We Are Family

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Here it is, another week gone past.
And another month all but gone too. The next time I write it will be April and three months of 2016 will be under our belts.
I had this pretty springtime photo up as my desktop photo for a while. I am happy to have pretty things to photograph again.

I was pleased when I opened my inbox on the email and saw I had notes from some of you. I love when something I’ve written has caused you to pick up pen and paper and respond. Okay, in the old days that’s what you would have done, these days you hit the reply button and type it out, but be that as it may, the sentiment is the same and I appreciate it.
Dear Peg,
You take the most beautiful photographs. Some look like Georgia O’Keefe paintings, only photographs. I’m sure she would have loved to have painted some of your photographs.
Keep up the wonderful work, you need to publish them so many more people can enjoy. You really have a gifted eye for capturing beauty, whatever the subject matter. 
Wow. Thank you Marsha. I’d love to be paid for taking photographs or writing or for any of the other things that I love to do. I don’t know how to make that happen though. So for now, they will remain free.
Marsha, for those of you who don’t know, is Miss Helen’s daughter.
I got this note from my cousin Lorraine.
Andrew is so adorable. I knew about the fairies wash because Mom also talked about them. They are mesmerizing in the photos you took. Spring flowers are beautiful too!
My mom and Lorraine’s mom were sisters; this I know. But hearing about the things they have in common gives me a glimpse of their lives, their past, their childhood.
Lorraine, I hope you are not tired of spring flowers yet because I have a feeling there will be more at the end of this letter!
Another beautiful cousin of mine is Lorraine’s sister, Rosemary. She sent me a photo of her hand! LOL!
This is the oldest hand in our generation, she wrote.

How cool is that!
Hands…they tell a story, don’t they.
About a month ago I talked about Andrew helping me make his daddy’s birthday present and Andrew pronounced birthday as birday. That was when cousin Stacey sent me this note:
Andrew calling birthday birday made me laugh…many years ago Ean’s tenth birthday, he’ll be 20 this month, in my rush to get everything ready for his birthday I wrote Happy birday Ean on his cake…totally forgetting the th…it’s been a standing joke ever since and each kid gets a cake with happy birday every year in our house!
Yesterday Stacey sent me a photograph of Cole’s birday cake.

Thought you might like to see this…LOL! You can tell Andrew he is correct in our family! 
Cole is Stacey’s son and he had his fourteenth birthday just this past week.
Happy (belated) birthday to Cole!
I love family. I love having family. I love knowing we are family. And even friends can be family. Family, by definition isn’t just people living together, or a group of relatives, or lineage, or offspring; family can be a group with something in common and the something that everyone reading this has in common, is me!

Tuesday this past week, I spent a day helping one of my favorite old people with her flowerbeds.
“Miss Helen, where you offended when I called you old in my letter?” I asked her.
“Pshaw,” she said with a little laugh, “No.”
Miss Helen has always loved her flower beds. She loved everything about them from putting them in to maintaining them to the pretty flowers they produce. But this past year she hasn’t been able to keep them up and it distresses her to see them neglected and overgrown. “I’m just going to take them out and let them go back to grass,” she told me. “That will make it easier for the guy who cuts my yard.”
That is just so like this beautiful and kind-hearted lady; always thinking about someone else.
So this past week, I spent a nice afternoon with her.
“Get me the white chair from the shed and I’ll sit and help,” Miss Helen told me. I went to the shed and got the chair.
I gathered the tools.
When all was ready I hovered near Miss Helen as she made her way down the kitchen steps, — Thank you Frank for putting in such a sturdy handrail! — had the walker waiting at the bottom for her, stayed close as she made her way across the patio, up three steps to the yard, across the yard and finally had her seated in the waiting chair.

