The last day, the last minutes and seconds before we greet 2014

A few years ago my daughters Christine (photo left) and Audrey (photo right) and I visited the Chicago Zoo at Christmas; I don't know when I've had a better, more fun time. This photo will forever be my favorite. I am, like all of you, looking forward to the New Year, but before I turn that new page, I want to tell my daughters, that they are my best friends, the best of me, and the most caring human beings on the planet. I know that whatever life throws our way, that they will be there for each other, with support, love and caring and most of all their humor will uplift me, and I want to thank them as well as my youngest daughter Nikki. I am so proud of all of you and I love you more than you will ever imagine.

Before Christmas 2011, as remembered in Sept. 2013

Christmas 2011

 

Christmas is around the corner and living in the desert it’s hard to get in the mood. There are no, no real cold days although we consider 70 cold. I’ve not been in the Christmas mood until I started baking cookies yesterday. I continued today, wanted a friend to have some like I make every year.

 

I thought back to what Christmas used to be like when the girls where small, back when I lived close to my sister and I remembered many of them going back to my Childhood. We had a real tree with candles on it. Being next to the youngest we had to go to our parent’s bedroom on the 24^th when the tree was put up. Our presents were cookies Mama had spend weeks baking, perhaps an orange or some chocolate, that was when we were back in the city.

 

I remember telling Audrey to take her sisters for a walk on the 24^th, that’s when we open presents. When they came back Santa had been there. The youngest asked me year after year “where were you when he came”? I was in the bathroom I would answer year after year.

 

I remember going to Church Christmas Eve with Audrey, Jason and Alexander, we did not know that we were late and that our paper had the wrong time. We arrived in time for Communion, they passed a platter with Wavers and Jason said “oh goodie, Matzo crackers”, who was I to correct that. Later “wow that’s a little glass of juice”…After Communion the Pastor blessed the offerings ending with “Jesus Christ, Amen!” When four year old Alexander piped up and said “Mommie, the man said a bad word”. We didn’t exactly flee, but we left as fast as we could.

 

Christmas in Evergreen the year Pedro our 29 year old friend from Venezuela decided to come spend a month with us. He was overjoyed being knee deep in snow and couldn’t stop making snow angels. We had a great time celebrating the Season.

 

Norris, Tennessee with Christine, Frankie and Joey, we’d moved from Colorado and I couldn’t find the ornaments. I sprayed leaves of Holly and any other leave I could find, pine cones silver, gold and copper. It was the best tree ever.

 

I remember when Nikki, Eric, Ella and Riley visited us here in Lake Havasu City. The twins are now fifteen they were six at the time. After opening their presents they were not happy and my daughter wondered why. I pointed out that all they got were educational toys and not much in the way of fun stuff. We had a great time with them.

 

Most of our Christmases were spend with Audrey, Jason and Alexander. We always had the Menorah up as well remembering what no one should forget. They often made the trip by train and I will be grateful until my dying day for the wonderful time we all had. It was a privilege for me to be with the boys from the time they were small and this tie is still firmly in place and always will be.

I remember the year Nate gave me a hand made Dulcimer when we lived in Tennessee, he said lessons came with it but an hour and a half away. I was too scared of failure, tried it when I was alone and in the end I gave it my son-in-law Eric who I hope plays it now and then and that it didn't end up in a garage sale, if he had to or wanted to sell that would be ok, it would still be painful, but once you give a present away the choice of what that person will with it are no longer up to the giver.

There were other great presents from Nate and as life winds down there are still great times ahead and today, remember all this and more I am thankful for all of life’s blessings.

IDAHO PHOTOS, What a beautiful State

The River of No Return

 

 

The River of No Return

For Phyllis and Ron

 

I sit outside and listen

To the song of the river of no return,

Watch the blue heron fish

From the sand bar

And when evening slowly descends

Watch deer make their cautious journey

For their nightly drink.

 

I let my thoughts wander

Back to the time of

The Lewis and Clark expedition

And think with sorrow

That Sacajawea lies

Somewhere

In an unmarked grave

Like so many who journeyed west.

Here in this place

It feels like

I have God’s arms around me.

 

Written in Salmon, Idaho, August 22,2913

By Karin Feuerstein

Frog Castrations

Just got that in an email from the Center for Biological studies, I didn't need to read any further but thought, "What kind of bullshit is that?" Are we wasting money on frog castrating? Aren't there enough people in the Southern States that spear and eat the things? Let's blow our money where it's needed and counts, pay teachers better salaries, feed the children in our own country and stop counting mosquitoes and castrating frogs. Am I getting so old that I ponder crap like that shouldn't I be old enough to not give a shit what goes on in the world? I mean I'll be hitting 73 in a few days, my grandmother never saw TV and the village we were evacuated to during the war because our house was bombed had a town crier, a town crier who loudly yapped about Hitler's triumphs, why didn't the world step in sooner and kill the sonofabith and save six million people, not just Jews but also mentally challenged people, men or women who stood on the street corners and bitched about Hitler and what he was doing to our country. We, who once were the richest and most powerful country in the world, have regions of abject poverty like the Appalachians and so many more. Do you really think they give a shit about frog castrations? Hell they eat them.

