I Prevailed!

Pond 5

I think I told you yesterday that we tried to get our flower planters/tomato planters watering system going and failed. My husband was able to change the batteries in one of the timers, but he gave up on programming it. This is one of the many things he has always been good at doing – making me feel inept – but now “I” am the go-to technical person. YEAH.

I tried to do it yesterday, but it didn’t run. I decided to see if I could find the paperwork and try again today. This morning I went out and started from scratch, completely resetting both timers to run 15 minutes apart. I set my alarm so I wouldn’t forget to check to see if they actually ran this time.

I’ve just come back in and I prevailed! I had time to go around to all the planters – including the tomato planters – and make sure all were getting water. I tweaked the amounts, since we had shut things off tightly for the winter and there was still a lot of air in the lines. Once I finished that, I cam around the front and the 2nd system was working!

I think I have most going fine. We’ll check for any breaks in the lines and keep tweaking how much water each of the planters is getting, but the main system seems to be going fine. I’m really relieved. Can you see me grinning?

Romper

Shared Humanity

Simon & Schuster

I write this blog to share the beauty and talent I find all around me in an effort to combat all the bad stuff that can sit on your soul and make you forget.

Two things have shown me lately that we have a shared humanity that fills you up when you least expect it – when we react as one, regardless of our backgrounds, uniting us.

One was when Chris Stapleton sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. Usually, I’m not very impressed. Singers tend to use the opportunity as a place to show how impressive their voices are, rather than to share the message of the song. We tuned in late and missed it, but I’ve listened to it on YouTube and then have been watching reactions to it from all over the world. People are uniformly blown completely away by his performance and in many cases, moved to tears.

The second was when I listened to Iam Tongi singing “Monsters” by James Blunt as his audition on American Idol. He had Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie in tears at the audition. The reactions on YouTube have all been the same. I looked up James Blunt and the song, thinking I should hear the original by the person who wrote it – and was in tears, with a lump in my throat. And in every reaction, every man, young or old, has reacted the same.

A third was a performance of “Creep” written by Radiohead, sung by Brian Justin Crum on America’s Got Talent. He was bullied as a child for being overweight and then gay. He channels his emotions into this performance, making you almost shake with what he has suffered and yet inspired by his stunning, powerful voice. Reactions again – regardless of background – uniformly feeling empathy for the boy and jubilant for the man.

It seems that, even in the middle of division, harsh opinions, disgust, and fear, we can come together with our shared values, our shared humanity. It’s a beautiful thing when differences drop away and we react with our hearts.

Shay

What would you do?….you make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one… Read it anyway.My question is: Would you have made the same choice? At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its Dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’ The audience was stilled by the query. The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’ Then he told the following story: Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning..’ Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt… I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field.. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the Plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball . The smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’ Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’ As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team. ‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’. Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day! May your day, be a Shay Day.

Sent to me by my friend, Marsha.

Whew 1, Whew 2

Life Coaching with Sonal

Whew 1 – We signed our tax returns and had overpaid, so we applied the overage to next year’s taxes, just in case.

Whew 2 – We made it to Ft. Smith and back with my husband driving the Vette safe and sound. I had to take an Alka-Seltzer when we got home, but it was actually better than the last time.

So, much relief here. :0)

And the Celebration Continued!

We’re just home from Lunch Bunch and errands. Lunch Bunch was just Kay, Bud, my husband, and me, but WOW – was it special!

Kay and Bud got me these gorgeous flowers. I took two pictures so you can get an idea of the variety of gorgeous blooms.

Kay and Bud also bought our lunch!

Our wonderful waitress/friend, Mikey, and the “Pizza Barn Gang” got me a card, this Vanilla Sugar candle, and the CUTE ladybug below.

I’m thrilled, but feel a bit guilty. I’m not this special, and this whole week or so of celebrations has been over the top.

I even got to chat with our son this morning before he headed to bed. He is 13 hours ahead of us, and so his day is over as ours begins.

You can see how lucky I am in relatives and friends who reached out with good wishes, cards, emails, texts, presents, and food, with lots of smiles and hugs. It just means the world to me.

Celebrate!

PBL Works

__________________

We are in celebration mode at the Lewis house.

My husband went out to the shop right before lunch and put the new part he ordered on the air compressor. It was the RIGHT part and WORKED!