“Get me that pillow out of the garage, would you please?” Miss Helen said. “These old bones can’t sit on anything hard anymore without aching.”
I was off to do her biding even before she was done with her request but in my anxiousness I neglected to ask where it was. I stopped and called, “Where should I look?”
“What?” she asked.
Doggone it! I have to remember not to call from halfway across the yard (or from the other room if we are in the house). Her ears are old too! All kidding aside, Miss Helen still hears pretty well, just not when I’m soo far away.
(Let’s see, excessive to is spelled too, so excessive so is spelled soo?)
I went back to where Miss Helen sat in the warm sunshine and repeated my question.
“It’s in that stuff that’s right outside the door.”
I went into the garage and just outside the door into the house, under some things, was her pillow. I shook my head. She’s still got it, I thought. I bet it’s been most of six months since she’s used the pillow and yet she still knew where it was.
I brought it back to her and got her comfortable. “Did you put your bug spray on?” I asked.
“Oh no! I didn’t.”
“Where is it? In the utility room?”
“Yes.”
And I didn’t have any trouble finding it. When I got back with it I gave Miss Helen a good spraying. The last thing she needed was to have any of those little bloodsuckers on her.
“Aren’t you going to use any?” she asked when I put the can down.
“I’ve got some natural bug spray on already,” I told her. “I even sprayed Ginger with it.”
Then we got to work and spent the next four hours pruning the rose of Sharon’s which have taken over one of the flowerbeds. I used loppers to cut them back as far as I could, on the ones she wanted removed, and halfway back on the ones she wanted to leave.
“If anything happens to the neighbors fence I want to have a few to act as a screen,” Miss Helen explained to me.
As I cut the branches I tossed them to where Miss Helen sat with a pair of hand clippers making little sticks out of big sticks, or breaking them when she could, and dropping them into a black trash bag tied to her walker.

That is going to take forever! I bemoaned to myself. “Maybe we could just cut them and have Gary haul them off in his truck,” I said to Miss Helen.
“I would like to have it cleaned up and not leave it if we don’t have too,” Miss Helen said. “We could take’em out to the ditch and burn’em but it’s too windy today. I have a lady that I can call and she’ll come and get them if I put them in bags for her.”
So when I was too far ahead of her, when her pile was too big, I stopped clipping and helped to clean up the pile.
Sitting there, chatting with Miss Helen, I found disassembling the branches very satisfying. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse! And it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would.

“Now I know why you cut them up,” I told Miss Helen.
“They go in the bag much easier and I can get more in a bag without tearing the bags up,” she said, and that is what I figured out too.
Now Ginger…
That little stinker!
I walked both dogs before I left the grouse so they would be comfortable and nap with Mike while I was gone, but Ginger wasn’t having any of that. As soon as I opened the door to the garage she shot through. The outside door was already open and I didn’t want Ginger to run off, so, since she was so determined to go with me, I opened the Jeep door, “Com’on,” I called, “load up!”
The command to load up works much better with the golf cart than the Jeep; the Jeep is too tall. She can’t get in on her own, but the command had the intended effect. She was at my feet. I reached down, scooped her up and dumped her on the seat. “You can go but you won’t have a good time,” I told her.
At Miss Helen’s I tied Ginger’s leash to a tree close by so I could keep an eye on her and she was so good we hardly knew she was there at all. Then the neighbor’s dog barked and Ginger barked back. That was the only time she barked.
“I can’t believe how quiet she is,” Miss Helen said after I shushed Ginger.
Ginger moved from the flower bed, where she was napping, to a little patch of irises the lived against the house.

