I'm Back

It’s been a while. Sorry. Time just flies out the window ...

I hope you didn’t think something awful happened on our trip to Kentucky last summer – nothing happened, the week went very well and we worked hard and had a lot of fun along the way. It was so nice to visit with Brenda, and Pete and Stephanie and their children, and make some new friends among the church volunteers from Pennsylvania and New York who were working that week. Our wonderful friends Karen and Doug drove down with us – both of our pick-up trucks were loaded to the gills with donations for the thrift store - and they were able to stay for a couple of days. They very quickly fell in love with the area and the work that’s being done at E.C.C.O and SWAP. Chris led a team of volunteers during the week, going out to do home repairs in a couple different locations, while I stayed back at ECCO and helped Stephanie with meal preparation for the 25 or so volunteers. I did go out with him on Thursday to the home where they were working, since Thursday is usually a half-day of work, and a half-day of sight-seeing. (Not that’s this area is exactly a vacation wonderland, let me tell you!) We drove out to the coal mining museum and toured the coal mine that afternoon. I can surely appreciate the hard lives of the men who work in the mines, day after day, year after year. Dark, cold, damp and depressing work, for sure.

The remainder of the summer went quickly: 4th of July fireworks with friends, a day trip to Lafayette,IN to be with our friend Minnetta and her husband Dick, for the funeral of her Dad; numerous Sunday evening drives to try out new ice-cream places with Doug and Karen; we said a sad good-bye to our beloved 20 year old cat Lucy; our daughter was in a car accident in which her car was totaled (and thankfully nobody was hurt); we all moaned and groaned about the heat and the drought that seemed to last for weeks on end in July, August and September … and then finally came the fall.

Our son became employed again in September – that was good news! – as he found an entry-level job as a Pharmacy Technician. He also moved in with us for a short period of time as he and his wife have decided to part ways. He brought his cat Melvin (who is a very cool cat, by the way) and our granddaughter Tara also spent some time at our house. We made a second (3-day) trip back down to Eolia in mid-October taking the remainder of our donations for the thrift store – our basement was finally cleared out for a “minute.” Karen and Doug drove down with us again and we spent a wonderful couple of days roaming around the area – hiking, driving Little Shepherd trail, visiting Kingdom Come State Park, and we found a great little family restaurant where we ate 2 nights in a row. On the way home we took a small detour and visited Natural Bridge State Park in Slade, KY. We had a fun cook-out on Halloween at a friends’ house, trying to stay warm as we huddled around a portable fire pit that Celia set up in her driveway. We did a hot dog/ hamburger giveaway and passed out candy – it was a popular stop for all the trick-or-treaters, adults and children alike.

The holidays came and went quickly with lots of good family time and visits. Nothing eventful, all good. Every year I find myself more and more thankful for low-key, low-stress holidays. Keeping it simple is definitely the way to go, and “time spent” is the best gift of all. We were blessed to have Tara with us quite a bit in November and December, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – she is so much fun in her toddler stage! I’m glad she feels so at home with us. She keeps us smiling even when life all around us might otherwise be quite messy. We also said good-bye to another of our faithful felines just after Christmas. Beanie had become ill and there wasn’t much we could to except to keep him comfortable for his last few weeks. (For those of you trying to keep track, we’re now down to 2 cats and 3 dogs.)

Anyway, here it is 2011 and I still have more to catch up on, many pictures that I could / should be sharing. Oh, that reminds me, I've upgraded my camera (at my husband's suggestion) - it's the newest Canon Rebel with an awesome lens. Don't know the specifics, ask him. I just use it! We're shooting a wedding in June and knew we needed to kick it up a notch, so we both got some new equipment. Fun! Too bad I rarely have time to sit down and edit through the 100's of pictures we take... and as you can tell, Tara is the subject of so many of them!

More later. Yes, really. I'm going to get back in the groove again. I must.

Getting Ready

I don't know if you can see this map of Kentucky very clearly, but we're getting ready to go down to Letcher County, Ky. this coming week. It's all the way over in the southeast corner of Kentucky, bordering on Virginia and adjacent to Tennessee (colored in green, between Harlan and Pike Counties). We'll be visiting Eolia, a little town in the midst of coal-mining country, in the heart of the Applachian Mountains. It's a beautiful corner of Kentucky but very poor and with very many needs. We love the friends we've made there and can't wait to see them again.

