A Hairy Tale

Hi guys,
Went to Ky. this weekend to visit with the family, as Dennis and his family were coming in from Arizona. You will no doubt read lots of blogs about this event.
We had a really great time. So good to see all the family again. We have the greatest family on earth. Just ask any of us.
Becky, Adam and myself went down Friday night. Got to Granny,s about 10:00. We all stayed at her house because it was so late.The next morning granny insisted on fixing sausage and gravy for breakfast. I then cleaned the kitchen for her for her mother,s day present.
I told my sister, Betty that I would go to a memorial service for my uncle Clabert Boyles, who had passed away. The service was at 2 o'clock on that Sat. Betty said she would be at granny,s at 1 and we would leave about 1'30 to go to the service. The kids went with me.
After the service the minister said there was food for the family at the fellowship hall. Betty said she was hungry so , since we were riding with her, we went to eat. A lot of my family was there, including my other two sisters who lived close. So we spent some time visiting with all of them. Went back to granny,s and Betty came in to visit for a while.
When Betty left, we needed to go to the store for granny. She needed more sausage in case Dennis helped her fix a breakfast while he was in. And Adam had used most of her ice to soak his ankle in, so we wanted to replace it.
Now, Dennis and his family will be in tonight so we are supposed to go to Diana and Murf's to spend the night. I wanted to get there before dark because we are not very familiar with the area. So we realize that time is running low on our time clocks, so we need to get hoppin'.
We devise a plan. We will go to town, Becky and I will go to the store and get the few items on the list, while Adam goes to the dollar store to buy a belt. Then we will go to the Dairy Queen to get granny a burger and onion rings, then take it all back to granny,s and head on out to the Murphy,s.
It starts out good. Adam gets his belt, meets us at the store, helps get the items needed and we head to DQ. Things aren't so good there, for one thing they are slower than Christmas. After we get the food we head back to granny,s and on the way, I suddenly say," Did, we get sausage?" Becky replies, "Oh, no." We decide to stop at the little store near granny,s to see if they have any. Then I say, "Did we get ice?" and Becky replies, "Oh no!" so I know they have ice at the little store, and I go on down the road, headed toward the little store. As I near the store, I have already forgotten that we needed to stop there, but before I got past it Becky pointed her finger at it and said something that resembled "store" giving me enough time to whip in before I passed it. Not wanting to block the gas pump, I stop at the lower end of the store.
Becky, nor Adam wants to get out of the car, so I go in looking for the needed items. God was gracious and they had a roll of sausage. I took it to the counter and paid for it and a bag of ice, which I was told I could get myself.
This is going well, I thought, and we will have plenty of time to get to the Murphy's before dark. I go over to the ice box and open the door. I have the roll of sausage in my left hand and my purse hanging on my arm. I reach in for the ice, but there is only one one bag on the very bottom on this side and when I try to pull it out , it is frozen to the bottom. Oh, darn, I will have to open the other side and get one out of there ,for it is full. I raise my head up for I have been bent down in this chest trying to reach the bag of ice, when my head hits a big steel spring that holds the door open. Don't you know my hair twists itself in the spring and there I am trapped on that hinge. Becky and Adam can't see me and I know they will let me hang there for an hour before they come to see what happened, so I have to take my right hand, and twist it up around my head and try pull my hair out. It will not come out easy. I have to slowly pull and pull to get myself unhooked.
Finally! I feel my head come free. I go to the other side and with my head reared back so as not to get near the door, I get the ice. As I am going to the car with the stupid sausage and purse dragging my left hand down, and the ice dragging my right hand down and the one side of my hair sticking straight out on the side of my head, I see Becky and Adam laughing.I can tell you I do not think any of this funny. And I certainly hope that if Dennis has sausage for breakfast one morning, he doesn't choke on it.And whoever gets a nice cold drink for dinner had better appreciate it. And if I have a bald spot on the side of my head, you can laugh, but you better not let me see you.
I hope going up to Diana's isn't this hard!