“She’s watching something,” I told Miss Helen.
“Maybe it’s a little ground squirrel or a lizard,” she said.
Ginger sat there and sat there and sat there for a long time just staring. I saw her alert on something once, but whatever poked it’s head up must have pulled it back down pretty quick, because Ginger relaxed again and took up her station just staring.
Once Miss Helen and I had quit for the day, I cleaned up the tools, knotted the tops of our five bags of sticks, stowed them behind the garage for pickup, and helped Miss Helen get back into the house.
Then I went back out through the kitchen door to collect Ginger. I untied her leash and headed for the Jeep. “Com’on, let’s go!” I said totally expecting her to follow. But she didn’t. She was dead weight on the other end of my leash. I turned around to see what was wrong and she had her bottom planted firmly on the ground, ears perked up, and an expression on her face I could read perfectly.
“I’m not going,” she said.
I don’t know what was so interesting that it kept her attention for over an hour and even now she did not want to abandon her post, but she wasn’t budging. I had to walk back and pick her up and carry her.
I had intended to help Miss Helen on Wednesday too but Monday Mike received a call from Camping World in Columbia. The parts were in to fix our RV and we needed to be there Wednesday morning for our appointment.
“Mike will want to leave this afternoon,” I told Miss Helen and when I got home, I was right. He wanted to go up Tuesday night rather than drive early Wednesday morning. So once I was back from Miss Helen’s I started getting stuff picked up, packed up and tucked in for our eighty mile trip.
“We’ll be home tomorrow afternoon,” Mike said. “Why don’t we just leave the cats here?”
“Okay by me,” I said and we went looking for the cats. We found Macchiato but we couldn’t find Molly anywhere! We’ve seen Molly come out on top of the RV tire by the table before so we know she goes under there somewhere - but where! We took flashlights and crawled under the RV but couldn’t find her.
“I’m going to start the RV,” Mike said. “That should scare her out.”
I stood watch while Mike started the RV, but it didn’t work. No Molly. Mike put the RV in gear and moved it a little forward and a little backward thinking the motion would spook her. It didn’t work. No Molly.
“Let’s go get a bite to eat and maybe when things are quiet she’ll come out,” I suggested.
Mike and I got in the car and went through the drive thru at McDonalds and brought our supper back here to eat it. We hadn’t been sitting and eating for two minutes before Molly came creeping out from under the RV.
We have no idea where she was hiding.
With all of our critters safely inside the RV, Mike opens the huge overhead door and takes the RV out. Then we transferred the cats back into the grouse. There was no use to stress them out for just an overnight trip.
I took a few pictures on the way to Columbia.
A barge as we crossed the Missouri River in Jeff City.

An abandoned house with graffiti.

And cows!

Safe and secure in the parking lot of Camping World, we settled in for the night. Mike watching TV, me on my computer when…
OUCH!
Something bit me! Right on my hip. I opened the front of my jeans and as soon as I exposed my hip, I saw him. That little bloodsucker! I picked him from my skin and gave him a taste of a Bic I keep handy for just such occasions. Well, for that and for lighting incense. The cat litter box sits near my desk and is sometimes a little stinky.
I settled back and before long I felt a tickle on my arm and there was another one! This little tick met the same fate as the first one. Sometimes, when you light them up, they pop you know, just like a kernel of popcorn.
After finding two, all bets were off. Now every little tickle, real or imagined, had me checking for a tick.
This is ridiculous, I thought and got up from my seat, went to the back and stripped. I picked several more ticks from both my body and the inside of my clothes.
Sigh.
Just because my homemade bug spray didn’t work this time doesn’t mean I am going to quit on it. I mixed it according to the directions. Twenty drops in eight ounces of water or witch hazel to make a spray. I didn’t have witch hazel so I used water, but maybe it was still my fault. With the witch hazel you don’t have to reapply as often and I was out for four hours and didn’t reapply at all. So maybe it was my fault and I’m going to try again using witch hazel. I love the idea of using essential oils for pest control.
Camping World replaced our slide motor but didn’t fix the steps.
“We can fix the part that’s on recall,” Jeff, the head of service told us, “but we can’t fix the part that’s broken. We’ll have to order it.”
Mike was not happy but what can you do?
That means another trip to Columbia when the parts come in and in the meantime, we have to use my kitchen step stool to get into and out of the RV.

Sigh.
What a pain.
Let’s end this with springtime photos.
I love the wild plums but they are reaching their peak so after today I don’t think there will be anymore of these.

I used to photograph the blossoms of an apple tree that lived on the edge of a parking lot just off the Strip but last year they tore it out.
It made me sad.
I lost a mimosa tree two years ago, and that made me sad.
Earlier this week, walking past the lilac bush that I like to photograph for you, I see it is gone now too. I got some awesome hummingbird moth photos there.
Sad again.
But I don’t dwell.
I walked down a road I don’t normally go down and found violets.

Then I see a whole patch of pink blossoms. I don’t know blossoms well enough to know what these are, and I haven’t been in the area to see the fruit.

I think this is a pear blossom.

The redbuds have opened.

I don’t know what this is.

Or this. I have no idea, but these are tiny little flowers on a shrub like plant.

I don’t know this one either, but it is a good example of a green flower.

New leaves with no flower.

The honeysuckle bush is coming on.

And so are the gooseberries.

Johnny-jump-ups. I know, they look like violets to me too.

Field cress.

Rose verbena are my current desktop photo.

I was going to try to end it here, but I just have to show you a couple of more photographs I took this past week.
For one, we may not be happy to see the dandelions come on, but the ants are!
Yeah. All those specks you see sprinkled amongst the dandelions petals are ants.

And check out this orb weaver. He was hanging there, upside down, all curled around himself, just hanging out.

“Is he dead?” I asked Mike.
“No, watch,” and with that Mike lifted his hand.
“Don’t hurt him!”
Mike dropped his hand, drew in a great breath and blew on him. Mr. Orb Weaver took off and scrambled so as to not lose his anchor line. I shot off picture after picture trying to focus on him. Then, when all was still, he settled back into his cradle again.
Isn’t he cool!

And with that, we will call this one done!

Andrew And More

It has only been a few days since I finished and sent Dusty Old Things so you may remember that Mike and I had a great few days poking around junk shops with his brother Cork and sister-in-law Pam.
I spent two hard days writing Dusty Old Things and in my rush to get it done and published there may be one or two errors in the story - but I know y’all don’t hold those against me and often times never even notice them.
For instance…
The only difference between wander and wonder is a single vowel. When we read, we don’t read the individual letters so even though I intended the word to be wander, I wrote wonder and of course, when I proofread it, I read it the way I intended to write it.
Funny the difference a vowel can make.
Besides a few spelling errors, which I can usually spot the next day with fresh eyes, I sometimes see things I would have written a little different if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get it out, but those are little things and don’t matter all that much.
But — and there’s always a but — in my rush to wrap things up on Thursday night, I wrote this: With a Kozee jar the lid doubles as a serving dish. The one I was showing her was priced at ten dollars, but I only paid between one and three dollars for all of mine. 
Now, you can read that to mean that I only paid three dollars for all the Kozee jars I own, which is somewhere between three and fifty —
Yeah.
I don’t know how many I own.
— When in reality I meant it to read that I had paid between one and three dollars for each of my Kozee jars.
Funny the difference a word can make.
Oh. And Mike had the internet card at the time I was finishing up the story and even though I made a mental note to check the spelling of Kozee, I forgot.
Kozee, is how I would pronounce it but it is spelled Koeze.

Also, did you notice that in my story, when I was talking about Mike’s well bucket, that even though I hadn’t taken a picture of it until later, I placed it in the story where I was writing about it. Then, when I was talking about a potato masher like my mother used to have, I made you wait until the very end to see a picture of it? Did you notice that?
My beautiful cousin Lorraine did.
Peggy,
I was reading your letter and the part about looking for a potato masher [piqued] my interest. I was wondering what it would look like and what was so special about it. The first one you showed was different and I had never seen one like it. When I got to the pic of the “one” you had been searching for, I had to laugh. It just so happens that I have one in my kitchen drawer. I don’t know how long I’ve had it but it’s the only potato masher that I have. It was my mother’s and I don’t know how long she had it. It’s possible she got it at a yard sale or the antique store in town. I have a feeling it reminded her of a potato masher she had used when she was growing up and maybe even one that her mother used. Isn’t that an interesting coincidence!

Lorraine, I’m guessing our mother’s mother used a masher like this one  too! And for all of you who have never used a masher like this…call Kevin. Our son is the designated mashed-potato-bringer for all family functions and has used all kinds of potato mashers through the years and he will tell you how much better this design is than any other masher he’s ever used.
You guys may or may not know this, but for Connor, my youngest reader, I sometimes like to explain a word he may not have seen before.
Conner, do you see that word in brackets in the note my cousin sent to me? Piqued? You may have guessed what it means by the way it’s used; it means to cause a feeling of interest, curiosity, or excitement in somebody. Well, that’s one of it’s meanings and it’s what the word means here.
Can you guess how it’s pronounced? I still sometimes want to pronounce it piked because of the q in there but it’s pronounced peaked.
Isn’t that a fabulous word!

After two hard days of writing, I had other things to do! I didn’t even make my bed - and I always make my bed! But as soon as I was up in the morning, had the dogs walked, got breakfast out of the way — it doesn’t take long to pour a bowl of cereal — fed the cats and made a cup o’joe, I settled in front of my computer and didn’t budge again until I ran out of coffee, or had to pee—whichever came first.
I had a self-imposed deadline to finish the story by Thursday night. I had to get caught up on my other chores on Friday and I needed to visit my old people, Miss Helen and Mr. B.
“Peg, that isn’t nice to call them old people,” you admonish.
Yeah? Well guess what?
They are both in their nineties, which is old in anyone’s book - including their own! — and they both know that I say it with love.
Saturday morning (the 12th) was our St. Patrick’s Day Parade and a pancake flip -a fund raiser- for the Lion’s Club. That means that Mike and I got to spend time with Andrew while his mom and dad worked the pancake flip. And not only did we watch Andrew, the five of us had breakfast at the Lion’s Club too!
“Five?” you wonder.
That’s right. Mike, me, Andrew, Cork and Pam. That’s five.
As the Lion’s Club came into view, Andrew pointed and exclaimed, “That’s my daddy’s Lion’s Club!” He tickles me.
Breakfast was good. They had pancakes, ham, sausage, biscuits and gravy, coffee, juice and milk. Afterward, Cork and Pam struck out on their own to do some shopping while Mike and I brought Andrew back here, to our grouse. We would keep him until it was time for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, then Kandyce would come and get Andrew so he could ride in the parade with them.
That was the plan.
Mike was busy so Andrew and I hung out together. The first thing he wanted to do was go in the RV.
We went in the RV.
Then Andrew wanted to play with my Nook. “Mimi turn light on for me, please?” Andrew asked.
“You know how to turn it on,” I told him.
He stood there looking at me, arms crossed across his little body. He looked to the back of the RV and although he did know how to turn on the light in the bedroom - it was dark between here and there!
“Mimi go with me?”
“Okay, I’ll go with you,” and together we went to the back of the RV, Andrew felt the wall for the switch and smiled so big when he flipped the light on! Then Molly came shooting out of the bedroom and Andrew saw her.
“MY MOLLY!” he exclaimed.
“Yes it was your Molly,” I confirmed.
Andrew went around the bed and climbed the dog ramp, holding onto the window frame for support, and got up onto the bed. I think climbing the ramp is half the appeal of getting my Nook from my bedside stand. Getting down from the bed is easier than getting up on it. You clutch the Nook to your chest with one hand, sit on the ramp and slide down on your bottom. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!
I turned the light off and we went back to the front. Andrew was going to climb into the drivers seat when he spots Molly. “MY MOLLY!”
“Is your Molly under there?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said and went to where the flashlights hang on the wall, reached one down, turned it on, and spotlighted Molly for me. “See!”
“I see her,” I told him and snapped a picture.

Andrew turned the flashlight off and put it back. He’s such a good little boy. Then he flipped through the three home screens on my Nook looking for the one I set up for him.
“Andrew, I got you a new game. Let me show you.” Reluctantly Andrew let me show him. Tally Tots and Pudding Monsters are his favorite games and that’s what he wanted to play. I opened Zuzu’s Bananas and he breezed through the first screen.