The monsoon has started

Thursday, July 10.2013.

This was the look outside my office window that morning, the sky looked like a lot of days in our home in Clinton Tennessee, we had a house on the Clinch River and every evening we saw the fog roll in. I loved that time of day. When I looked out Thursday morning I remembered those days. For us in the middle of nowhere Arizona it meant that "perhaps" we'd finally get rain, we've been in a drought for years . Sure enough after a while the rain began, by Tennessee standards it was laughable, it did not last five minutes and could not be called a downpour. But we were grateful to get the dust out of the air. I had heard thunder which was so much nicer in Evergeen, Colorado where we lived at 8200 ft. there it was THUNDER, but still it was better than nothing. I hoped for lightening and the noise of booming thunder, oh well, hope is a good thing. I knew we'd get more rain later, after all we need it, the East had more than their fair share and they didn't need it at all. We needed it to put some big fires out, but nothing. Of course here in our town it can rain up on the hill where we are and not downtown or the other way around.

If your garbage can lid wants to fly off into the wind....LET IT!

On the second of July I was supposed to drive my husband to the doctor. I was outside waiting for him when I saw the lid to our garbage can take off into the wind...I ran after it and stumbled and landed face first into the rocked hill between us and our neighbor. Of all the crazy places I landed on the outer edge of my eye, had it not been for my sunglasses I would have lost the eye and would have if the glasses had broken, talk about good luck. Of course I had a violent headache, tossed my cookies a couple of times and spent the week nauseous. Now here it is later and my eye is purple and yellow, it's like a ring under the eye and the colors are not bad. The purple reminded me of a glaze I used to put on my pots, it was called nuclear purple, that is an exact description of what my eye looks like....nuclear purple.

I must say that's what it looked like before it turned more purple and yellow, and wow do I have grey eyebrows?

I am the Museum of Art or not, depends who's lookin'

In the 70's I volunteered at a drug abuse center in Solon, Ohio.(I was in my thirties) We had a mandatory group with a psychologist once a month. In one of them we were told to pair off and discuss the following points.

What kind of tree are you?
What kind of building are you?
What kind of cookie are you?

There were a few more, but I don't remember them. I was partnered with a shy lady, she was so lifeless that she could have stood against a opaque wall and no one would have noticed her.

When she was asked to answer the questions based on what tree, building, cookie, etc. I had given her. I only remember what she said about me being a building, she said: "I see her as the art museum, but you are not always in the mood to go three." I LOVED it and howled. When I had to answer the same questions about her I told the group that I saw her as a "Vanilla Waver", she was offended and that's the last thing I wanted to do, even thought I figured she should be tougher or not stay in the group. I explained to her and guess to the group, that a vanilla cookie goes with anything. Not sure she was appeased. Ah those were the days, I was in my thirties and you can figure out how long ago that was.

This photo was taken at the Narita Airport (Tokyo) in 1987 when we came back from China. We ran into some soldiers who carried several babies from Korea to New York. They lamented that they wished they could hand them directly over to their respective new families instead of a social worker. I often wish I could  have made contact and told this baby girl how much she was treasured on the way from her homeland to her new family. I hope and pray she fared well.

Arizona is burning

Here I thought that all my blogs from previous times were gone, erased by none other than myself, stupid, but....I found them again, don't ask me how, I clicked here and clicked there and voila I found them. It's like finding friends you haven't seen in ages.

What's new? Arizona is burning, in the Yarnell fire 19 Hotshot Firefighters lost there lives, it makes every day small problems fade into the distance. Now the Hualapai Mountains are on fire now as well, you can find photos on ABC15 here. I'm posting one here and hope that I don't get in trouble, but it they put them out there anyone can copy them and that's what I did.

It is a tragedy, not only for the lives lost, the homes, and let us not forget the panic the animals must feel and those that don't have time to escape. It's time to say a prayer, not only for the 19 lost and their families, but for the disasters all around usl.

I'm back to blogging

I don't know why I ever stopped, I loved a lot of what I had written and one day I thought "who is going to read this crap" when an answer didn't come to me I erased it all. Like it so often happens in life, we regret something we did in the spur of the moment. I never thought what I had written was exciting enough, not when I read other blogs, so here I am, a couple of years later writing again. I've written journals for the past 50 years and here and I offered to read it to someone, no one was ever interested, but when I turned my back, I discovered that they read it on the sly. I could never understand "underhanded and sneaky" but guess some people thrive on it, so what the hell. I'll begin again.

These are two of my three daughters, we were at the Chicago Zoo at Christmas time several years ago, and as always when I'm with the two of them we laugh and have a ton of fun, who knew it could feel so good and provide memories for a lifetime. I'm crazy about these two women.