Lost and Found

I am a little tired tonight. Mostly because I stayed up until 4:00 last night. I have an appointment to see a financial advisor tomorrow and he told me to bring my copies of my IRA forms I had taken out 7 years ago.
Now, I haven't thought about those papers for a long time. I thought I had all my important papers in my fireproof box but when I looked there, no papers! I thought I would go to bed as it was 1:30 and look for them in the morning. But as I lay there trying to go to sleep, my mind would not shut down and I kept thinking of where I may have put them to keep them safe.
All of a sudden, I thought I knew where I had put them, so I got out of bed to look. Not there. So, now I am wide awake and figured I might as well search for a little while. I can sleep in for a while in the morning.
I searched thru all the files in the file cabinet, no papers there. I dug thru the closet and that was no easy job, but did not turn up any papers there either. I did find my old fireproof box. The lid will not stay shut without locking it, so I looked for the keys to open it. I shook the box and heard something move in there.I just knew that this is the place I stuck them to keep them safe. Now you must understand that I know for a fact that they are in the house somewhere for I never throw anything away.
I have keep those keys in a little jewel box on the shelf of my dresser ever since I got the box. They are not there! Now I remember, I put them somewhere else several months ago to "keep them safe". I looked for 2 hours for those keys. Finally, exhausted, I went to bed. I figured I had worn my brain out trying to think where I had put those keys.
I must stop trying to keep my things "safe" because I can never find anything anymore. When I got up this morning I continued my search for a hour or more. Suddenly I remembered I had filed some things in the drawers of the computer desk. I looked there, and all I can say is 'God is Good' for there they were.
I still don't know where the keys to the fireproof box are, but I will run across them some day. I only hope I don't need whatever is inside there until I do. I'm sure they are guaranteed to be safe though.
This is an every day occurrence for me anymore.I am getting tired of searching for hours for things that I know are in this house. I really need a smaller house so I don't have to search such a big area.
You know, of all the things I've lost lately, I think I miss my mind the most.

