October 26, 2014

Hi everyone,

My wish and prayer for you this day and everyday is for happiness and health.

My current desktop photo is a pair of trees along the Osage River. I’ve photographed these trees before and Momma really liked them so I think of her when I see them. This morning on my run, the light was especially pretty and I took a few shots of them and they make a fabulous desktop picture too!

I had this photo of two deer at the river for a morning drink as a desktop photo for a while too. Something that you may not be able to see in my reduced size photo is there is a heron poking out from the left side of the tree.

The weather here has been perfect for the painting job that Mike and I have undertaken. We are painting our building from a gray color with maroon trim to a mustard with butterscotch trim. Only it’s more of golden mustard and not the traditional yellow stuff. Don’t laugh! I don’t know the names of the colors and that’s what they look like to me!

Do you see that tree there? I think it may be poison sumac and the only reason I say that is because I am covered with a rash. That and I read on the internet that poison sumac has red shoots. This tree has red shoots. My rash starts with a little bit on my forehead, comes down across my nose to the right side of my face, neck, upper chest and inside of my right arm. Geesh!

“Mike?” you ask. Well, he was up on the lift, operating it so he only got a tiny little bit on one arm.

This whole courtyard was overgrown with baby sumacs and mimosas and Mike had a guy come in with a bobcat and clear it so we could get in there with the scissor lift and paint. The only problem we had is Mike’s lift is heavy. Once he got off the concrete onto the gravel, the lift got stuck. We had to hook it up to the golf cart and between the two, we had enough power to get the lift back onto the concrete. Then we went to the construction site next door and got a whole bunch of castoff plywood and laid that down for Mike to drive on. There was at least one low spot and I had to make a foray into the undergrowth to find blocks and rocks to put under one corner of the plywood. I expect that was when I got into the poison.

The worst part of the whole Paint The Courtyard Ordeal was when we got the lift hung up on a sewer cap. It was caught right between the tire and the frame of the lift. We couldn’t go forward and we couldn’t go backward.

“We could hook it up to my truck and drag it out,” Gary, our helper suggested.

“Won’t work,” Mike said. “The lift is too close to the building.”

We ended up jacking up the lift and putting blocks under the tire. Once everything was in place to Mike’s satisfaction he drove right off the sewer cap. It worked like a dream.

“Gary? Your helper?” you ask.

Boy, you guys don’t miss a thing, do you?

We have known Gary for years and we hire him to do jobs around here. Winterize empty units, construction or de-construction, plumbing and electrical jobs. Gary can do a lot of things and that makes him just about the perfect maintenance man.

When we were at our mountain home in Pennsylvania, Mike hired Gary to take care of Luby’s while we were gone. Gary did a good job. He is an older gentleman and mostly retired. So when he gets up in the morning he likes having something to do. He would go visit the girls at the gas station and get his morning cup of java, then he would come through Luby’s and see if anything needed done.

Michael always needs help with the odd jobs that pop up around here, and Michael is a morning person too. I see a match made in heaven, don’t you?

We have hired Gary to stay on and be Mike’s Helper. He comes in around 9 on most mornings and checks to see if Mike has anything he needs to have done.

In the past it has always been Mike and I to clean up the leaves in the fall. This year, Gary helped him. That allowed me to the get the games dug out of the garage and cleaned up for the 15^th annual Halloween Party at Luby’s! YAY!

I just love our games! They were custom painted and they are beautiful! The lady who painted them for us did such a fabulous job!

Look at these squares for the cookie walk, would ya! Thirty-two different squares. As I washed the previous years dirt and grime from them and laid them out in the sun to dry, I couldn’t help but admire how beautiful they are! I know Barb worked hard on them-even though she is a fine artist and this was just plain fun for her! I just hope I am not the only one who appreciates them.

“Halloween party?” you ask.

Yep! Every year we host a Halloween party here at Luby’s for all the local kids. There is trick-or-treating all up and down the Strip at the local businesses and games here at Luby’s from 2 to 4 in the afternoon. We have three double sided bean bag tosses, a double-sided mini putt, a football toss, limbo, basketball, a checker board and a washer toss game for the kids. All with a HUGE basket of candy and toys for the kids to choose from after they play.

Now, I want to tell you a little about my experience manning one of the games but first I want to tell you what else was going on here at Luby’s, okay?

Great!

We also have a costume contest with CASH prizes and our friend Margaret is solely responsible for that. She puts up ALL the prize money and handles the registration-bless her heart!

We also have a dog costume and trick contest that a local pet groomer takes care of and she puts up all the prizes for that. Things like free grooming and boarding and obedience lessons and she goes to Pet-Co and gets them to donate stuff for it too.

