We are trying to get rid of stuff in the basement...I have lost track of the times we have sorted, moved, stacked and tossed things in our basement which belongs(ed) to 'him', me, my folks, his folks, my grandparents, his grandparents, my Aunt Frances and our girls.  I was down there a few minutes ago, pulling things off shelves that I have decided to part with and I wondered...when I did this last time, why wasn't I able to part with it then?  Strange.  Dad will be gone 12 years ago tomorrow and I'm just now deciding to part with his old hand tools...I found a spot for his old fishing gear and all of his artwork and clay work...I have totes of stuff to sell on ebay that belonged to mom and Aunt Frances...I hope to start clearing out those totes soon.

My other:  I like this word a lot!

co·nun·drum  

Yes...it snowed and it "blowed" and it is still blowing.  If you read yesterday's blog...just wanted to followup and tell you there were no surprises!

Our 4-wheel drive pickups have always had the manual shifter on the floor between the seats for switching into 4 wheel drive.  I've always had an, "ahem" warm feeling when sitting in the passenger seat....he's over there in his heavy coat with his big ole leather gloves on, he reaches down grabs ahold of that shifter and manipulates it into 4 wheel drive.  It is such a sexy move - I look forward to it every year....until this year...we bought a Nissan and it has a little dial on the dash.  Talk about dash...dashing sexual appeal for their big ole truck commercials...that's right..he just pushes a little button...whoop-d-doo...this morning he leaned over and simulated controlling the shifter.  whew.....

Until next time....

This will be my 28th winter as a 911 dispatcher.  This job kills the joy of winter!  For you non-Iowans, we have a forecast blizzard warning for the state tonight and tomorrow...a lot of  folks are posting about how excited they are for the snow/blizzard so they can sit home and drink hot chocolate...meanwhile I'm reading these comments and thinking...are you people just nuts?  But I get it...

A winter storm blizzard to me means drivers in the ditches and everyone who has a cell phone calls to tell us about it..we call them cell phone heros..they don't stop...they just call...it's nothing to get 10 calls about 1 vehicle in the ditch when you magnify that by 50 cars in the ditch, you can understand how difficult it is to do anything else other than answer the phone....like page ambulances or other emergency vehicles.  When it gets that bad..usually we just have to tell people that they are patrolling and will get to you when they can...normally the state puts a tow ban on which means that unless you are sitting in the middle of the highway, your car is in the ditch until it is safe to pull out...of course, there are those who want to remain in their car...even when told that it could be a couple of days before they can get a wrecker..at first...you can't pry them from their cars...of course the cell phone heros continue to call about them...eventually it sinks in and they want to be picked up.  When the ice and snow take the power down, what do you do...call 911..well there are a lot of people who do.Why would you possibly call 911 when your power goes out...I cannot and never will be able to turn on your power...why not call the post office when you need an ambulance.  I think I've probably said about all that needs to be said about hating winter as a 911 dispatcher.

Now.  If I'm off work and "he" is off work and the kids are safe.  I LOVE A BIG SNOW!!!  I love to walk on those nights when it is very still...big snow flakes coming down and the layer of snow cushions all noise...I have thought before that it just doesn't get any better than this!

Until next time.....

I hope this isn't just old age sentimentality...or maybe I do because then I would have a reason for this mood I'm in...part of me feels like I'm back home with myself and the other part of me wishes I could just quit tearing up about songs and the thoughts about friends. 

I spent last night with my new bluetooth speaker which plays awesomely loud.  I was trying to find just the right version and singer for O Holy Night...found lots I like but none that made my heart smile and chills up and down my arms.  I did find 3 of my favorite songs David Reynolds put on his album a gillion years ago and I cried big ole tears remembering sitting on the piano bench in a practice room at Ozark Bible College while he sang and rocked those keys..David..if you are reading this....still a blessing after all of these years.  I'm thinking really tender thoughts about old friends...some of them are drawn closer to me when I hear a song...others there are no particular songs, just that ooey gooey feeling about how much I miss and love them.

Yes...here I am...my second night...sitting on my yoga ball as recommended by Dr. Laurel to start strengthening my core muscles...A little Kenny Rogers got me tearing up like a faucet.  ... perhaps it is just the season...

Until next time.....

There are a few things I did as a child that I wish I hadn't done...and there are a few things in my past that I think..WHAT WAS I THINKIN' and perhaps wish I hadn't done...although all of those things shaped me into the person I am today.  At least I can look back on those things with a little remorse..I guess I'm one of the lucky ones with a conscience and in spite of the belief that I was raised by disfunctional parents, I was taught the difference between right and wrong.  While I didn't have a gray area when I was younger...it was either black or white and anything else was totally breaking the rules...I now see that there is a gray area in anything.  I think it is probably better not to lounge around in the gray area but sometimes I may hang around there until I decide whether it is closer to black or closer to white and/or how fast I think I can run if someone else has a definite opinion about it...actually that's not true...I don't run anymore.  I might say..ya know..you may think it is gray..but I'm comfortable here..so mind your own business and move on...there's nothing to see here.  Ya...that's what I do.  Sometimes when I'm really pent up with anxiety or boredom...I think about escaping to a little gray area just to see what it would be like..