He told me the compressor charged up to 120 pounds during the test he ran after he got the compressor back together.

We use the air compressor ALL the time, so this is huge for us. I use it to etch designs on glassware, plus clean yucky tools. We have several air tools, like the tool that helps us get the lug nuts off the truck tires and then put the snow tires on. We also use it to do powder coating of things we make.

It’s big – about 8 feet or so tall and about 2-1/2 feet wide. We have a really long cord that we wind up with a gravity-based (I think) wheel to draw the cord up and out of the way. There are small, compact units now that you can throw into the back of your car. This is NOT one of those, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

When the compressor failed, my husband took it apart, figured out which part had failed, took it off, brought it inside where he could try to find a replacement part on the computer. Got the part, put it on, and we’re back in business. Are you as impressed as I?

Hooray – TWICE!

HOORAY ONCE – My husband “came up with the idea yesterday” (idea suggested/rejected by this same man several times) that we might drive the trash can down to the bottom of the driveway and leave it overnight for the trash people to pick up today. We did that.

I had all appendages crossed as we drove down the driveway this morning. I wasn’t sure if we would find the trash can on its side with garbage strewn all over the place for us to regather before the trash people came, or the trash can as we left it, still full, proving my husband’s previous point that we could simply leave the can when we left to do our errands this morning.

HOORAY TWICE! – the trash can was upright and EMPTY when we got down there! This reinforced the idea that we SHOULD, in fact, leave the trash can for pick up the night before and that it wouldn’t necessarily be dumped by critters or stolen by weird-minded thieves.

HOORAY – HOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAY!

Happy Day!!!!

Music.Musings.Meanderings-WordPress.com

We just got home from Lunch Bunch and errands.

Kay, Linda, and Patty were all there!!!!!!! That’s the first time in WEEKS!

I hugged Linda’s neck when I saw her, and then again, when we left. I told her how much I’ve missed her and encouraged her to come back. I hope it got through how important she is to the group and how much she is loved.

We saw that the local library was having a fund-raising sale next door, so we headed there, getting several books, as well as information about the new library to be built in the future. I asked a lady about the location of it, since we were all gritching about it at lunch. It’s going to be at the intersection of the main street in Greenwood and the larger highway that goes to Ft. Smith. I had forgotten that the library is a REGIONAL one, not just for Greenwood, but also for the whole South Sebastian County, plus Scott County, and the new location will be better access for the others. She also told me that the ideas for expanding the current library just weren’t workable, since the building was built in 1965, I think, and is considered ‘unworkable’ at this point. (I have to admit that I got a bit ‘huffy’ internally at that point, since MY date of origin is even older…. ) I got several biographies of people I admire, and I’m looking forward to reading them. I also found a couple of books about quilts that I’ll make sure get to Kay.

Strawberries will be served with no-sugar-added ice cream for tonight, plus fresh salad ingredients to go with our dinner rounded out our errands.

A happy morning to be sure. I hope that YOUR day is a happy one, too. :0)

Did it!!!!!!

Andrey Popov-Depositphotos

At the risk of alienating you completely, I wanted to tell you I DID IT!!!! I used the new one-gallon sprayer and got ALL the garden boxes sprayed with KILLZALL to kill the weed roots. I finished the job in about 20 minutes from start to finish. I’m going to take the sprayer attachment out of the container this time and run water through it with the hose, hopefully keeping it from clogging up.

HOOORAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!

Empowered

Traveller.com.au

We just returned from going to the phone place.

I brought the old phone, just in case. It turned out to be a good thing, because the kind lady transferred the SIM card from the old phone to the new one. I wanted a screen protector and carrier this time, since my previous phone had a hard life and had actually fallen out of the carrier I had been using for years. The nice lady put on the screen protector and then the carrier for us.

I’m still feeling very good that we managed to do the updates here at home, as well as transfer my information to the new phone.

I feel empowered now, with a phone that is not overheating, as my old one did, and doesn’t cut my fingers on the chips on the screen.