We have other people who help too. There are volunteers to man the games and volunteers to help package the cookies for the cookie walk and mix the prize baskets and keep them full, and another business owner who has the flyers made up that go out in the school packets with the kids. There are people who come and decorate the party area with hay bales, pumpkins and mums. There are people who help set up and tear down and then help to sweep the whole mess up when it is over and done with!

It really is a community effort!

I was kind of cranky when the day started. Mike and Margaret used to be the only sponsors of the Halloween Party at Luby’s when it first started and now the Betterment Committee has joined forces with us. People showed up to help and everyone kind of did their own thing with no regard to what others were doing. That was when I played boss, aka-Queen Bitch. Later I had to apologize for that, but regardless, there were things that needed to be done.

Things got done and everything was done in plenty of time for the party to start.

Sometimes I fuss too much.

If you are as old as me (or older), you know how to play checkers.

Checkers are easy.

“It’s what we did before there were computers,” I told Meritza, Alex and Louise, three American born children of workers of the Mexican restaurant here at Luby’s.

They came to work with their parents so they could participate in the Halloween Party.

“Meritza-pizza.” That’s the way Alexandria told me how to remember to pronounced Meritza’s name, they rhyme. Meritza is 11 years-old, Louise is 12 and Alex is 8 years. Louise and Alex are brothers and are cousins to Meritza.

I taught them the rules to checkers.

I know, that’s scary, right?

But I am pretty confident I remember the rules.

And we had a great afternoon playing.

Meritza reminds me so much of that smart, beautiful lady I have the privilege and honor of calling my sister. She just plain gets it. She can track all the moves in her head, she is just so smart.

Alex makes his jumps too fast-without thinking.

Louise is kind of in the middle, he sees fast and he thinks fast.

I had a great time mentoring these kids and they want to learn chess next.

Now, for the most part, hosting a bean bag toss at a Halloween Party is great fun and there is always one or two kids you fall in love with. I can’t show you mine because I can’t host and take photos at the same time, but mine was a sweetheart and she came back lots of times to play with me and she was awesome! She was also about 4 years old and wore glasses and had funny looking teeth-but she was a real princess!

I let the dads play too.

I’d be handing out three bean bags for each kid standing in line and when I got to the dad-I gave him three bean bags too!

“Dad’s have to stand waaay back here!” I’d tell them and most of the dads played with me. Sometimes they made the shot-sometimes they didn’t. But it was all good!

“Get some candy!” I’d tell them and, “Thanks for playing with me!”

One guy, after playing, went to the prize bowl and took one piece of candy. It was a snack size Snickers. I watched him. I went over to the woman he was with-his wife, I assume, and said, “He didn’t even get you a piece!”

“That’s just how he is,” she said.

“Yeah and if it would have been us, we’d have gotten him a piece, wouldn’t we?”

“Yeah,” she answers and he joined us and the game moved on.

Another time I told a young man (maybe a eight or ten-years-old) to wait for his sister as I was giving out bean bags to all the kids in line and reminding them to wait their turn.

“He’s a boy and he’s my cousin,” the youngin’ informed me.

This little cousin-this little boy had braided hair that extended the whole way down his back to his bottom. It was long!

“You’re a boy?” I went back and asked him. He nodded that he was indeed a boy. “Oh my gosh! I just love your hair!” I told him and I meant it too! Throw convention out the window!

Sometimes the kids took too long in the prize bucket. They would get to digging for their favorite candy and pretty soon I had a line of kids waiting. “Grab some and get out of my bucket!” I’d exclaim.

“Just one?” they would ask.

“Whatever you can grab in one hand!” I’d tell them. “As long as you do it fast, I won’t say a thing!” Boy you should see them grab a handful of chocolates and go!

All in all it was a fun day.

And next year, I hope to see YOU here!

Last time I wrote about someone throwing a McDonalds bag out and I wondered who thinks it’s okay to do that. I didn’t expect anyone to answer me and I actually got two responses.

Kevin, our youngest son, said, “Just let them go out and pick up trash once and they’d think twice about doing it.”

My beautiful niece Bambi said she is always getting on her young son about dropping trash on the ground. “It just isn’t okay,” she said.

And this is what happens to your bag of trash in a few days.

Now, speaking of Kevin, he’s awesome! He and Kandyce and Andrew came to visit us one rainy day and had to step over the pool that forms at he bottom of our stairs. “Mom, I work at a dock company-I can make you a grate for here,” he said. And this week I got my new grate! Yay! Just in time for the rain that is supposed to come in Monday night.

“All the guys helped and it was made out of scraps,” Kevin told me.

Sometime this coming week I will make cookies or brownies or a cake or something and send it to work with Kevin to show my appreciation.


Lot’s more stories-no more room!

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike