So last time I left you with the promise of more stories and more pictures but before I get on with the jibber-jabber of my mundane life, I would like to tell you — actually, I don't like to tell you, but I should tell you — that we've lost someone very near and dear to my heart.
|
|
and I want to share one of my favorite pictures of Miss Helen with you. She loved to tend to her flower gardens but as she got older, she couldn't do it anymore. I was honored to sit at her knee, so to speak, and be her hands as she guided me in doing the things she could no longer do.
I thought of you today, but that is nothing new.
I thought of you yesterday and days before that too.
I think of you in silence, I often speak your name.
All I have are memories and your picture in a frame.
Your memory is a keepsake from which I'll never part.
God has you in His arms, I have you in my heart.
I love you Miss Helen.
"I was just looking at them," I replied as I raised my camera and fired off a shot. The sun shining on the snow-laden trees was just like a winter wonderland, I composed in my head in anticipation of writing my letter blog.
♪Walkin' in a winter wonderland♫
I sang out loud. I really can't sing very well but Mike never complains and never tells me to stop.
"What did you have?" you wonder. "Was it good?"
Mike had a burger and he said it was good. I had fish and chips and it was also good. For dessert, we shared a very expensive and really small piece of Reese's Peanut Butter pie. There's not as many calories in it when you share, don't ya know. And I have to tell you that it was one of the best peanut butter pies that I've ever had.
I look across the parking lot and see two hawks sitting in a tree. I got out of the Jeep to get a closer picture and snapped away as I got closer and closer to them. The hawk facing me spooked and took flight. The one with his back to me sat for a little longer before he too took flight. This is as close as I could get. I love the raptors.
Tunkhannock doesn't have an Aldi's but it does have a Wal Mart and we stopped and picked up a few things. On our way out of town, we stopped at another thrift store and there I found five workout videos. All brand new and I was thrilled.
A sunrise to start a new day.
Sunrises don't have to be all blue and pink and red to be pretty.
Mid-morning, when I let the girls out to do their business, I stood at the door watching them for a moment. I see a place up against the building where it looks like someone was digging in the snow. As I was puzzling this out a flash of light appears and dances across the wall and I knew what it was. The wind moving my bird feeder, the glass catching the rays of the sun and throwing them onto the side of the house. "Do you think the cats were chasing the spot?" I asked but Mike didn't know.
Writing, the way I write these days is a time-consuming process. For one thing, I have to remember to take my camera with me whenever we go anyplace so I can have lots of pretty pictures for my stories. Most times, I do remember. Once in a while, I forget.
"I forgot my camera!" I'll exclaim as soon as I miss it.
"You don't need no stinkin' camera," Mike'll grumble in mock meanness. If we haven't gone too far, he'll turn around for me — for you!
Then there are the hours and hours I spend at the computer. The photos have to be downloaded, sorted, and edited. I don't do a lot of editing but at the bare minimum, every photo I'm going to use has to be copied and reduced in size.
Then there's the writing itself. Deciding what to write about is almost the hardest part. Then putting the words to paper. Picking what words to use in what order so it flows and makes sense to you. We won't talk about editing. I know I make mistakes. A lot of times I write on automatic pilot. I think the word and my fingers type them out on their own with very little thought from me. Sometimes my fingers don't pick the right form of the word. To, two, and too, is an example that comes to mind. They all mean something different but when I re-read what I've written, they all sound the same in my head. Sometimes I miss a word altogether. Another side effect of writing on autopilot. And when I re-read, my mind will supply the missing word so I don't catch that it isn't there.
But y'all are so kind to me. You seldom, if ever, call me on my mistakes. You take what I've written and read it the way I meant to write it. Sometimes, like the next day, after my brain has rested, I'll find them myself. I can fix them in the blog but I can't do anything about the ones I've sent on the email or printed for the snail mail.
And then there's the time involved in writing. When I first started, I wrote whenever I wanted to. Then we went back into business and my time wasn't my own. Writing became strictly a Sunday deal.
Time passes. Years in fact. And now writing consumes me. If I'm not taking pictures or writing, I'm thinking about taking pictures or writing.