But to get right down to it.  What is going on with our society?  The craziness on the left and on the right..yes...both sides have their extremes... just totally blows my mind.  Or we could call it the religious right and the left athiests?  I personally don't think the religious right are God fearing people...and I totally don't believe that those on the left are all athiests...Hell, I don't know what to call it...but those of us in that huge gray area between the extremest want to know how to get free of them...and how to get free of them NOW.

Until next time.

Today I'm thankful for Google.  Oops...I guess Thanksgiving is over and I'm a little late with my thankfulness listings.  I kind of like the thankfulness daily posts on Facebook before Thanksgiving because if I'm peaceful, I read thru them and usually get a hit  for something I'm thankful for.  This whole rule about prepositions at the end of sentences being a no-no has me really bugged.  For many years, I was a slave to gramatical correctness.  Now I talk like I've ain't never been schooled.

Back to Google.  I'm curious today...Google is my friend.  I started off googling Kenny Rogers...that man is 74 years old..no wonder he had a limp and an occasional voice kink..he's also been married 5 times and has 5 kids.  I thought MaryAnn from HEE HAW fame was his first...uh no...number 4.

I really want to see Chicago - the band.  I googled neighboring state concert venues and the closest is Salina, KS.  Interestingly enough - my BIL and SIL recently moved to Salina KS.  Tickets are pretty high..I'll need to think about this.  Bon Jovi is coming to the Des Moines civic Center in April.  That is about the only two places that had anything interesting to me.  He and I are going to Kansas City next weekend to see TSO for the 3rd time.  And the week before Christmas, we will be seeing Mannheim at the Civic Center in Des Moines.

I googled Nina - which is greek and means grace and wow...don't we know that is true...then I looked up names from 1956, 1952, 1981 and 1987.  Of the 4 of us in the family..Jennifer is the only one who made favorite baby names for her year.  The rest of us either didn't make the chart or were so far down that it doesn't even matter.

My back is still causing me grief from the fall.  Lots of pain center back. It will be two weeks on Tuesday since I took the tumble.  It's getting old!

That's it for now...Until next time....

Marsha Patterson (and I use her last name because there is another Marsha in this story) is "police" dog handler in a neighboring county and neighboring volunteer fire department - We call Marsha when we need a dog for tracking, cadaver dogs and when we need the volunteer Jasper County sheriff's office reserves to be activated because she is one of those too.  Recently she brought Bullet and Tazor into her life and into the life of all of us at the sheriff's office.  One is a blood hound and one is a shepherd - frequently she brings the pups to the sheriff's office for socialization because there are several of us in the S.O. that are just crazy over these two puppies...and we really like Marsha too.. Yesterday, I learned that she not only had the pups with her but had been training and had the two older dogs too.  A beautiful golden who is a cadaver dog and an equally beautiful german shepherd who has proven himself to us as a tracker.   Marsha got these two older dogs out of their kennels and put the babys back in...Nancy Dunsbergen, Marsha and I were lovin' up the dogs and I thought the shepherd was acting like he may need to use the facilities...we headed for the grassy area - I had the leash wrapped around my legs so as I was twisting around to loosen the leash, I tripped over my own feet and ended up falling backwards in the parking lot.  This is where the dream segment starts...you know...please let this just be a bad dream. OW.

Now there is something about laying on the ground in the fetal position with your friends taking care of you...realizing that no, in fact, you can't get off the ground..yes...I guess I do need an ambulance and the whole total embarassment that these are the people that you work with every day and now you are vulnerable, yet thankful..then you hear the ambulance coming with sirens - OH GOD!  When the ambulance arrived, Marsha Steele, the office manager told the crew that the first thing they need to do was cut off my clothes, the deputy who got the blanket out of his car to cover me up said that the last time he used this was to cover up a dead person - although taking it back said, naw...its just the blanket Gus lays on...His huge dog.  I had it made because Marsha Patterson, the EMT was already on the ground with me, holding my head up, feeling my spine, making me wiggle my toes and firmly telling me to STOP MOVING YOUR HEAD   The reality that these people do these things for complete strangers on a daily basis  brings me the most emotion...unless you are in one of these situations, you don't know what these cops, EMS or fire personnel do for us on a daily basis...I've mentioned before about my respect for volunteer fire and EMS personnel...neighbors who are our heros...but the next time you are trying to avoid the cop so you don't get a ticket...remember that for the most part, they are a bunch of compassionate human beings who are doing a thankless job most of the time.

Now, about me.  Went to the ER...xrays showed no deformaties just some bone bruising...the doctor said I was going to hurt for a few days...and he followed that up, chuckling, that he knows this because he is a doctor...it could have been my reaction to his comment.  How refreshing to have an ER doc with a personality..and the nurses at Skiff...second to none in their care and compassion..

