Hi everyone,
My desktop photo for part of the week this week was Bagnell Dam. I took the photo two weeks ago and all twelve flood gates were still open. With the dark foreground and the dark background, and the sun shining on the dam, it just made a nice desktop photo.
I had this little sunflower on my desktop for part of the week too. I say ‘little’ sunflower and even though the flowers aren’t all that big, the stems are tall! Up to eight feet! So in this photo I’m shooting up, into the sky. I like the little bug I caught the petals.
And my current desktop is this landscape. I can’t tell you why I like it-- it’s crooked and everything! -- but I like it anyway.
“Peg, you could straighten it,” you say.
Yeah, I could, but I have found that when I do that I lose part of the photo. The Queen Ann’s lace is right at the edge and I would lose most of it if I straighten it and besides, I think being crooked is part of what makes it interesting -- to me anyway.
I took this photo somewhere in Iowa, I think, on the way home from Minnesota.
Sigh.
Loosing Kat…
Some of you remember her as Kathy, and that is what we called her while she growing up but once she hit a certain age (and reinvented herself), she wanted to leave the past -- and her little girl name -- behind.
She wanted to be called Kat.
Before you go thinking this is silly, just let me interject a little story here.
You may, or may not know that Mike’s birthday is in mid July and mine is at the very start of August. Okay, okay, it might be the second day of August but I think that’s close enough to call it the very start, don’t you?
Our friend Margaret always takes us to dinner at a very nice restaurant as our birthday gift and that is where this photo was taken.
J. Brunner’s.
Oh! My! Goodness! This place is always good. The steaks are cooked to perfection and are tender and flavorful without being covered in a ton of spices. The stuffed mushrooms are awesome and as if one appetizer wasn’t enough, we ordered onion rings to boot!
J. Brunner’s onion rings are a good part of the reason we like to eat there. You can get a good steak at a couple of other local restaurants but these onion rings are like no other that I’ve ever had anywhere. The batter is light and crispy, the seasoning perfect, and we ate almost the whole basket before I thought to snap a photo.
Guess who got to eat the last one?
Now, the point of the story wasn’t to solicit birthday wishes or make your mouth water for steaks, stuffed mushrooms or onion rings, it was to point out that our friend Margaret used to be called Peggy. When Margaret started her career she decided to she wanted to be called the more sophisticated version of her name.
Our name.
So people decide all the time, for lots of reasons, to change their name and it has only been the last few years that I have submitted to Kathy’s wishes and called her Kat.
Writing I Didn’t Know -- Kat’s Story has been good for me. Very cathartic and therapeutic. Cleansing and restoring.
Have you ever seen the movie with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson called Something’s Gotta Give? There is a scene where Jack broke up with Diane and she is sitting at her desk, sobbing, piles of tissues all over the place, she’s sipping wine, sobbing and typing away. Then, just as her sobs start to subside, a new thought occurs and sends her into a fresh fit of sobbing and tissues flying and a flourish of typing. Do you know the scene I mean? Well, that was me, writing Kat’s story.
The outpouring of love, kindness and sympathy that resulted from this story has also been very good for me.
There is a Swedish proverb that goes like this:
Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow.
And I really felt it to be true. I didn’t have to cry all the tears for Kat by myself, you helped. You cried for her too.
And before I take any credit for the writing of this story I want to give all the credit where it truly deserves to be. And that is with God.
“Peg, don’t you hate God for taking your daughter in the prime of her life?” you ask.
No. Not one bit.
“But you begged God to heal her, to make it right, to bring her back even!”
Yes. Yes I did.
“Aren’t you even a little bit mad at Him?”
No. Not one bit. God loves me, and God wants only what is best for me. I don’t understand it, but I don’t have to.
I trust God.
And I am thankful to God even. I am thankful that He let us have her for as long as He did. I am thankful for the beautiful girls that Kat gave birth to. I am thankful that through a series of events in my life, that God gave me the good sense to never take a single day for granted and to always tell Kat how I felt about her, which leaves me with only one regret as far as she goes.
