Commune or not to commune

When folks (hippies and such) were heading off to communal lifestyles, either religious or experimental in nature, I was busy working and raising four kids, mostly single-handedly.  The thought of living with even more humans than I already did, did not appeal to me.  In a lot of ways it still doesn't.

However, when you find yourself located in a place where very few people share your beliefs or outlook or politics, the idea of moving somewhere where people do doesn't sound so bad after all.

If you know me, you're laughing at the thought that I could dwell communally with anybody.  Both my husbands and all my children couldn't wait to get away, most of them did visit occasionally, even the husbands.  In fact, when down on his luck, the first one moved in for a couple of months and everybody knows that for many years PW came over on Saturdays to do his laundry and take us all out to eat.

The downside of this plan is that those places I'd hanker to camp out at seem to be a very long way and in very opposite directions from the family that I care about and want to see when they're willing.

So, I'm probably not heading off.  It just sounds like it would be a pleasant way to while away the remaining years.  Oh, and I can't afford it anyway.  One of the coolest things about not living any more must be not worrying about finances.

How's this for a happy holiday blog?  Well, if you know me (or knew my equally dour Dad) you know that while the Christ part of Christmas brings me incredible joy and hope ... the Merry part often eludes me all together.  I believe it does have something to do with lack of sunshine, long nights and cold weather.

I pretty much feel that way about New Year's Eve too.  Good thing I have a fancy schmancy dressy party weekend coming up.  You know, something else to shop for :)

Bah what?

Insignificant Bucket List

First, I am equally aware and grateful that my many years in radio and advertising allowed me to experience shows, travel and events far beyond my pay grade.  Even my kids knew it was not normal to get to go to every circus, every ice show, multiple rodeo performances, movie premieres and theatre performances.  Most of them even got trips to Europe.

Second, I did an extremely unsatisfactory job with a Major Bucket List!  What a mess.

Third, the places you can and do want to go change along with the rest of growing old.

However, sometimes I see a story, an ad, a post from a busy friend, that piques my interest.  Today it happened to be a FB post/ad for Cirque du Soleil.  I've never seen a Cirque performance and I do think I'd enjoy it.  They probably bring their tent show to Dallas.  I know the price is crazy but maybe a grand girl and I could get to one.  So, the list begins.

There are half a dozen good old country singers I'd love to hear one more time.  Glad I got to see Ray Price at Flores Store some years back.  Right now I have Pandora radio stations for both Gene Watson and Moe Bandy.  You'd think they'd show up around here sometime.  (I would prefer they be close enough to drive home from, the Woodlands is not.)  Don Williams is actually appearing in Tyler soon but $50 seems a lot to watch him sit on a stool and sing his hits ... even tho' I love his hits.

One more trip to NYC and Broadway shows will still be on my list when I am toast.  And I don't think I've quite given up on the two parts of the US I've missed, Big Sky Country and New England.  It is much harder to travel when you're old and poor!  Oh, and I really want one more view of my friends and mountains in NM and AZ.  I am determined to get to Fairhope in March for Jaca's first round as chair of the Arts & Crafts.  It is a wonderful event.

So the mini-bucket list is underway.  I know, I should go write them down so I don't forget what I'm saving up for.  Thank goodness I have a job that makes some of this possible.  It won't always be the case.

Having another visit with dear family and friends around the country is included too; maybe one more reunion in Clark Lake, MI with the Stephenson clan.  Can you believe my Dad's younger sister is still alive and kicking, and traveling from Florida back to Michigan with some regularity?

Wonder what else I'll want to do.  What's on your list?

Incomprehensible

I do not understand how those who worship the Bible can be so blatantly anti-Semitic.

First of all, the Old Testament is Jewish.  Jesus was Jewish, an observant Jew until his death on the cross.

If you pore through the Old Testament looking for laws that apply to the judgments you want to make, you're poring through Jewish law ... Leviticus, ie.  And, if in that search you come up with a "law" you wish to adopt for your own use, don't you have to include the ones before it and the ones after it?

Jesus said he came to fulfill the law and then proceeded to die on the cross for our sins (all of them)(all of us) and then he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.

So, if you refer to yourself as Christian in the boxes to check for religion even if you worship the Bible instead of the Christ, how can you claim that those who are still Jewish are not acceptable people?

And, yes, I am referring to the Hobby Lobby folk who refuse to carry any Judaica, ie. Bar Mitzvah cards, Hanukkah decor items, Menorahs, etc.  The Holy Bible is filled with these events and holidays.

Please don't yell at me ... this is my blog and these are my opinions.

I Believe in Angels...

cue Abba: "I have a dream"

Fr. Matt preached a wonderful sermon this morning, based on the Propers for this, the 15th Sunday after Pentecost.

Hebrews 13, 1-8 "....show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."

He asked, "Do any of you believe in angels?"  

First, I heard Abba singing and then I thought of my paternal grandmother, Anna Louise Trevoy Stephenson, who died in October of 1905, just ten days after giving birth to her first child, my father.

Since he didn't ever know her, even less did we know her.  However, we did have a picture of her.  It was an enlarged photograph which had been colored and framed.  



As many of you know, my little brother, Royce Stephenson, was born severely handicapped with Cerebral Palsy, very smart but relatively unable to do anything for himself.  As a youngster he saw this big old picture and asked to have it on the wall visible from his bed.  Years and moves went by and "Grandma Stephenson" went wherever he did.  

As mother aged and care for Royce was tranferred to Sunshine Haven Nursing Home in Lordsburg, NM., he was extremely insistent that the picture be hung there as well.

I'd never paid much attention to it but eventually he and I talked about it, me out loud, him with his talking board.  Turns out he was very sure that she was his.  She was his Guardian Angel and while he lived somewhere on this earth, by golly, she was going to be there too.  

He said she comforted and encouraged him.  

I think his going to Heaven was a perfect opportunity for them to get better acquainted.  

Therefore, had we been called upon to raise our hands if we believed in angels, I would have raised mine.

Road Trip !!!

I love road trips.  I am a truck drivers' daughter. And I have never gone this long in my adult life without a road trip.  Now there's one in the works.

This year of diminished income has cut out all but the smallest of travels.  The last time I left the state (except for over there to Louisiana the other day) was for Kate's graduation from Alabama last August and we flew.

I like to fly just fine but its mighty pricey. I really love road trips.  Love to plan them, take them and look back at the memories of them.  Facebook makes it even worse with sites of places I've been and places I'd love to see.  Hatch Chili, La Fonda, Ireland, England, New England, you name it, I want to go there.  Then there are my many fortunate friends who go to beaches and islands, and cities and towns.  Then there are my FB friends who already live in really cool places, like Fairhope, Alabama, close to Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Perdido Key.  I have not seen one drop of salt water for an entire year!  Or a grandson who's sailing the Alaskan coast and another who's happy in Chattanooga, TN, and tells me I'd really like it.  Of course I would.  I like most of the places I go.  I even watched a special about Marfa, TX the other night and longed for one more visit to Big Bend country.

Anyway, whine, whine, whine, I have a road trip ahead.  Yay.  Granddaughter Alexis, a sophomore at UAB and cheerleader, is down for the UAB football game against UTSA, in the Alamodome in San Antonio in October.  I'll get to see her sister too, who will be in grad school at St. Mary's.  I may even get another visit with my new great-grandson.

I know, there's no other state, nor beach, nor new territory involved, but its over five hours from here to there, I get to stay in a hotel (love hotels) and eat at some of the best Mexican restaurants in the world.

Its really great to have found a job that I like and while it doesn't pay a lot, it pays.  I also work with interesting people from many different parts of the world, who travel and transfer to other places.  Obviously, listening to all there travel experiences only whets my already voracious appetite.  I do have a small cache of frequent flyer miles, maybe enough for one trip to Europe.  So when I get road tripping back on the map I will probably start thinking of farther fields.

Beep, beep ... see ya'.

Everybody has done it ???

To be honest, I've never been a fan of Paula Deen.  You can ask any of my friends.  I love cooking and baking and I like a lot of cooking and baking shows.  I am a mid-westerner, been in Texas over fifty years, but I am a mid-westerner.  Texans call us Yankees, but we grew up in the mid-west of the US.

Further, I've never been a racist.  How do I know?  My dad was one.  He was a hard driving truck driver and he knew every unacceptable politically incorrect moniker for every ethnic section of the city of Milwaukee.  He had disparaging titles for Italians, Irishmen, Jews and Polish Americans.  He used them with great regularity as he did cuss words.  When he came to Texas he adjusted them to fit the ethnic makeup here.  And, God knows, he was not alone in any of it.

Every time he used one of those words, about a person, or a group of people, or an expletive when he banged his thumb while hammering, my Mother responded, promptly and loudly, "Lyle, not in front of the children."

As a minister's daughter she went to some lengths to reference Biblical instruction regarding the Lord's name in vain.  As a biology teacher she was pretty clear about anatomical references.  As a fine example of an mid-century motherhood she was equally clear about debasing terminology.  As the mother of a totally handicapped son she was way ahead of the curve when it came to name calling of any person who also was afflicted in any manner.

I see a number of folks pardoning the recently exposed inappropriate comments by the above mentioned cook, followed by support for her based on the remark "we've all done that at one time."

Maybe there is over reaction, I don't know.  Why not ask someone who has spent a lifetime being called a name.  Maybe its "just about the money" ... as in minority persons buy food, cook and eat, too.

I am too critical of too many people and I know it.  But I am not a racist.

Work History

In a conversation with one of the employment experts I have searched out about my inability to land a job, he said, "maybe it would be better if your "work experience" data didn't go back quite so far. Try starting with your radio job in 1980."

Here's the funny part, I had not begun at the beginning, not even close.

On a summer day in 1956, my good friend, Bunkie, and I visited the radio station in our Milwaukee neighborhood.  We trucked through Hawthorn Glen, across Hawley Road and up the street marked by a huge broadcast tower and a small cinderblock building.  For some reason, long forgotten, we were welcomed in by the genial General Manager, Bill Weaver, and a friendly Program Director, Gene Edwards.  

Some fella named Gordon McLendon had recently put WRIT on the air.  He was famous in Texas for movie theaters and radio stations but this was his first foray into the midwest, land of labor unions.  He had sent some of his best Dallas folks up to show 'em how it was done, this new Top Forty Radio.  He was a pioneer.  Both of the above mentioned had been at KLIF in Dallas.  The Chief Engineer was a Texan as well.  They were all such nice people!  The air staff came from many places, mostly New York maybe, although I know Red Jones was from Georgia and Chuck Dunaway from Texas.

Turns out the old station had used 78 rpm records and this hot new station was set to switch to 45's. ( It is 1956 people.)  And they needed some diligent and very inexpensive hands to catalog the record library for all the new records.  We got the job although frankly Bunkie thought hospital work sounded like a better money maker and was soon gone.  (She got her nursing degree at Marquette and nursed for many years.)  Money was tight at our house.  My teamster Dad had been on a protracted strike and the possibility of buying some new school clothes really appealed.  They were paying me $25 a month and I had business cards, cards that said Sally Stephenson, Record Librarian.  I still have one.  Beside that they allowed, begged me to take all those old 78 records home with me.  It happened to be what our record player could play.

Short story, I worked at WRIT most of my high school years.  The McLendon ownership was short lived.  He didn't much care for having to pay a separate "engineer" to play the records, run the spots and cue the deejay.  By the second Christmas party we'd been bought by Balaban & Lederer, fancy Chicago and St. Louis broadcasters and the tenor of the place changed.  We had some fairly famous folks through the doors. The night newsman for some time early on was Tom Snyder, what a case he was.  It was a fun way to find a career, one I thought was going to be journalism turned into broadcasting.

It also resulted in my first try at television.  Our 7-midnight jock, King Richard, (he'd been Dick White in the Night at a different Milwaukee station) started a once a week "dance party" show on the newest UHF tv station and I helped.  Sometimes I actually appeared live, on camera, drinking the sponsor beverage.

