Category: Life changes

Photo 365 #22: The beginning and the end

2 Comments

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.  -Seneca

This post has been percolating for a good week now.  Last Wednesday, I attended my great-aunt Janice‘s funeral with a heavy heart.  She passed away the morning of August 17, after years of battling an assortment of health problems.

Wednesday, August 20, was her 66th wedding anniversary.

Her husband, my grandma’s brother, Calvin, is still living, and I couldn’t help thinking that burying your wife was a hell of a way to spend your anniversary.  And despite Aunt Janice’s stated wish that we celebrate her life instead of mourning her death, there was a fair bit of mourning going on.  She was a wonderful lady, after all, and we miss her greatly.

It was a lovely funeral – their whole family turned up to see her off to eternity, which is saying something because they had four children still living in addition to 18 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.  It’s been so long since I’ve seen some of those cousins that I couldn’t put names to faces – name tags would have been a huge help. 🙂  It was great fun visiting with them all again, but I wish the circumstances for the reunion could have been different.

Martha StahlThe strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows haunted me…

Photo Friday: Lasts

2 Comments

I had so many fun ideas for a photo post about lasts.  See, I’ve got this post that’s been incubating for a week now, and it would be a perfect lasts post, but then I thought of this picture:

Oh, Gretchen, how we miss you!

Oh, Gretchen, how we miss you!

This was my last official day of high school.  Graduation day.  Both bitter and sweet, I find it hard to believe that it’s been twelve years since this picture was taken.  I’d love to say we all stayed in touch, but we didn’t.  Well, three of us did, and I couldn’t be more pleased about that.

Here’s hoping I get to see you lovely ladies soon!

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and check out her post.  Have a great Friday, and an awesome Labor Day weekend!

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

Photo 365 #20

9 Comments

Today’s photo post is accompanied by a little piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the humid heat of an Iowa summer combined with the indescribable heat of a hot flash.  It’s more an experiment in painting with words than anything else, and I hope I’ve achieved what I set out to do (which is to attempt to convey the misery of having a hot flash in high summer).  Comment away and let me know how I’ve done!

cloudline

Impressive, no?

I stepped out of my perfectly climate-controlled office…

Photo 365 #13

3 Comments

Today marks the first day of the new school year, and it’s already been a bit wild.

image

Between cleaning up after some naughty kitties, tracking down those last few supplies, and chasing little brothers around, it’s been rather hectic. But it’s good to be back in a routine, too.

Here’s to another great year! 🙂

(c) 2014. All rights reserved.

Photo Friday: Ball

13 Comments

Bubbles starts fifth grade next week – my how the time has flown!

2014-08-14 17.20.23

He’s suiting up for football practice.  This year he graduates to tackle football (instead of flag football).  Before I know it, he’ll be all grown up and playing in high school.

Don’t forget to stop by Charnele’s blog and see what she’s posted, and have a great weekend!

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

RIP Oscar, and hello, new kitties!

26 Comments

Saturday was a tough day.  Our kittens, Oscar and Patches, went to their new home Saturday afternoon with a lovely lady who’s a friend of a friend.  Bubbles and Tadpole were understandably upset when they came home and found the kittens gone, but not nearly as upset as they were when we received the news that Oscar had died sometime Monday night from an unknown illness.

Oscar loved to lie around…
…but he took his food very seriously.
So did Patches.
Sweet little kitten.

Patches, thankfully, is doing well…

Memory alpha

17 Comments

The story of my most prized possession is a difficult one to tell because there are many things I prize quite highly.  I’ve never been able to choose a single thing I love more than all others.

As a kid, whenever someone asked what one thing would I grab if my house were burning and I was forced to flee, I always answered, “Puppy and Blankie.”  (They’re exactly what they sound like – I know, I was so creative as a kid.)

bffsPuppy was a gift from my dad and I’ve had him for longer than I can remember.  We share a telepathic connection, and he has always been there to comfort me when I needed it.  Despite his advanced age – 210 in dog years – he doesn’t look half bad.  Oh, sure, his hat is missing, and he’s had a few surgeries over the years (he’s had several nose jobs, plus open heart surgery and a spinal fusion)*, but his heart is as big as ever.  And even though he no longer goes everywhere with me…

I am enough

3 Comments

MNO_OfficialPoster_HighRemember a while back when I reviewed Moms’ Night Out?  I went to see it again, this time with my mother-in-law, who’d had a very stressful day and needed a good laugh.  I’m so glad she went with me, because we don’t see each other as often as I’d like and we had a ton of fun.  We definitely need to do things like this more often.

Anyway, as we watched the movie, I got to thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know) about why I related so much to Allyson.  I mean, I’ve been there – I stayed home with Bubbles till he was two and now that I only work part-time, I’m home alone with Cricket and Thumper two or three days a week.

It’s hard!  It’s so hard.  Like Allyson, I wanted to be a mom.  Of course, I also wanted to be a world-famous author, but let’s just take this one dream at a time.  Her reasons for wanting to be a mom are never mentioned – it’s simply her dream, and she’s lucky enough to be living it.

As for me…

Facing fear

17 Comments

100_2329Once again, a Writing 101 challenge.  Today’s topic: My worst fear.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but my worst fear is that I’ll die before my kids are grown up.  My memories of my mom are fragmented; sometimes I remember things that don’t seem possible, and other times I recall things with crystal clarity.

But mostly, I don’t remember.  I don’t remember very much about my childhood before my mom died.  I would really, really hate for my kids to say the same.  I’ve always worried about it, which is why I stayed at home with Bubbles the first two years of his life.

The only problem is that…

A belated find

10 Comments
Looking less tired already!

Looking less tired already!

The challenge for Day Thirteen of Writing 101 is to write about something you’ve found, in contrast to Day Four’s challenge to write about a loss.  For day four, I wrote about my loss of sleep.  Today I think I’ll write about how I found it again.

It’s only just happened, see.  Ever since my surgery in January, I’ve been having more trouble than normal sleeping – getting to sleep and then staying that way.  I thought it was just because of the hot flashes, because they’ve been awful, and worse since I stopped taking hormone therapy in April.  It wasn’t working as well as I thought it should, so I decided to try a different doctor.

The only hang-up?