Little could happen the rest of the day that would dampen my spirits. :0)

Good News and Good News

Zero to Three

GOOD NEWS ONE –

One of my dearest friends liked the Christmas cards I just finished painting and asked me if I would paint some for her to send to her friends this year. That is the highest compliment, and I’m walking 3 inches off the ground with happiness. I’ll get started on them soon. :0)

GOOD NEWS TWO –

My husband just went to get our mail and check about the trash. THE TRASH IS GONE!!!!!!! We had two weeks worth of trash down there, having been re-gathered by us twice, three calls to Customer Service, one forthright email, and two work orders later – it’s GONE. HOOOOOORAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!

‘Perfect!’

http://www.Alamy.com

Well, we took the snow tires off the truck and got the regular ones on. No injuries. No lives were lost. No flared tempers. It took us an hour and a half – two hours by the time we were back in the house.

We fixed lunch. The next thing I knew it was two hours later. I woke up in my chair. The TV had gone off (probably what woke me).

My husband told me – before he left the office to go take HIS nap – that I was, “Perfect” this morning in helping him with the tires. It’s a laborious project for us these days, fraught with chances for it to go badly, but this morning went well. I’m relieved it’s done now until late fall. I’m enjoying basking in the praise. :0)

I’m now trying to wake up with a cup of coffee. My PLAN is to watch the tomato pruning video and then to get out there and get started, VERY cautiously.

Tonight-into-tomorrow we’re supposed to get bad storms, so this afternoon is the time to get the tomatoes pruned. Both my husband and I are intimidated by the actuality of this. The worst that could happen is that we don’t get ANY tomatoes. But since we love them so much, that’s a daunting thing. I’ve told him I’m going to go REALLY slowly, mainly trimming off any limbs touching the dirt first and then moving really slowly after that, trying to make SURE I can identify what should come off. We’ll see.

Battle Won

Pinterest

I just won a very important battle.

Forbes

I told you that my husband agreed to let a solar panel guy come to the house in answer to an email talking about a government program for free residential solar panels. I researched it, read to my husband that there WERE no ‘free’ solar panels, etc. He wanted to hear the guy out anyway.

The guy was here for about an hour and a half this morning. I had him send the offer to my email so I could print it, and give me his card, telling him that we “needed to discuss it.” After he left, I said, not only ‘No,’ but, “Hell, no!’ Of COURSE my husband wanted to do it.

He gave me all his reasons. Some of them I agreed with, others not so much. He asked me for MY reasons to NOT go with it.

1. the offer started off ‘free,’ then went to ‘none of their financial people would probably go with reverse mortgage situations’, then ended up being an ‘up-front one-time payment of $42,450 (give or take.)’
2. I told him that we needed any extra money we could pony up for unforseen events that might occur, and that, even with inflation, we could pay a LOT of electricity bills for over $42K.
3. I then threatened him with hiring our ‘man-of-all-good-works-with-large-equipment,’ who just HAPPENED to come up the driveway yesterday to see if we needed him to do anything, that he had a backhoe and could probably did a large enough hole in the back yard that would be perfect for my husband. And that could be done BEFORE my stress level erupted.

Surprisingly, my husband remembered years ago when we were at loggerheads about what to do with a stocks profit windfall. My husband wanted to buy more stock. I wanted to pay off the house and cars. I won that battle, and he has told me several times since then it was one of the best decisions we ever made. He told me if I really didn’t want to do this, that would be the end of the discussion.

THAT’S one of the many reasons he’s a keeper. The man I married is still in there, though sometimes he is buried a bit. I thanked him for listening to me, and caring what I thought.

The backhoe expert can wait awhile on the hole…

Now I’ve just used my ‘1a warm-up and workout,” and “weights video” to calm myself down. I’ll relax a bit and then do my yoga. I’m exhausted, but I am SOOOOOO relieved. :0)

Secret

redbubble.com

Thoughts on a Saturday 1-29-2022

elephantjournal.com

We can all use a hug. Here’s one from me to you.

I just talked to my friend who broke a bone in her back falling recently. After tests, procedures, and lots of flailing around with insurance, doctors, etc., they have told her that they have done all they can do and she will ‘have to learn to live with it.’ That may be true, but I still want to bite them in the leg. She is isn’t in as much pain now, and is figuring out things that ease the pain she has. Her husband has stepped up and is helping her a lot now. They are both older than I am (two of a small group of folks who still ARE :0) but it sounds like they are coming up with ways to get things done without hurting themselves. I’ve waved my magic wand ’til my arm is aching, but to no avail. We talked about being thankful that we can still ARRANGE things to help ourselves as we age. She sounded stronger, much more like herself.