With graduation I accepted a summer "internship" at KILT, another McLendon station, newly on the air in Houston.  The PD, Gene Edwards and his wife (for whom I had become a regular babysitter) had a new son and offered me room and board at their house in exchange for child care and a job at KILT (this time in Traffic and Continuity) for the summer.  I was in Texas three days after graduation.  Finagled a scholarship at the University of Houston in Radio/TV, naturally.  They had both radio and tv stations and it seemed perfect.
KILT was an amazing introduction into Texas radio and I worked there while going to school.

Unfortunately I "fell in love or something like it," and married that summer, ending my college career.  Lindsey, who was also in broadcasting, had to serve a two year Navy stint in exchange for being in the Reserves.  I left KILT and took a job at AS Black Advertising as Production Coordinator.  Mr. Black was not pleased to find I was soon pregnant and wanted me out but I ended up working until just a month before Laura was born.  In fact I (well my hands) appeared in a Grand Prize Beer TV spot shortly before that.

During our two year Navy duty I gave birth to two, worked at Gimbels toy department, and for an advertising agency in Charlotte that promoted a big time event called Carolinas Carousel.  My boss, Earl Crawford, took me for coffee one morning with Billy Graham's mother.  (Soon after the Navy was over, I had child number three, Lindsey gave up his FM job in Philadelphia and we moved to Charlotte where he worked at WSOC.)

Then he decided we should move back to Houston where he had gotten a job at KTRH.  We left Charlotte on the day John Kennedy was assassinated.  In Houston, with children 1, 2 and 3 years old, I went to work for Brown & Snyder Advertising, Sylvan and Phil, what a pair.  Several clients but the most important was a young man running against Ralph Yarborough in his first political race, George Bush.  He lost.

And I went back to KILT, this time as Continuity Director in the lovely McLendon Building on Lovett Boulevard.  Very few of the same folks were at KILT, Bill Weaver was still the GM and he'd married my pal Beverly who'd worked there at the beginning.  Lots of the stories and people get mingled up.  Richard Dobbyn was fascinating.  Dan Lovett was fresh out of Missouri and green as could be.  Dickie Rosenfeld was just cranking up his legendary personality.  Disc jockeys came and went.  So did record promoters.  One, now famous, Steve Tyrell, brought his buddy, a dj at KNUZ, Paul Williams on one or more visit.  (Should probably note that I was now a single mother of three young kids).  Steve was dating the Traffic Mgr, next office, so Paul talked to me.

Bill Weaver had to fire me.  I sent a whole day's mail out that should have been stamped .05 cents, as .50 cents.  It was a big mistake but probably not the only one I made that year.  Anyway, Dickie called Jack Harris and I got a job at KPRC, traffic assistant and soon radio secretary.  That was a fun time too.  Tim and Bob were local traditions.  KPRC was still sort of block programmed and carried the Astros.  The radio office was down the hall from all of the TV stuff and right outside the coffee bar which was often occupied by "stars" fixing to go on someone's live show.

But enough of my work history .... I guess this is Part I ... 1956 to 1966.  Its not on my resume.

Yoga Music -- Rant alert

I love hymns.

I also love yoga, or as they call it at the Y, Gentle Yoga.  It is the best for stretching and feeling better.

But, I skipped Yoga again today.  I skipped for a crummmby reason.  The music.

We have a new instructor and she is very very good.  Except she insists on playing hymns for the session ( at least now instrumentals, earlier by choirs or Christian rockers).

One of the best parts about 45 minutes of yoga is to concentrate on your breathing, on not tipping over and on not being distracted.  

Maybe you can listen to familiar hymns and not be distracted; not remember the quartet at the Lordsburg Methodist Church singing that one at your Father's funeral; or how every rendition of that one reminds you of your Grandmother, or how "Blessed Assurance" immediately calls up a special Sunday service.  Good for you.

I can't.  I know, its a little bitty thing.  But, trying to remember the second or third verse of "Amazing Grace" is not conducive to yoga practice.

All my preceding yoga instructors used ethereal semi-Asian sounding music, fairly low, just so it would not distract.

I need to get a grip on this because I really believe that I feel better after Yoga.  