 It amazes me that he can look at a game he has never seen before and figure out how to play it. This game teaches things like swiping and tapping and matching and every time you figure out a screen, you get a banana.
“You got a banana!” I exclaimed making a big deal about it as a banana and stars appeared on the screen and music played, then the banana shrank and filled a spot at the bottom of the screen.
Andrew cleared another screen, “I got another banana!” he exclaimed.
“Yes you did! I’m so proud of you!” I gushed.
And on he played. After he collected five bananas he got a banana dance, and I made a big deal about that too. “Banana dance!” And I chair danced to the music. Andrew watched the bananas dance across the screen then a new game started. He sat and happily played, declaring, “I got a banana!” after each win, and “Banana dance!” when he got one of those. Then after half an hour he had enough. He turned off the Nook and set it aside.
“Are you done?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered.
“You wanna go outside and find Pop-pop?”
“Yes,” he answered and headed for his shoes and sweater. We dressed and went out and found Pop-pop talking with the face painting guy who was setting up in our parking lot for the parade.
“You want to get your face painted?” Greg, the face painter, asked.

“No,” Andrew stated flatly. He didn’t even have to think about it. We stood and watched but Andrew wasn’t going to have anything to do with it, then we wandered away to play on the bleachers. Running back and forth to the sound of his footfalls on aluminum and jumping off the end is one of his favorite games.
Then Andrew got up on the stage and I got this shot of him peeking around the post at me. I love this photo of him!

The weather was cool and we had sprinkles, but currently it wasn’t doing anything. Nonetheless Andrew and I grew chilly and went back inside.
Andrew took off his sweater and shoes and headed for his toy box. He had a couple of animals up on the table and was playing when Pam came in.
“Hello!” she called as she came in.
“Look Andrew,” I said. “It’s Aunt Pam!”
Andrew, up until this point, hadn’t wanted much to do with Pam, which is normal. He had only met her a few hours before. Pam didn’t push too hard, she took her time. “Hi Andrew,” she said in a pleasant sing-songy voice. Then she dug around in his toy box and started handing him his little animals and Andrew lined them all up on the table.

Then, as Pam and I chatted, Andrew started to pull the pigs out of lineup, then he picked up a cow and started to rearrange all of his little animals. He tickled me when he picked up a little sheep and said, “Aw, baby sheep,” gently put it in his cupped hand, and stroked its plastic fur.

“Awww,” you say?
Well, that might be a little premature. When Andrew had all of his animals the way he wanted them, he started flicking them with his thumb and index finger until they were all knocked over and scattered all over the table.
“Here, let me sit with you Andrew,” Pam said and she lifted him up and scooted into the seat. “You can sit on my lap.”
I was surprised that Andrew allowed it it but he sat there for a little bit, playing, then climbed down looking for more toys. He found his blocks and stacked a few.
“There’s one,” Pam said, picked it out of the box and handed it to Andrew. He stuck it on top. She picked up more blocks and Andrew stacked them with one hand while holding on to the ever growing tower with the other.

The tower toppled and we all said, “Aww.”
Andrew started stacking them again but was having trouble.
“Why don’t you let me hold it while you put the blocks on,” Pam suggested and reached for the tower. Andrew let her take it as he picked up and stacked more blocks on top. Finally, on tip toes, he crowned his tower with the very last block.
“Now you take it,” Pam told him letting go and sitting back in her chair.

Andrew took the tower they had built together and glowed with happiness, and in his glee and inattention,

...the tower toppled. Pam and Andrew must have built the tower at least four times, then Pam had to go.
“Let’s pick up some toys,” I said to Andrew after Pam was gone and he willingly started picking up toys. When we had them mostly done, Andrew spots his ball and picks it up. “You want to play ball?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
I pushed the toy box out of the way and Andrew moved a few feet away and tossed the ball to me. We played ball the normal way for a while then Andrew added a twist.
“Hit me,” he said handing me the ball.
“You want me to hit you with the ball?” I questioned as I took it.
“Yes,” he said and took up his station a few feet away and with his back to me, waited expectantly and patiently for me to throw the ball at him.