“What’s that?” you ask.
I regret that she thought I hated the cows she painted for me. I didn’t. I told her right on Facebook that I liked the cows.
Sigh.
And now, of course, they mean just that much more to me.
My story touched you.
“I had to take my cell phone out of my shirt pocket and dry it off, for all of the tears that fell there,” I was told.
Most of the comments I received were in the range of, “beautifully written,” and “touching”, but when I was told that my story “devastated” one of you, I had to call and make sure you were okay. Devastated is big word.
Another big word is powerful.
Lord, help me not to get a big head!
“You wrote a powerful story …”
I don’t know what higher praise there could be for a writer. ‘Powerful’ is a powerful word. Then to hear this person say that my story also helped with their grieving process too was like icing on a cake; the best part. “You should get paid for it,” I like that one a lot too, unfortunately writers who are not published seldom get paid for stories. As a matter of fact, getting it in print with no pay is a huge feat all in and of itself.
“Submit your stories,” Momma has told me on many occasions. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“They won’t publish it.”
“And what do you get if you don’t submit them?”
Yeah, she’s a smart lady.
So Momma has been planting these seeds and now with a shot of ‘powerful’ fertilizer, one seed has sprouted.
I submitted Kat’s story to Reader’s Digest. With the number of submissions they get everyday they can not respond to every one. That was a warning posted on the website. So even though I won’t hold my breath, I will continue to trust in God.
I posted the story on my blog, my niece Bambi and daughter-in-law Kandyce both shared it on their Facebook pages, I posted it on the Life Source Facebook page and the story has had over 115 views.
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This past week Mike had to go to Menard’s, a home-improvement store, for something and while we were there I picked up some treats for the dogs. They love Pup-Peroni. While I was looking at all the treats on the shelf I see something by Nutri-Source called Pure Vita Chicken Giblets & Sweet Potato Delights For Dogs.
It looked like the treats my sister Phyllis had for her dogs. Freeze dried bits. Itsy and Ginger loved what Phyllis had so I decided to buy this package.
I get it home and open it up and the girls go nuts for the chicken part of the treats. The sweet potato…yeah, not so much. But I gave them each a couple of pieces and put the treats away.
That night, I’m sleeping when all of a sudden Mike yells and this blinding light snaps on. I bolt straight up. “What! What is it?”
“Ginger shit on the bed and I got my foot in it.” He is pissed.
Yeah, not a nice way to be woken up.
Mike hobbles to the bathroom and I clean the mess from the bed. I take the dogs outside while Mike settled on the couch in front of the TV. When I come back in I change the sheets and crawl back into bed.
In the morning…
OMG! Oh my gosh! There were at least four new spots on the floor and I’m guessing it was Itsy this time.
“Throw those away,” Mike grumbles at me and I’m not sure why he was mad. He didn’t have to clean it up. So I kind of copped an attitude.
“What? You think I didn’t already have that figured out? You think I like cleaning up these kind of messes?”
I can get away with a little attitude once in a while.
Macchiato.
I was standing in the kitchen talking to Momma on the phone. It was nine o’clock at night and typically after I talk to her I get ready and go to bed. So while we chatted I got a glass out of the cupboard and drew myself a glass of water, just in case I needed a drink in the middle of the night, and I set it on the counter.
Macchiato is a night prowler and prefers to be out at night, but Mike doesn’t want him out. So often times Macchiato cries at the door until we are all in bed, then he settles down for the night. So this night, while I was talking to Momma, he jumped up on the counter to beg me to let him out and seeing the glass of water sitting there, he walks over to check it out. I watch as he sticks his head right down in my glass and gets a drink of water.
“Momma! Guess what just happened?” and I told her.
She laughed. “He won’t drink much.”
“Yeah, well I wonder how many times that’s happened and I didn’t know about it.”
“What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah! And I can’t taste it either!” I guess it won’t kill me, still, I’ve switched from a glass to a bottle with a lid.
Let’s call this one done,
Lots of love,
Peg and Mike
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