The Service

My mother died last Monday. It was time. An infection had taken over her body and she died peacefully in her sleep. Since then it's been a whirlwind of activities and emotions filling every minute. I will be processing this for a long time, but today I've been thinking about one thing in particular. My mother gave us the final gift of letting us have a service for her.

It seems that it is becoming more the trend these days to not have a funeral or memorial service for the deceased. I can understand some of the reasons for this: expense, privacy, emotion, etc. But that was not my mother's request. Funerals were a part of her entire life and in death we honored her with one.

My mother did not have a service planned as some people do, but we knew what she wanted from comments over the years along with the things she chose for our father. We planned a short service that was lead by one of her friends from church. Each song had a meaning as well as each reading. I gave a 10 minute eulogy of her life that I actually made it through.

The service was upbeat, positive, and was about her. Just what we wanted and just what she would have wanted. So among the tears, I think back on her send off and I smile. Thank you, Mother, for letting us honor you in this one final way.

Thankful Sunday--August 19, 2018

Today I did an experiment. I gave myself one minute to do a brain dump of things I am thankful for and below is what I came up with. There may or may not be significance to what ended up on the list, but I'm not going to analyze it right now. Normally that would be something I would do, but right now I'm going to go outside and work before the heat and humidity take over the day. Actually, I just read the list and my mind is racing and reading all kinds of things into it. Gotta stop that because I think the way our/my brain works is much too complex to look at a simple list and draw great meaning from it. Ahh! Can't help myself. The analysis continues and the typing continues, but I'm not going to share all my thoughts. Right now, anyway.

What is on your list when you do this exercise? But forget the analysis. Just use this as a way to put a little positive in you day. There. I'm getting up from the computer right now because my agitator washer just finished. I'll tend to it on my way outside.

I am thankful for

Good insurance
An agitator washer
My sisters
My kids
My husband
A day without rain
Only one mosquito bite
My leftover salad in the fridge
My one level house
My employed sons

While I Was Gone

I went away for a few days recently and after a long drive, we arrived home after dark. The next day I was curious to see what had happened in our yard while we were gone. That's part of my routine after we go away. Unload the car, scan the mail, and check out the yard. A Second Look, so to speak. We were gone less than a week, but it was surprising to see some of the changes that happened in that short amount of time.

Here is a tour of some of the things I found.

The weather was hot and humid while we were gone with lots of rain. The begonias in front of the house thrived and had grown.

However, the pumpkin vine in the back did not survive. This was a volunteer and we had decided to let it grow wherever it wanted. It was a beautiful healthy vine when we left. 

But the zinnia along the same walk took off while we were gone. Other zinnias, planted in pots on the deck, looked only slightly better than the pumpkin vine.

The dill in the same bed also had a lot of new blooms. Before this, I had been trying to cut the blooms so it wouldn't go to seed too soon. However the bees are enjoying the new blossoms, so I may just leave them. This was also a volunteer that I transplanted from another spot.

Around the side of the house, I found grape hyacinth leaves that were coming up.

Close to there, I found the first coneflower that had all of its petals intact.  Something has been munching down on all of the coneflowers' petals making them look like Morticia Addams has been around.

In the same bed, more Black-Eyed-Susans had bloomed, but something is starting to eat the petals. Maybe our muncher has moved on from the coneflowers.

Moving away from the house, I went to check on some newly planted hostas. There I found the deer  had visited while we were gone. Another place they ate a tomato plant until it looked like no more than a stick in the ground.

Also in the back part of the yard, mushrooms had sprung up.

Moving up to the deck, the sunflower had several new blooms. This was a volunteer, too, from the bird feeders.

The bird feeders were empty.  So I filled them and made new nectar for the hummingbird feeder. 

There will be seed in the feeders as long as this squirrel and his buddies are content to eat sunflower seeds dropped into the grass. But I don't expect that to last for long. Why should they work at picking seeds out of the grass when they usually lay on the bottom of the bird feeder above and munch away?

I don't have pictures to show you everything else I found such as new poison ivy, half of an azalea bush that had died, and nearby canna lilies and marigolds which were doing well. I also found an empty bird nest, so I hope the babies successfully fledged while we were gone. And the most interesting thing I discovered was a sled filled with rainwater and hundreds of tadpoles swimming in it.

Thankful Sunday--July 29,2018

I am thankful for an afternoon with my sisters.

To celebrate my recent birthday, my sisters took me to the movies today. A movie treat is something we used to regularly do for each others birthdays, but somehow we had gotten out of the habit. Today the tradition began again. They took me to see "Mama Mia! Here We Go Again" and I thoroughly it. No complicated plot here, just a feel good movie, with fun songs, and visually stunning scenery. For this special treat and afternoon with my sisters, I am thankful.

This and That

I think most of us have a stream of consciousness that has thoughts skipping along to various places. Sometimes on a straight path and sometimes not. Here's a little of my stream of consciousness. Well not really a straight stream of consciousness, because that wouldn't be understandable to the outside world, but certainly some random thoughts that floating around in my head.

A dust kitty I swept up
this morning in the cat's room.

--While I was sweeping the cat room in the basement, I swept a lot of dust bunnies that were actually filled with cat hair. Which got me thinking, why are they called "dust bunnies" and not some other furry animal. I spent a while cruising around the internet looking for some answers with no conclusion. The term has been around for hundreds of years or was first used in the 1950's or 1960's. The most logical guess as to why they were called "dust bunnies" was that they were furry like a bunny and multiply like rabbits. Makes sense but they are called different names in other countries. In Hungry, apparently they are called "dust kittens". I think that's the term I'm going to use because my dust balls are made up of 80% cat hair.

--When did my legs get so short? Since we moved into our new house, we have not had a full length mirror, so it has been a struggle to see the bottom half of my body. Ward put one up for my birthday last week in our bedroom where I now see my entire reflection frequently. And every time the first thing that I think is that my legs are short. I've always known that I've had a long torso so I don't know why it would be a surprise to me that they are short compared to the rest of my body. Or maybe it's my imagination or maybe Ward put up a fun house mirror just for kicks.

That would be me in the middle.

--And speaking of long torsos, I've decided it's time for me to get a swimsuit that fits. I'm not a big pool or beach person, but I really should have something to wear if the occasion to wear one comes up. I've been thinking this for several years. Well, my sister told me about a online sale for swimsuits the other day and I took the plunge (pun attended). However, I had no idea what size to get. And my measurements of bust, waist, hips, and torso didn't really help. I measured a 6, 8, 10. 12 with the torso being the largest. I did my best to average out the sizes and ordered something. It hasn't come yet. We'll see if it is anything close to fitting when it comes.

--Is there preference of a floating floor vs. a glued floor when they are being installed over concrete? We've had a lot of heavy rain recently. A whole lot. In fact, we're having heavy rain right now with a thunderstorm. With all of this rain, we got some water in the basement. Unfortunately, it was in the Theo's bedroom. We ended up cutting out part of the wet carpet from there and don't plan to put carpet back down. We think the water problem came from a faulty window well, but haven't been able to get any wet basement experts out to look at it. Guess what? They're swamped (pun attended again) with work and won't be able to work us in for a while even for just an estimate. Anyway, we think we can fix the floor in the meantime and are considering our options. Having one bedroom currently out of commission is complicating the sleeping arrangements with the visitors we're having next week.

And along these lines, need to go check to see if any water is seeping in. As best as we can figure out, seepage occurs when we have wind blowing in a certain direction which is happening now. Every bit of evidence we can amass will help understand the problem.

Things look busy for a while with company and then a trip, so

Until next time....