It did not occur to me ...

that I would be eight months in boomy, bloomy, Tyler, without finding employment.  But it is so.

However, I'm not complaining, just observing and appreciating.  I am very grateful to my Tyler kids, Lane and Kathy, and Currie, for their considerable generosity that helps me stretch the bucks, from reduced rent, to fill-ups and WalMart trips.  Big help.  I'm fairly proud of myself for remembering some old single mom tricks, like pasta casseroles that make pretty good eating even three (or four) days in a row.  I can stay out of stores.  I can watch my credit card debt inch up and not panic.  I can dump a pricey Internal Medicine Clinic and opt for a friendly Family Medicine place.  If you know me you know that getting in the car and heading out is one of my favorite solutions to any problem.  Not so much now.

Here's the upside:

This is Kyndall Grace, the youngest of my eleven grandchildren.

And if I'm gone tomorrow, she will remember me.  We spend some time every week doing something special.  Very often it includes taking pictures and usually of something in nature.

Sometimes its just singing silly songs in the car, or reading her newest book.  KGB, as I call her, is in Kindergarten but she's a reading machine.  She is also a counting machine.  You know, everyone of my grandchildren may have been as bright and funny as she is, but she's the one I am getting to know.  And she knows me.  

That is a gift.

There are many gifts here in greater Tyler, an adorable house on two acres with a bazillion birds, a kid who appreciates my cooking and cleaning, a wonderful new church family that makes my heart sing, (better than listening to me sing!) it is a really beautiful part of Texas, a little chilly, a lot hilly, and covered with sumptious plants and flowers and trees.

When I start to worry about making ends meet I remind myself that the important ends are meeting and there's a lot more to old age than making ends meet.

As Currie is inclined to say, "Thank you Father."

Medical but not Political

I have Shingles, again.

The last time, about 7 years ago, Laura and I were driving back from Baton Rouge.  Internal pain galore, nothing external.  So when I went to the emergency room in Brenham, I suggested internal diagnoses; kidney stones, gall bladder attack, etc.  I should have kept my ideas to myself.  I spent the next two weeks seeing surgeons, nuclear x=ray machines, and other doctors.  One did ask what those spots on my midsection were and I said "spider bite, I guess" ... because I was just guessing.  Finally a nurse friend said, "have you considered Shingles?"  I had no, zip, zero knowledge of Shingles and so I had not.  I went to my Family Practice clinic and asked the nurse to look at my "rash" and see what she thought.  She instantly thought "Shingles" but it was too late for any radical medicine and I did survive.

I had wonderful medical care in Navasota.  Dr. Selva is probably the finest internist I've ever met.  And Shingles did not present during those five years.

Tyler, new clinic, very nice and the Doctor's kids go to All Saints.  However, it seems to be a place for the retired rich, those with "supplementals" ... I don't have supplementals.  Every visit so far has resulted in the need for more tests, more tests and more tests.  Every exit has seen me write a check only to receive a further bill in the mail.  I was so spoiled in Navasota.

So today, suffering an ugly rash and some other symptoms and not wanting to self diagnose (ever again), I went to Urgent Care in Tyler.  I had forgotten what good care I got from them three years ago when I totaled my car on Christmas morning and had a nasty pair of piercings and swelling on my right hand, the only injury from a near death roll over !!!  It is the best place!  They listen.  You see a doctor within minutes. He knows what he's talking about and is even nice.  Medicare covers it.  I wish they could prescribe my blood pressure medicine and I would never go anywhere else.

So, I have Shingles again.  It seems to be a lighter case.  The prescriptions cost $45.  Glad its not fleas or bedbugs.  The exterminator would have been more!

The Last Grandparent

My eleven grandchildren range in age from five to thirty (nearly).  The great majority of them are well over twenty but the three youngest, the Tyler trio, have lost all but one grandparent.  Actually they never knew Lane's father who died when Lane was still in his teens.  They were close to Kathy's father, Papa, or Paul Williams, and he has only been gone for three years.  But last night Lane's lovely young mother, Merridonna Thompson, passed away in Mother Francis Hospital at only sixty four.  Her health had been on the decline but this was still a stunning turn of events.