This has been a day of catching up with people. I received a text from a long-time friend, letting me know what’s happening with her. It was wonderful to hear from her, know that she thought about me, and wanted to catch up.

I start each morning with emails from two of my favorite people, my friend in Florida and my sister-in-law. We write every day. We know we have each other’s backs, can vent, cry, and laugh together, helping each other live as sanely as one can these days.

I chatted with our son briefly this morning via our online chat program, so I feel very close to him right now.

Aren’t we lucky that we live in a world where we can stay in touch with people we care about with a wonderful choice of methods, sharing our feelings, our lives, and our love?

This Probably Sounds Funny…

talesoftheinvisiblefemale.tumblr.com

but I’m dancing today because my husband is a keeper.

We’re having our pest guy come Monday to spray for all, including stray elephants. He comes quarterly and I wouldn’t give him up for anything.

But, he does go in every room of the house, spraying along the baseboards and putting down sticky paper thingies to catch any strays, and I pictured him going into our master bathroom upstairs…

I died inside, but not quietly. We have a rug in the part where the toilet and shower are. And then a large one and two smaller ones in the part where the tub and lavatories are. And ALL of them looked AWFUL. I’ve been staring at them every day since I’ve been sick, but I just don’t have the strength yet to vacuum.

Yesterday I asked my husband if he would vacuum the bathroom for me. My request is unusual. In fact, I remember his vacuuming one time before (in almost 53 years), when he wanted to show me that there wasn’t anything wrong with the vacuum, but with the USER. Grrrrgh. That ended up with a trip to the vacuum repair place… :0)

When we went up to bed last night, I stopped at the door of the bathroom. The rugs looked GOOD. He had vacuumed while I napped yesterday afternoon. I am SO relieved that our bug guy won’t know – for at least another few months – what a lousy housekeeper I am. I’m saved. So I’m dancing – very gently, while I’m continuing to recover.

Negative

The Canberra Times

There are some beautiful words in our language. One I’ve found today is “negative.”

I had a test last month that was ‘positive.’ Like a child, I immediately spun the worst scenarios and have been having real trouble keeping my act together, trying to figure out what I could do to make it easier for my husband to live alone.

The exam I had last Friday came back as “negative.” I received the results on the medical portal this afternoon. I had to look up a lot of words, and then look further into what they MEANT, but unless my doctor tells me something different, it looks like I’m out of the woods.

The news hasn’t really sunk in yet, but I told my husband it looks like he’ll have to put up with me for awhile longer. :0)

Hooray!

PBLWorks

I just called my friend, Kay. (She’s the friend who fell and broke a bone in her back recently.) I talked to her husband first, and then he gave the phone to Kay.

She finally was approved to have “vertebroplasty.” Vertebroplasty is a procedure in which a special cement is injected into a fractured vertebra — with the goal of relieving your spinal pain and restoring your mobility.

When I went to see her recently, she was in pretty bad shape. She had had the procedure and initially felt better, but was having a hard time. She was in pain, she was disoriented, had word retrieval problems, and her husband said she had been hallucinating. He fixed food for her, but she would only eat a bite or two. I was worried that she was suffering some kind of complication.

I just talked to Bud, and then Kay.

She is feeling a whole LOT better!  Her voice sounds normal – for the first time since she fell. She is COOKING dinner for them tonight! She isn’t hurting!  She feels HUNGRY!

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!

I’m so relieved. We are in celebration mode.

Made My Day

I had a really nice thing happen when I was down at the bottom of our driveway, getting our mail before heading to town to get a haircut.

I got the mail, and was ready to get back into our truck when a truck was driving by. I waved, and started to my truck. She stopped. I went over, and she asked me if I made the decorations that are on our mailbox. I told her that my husband and I made them together. She asked me if we sold them. I told her, “no,” because we can’t make the same thing twice, and we don’t want to disappoint anyone.

She went on to say that her family detours through the neighborhood so they can see what we have on the mailbox! She was quite effusive in her praise and my spirits went through the roof. I told her that she had really made my day. Then I had to apologize because we’ve gotten lax on changing the decoration with the pandemic. I told her we would do better.

