2/17/11 A Mother Went to Sea Sea Sea...

Hi Mr. Blog,
Guess who called me this morning?
Brandy from Miami.
She is sending my airline ticket to Honolulu
and I leave March 5th.
So I am a seasonal youth staff from March 5th until May 1st.
Then I get reviewed by my superior and if that is positive
I can stay out there longer or come home.
I'm leaning towards staying longer if allowed because it can
be chilly here until August.
Somehow everything fell in place for me and I'll be home
to apply for the fall teaching jobs.
So after I hung up,
I just laid in bed for the longest time and a
patty-cake song from when I was a kid came to me:
A mother went to sea sea sea
to see what she could see see see
but all that she could see see see
was the housework she could flee flee flee

2/15/2011 So I Put the Valentines in That Special Place

Oh Mr. Blog!
I am so happy you are back.
You would not believe everything
that happened this week.
So I won't tell you.
But yesterday was Valentines Day
AND I had bought three, large and special valentines
three weeks ago.
One for Terry,
one for Troy
and one for baby Teddy.
They were lovely and very expensive.
Fifty cents each at the Kenmore Dollar Tree store.
So I had put them in
That Special Place,
so I could find them easily.
Ugh.
Yes.
You know what that means.
They are gone until the middle of July
or some other unlikely
to be close to Valentines Day day.
So, like all my other fine,
grand plans,
they were kaput.
I did find the cheap, cute schoolchild Scooby-Doo
valentines that I had bought for
my cruise ship coworkers that didn't materialize
and I attached them to the large dark chocolate
Hershey bars that I found in Teddy's backpack
when I was looking for a flashlight.
They were leftover from our trip to Yellowstone
with a large opened bag of marshmallows.
No wonder we have mice!
I put the cards and candy in Troy and Teddy's room
and right when I got ready to tape Terry's
Scooby-Doo to his chocolate
I had a fit of
chocolate craving.
I thought he wouldn't notice
one small square missing
BUT
he did notice all six squares missing with only
two left.
Darn.

3/5/2011 The Memorial of Lois Ringstrom Helton Spinrad

Hi Mr. Blog,
It was nice to see all my Helton and Lemon cousins
and my Auntie Adelle for the
first time in years and years at auntie's memorial yesterday.
She was a marvelous person and lived to be eighty-six.
My Auntie Lois was one of the finest women I ever knew.
Warm, kind, friendly, helpful and zesty.
She was my role model.
The kind of person I want to be someday.
Her dad was widowed and remarried to my divorced grandmother
long before I was ever born.
They had a slide-show of her life which included pictures of her
with her dad hiking when he was a fairly young man
and she was a little girl around nine.
He was the most kind, trustworthy person I ever met
and to me he was the old grandpa always reading me books.
Nice to see him and auntie young and captured in
family love and vibrancy.
Auntie Lois was my mom's step-sister and they were friends too.
When I was twelve, she invited us to visit her house in
Beaverton Oregon.
It was the only train trip I have ever been on
and pathetically short in my young opinion.
Her youngest daughter, Holly, and I were the same age
and got along like salt and pepper.
She had three older brothers, my cousins Paul, Chris and Mark
and they were wild as March hares!
I thought my sisters and I could get rowdy,
but those older boy teen cousins were in a league of their own.
Auntie had a nice rambler house and was a
single mom like my mom
and boy did she have her work cut out for her!
We all sat down to her picnic table for a barbecue
in her huge grassy back yard on a hot August night
and she asked Mark to say grace and he said,
"Good food, good meat, good God, LET"S EAT!"
My mom and aunt looked all shocked and auntie Lois said,
"MARK!"
But then she just started laughing.
We all laughed and laughed.
It was so much fun.
She was so nice and very refined and elegant and classy.
Auntie and mom took just us girls to see the Portland Rose garden
and the next day, all nine of us went to a place called
Lee Falls for the day.
There was this outcropping over a small lake with a natural
rock slide and you could slide off or jump into the lake.
Well, those wild boy cousins were so wild!
They were much older than me and full of the devil.
They did all kinds of dangerous-looking stunts
but do you know what Mr. Blog?
Auntie Lois was just unflappable.
She trusted them not to kill themselves and they didn't.
That day with my Auntie Lois and Helton cousins
and my mom and my sisters
was one of the best days
of my entire life.

2/3/2011 Pins and Needles, Needles and Pins

Hi Mr. Blog,
I have no idea why I was thinking about this
schoolkid saying when I woke up.
Pins and needles
needles and pins-
Where one begins
the other one ends.
What goes up the chimney?
Smoke
What comes down?
Santa Claus
One
two
three
four
I declare a thumb war!
Then you have a thumb war.
I suspect it is one of those old English sayings
like we said as kids like,
Don't step on a crack
or you'll break your mother's back.
We used to carry rabbit's feet in the early sixties
for good luck and not walk under ladders
or pass a black cat.
My ancestors on my mom's came to America right before the
Revolutionary War but those sayings couldn't
possibly have been handed down could they?
I wish I could find out the origins of all these superstitions!

2/1/2011 Is Your Teen Trying to Get Out of Doing Chores?

Hi Mr. Blog,
Good thing I'm over my cold so I'll be tough enough
when the kids come home.
I just unplugged their X-BOX 360!
I hid it next to the TV under a cloth.
I'm too lazy to carry it more than two feet
and the easiest way to hide something
is always in plain sight.
Hahahaha.
I'm such a mean mom.
No games allowed until
their chores are done.
I'm talking clean the whole house,
put their laundry away,
do their homework,
and when it warms up
they'll have to do the yard.
That's how I roll.
Ciao!