I was having a little trouble digesting this. I didn’t understand this game but honestly, I didn’t think it would hurt anything. I gently tossed the ball and it lightly hit him in the middle of his back.
“OW!” he cried and clutched at his back.
I immediately felt regret.
Then Andrew turned and looked over his shoulder at me with the most impish grin on his little face.

“Again,” he said chasing down the ball, throwing it to me and going back to stand and wait.
I was throwing so softly that I missed sometimes. It tickled me when Andrew got the ball and took it back to his station with him, turned his back to me and tossed the ball over his shoulder.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Over the shoulder! Way to go Andrew!” I cheered. And from then on that is how Andrew got the ball back to me.
Around noon Kandyce and Chi-chi came to collect Andrew to get ready for the parade.
The sprinkles came and went all morning and it was drizzling pretty good by the time the parade started. Mike went and got our stadium umbrella and three of us stood under it — Mike, me and Cork — watching the parade.

Pam had joined us in time to watch the Lion’s Club roll by and then, not wanting to be out in all of the rawness of the day, went back to her RV. I don’t blame her either. It wasn’t a very nice day for a parade.

Later that afternoon I put my boots on and took Itsy and Ginger for a walk-about.
This photograph, with the rain dripping from the thorny branch of a multiflora rose, is by far my favorite of our walk. I hadn’t seen the spider when I took it.

The rain continued into the overnight and Sunday morning, Mike, Margaret, and I went to Golden Corral for breakfast and to see Sue, our favorite waitress. Cork and Pam opted to skip breakfast. For one thing they are retired and like to wake up slowly. For another they planned to use that time to get ready to continue their trip to Kansas City.
When we got back from breakfast their curtains were still closed. That’s a signal RV’ers use to mean DO NOT DISTURB!
“Mike, I’m going to walk the girls. Call me before they leave, okay?”
“Alright,” he said.
I didn’t know what time Cork and Pam planned on pulling out, but with the rain and things blooming I thought I might get some nice pictures.
One of the first things I noticed were the spider webs that are spun on the ground. Momma calls them ‘fairies wash’.

“Why are they called fairies wash?” I asked her once.
“Because it looks like the fairies have hung their sheets out to dry,” she told me.
The fairies wash cradled the raindrops and the underside was fascinating! But you just try to get an old fat lady, totin two little dogs, down on the wet ground with a camera! I wasn’t willing to get that wet for the sake of a photo. Luckily I found some webs on a hillside and got my photographs that way.
I visited the patch of wild daffies but didn’t linger overlong.

I had just gotten to the wild plum blossoms when my phone rang.

“Hello,” I answered, but I knew it was Mike.
“They’re getting ready to leave,” he said.
“I’m up behind Two-Bit Town, I’ll be right there,” I said, hung up and hightailed it for home. When I got here Mike, his helper Gary, and Pam were all standing around watching Cork hook up his Jeep to the back of the RV.
I smiled. When I was within earshot, I called, “This looks like a union job to me!”
Pam walked over to meet me and laughed, “One guy working and three more leaning on shovel handles?” she asked.
“That’s it.”
We shared hugs and said our good-bys and wished them safe travels.
“I’m going back up to the plum tree,” I told Mike after Cork and Pam pulled out of the driveway. “I had just gotten there when you called.”
Once I got home I settled in to write and I’d only just started my letter when Mike came to talk to me. “We have to be in Columbia at 8 a.m. tomorrow. Why don’t we go up today. You can write up there as easy as you can write here.”
So we packed up and drove the eighty miles to Columbia and sat in the parking lot of Camping World.