When I got home I talked to my husband. He didn’t seem as thrilled as I was, but just now, hours later, as I type this, he asked,’ Do you think we should change the mailbox decoration?” :0)

We’ll do that as we leave for Lunch Bunch Friday morning.

Her kindness has also motivated me to get started seriously on the refurb of our yard critters.

Big Check Mark!

Giphy

Yesterday afternoon – after a year of trying to get it done – the wonderful guys at Window World of Fort Smith called, came, and installed replacement windows in two places for us.

We got the windows originally in 2005, I think, and we have been delighted. About a year ago, though, an upstairs window and the center one in our dining area got liquid between the layers during a storm.

Due to my stupidity, we had trouble proving to the company that they had, in fact, installed the windows originally. Finally, I was able to produce a small piece of paper that had a number on it. That turned out to be the serial number on one of our windows and they were able to locate our account and the information they needed through that to help us. Hooray!

Then the pandemic came and the world as we know it fell apart. Like everyone else, they had trouble staying safe, as people, and afloat, as a company. They were trying to create replacement windows for us.

I kept checking back with the nice office lady from time to time to no avail.

When I called last week, though, she told me she would check in the back to see if our windows were there and call me back. They were there!

We set up installation tentatively for late Tuesday afternoon.

Now we have brand new windows replacing the ones that lost their seal. I called the office this morning to thank them again for standing behind their warranty, getting the new windows made, and getting them installed for us.

This is a BIG CHECK MARK finally off the list – and – unlike all the rest – this one didn’t cost us anything. :0)

We Did It!

We walked down the driveway right after lunch today to get to our truck my husband had to abandon yesterday, not being able to come back up our driveway. We cautiously backed down a seemingly endless amount, sliding a lot, before we were on the street in front of our house. We were delighted to find that our driveway was the only bad spot between our house and town.

We were able to get a microwave that was almost exactly the same as the one we loved that died. It’s a 2.2 cubic foot Panasonic with turbo defroster, genius sensor, etc. The only difference is that the new one has 100 watts less power than the old one. We are beyond delighted. My husband celebrated by warming up a cup of coffee. :0)

The only other excitement in our trip was trying to get back up our driveway. The first time we made it up about 1/3 of the way, but then started sliding around, losing traction. My husband had to carefully back all the way down to the bottom to give it another try. I thought we would end up stuck in the deep ditch on one side of the driveway or the other.

The second time he ‘went for broke.’ We started sliding about half way up, but managed to gain some traction and got over the middle, really steep part of the driveway. I had been holding my breath and firmly keeping my big mouth shut, so it took me a minute or two to calm down. My husband is a much gutsier driver than I, and gutsy is what it took today.

So the truck is in the garage safely now. Hopefully, by the end of the day tomorrow our ice and snow on the driveway will be only a memory.

FINALLY!

I saw this Everblade Knife on TV around the beginning of November and ordered it online. I waited and waited, but didn’t receive it. Finally, a week or so ago, I wrote, telling them to either send the knife I ordered or give me a refund. It was just delivered about 30 minutes ago, January 25th.

Though the shipping was lousy, the knife seems to be first class. It comes with a self-sharpener for the blade built into the holder, which sticks to whatever surface you would like. Every time you take the knife out or put it back in, the blade is sharpened.

I have high hopes, since it was advertised that it makes cutting squash and/or bread easy, and that really appealed to me. You have to hand wash and dry it, but that’s a very small price to pay if it’s as good as I hope it is.

I’ll make a note to let you know.

_________________________________

The other thing I ordered about the same time was a purse. It looked like a good size, had a strap so you can wear it cross-body, is large enough to easily carry my big wallet/checkbook combination, and looked like leather, even though it cost almost nothing.

Again I just received it in the mail this past week. I transferred all my STUFF to it yesterday and carried it for the first time today. I love it. It’s probably not leather, but it FEELS good. Nice and soft and yummy.

This is the back.

This is the front.

I love it. So the lesson for the day is that determination and patience pays off. :0)

I DID IT!

I just finished my part of the tax prep for the year. I feel SMUG, TRIUMPHANT, and RELIEVED.

I feel SMUG because I jumped right in on it this year, rather than doing my normal procrastinating until it was a really stressful, have-to thing. I have been inputting monthly information on the spreadsheets I created for each tax category so that when all the information is there, I just total it and print it. This has been the best year ever for staying on top of things. I have opened the spreadsheets now for 2021.