Oh..then there are my husband and daughters.  He was my dependable, loving husband.  Katy, who had arrived home from Ohio, came to the hospital too...and in reference to my million trips to ER with my mother when she got old, said...and so it begins...

I'm fine, I hurt, but I have ice, meds and feel loved.  I'm thankful.

The new kitty in my life is named Belle.  Belle was rescued by Sarah Oswalt Jorges several years ago...but as sometimes happens, Sarah's little daughter, Layne, is allergic to cats.  I've thought about what if and the agony of having to give up my cats because of an allergy...I can't even go there in my mind and think it all the way through.  But Sarah needed to find Belle a new home so we said yes.  Belle comes from a one kitty home - her..she's older.

Belle came to us at 10:30 at night by her grandparents, Mike and Kim...I took her downstairs in her carrier so she could be immediately introduced to her litter box...when I opened her carrier, there was no stretch, sniff, look around..slowly get your bearings like the other cats we've introduced to the herd...this was an all out waddle for cover.  I use the term waddle to describe her overweight little body seeking immediate shelter the fastest she has probably every walked/run.  I surrounded her with a fresh litter box...her little bed, water and food and barricaded her in so she wouldn't have to deal with the other 5 sitting around in a circle staring at her.  Among the most important pieces of information for any cat book involves cat nip.  In order to draw Belle in, I sprinkled a small amount of cat nip in her litter box...forgetting, of course, the feline sense of smell...so in order to draw the other 5 away from her, I sprinkled cat nip on the other end of the basement which was the second dumbest thing I could do.  Minnie didn't get involved...but Baxter and Billy got into a paw swinging on their haunches after a little hit from the cat nip doobie!  Meanwhile Truman and Benny were sliding their heads along the floor, rolling in it totally immersed in their chemically induced stuper.  Well, damnit..this was not smart...so I had to sweep it all up and dispose of it so as not to bring any more trauma to the already freaked out kitty.

The next night with the cats barricaded upstairs, I was able to coax her out of her hiding place - she rubbed against my leg and let out a hardy hiss then did it again...she returned to her hiding spot not to be seen for 24 hours. 

Last night he and I took a flashlight and moved every box in the basement, looked in every crevice, and could not find her.  I returned to the basement later alone with the flashlight, she heard, saw or smelled me, started meowing and came out of hiding...I was finally able to pick her up and take her upstairs...she is now happily hidden under my sewing cabinet.  She has eaten, she has used the litter box...she has seen all of the other critters through the windows in the doors to the room.  I'm finally breathing a sigh of relief, I think the hard part is over.  I'll post pictures in the near future.

You can never have too many cats!!!

I opened the door to let the dogs out this morning and a summer breeze met me.  I stepped outside and was very disappointed that I didn't have time to have a cup of coffee on the deck...it's not something I've done since moving into this house - but I wanted to do it this morning.  I live in the house my parents built in 1984...we had purchased a couple of acres together and we each put a house on it.  We built an adorable little chalet style house that we could afford and finish after we moved in.  They built a very large ranch house that they could afford and put their accumulations of stuff...it is mostly this accumulation of stuff that I"m still getting rid of....but back to the weather...My dad was a smoker and like to sit out on the deck to have a cigarette...I used to love to go over and talk to him - my mother was usually  out there with him too in her housecoat and my girls were regulars.  It's a wonderful - peaceful memory that pulls on my heart strings..>I can still see him sitting there in his flannel (always plaid) shirt with his little melmac brown coffee cup and white saucer - putting out the cigarette he smoked down to the filter in his blue ashtray that we brought home from a trip to Louisana when I was small.  He would lean over and put the cigarette out and bend the filter because there was nothing left of the white part of the cigarette to smash out.

He loved the country.  I know this is where he found the peace...enjoying the quiet, the birds and the trees.  Tuesday would have been his 96th birthday.  I really miss him.

Until next time.....

I slept like a log last night - getting the election - county and federal - overwith has dumped me into my peaceful mode.  Seems like every peaceful mode always has at least one safety pin that has come unfastened and pokes me every now and then...but today...nothing - peaceful - content.  A little over a year ago, I told the therapist that this was my goal...I feel like I've stepped over that invisible line into the circle..

This month - I get to go see Kenny Rogers at the Civic Center with Gena.  She and I have loved Kenny Rogers for many years.  There is no one on earth that I would rather have beside me at this concert!!!! and sitting beside me in the Polk County jail after the concert...I'm going to take extra panties with me to throw on the stage because I just can't get into that commando thing...We love you Kenny!!!

Thanksgiving is a blessing.  Both girls and significant others will be home...we are going to all eat oysters, play a couple of games (which I will win) and enjoy the comfort of family.

Then the Christmas season arrives.  I love the Christmas season.

Peace out.