesman Honey really got along with, was a small town Baptist, a Gideon, very conservative by nature. He was basically retired, but put in time at the dealership to supplement the checking account and stay limber. In one of their conversations, Mr. Baptist/Gideon complained that his church was out of control. They split the morning services into a traditional service followed by a contemporary service. He sternly objected to the drums and the microphones.
Honey, knowing how much I was enjoying and benefiting from the new free style, commented that it sounded like fun. Wrong thing to say.
changing world
This doesn’t sound really profound at first. I begin with what we already know.
We are shaped by genetics and influence from the environment and the home. (Yeah! Really! This is news?) Yet, we are still responsible for our decisions. If the parent(s) messed up, we should be looking for a better life or an alternative answer outside the home rather than use their poor decisions to excuse ours. If we simply don’t like what the parents are trying to teach us, we look for an alternative outside the home as well. The latter is sometimes referred to as rebellion.
If we have even a relatively good relationship with our parents indicating a solid bond, we really do turn into our parents in several ways eventually. We can run. We can’t hide. We can scream out our independence to exhaustion to no avail. It’s a rule.
I base the following on the western culture, which, contrary to the new internationalist view, is not evil. Just ….. us. Western culture. No guilt. No endorsement. It just is what it is. Much of my logic is based also on my own world since that is just what I said, my world and my parents’ world. I’m sticking pretty much to the majority middle class of the period. WASP, ok? Here goes.
The Weather’s On !!
It happened every night.
Why, back in my day ….. we had, via antenna only, CBS and NBC and sometimes when Zeus was crossing his eyes just right, ABC. The national news authorities of the day were Walter Cronkite, and the team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. Nobody remembers the local news pundits after 40 years. Did I say40? Whew! Time flies when you’re continually trying to get it together.
Dad would get home from the factory about 4:30. He would then devote whatever daylight was left to the ongoing project of building the new house. One of these days I’ll post the 10 year saga in a series of maybe 5 entries. It’s that detailed. But for now, I have another point to make.
Life in a jar
I’ve heard this several times on the radio. I can only assume it came from the endless supply of forwarded cute stuff that still swirls round and round via email. I like it.
The teacher wanted to demonastrate to his students what is and what is not important in life. He started with an empty mason jar, size unknown.
First, we fill the jar with golf balls. Is it full?
No.
Now, we pour in pebbles up to the top. Is it full?
No.
Next, pour sand in until it’s level with the top. Is it full?
No.
Last, add a beer. It’s full.
The jar is your life.
The golf balls are the important things like God, family, shelter, food.
The pebbles are the secondary things — job, vacations, and the like.
The sand is all the little things, things you can live without but may choose not to, or things that bug you, things that need fixing.
And there’s always room for a beer or two, or if you don’t like beer, you choose the treat.
If you fill the jar with the sand first, there won’t be room for the golf balls, the pebbles, or the beer. You’ll be stuck with just the little things to annoy you.
Another Nail in the Coffin!
Another epiphany, another flash of recognition, a defining moment, a confirmation, revelation, newsflash, word of knowledge, slap upside the head !!
There’s nothing left for me in Victoria’s Secret !! BaaaaaaaH !
I’ve been shopping at Vicki’s for, I don’t know, at least 18 years now, if they’ve been in malls that long. Nothing kinky. If I wanted kinky, I’d go to Frederick’s. No, she just had the style, quality, and fit I was looking for in …. what I was looking for, be it a nightie or an unmentionable. Gradually, I began to notice that storewide some of the styles …. um … fell short of what a woman living in a colder climate might be able to use on a daily basis. Finances being what they were, I had to remain practicle. Cotton. That’s the ticket. And she carried a style in cotton that I liked.
Until yesterday.
Error
My cubie is on the end of a row of cubies far, far away from the rest room and coffee machine. We each face the back walls of the identical cubies. If all six of us on our team stand up, we face each other, 3 to 3. Mary is on my left. Her brother has brain cancer and as of this evening, has one more day to live. So Mary is at the Comfort Room in the hospital with the rest of the family. She’s close to him, so pray for her strength as she comforts their mother.
To Mary’s left is Angela. Soon she’ll let me call her Angel. She, too, has family ills, none fatal that I know of; I think it’s mostly behavioral and she is by default the caretaker. She works to get away. Pray for Angela that she receives the comfort and strengh only God can give.
She would face Terri. Hmmm. She’s nice but we haven’t had enough conversations for me to know any details. I’ll have to fix that soon. One thing I noticed about Terri is that she is either a white woman who has bathed in the sun since age 3 or she’s a racial mix who dyes her hair light red. I’ll find out. Maybe.
To Terri’s left is Sandi. Sandi has trouble balancing her blood sugar and can be home sick all of a sudden doing exactly that. Very pretty lady. Naturally curly hair (mine is straight and bodiless), but I like her anyway.
On Sandi’s left and straight across from me is Pat, the 20 year old great grandmother. Not literally. She is undoubtedly over 70, stays blonde and wears juniors fashions down to the spike heels. Not a bad figure. The clothes look good on the body but don’t match the face. Nice, nice lady but she makes us laugh with her near deaf state and her witty comebacks. One Friday she was heading toward the exit in her spike heels telling us she was stopping at Hooters. (I couldn’t resist. Forgive me) “Are you moonlighting?” The girls giggled. “Those days are long gone and so are the men!”
Today Mary is at the hospital, Angela was out, and the rest of us couldn’t meet the percentage goals without them. On top of being short handed, Pat’s computer laid an error egg. She had to use Mary’s in her absence to work, causing her to go back and forth to get her phone which is constantly buzzing with daughters, grandkids, and her realtor as she is looking for a house (not the home yet).
“It’s blue! ………