The Tree Ordeal

For Mother's Day, I got a tree. Well, really I got a gift card that was bought to buy a tree with. Every since the two pines went down this February, I kept saying I wanted a tree for my front yard.
So, this is what the kids got me and I have been real excited that I will get a tree for the front yard and I don't have to spend any of my own money. I knew that I would have to wait until Adam came home from college, to get the tree. I needed his truck to bring it home in.
This week we started on the "Tree Project". On Wednesday Adam and myself went to Lowe's (where the gift card was purchased because the kids didn't really know of a good place to buy a tree and I had said that I had seen one at Lowe's that I liked). We looked at the trees and I found a maple that I liked, but we had driven the van so we could not purchase it that day. It was only $40.00 so I found a flowering cherry tree that I thought would look good in the spot where the big pine came down. Now I am all set in my mind to what we would buy. We decide that the next day, since I have to come to Mansfield to pick up the plaque I had ordered for the memorial service we are having in June, we will drive the truck and pick up the trees on our way home.
Adam says on Wednesday night that he is getting up early to go lift at the gym and will be home by 10 or 10:30. I usually go to Curves and exercise at 10, so we will be ready to go to Mansfield by 11. I get home from Curves at 11 to find the phone ringing and Adam still in bed. Chris Hunt is on the phone for Adam. He got out of his classes early and wants to stop by to see Adam. I say O.K. because I need to make a couple of calls. Chris is still here when I am ready to leave so I ask him if he wants to go with us. He does. So we take the van again as It would be a really tight fit in the truck with all three of us.
On Thursday night, Adam says he is getting up early and he, Chris and Kyle are going to go golfing and will be home about 11 so we can go get the trees. Adam gets up late and they are just leaving as I am going to curves. I get home and wait and wait. Adam calls, says things are going real slow and he will be later than he thought.Becky took 1/2 day off , so she and I go to Mansfield looking for purses. Adam calls about 3(he just got home from golfing, glad I didn't wait all day on him) He meets us at Lowe's. My tree is gone! They have a red maple. Maybe I will get that. Just doesn't click. I find an October Maple. Really like it, but it is $62. Guess I'll only get one tree.
We follow Adam home to make sure Belinda (the name I give my tree, Heather names all her cars so I thought my tree should be named too) gets home safe. The leaves are all curled up and turned dark green so I think we may have killed her. The kids think she will be alright by tomorrow.
On Friday night Adam says he is getting up early on Saturday, and will get Belinda planted and mow Heather's lawn. At 11 I can see that it is going to rain, so I get Adam out of bed and tell him that he had better go mow Heather's yard before the rain comes. He says that he can plant the tree in just a little while and it would be a good idea to get it in the ground before it rains. So I jump on my rider to mow around the place where we are going to plant the tree. Adam starts digging the hole for the tree. It is the spot where the Blue Spruce used to be. I am still mowing when he motions for me to come over. The people who took the tree down and charged me $75 to take out the stump, had just taken the stump out about a foot below the ground. I wanted the tree in that spot. I had to go call Buckeye Tree Service but they did not answer the phone so I had to leave a message.
The tree removal called while I was still mowing and before Adam left. He said that the roots of the old tree would compete with the new tree for water for 5 Years and people usually planted grass when they took a tree down. Adam went to mow Heather's yard.
Sam came to pick up the old railroad ties that used to be around the garden, He said just dig a hole in front of the old stump and plant the tree there. My neighbor came over and said the same thing, so when Adam came back from Heather's that is what we did.
We had to take an axe and chop a few roots out but Adam finally got the hole big enough for Belinda. We sat her in the hole and it was way too deep, so we had to take her out and put dirt back in the hole. Then Adam had to stomp on it to make it level. We had to do this three times before we got her up to the place we thought she should be. By now it has started to sprinkle rain. We are getting quite wet and our tennis shoes are so heavy with mud that we can hardly lift our feet. We finally get the tree planted and are pretty wet. Adam still has to put the stakes on her to keep her growing straight. He only puts one on for now as the rain decides to come down in a pouring fashion.
We take our shoes off inside the kitchen door and have mud everywhere. We are starved and I do not want to cook. I am pooped from the tree ordeal. So we decide to clean up and go out to eat.
I hope Belinda appreciates what we did for her. And she better live if she knows what's good for her, because I'm not going thru this again.

My Mother

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I thought about my mom today. She has been gone about 14 years now. Sometimes I can't remember very much about her. She worked most of the time I lived at home and was always tired when she got home. We didn't have much quality time together like I have had with my kids.
She must have had a really hard life because I don't remember her laughing much. Maybe it's because I moved to Ohio when I was 18. I only got to spend time with her when we went home for a visit and we had to share the time with Tom's parents.
I remember some things that will always be special though. She would sing this silly song that I have never, ever heard anyone else sing. It was called "The Tune The Old Cow Died On". And when we took her on vacation with us, and anytime we drove by a stand of pines, she would sing "In the Pines". She didn't sing very well, but she liked to try.
She got Tom's brother Dennis to drive her up to Shelby when I had Becky. They drove during the late night hours, through a heavy fog, and only stayed for a couple of hours before they went back home. I don't know for sure, but I imagine she had to work that day.
When Heather was born, and I called and told her the name we had picked out she said in a shocked voice," Heathen". I think she was making a joke but she never corrected it. It was funny to me.
We took a vacation when my sister April got married and moved to Oregon, and took her with us. We drove and took 3 weeks for this vacation. We saw lots of things and had many things that made wonderful memories on that trip. Mom was a smoker, which we all hated, but on our way back home, we stopped at a campground to spent the night. (We had bought a van for the trip,(our first van) that had been converted so that it could be used for a camper) The girls were so excited to be 'camping out'. The mosquito's were so bad that we couldn't sleep or even rest. The only time we had any peace from them was when mom was smoking. We would sit near the smoke and the mosquito's stayed away. Tom finally got up and said," I can't sleep so get in this van, we're going home."
We took her to Virginia with us the next year and that was another fiasco, but it's too long to blog about now. More memories.
Her favorite meal was bacon and eggs, even at 7 o'clock at night. Every time we went home she would lay out liver to thaw so she could fix us some for a meal. My family would not eat liver. I don't know why she couldn't remember that.
She had 3 son-in-laws named Tom. Two of them had last names that started with a "B" so she gave them numbers. my Tom was either "Tom Brown" or "Tom number one".
I gave her money several times and I think one of them she either couldn't or took a long time to repay so she insisted that I have her "red Avon glass" so I would be sure to get my money back.
Now that I started writing about her, I guess I remember lots of things. Wish we could have spent more time together and talked about her life. I miss her a lot, especially on special days like "Mother's Day". I'm glad she was my mother.