And so, I am their last grandparent standing.  Its a daunting position to be in.  It would be more expected for the older grandchildren but except for Tom, they all have active grandparents in their lives, around their activities.

Now Kagan, Kallie and Kyndall have only me.  Its a really good thing that I decided to head up here last summer so we could become better acquainted.  I enjoy spending part of almost every day with some or all of them.

Yesterday Kagan and I made baklava together, the easier Turkish kind.  We made it last year for a school history project and pretended it was the Greek style.  He liked it, we all do, and so it was yesterday's project and it turned out quite well.

A few nights ago Kyndall and I were having a quiet, getting ready to fall asleep conversation when she said, "Gramma, I hope you will always be my babysitter."  I said, "Kyndall, I don't think you're going to want a babysitter when you're thirteen years old."  She said, after consulting fingers on both hands, "lets see, I'm five now so that is eight more years. Okay."  "Then I'll be eighty."  Wow, she said, that's when people die isn't it?

I hope I get to see her turn thirteen and not need me anymore.  There are no guarantees, of course, but I'd like to think these three sweet kids will have at least one grandparent for a few more years.

Houston, the first part

I graduated from high school in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, on Friday, June 13th, 1958.  On Sunday I boarded a train for Texas, to spend the summer working at a radio station and living with radio friends I had made during the years I worked at WRIT in Milwaukee.

On Monday, June 16th, I arrived at Union Station and was whisked out Allen Parkway to begin my life in Houston.  I would live with the Program Director and his wife and two children, for whom I had babysat regularly back home.  They offered me room and board in exchange for help with the kids and a day job at the new radio station McLendon had put on the air in Houston, KILT.  The General Manager had been the same at WRIT.  I would put money away for college and head home in the fall.

It would be a fun challenge to map all the places I have lived and worked in Houston in the ensuing fifty plus years.  KILT began life in the OLD Milby Hotel on Texas Avenue downtown, directly across the street from the Rice (Fancy Schmancy) Hotel.  On the first day the first person I met was the lovely receptionist, Beverly.  I've always made friends where I work and I'm proud to say that she is widowed now (from the aforementioned GM) and lives in Cibolo, TX, just a few miles from my daughter Laura.  We stay in touch and see each other occasionally.  A beauty queen and beautiful person, she graduated from Spring Branch High School and lived at home with her folks who were gracious and welcoming to me.

Somehow I discovered that the University of Houston offered a Radio/TV degree and since I'd been working in radio for three years, I thought I should have one.  I contrived to receive a small scholarship and instead of heading North for college, moved to the only "girls" dorm on the UH campus in September.

In the Spring KILT moved to elegant, modern facilities at 500 Lovett Boulevard, quite a departure from the Milby!  No more elevator rides with Bull Curry and other local wrestlers.  No more walks to the 1010 parking garage in the afternoon downpours.  There is still a photograph of Beverly and me, wearing kilts, welcoming people to the courtyard for the grand opening.

I was engaged to Lindsey English, who was soon to graduate from UH.  He'd worked at Channel 13, on Cullen Boulevard, all through his years, both as a cameraman and weekend booth announcer.  We married and I got a job with a small ad agency, Tel-Ad Productions.  Their office was in the Park Towers.  Charlie Whitaker and Jim Page were hilarious.  It was a fun job but not long lived.  I became the Production Coordinator at A.S. Black Advertising on West Gray.  And I became pregnant ... much to Mr. Black's dismay.  I worked much later that he would have liked, because we were busy.  I even took part in a Grand Prize Beer commercial, pushing a shopping cart, when I had to back away to keep said child out of the shot!

Lindsey went off to serve his two years of Naval Reserve duty and I moved in with his folks in Willowbend.

Just remembering that first year or so of life in Houston brings up so many names, faces and places, that I could not get to sleep last night remembering them, connecting them and missing so many who are no longer around.

To think, at this rate I could do about fifty five blogs on my life since moving to Texas two days after graduating from high school at the age of seventeen.  Cheer up.  I won't.

Ironing

Ironing is a great time for introspection.  Today, while ironing shirts, I thought back to my first mother-in-law.  She was a very accomplished housewife.