My mind is swirling with all the things I need to do before we head out ... instructions for our pet-sitter, water plants, finish laundry, groceries we need to take, and for Pete's sake I can't forget to pack the earplugs and our medications. Not to mention sweat bands, cameras, cell phone chargers and GPS (though cell reception down there is very iffy). We've got an enormous pile of donated items to load onto the pickup truck tonight - our friends have given clothing, household items, toys, books, bedding and more - so we're praying for no rain overnight, since we'll be packing up 2 pick-ups with donations. (And we'll still have a lot left in our basement that won't fit this time - another trip later in the summer?)

We're praying for safe travels and a wonderful week! Pictures and posts will follow!

Wordless Wednesday (Pretty in Pink)

Butterflies, Bees, Baths

On a very warm summer Saturday I caught sight of this beautiful butterfly visiting every.single.one. of my coneflowers. So of course I had to take a couple of pictures - he was posing, I swear. I would too, if I were that pretty.

Nothing says "SUMMER!" like tiger lilies!

And bumble bees.

It was bath time for 2 itchy scratching dogs this evening. They don't love their baths but they manage to stand still for a good lathering and rinsing. The hardest part is waiting the 10 minutes for the medicated shampoo to do its work. Ten minutes is a loooong time to hold onto a slippery sudsed-up dog who wants nothing more than to SHAKE himself off. Ugh.

So now our house will smell like wet dog for the next day or so. Yummy.

Then we tackled Beanie, our 20 lb. cat, who also needed a good shampoo. Boy, can that cat put up a fight. He's strong and hates a bath (like any cat would) and will do anything he can to claw his way out of the laundry tub. It took 2 of us to wrangle him and get him bathed. That boy can yowl like he's being murdered - oh, he hates a bath. And so now he's skulking around the house looking like a drowned rat, trying to "wash off" the bath.

Now we're off to do some night time photography - we went out last evening to Devou Park which has an amazing view of downtown Cincinnati (looking from the Kentucky side of the river over into downtown). Who knows where we'll end up tonight??

Before, During and After

A local landmark for the past several years, visible just of I-75 near Monroe, Ohio, was struck by lightning on Monday evening during a thunderstorm. This enormous statue was often referred to as "Touchdown Jesus" and its fiery demise has created a lot of discussion and controversy. They're promising to re-build it "bigger and better" but many (including myself) think the hundreds of thousands of dollars could be better spent by serving the needs of the community.

Sweet Pea ~ Puppy Love ~ Wild Child

Not to mention Soul Mate and Baby Girl and For Ever.

This is what happens when my sweet tooth acts up and there are limited options. I'm eating leftover Valentine's Day candy from our break room at work. It may be 4 months old but fortunately, this kind of candy never goes bad. The blues ones are the BEST!

Losing Their Minds

I have two older sisers - twins - who are about 18 months older than I am. When we were younger, we would fuss and argue and fight and not always get along so well. In high school, they were in the popular crowd, had boyfriends, went to parties, all that. I was the geeky little sister, not so cute, not as popular, hung around with my friends in the band but still had fun in my own way. Thankfully, as we've grown up, we've become much closer and are in touch with each other all the time. We live in different parts of town, but there's always some reason we're talking or texting or visiting one another.

One of my favorite things to do in recent years is to tease them whenever I get the chance, that they're "becoming our mother." Now that's not a bad thing, no, not at all - we love our Mom to pieces and work together to take care of her and check up on her. It's just that there are times, you know, when all of a sudden you see a "Mom" expression on the face, or hear a "Mom" kind of comment - that kind of thing. And sometimes they're forgetful, or remember an event so differently than I do (seriously, sometimes you'd think we grew up in different houses, with different parents and vastly different childhood experiences) - so I tease them.

Here's a good example from sister Rose, this evening as we texted back and forth:

Rose: "What was the instumental group that Mom uswd to have their record? It was kind of a little bluesy ..." (She can't text very well either.)

Me: "No idea!!" (Complete blank - what could she be thinking of??)

Rose: (A while later) "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Margy knew. :)"

Me: "OK First of all it was dad who liked that."

Me: "And 2nd that is Latin music. Not blues or jazzy! You are so confused!"

Rose: "Oh I didn't remember that part."

Rose: "That's me very confused about music!"

She cracks me up. Especially the part where Margy "remembered" and was just as confused as she was.

This is Margy. Rose looks just like her since they're identical. Execpt they both dye their hair from time to time, and can look different because of that. HA! They're so gray (and I'm not, na-na-na-na!)