Have a Happy Mother's Day Mom, I Love You
Your daughter, Brenda

A Monster in the house.

Does she look scary to you? Well, in this picture she looks like my precious baby girl, but there was once a time when I thought she was a monster.
She still lived at home. All the kids were still at home with us. There was a movie on T.V. that night about a family going to their cabin for vacation and a serial killer, posing as a hitchhiker. I wouldn't watch it after I saw the advertisement for it, as those kinds of shows stay in my mind for a long time.
Anyone who is, or ever has been ,a mother, knows all about down time. When all the family went to bed I would stay up and read or watch something I wanted to see on T.V. until I got real sleepy and them I would go to bed.
This happened the night I saw the ad for that scary movie. At about 3 o'clock in the morning I awoke and realized I had fallen asleep and I needed to go to bed. Upstairs I went and went in the bathroom to brush my teeth before retiring.
When I turned out the light and opened the bathroom door, I faced total darkness. As I started out of the door, I realized there was something standing in front of me. And I do mean something. It was about 5 feet or more in height and had no head and had an awkward posture. I stared for a second or two and then the mind process kicked into gear. I thought someone or something had entered my home and could possibly harm my family( the serial killer hitchhiker must have been floating around in there somewhere)All of a sudden I knew I must do something to save my family from sure destruction. My heart started pounding so hard, I thought I might be having a heart attack. I opened my mouth and screamed with all my might!!!!!!!Just then My eyes has adjusted to the darkness and I realized that it was Heather standing there. She had that huge head of hair hanging down over her face( thus the faceless thing)and was slumped over as she had just climbed out of bed to come to the bathroom. She wore a black sweatshirt with the arms hanging down over her hands and some kind of dark pants on.
I had just gotten my heart to stop racing and was about to speak to her when she let out an ear piercing scream. ( Later she stated that I had scared her when I screamed). Now, not expecting her to let out a scream, she scared me anew, to which I replied with another scream. and doing this scared her again, so another scream from her. I cannot remember how many times we screamed at each other until I found enough sense to say "Heather Nicole!!!!"" Now we had broken the scream cycle.I demanded to know why she was up a 3 in the morning, as if her kidneys had no right to be awake at that time in the morning. After she informed me that she needed to go to the bathroom and I stated that she had scared me and she stated that I had scared her, we went on our separate ways.
Now, Adam's bedroom is directly across the hall from the bathroom but you know we never woke him up. But alas not so for poor Tom who had to get up at 5:30 that morning to go to work. When I got in the bed, he wanted to know what in the world was going on. I told him and he tried to go back to sleep. Still having that rush of adrenalin going thru my body I could not go to sleep.As I lay there thinking about what had just happened I found it very funny and I started to laugh. I tried to hold it in so as not to disturb Tom, bust I couldn't keep it in. AS I began laughing out loud, I could hear Heather laughing in her bedroom. It soon turned into hysterical laughter for both of us. It was so bad, I told Tom to slap me so I could stop laughing. I do not think my poor hubby got much sleep that night. The next morning we found out that we had awaken Becky and scared her stiff. and she was awake the rest of the night also.
The next day everyone was going to work and school in a daze. AS each one came home that night and walked into the living room, where I was sitting, we would break out into bouts of laughter. Needless to say we all went to bed early that night and got a very good nights sleep.
So, just look at that face and do not let it fool you. Remember the next time you see a pretty face, there just might be a monster lurking under there!