When her son, probably an adopted son, married me and subsequently went off to serve his two year stint in the Navy, she welcomed me into their home.

After a year on my own, in a college dormitory, it was the sensible thing to do both economically and advisorly.  Here I was, nineteen years old, pregnant, still working but not making much money, with a husband just out of college and now aboard a guided missile cruiser in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyards.

Looking back, they couldn't have been thrilled to have me.  First of all, in their eyes I was a "yankee."  Now, I knew that I was really a Mid-Westerner, but that wasn't a term with which they were familiar.  North of Red River = Yankee.

And I wasn't very good at ironing.  Looking at the five shirts I just finished, I believe I have improved.  I'm still not great at sewing on buttons, but that's next.  My M-I-L, who was known as "Honey", gave me serious lessons in how to iron a dress shirt.

The other lessons came when we brought our darling baby girl home from Hermann Hospital at five days old.  We had to push to get her out that soon because her Daddy needed to return to the ship.  He carried her from the hospital to the car and from the car to her crib and left for the airport.

My M-I-L's favorite saying, when it came to taking care of sweet girl, was "Now everybody has their own way of doing things.  Here's how we are going to do it."  And we did.  I lost most of the pictures of those first few weeks in the drenching from TS Allison, but I remember them well.

At five weeks old, Laura and I boarded an airplane non-stop to Philadelphia to begin Navy life.

Soon Laura will be a grandmother for the first time.  She has been a spectacular mother for almost thirty years.  She loves babies, and she knows how to take care of them.  Her grandchild's parents have nothing to fear.  It will be a very special time for all of them.  Thank goodness.

Luxuries and Necessities

Returning to the job market has me thinking about how I spend my money.

My guess is that everyone has Luxuries and Necessities.  For a sadly situated person in a developing part of the world it may be the difference between sparking fresh water, a luxury, and any old water, a necessity.
I'm sure that the really rich have a far different take on what is luxurious, private planes, regular vacations to exotic places, new clothes, etc, etc, etc.

Since leaving the big city behind to work at more menial tasks to supplement that massive check I get from SS every month; ( Note:  I love that check.  It is the most I've ever gotten in the way of support, that I didn't have to work 40 or 50 hours to receive.) I have reordered the luxuries.  One is really good coffee beans, another is finding great tacos, and another is buying cookware!

I have learned that one of the secrets to managing on less is to have far fewer temptations.  You all must tire of me going on about what a wonderful small town I found Navasota to be, on myriad fronts.  However, it was perfect for few temptations, few restaurants, few stores and few "entertainment outlets."  Since "boutique shopping" has never been my fashion, even the many of them there were not a problem.  Additionally, just twenty minutes up the road was College Station, so if I "needed" it and couldn't find it in Navasota, I knew where to look next.  That worked for stores, restaurants, doctors and churches.  Ideal.

Now I am teaching myself new coping skills.  While I'm in a very small town, it is immediately adjacent to the fanciest, richest, prettiest city of 100,000 in East Texas.  Oh oh, temptations everywhere.  Well almost everywhere, it does not have some of my favorite stores; World Market, Jamba Juice and Pei Wei, to name a few.  See, I had some luxuries right there in College Station.  So far I've gone back to CS for coffee beans, found fabulous tacos here ("street" and "Rusty"), and quit buying cookware.  I do, however, go to a pretty upscale church and did buy a new sweater to wear there.  They are warm and friendly and I don't have to keep up.  I wanted the sweater.  The kids and Kathy are at a really wonderful private school and I have attended many functions there and bought more than a couple t-shirts.

So, in thinking about finding my next employment, my thoughts wander to what luxuries I will be able to add, in addition to bill paying and food.  One note, medical care is much higher priced here, even with Medicare.  I miss my wonderful Dr. Selva in Navasota.  I want to go to Fairhope in March for Arts & Crafts, stopping in Louisiana to visit and EAT!!!  I guess my main luxury is traveling.

I'm not complaining, this is not a whine.  I'm just trying to see if I want the "luxuries" enough to get myself out there and find a job.

Off to find a taco.