Depositphotos

I feel TRIUMPHANT because I figured out some things on my filing system for receipts that will save me a LOT of time and effort next year.

I feel RELIEVED because it is done ahead of time – for once. I will print investment statements when they are available and then we can take it all to our wonderful CPA to perform his magic and make sure all is good.

HOORAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

HOPE

forwarded by Marsha Koenig

Milestone

June 14, 1969 – 51 years ago today  – my husband and I made the promise to share the rest of our lives.  Both sets of parents thought we were making a mistake. We happily made the promises anyway, ‘riding off into the sunset’ together, our whole lives ahead of us.

 

51 years later, we are still going strong.

Marriage is one of the most important promises you will ever make. It’s the hardest job you will ever have. It’s an evolving work-in-progress that will sometimes require more than you think you have to give. Merging two lives is difficult, to say the least. You will grow and change, and hopefully continue to build a stronger and stronger bond as the years pass. It’s a union that will bring some of the very best moments you will have in your life.  Bad things will happen, but you are stronger together than either of you is alone.  Sometimes you will feel so close your heart spills over. Other times you want to bite each other in the leg. If you each feel that you are giving 150%, it is probably coming out pretty even. In some ways, I can’t believe it has been 51 years (‘officially’, my husband says, since we dated for 8 years before marrying.) In other ways, it seems we have ALWAYS been halves of a stronger whole.

 

Last year, on our 50th anniversary, my husband said we had a good start, but that he wanted another 50 years. I have told him that I will do everything in my power to give that to him. We don’t know what is in store in the future, but we will face whatever comes together.

Highly Contagious

Awareness 22 via Jerri St John

Thoughts on a Friday 3-20-2020

Wild and Wonderful

Well, yesterday I called and told my friend Kay that my husband and I had decided that we would stop going to Lunch Bunch on Fridays until the coronavirus pandemic calmed down. We are in the high risk group for the virus, so we’re trying to limit contact as much as possible. This was a really hard decision because Linda, Kay, and I (plus various others) have met for lunch every Friday for almost 19 years now.

This morning I discovered that the governor of Arkansas has ordered all restaurants, bars, and gyms in Arkansas closed until further notice. (Restaurants can offer take out.)  Schools will remain closed through April 17th. I also learned that we have to make an appointment if we want to enter the lobby of our bank, though the drive-thrus and ATMs will be functional. City Hall and the Police Department buildings are closed to the public, too.

I have to tell you that – as worried as I am about the virus – I’m MORE worried about the economic effects of all this, and the changes that are being made in the power of the government as we try to get through this. I hope that we are able to get a handle on testing, possible medicines and equipment that help people suffering with the illness, and protect those trying to help the ill as soon as possible.

This being said, here are things that are NOT being cancelled –

Lisa Parkhurst Blaisdell via Ginger Charles

One of the Many Reasons I Love Arkansas

This is a beautiful state. We live in Greenwood, about 9 miles southwest of Fort Smith – right on the line between Arkansas and Oklahoma. We live about 3-1/2 miles outside Greenwood, on top of a ridge line where we can look at the view from our back yard and pretend we own all we can see.

One of the wonderful things about Arkansas, aside from the beauty, is that the state government has made some great decisions. One of them is early voting.

My husband and I weren’t even aware when we went to town this morning that early voting for Super Tuesday had started. We saw the signs posted at City Hall as we drove in.

We changed out my products at Rags & Roses, mailed a book we sold, and then circled back around to City Hall. We walked right in, right up to the wonderful volunteers who do the work allowing people to vote early, voted and went on our way. We thanked the ladies profusely for putting in the time that allows such an easy, CIVILIZED way to vote!

A Short, Personal History

RJ Bennett – LinkedIn

58 years ago we fell in love. (He was 17. I was 14). We waited and waited – through my last year of junior high, 4 years of high school, his Marine Corps service, and 4 years of college – and then we finally married June 14, 1969.

Today we mark our 50th wedding anniversary.

My husband describes me as, “mean as a snake.” He has asked me for 50 MORE years, so I guess he likes snakes…” :0)

I graciously accepted. If we make it the NEXT 50, I’ll be 122 years old….

Hanka Koebsch via Elena (Livia) D. – LinkedIn