Another thing that's been very time consuming for me is placing pictures in the story. I've started using Microsoft Word to write my letter blogs and sometimes when I add a picture it jumps around. I have the hardest time keeping pictures where I want them.
"Put it in a text box," that beautiful and smart sister of mine told me. And that seems to have solved that problem. But another problem I have is when I'm editing. If I add or remove too many words, the pictures will start jumping to other pages and even become all jumbled. It can sometimes take me hours to fix, which is very discouraging and often deters me from fixing, adding details, or deleting items.
In all of this my Michael is the one who pays the biggest price. I often times start my letter blog on Friday, work on it all day Saturday, and finish it up on Sunday. Unless it's this weeks letter blog. I started this one on Wednesday. Time spent writing is time I'm not spending with Mike. And sometimes he resents it, especially when he'd like to go someplace or do something and I don't because, "I'm writing."
"No one reads your stinkin' letters anyway," he'll tease me. "When they see it on their email they just hit the delete button."
"If they don't want them they can tell me," I retort. "I'll stop sending'em to them."
"Has anyone ever done that?"
"Only one person," I replied and I won't say who. I know that some of my family members don't read my letter blogs — just my brothers, but they never asked me to stop sending them.
"Peg, how do you know they don't read them?" you wonder.
Over the years, in phone conversations with different brothers, they'll ask me a question. "I wrote about it in my blog," I'd reply indignantly. "Didn't you read it?"
"I don't have time for that," my brother would laugh and answer.
I don't say that anymore and haven't in many years. I'm just glad they call.
"My letters often build on the week before," I told him. "I don't know how they'll make sense if I send one a month." So I stopped sending letters to him and never heard from him again.
But that's beside the point. In other words, I digressed — again.
Michael and I are like many other married couples; we often play the devil's advocate with each other.
"Only one person," I replied when he asked if anyone ever asked me to not send them my letters and I still won't tell you who it was.
"But they don't know anyone you write about," he defended.
"Not true," I say. "They know you and they know me."
Two days after this conversation with Mike, a letter arrives in the mail.
And that brings me to what I want to tell you about.
"Peg! You always take the long way around," you say.
Sometimes I wonder if my jibber-jabber bores you, but I don't dwell. You can read them or not, whatever pleases you. I don't worry about it anymore. Having said that, it's still nice to be appreciated and even nicer to be told that you're appreciated.
J.D., you may or may not recall, is the son of Mr. B, one of the oldsters that I used to take care of. I called Mr. B my Jersey Boy, and he called his son Jay. It wasn't long after I started taking care of Mr. B until he made an appearance in my letters and that's when he found out I wrote a weekly letter. He always liked seeing himself in print and often laughed at my silly stories.
"Mr. B, if people didn't know me they wouldn't be interested in what I write about," I insisted.
"Oh jeeze," he would say and scrub his face in the way that he does — did. "Will you send them to Jay? I think he'd really enjoy reading them and I'll pay you whatever you want," my Jersey Boy asked of me.
I loved Mr. B enough to do that for him and he did toss me a few dollars for postage a couple of times.
Mr. B is gone now, but I continue to share my stories with Jay. I can't help but feel like my pretty pictures and weekly jibber-jabber brightens his day. You see, Jay is in prison, paying his debt to society. And before you go thinking I'm being taken advantage of, I'm not. Jay has never asked me for anything. Not. One. Thing. In fact he brightens my day by taking the time to write me a letter every couple of months. Most of the time he talks about the memories my letters invoke, sometimes he tells me about prison life. But almost always he tells me how grateful he is to have my letters to live vicariously through.
About three weeks ago I started looking for a letter from J.D. Saturday it came and I'd like to share some of it with you.
J.D. had made a family tree for his aunt (she's in the picture with Mr. B) and had gone to the mailroom to have it weighed so he could affix the proper postage.
The lady at the mailroom said, "Oh, are you the one that gets all those letters from Pennsylvania?"
I looked up surprised and said, "Yes." She's only been here 8-10 months now.