“Uh-oh,” you say. “Camping World…Columbia…that sounds like you’re having some work done.”
You would be right.
While in Iola, Kansas our room slide quit on us. Mike went through the books that came with our RV but wasn’t finding anything helpful and he was starting to panic.
“What if we can’t get it in, Peg?”
“We won’t be able to go anywhere, Peg!”
“We’re stuck here, Peg!”
So, I jumped up on the internet and found out there is an override switch, what it looks like, where it is and how to use it. It worked like a charm. Mike called Camping World while we were still in Kansas and made the appointment to have it fixed. Oh, and while we are there, we have a recall on our steps.  
Sunday, sitting in Columbia, Missouri, in the parking lot of Camping World, I worked on my letter/blog. It was getting long and I knew it wasn’t going to be done on Sunday. That was when I decided to post the rain pictures I had taken that morning on my walk-about with the girls.
Monday we woke to fog. “I’m glad we came up yesterday,” Mike said. “I hate to drive in fog.”
They came for our RV and we relocated to the customer lounge where I continued to work on my writing.
After a couple of hours the head of service man came to talk to us. “It looks like your slide motor is out and you  need a new one,” he said.
“But how can that be? The slide goes in and out with the override.” In my head I couldn’t understand it.
“He has 35 years experience and if he says the motors out, the motors out. I’m not sure how it works but the override may use a different motor.”
I accepted that.
“And your steps are on the recall list so when we get the parts for everything we’ll call you.”
Great! Another trip to Columbia.
We gathered our things and headed for home. On the way we stopped at a big antique/flea/junk shop called Artichoke Annie’s. We got off interstate 70 and took the service road. As we pulled in we see a sign that says RV’s, busses and semis are to park in the gravel lot and there was an arrow pointing the way.
“I don’t want to park on gravel, I’m going to go around and park in their lot,” Mike said.
“What if we get in there and can’t get out?” I asked.
“I can back out of anyplace I can pull into.” And I know he can but in the end we just parked in the gravel lot anyway.
“Good morning,” a lady greeted us when we walked in the door.
“Good morning,” Mike responded.
I mumbled morning, but didn’t pause as I headed for the first aisle.
“I hope it’s okay to park where we parked,” Mike started a conversation with her and after some back and forth about neighbors not wanting her customers to park in their lot, I browsed the first booth.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “Most people go to both places anyway. But what I want to know is what she’s going to do with that camera.”
I take my camera with me most places I go and I did have it around my neck. I was too busy feeling indignant to hear how Mike answered her.
“Nowadays everyone has those cell phones that take pictures anyway, so I can’t really stop it, but what happens is they take pictures of things and pretty soon the market is flooded with fakes.”
Yeah! So why bring it up anyway! But I didn’t say that and pretty soon Mike caught up to me.
This was a huge place with over 200 dealers and I did take a picture of an Old Judge coffee jar. Could this be an original lid, I added to the photograph when I sent it to Cork and Pam. And I also sent a photograph of a beautiful grate. I thought its shape was unusual as most of them that I’ve seen (in the short time I’ve been looking for them) were square.

Cork and Pam were in Kansas City and they could visit this antique store when they left there if they wanted to.
At Artichoke Annie’s we found another potato masher like my mama used to have. Mike and I have come to the conclusion that the reason we haven’s seen any in such a long time is because we haven’t been going to antique stores.
Back at the Lake we backed back into our grouse — boy! That’s a lot of backs! — Mike opened the RV door — and our steps broke.
Talk about timing!
Now we have to use a step stool to get into and out of the RV until it gets fixed.
Talk about a pain!
All of this jibber-jabber brings us up to Monday a week ago.
Tuesday, my oldest brother Ed went home to be with our Lord.
Sigh.
Wednesday, Pam’s mother left for her trip to eternity.
Double sigh. Sigh, sigh.
And it’s time to wrap this up. How about if I show you some photos I took last week of spring bursting out?
My current desktop photo.

Can’t decide which one I like best so I’m going to show you three.

And with that, we will call this one done.
Lots and lots of love to all of you.

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