This lady says, "Oh, I just love those! I can't wait for them to get here. They're so nice and that lady Peg is so sweet. I always read them cover to cover! The woman I took over for told me to be sure to read them because they're so entertaining!"
By now I'm grinning from ear to ear as I read these kind words and my head is swelling big as a house.
I thought you'd like to know that you have inadvertently captured the attention of a secret admirer. I think it's really cool in a way.
Can you imagine a complete stranger who doesn't know me or anyone I write about loves to read my jibber-jabber — and she thinks I'm sweet! Frankly, I think I'm a bit of an idiot but sweet sounds so much nicer, don't you think. And let's not forget to mention that I feel vindicated.
"They were mad about something else," Mike said.
Another sunrise to start another day.
I took my camera with me when I went down to get the mail.
Our back driveway is nothing but a sheet of ice.
A couple of days later the temps warmed and we got rain!
The ground is still cold and frozen and the rain didn't have anywhere to go. The runoff came down the hill from the fields above our house, ran over the ice, down the back drive, and out onto the road in a torrent. That'll be bad when it freezes tonight, I thought.
Then I decided since I was out I might just as well see about getting some raindrop pictures for you.
I got some nice reflections this time. Mostly just trees.
My walk had taken me to the upper barn. In reviewing my photos I see I've captured the barn in a raindrop. I flipped the photo over. Can you see it?
Smudge, sunning his belly outside my kitchen door. "You silly cat," I told him. He just looked at me.
Another day, another beautiful sunrise.
But a sad day.
Fire destroys Endless Supply on the Golden Mile in Wysox, was the top story.
"Oh no!" and my heart cried. Mike had gone to the bathroom. "Mike, look at this."
"What?" he asked coming back into the bedroom.
"It's Endless Supply in Wysox," I told him. He stopped and we watched the devastating but short news clip.
The sun coming up over the Susquehanna River. There's still ice floes in the water.
It's sad and not just because the community has lost a business. It's sad and not just because a small businessman is out of business. It's sad and not just because people have lost their jobs. All of those things are sad and it's even sadder than that. It's sad because this place sold pets. Puppies and kittens and hamsters and guinea pigs and fish and birds and ferrets and rabbits and snakes and I don't know what all else!
"I heard it started in the warehouse," another local business owner told us. "I don't know why they didn't know there was a fire. They're open until 9 pm and the first pictures came out at 9:15 and they only saved one puppy."
We went on and did our shopping.
Have you ever seen a prettier public library?
Tending the grape vines.
At home, we hear a piece of heavy equipment going back and forth down on the road. We made guesses as to what it might be but it wasn't until I checked the mail that I found out what it was. The county has scraped up the ice at the end of our back driveway.
How about if we end this time on somewhat of a lighter note, and by lighter I don't mean my weight!
I was flipping through an old stack of recipe cards held together by two giant metal rings.
The cards all look like they've been typewritten and this recipe caught my eye. Conge Bars it says. I read through the ingredients and it's basic. I read the instructions and it's simple. Right up my alley. I decided to make them. I got a half stick of butter out of the fridge, put it on the counter, and did something else while it softened for a couple of hours. When I came back, I jumped right in and started following the instructions. Preheat oven, grease pan, melt 1 1/2 stick butter.... What the heck, I thought, I didn't get enough butter out. I got another stick of butter from the freezer. I didn't need to let it soften, I thought as I unwrapped it, dropped it in a microwave-safe bowl, and continued. Once everything was mixed, I reviewed the list of ingredients to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, something I'd done when I first started baking a hundred years ago.
"Always double-check your list of ingredients," Momma said spitting out the bite of whateveritwas that I'd baked having forgotten to put in the salt. To this day that is sage advice I follow still, and it's saved me a few times.
It was while doing the review that I realized the discrepancy between the amount of butter listed at the top and the amount listed in the directions. Too late now, I thought. I can't take it out. It looked fine so I baked it anyway. What I ended up with is something very much like a chocolate chip cookie bar.
"They're softer," Miss Rosie said. "I like them better."
I even calculated the calories so I can add it to my food journal when I eat one.
"How did you do that?" you wonder.
I Googled it. You can find anything on the internet.
Let's call this one done.
