Tresa's Blog

I am sorry I didn’t visit blogs or write while I was gone.  I had internet service.  I am lazy.  lazy lazy.  But I did think while going down the road.

I was thinking about how this is my blog and I write what I want and how because it’s MY BLOG.  Sometimes people don’t understand I use sentences that run together and And @ the beginning of a sentence or aint because it suits my purposes.  (OK sometimes I don’t know any better but we can pretend I catch all my mistakes can’t we?)

I also use hyperbole, rhetorical questions, allusion, illusion, preparation h, simile, and ky jelly if necessary to get my point slid across.

I also tilt @ windmills, the rebel without a cause, I spawned two conservative children and I have NO idea how but they think I am nuts.  BUT I play Don Quixote sometimes here BECAUSE I CAN, because it’s MY BLOG!!  And yes I had to look up how to spell Quixote.

I know the last 3 paragraphs have nothing to do with thanksgiving but I thought of the ky jelly line and it seemed too good not to share? I also thought of a blog post about how I lack the farming gene and my families ability to tell the crop and planting date of any field while I’m doing good to even notice them much less identify them but we will save that for another day.

What I’m grateful  for Thanksgiving day 2009:

The ability to blog and to read others blogs and my dear friends I’ve “met” blogging.

The free internet, news services, and press we have in this country.

Of course family and friends, I do have friends, I was just having trouble remembering some of their names because I hadn’t seen them since July?  LOL

Our family having survived the ups and downs of the previous year.  It’s been triumph and tragedy.  Some lost companies because of lost contracts through no fault of their own.  Some lost jobs because they were too temperamental.  (sorry if I scoff @ that one, they spoke up and told the truth and it hurt so they lost their job, imagine my relative having a big mouth? Moi?)  It was over a year ago that I started but I worked outside the home @ a job for the first time in 19 years.   Anyway I did a “real” job and I took orders from people and was a good employee which is not easy after years of “self” employment.  My husband also got a “job” for the first time in 20+ years when he leased his truck onto construction.  From what I hear he was a model employee (except for the time he asked permission to knock somone’s block off from the foreman, foreman said OK?) and was always ahead of everyone else even though he was the oldest one doing what he did. We are back to self employed but you always “work” for someone, if you are boss you “work” for the employees sometimes I think.   Also my brother is shall we say a senior citizen, I don’t know if he’s in like in his second childhood or what (I have doubts he ever left the first) but for an old man he’s not old.  Maybe it’s the race car he has?  He doesn’t drive it anymore but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.  My husband is of an age where I remember my parents well and I was going through my teenage rebellion.  He’s not old.  I’m thinking we are oblivious or just not aging like previous generations did (due to superior health care or the bilssful oblivion of many drug trips, JUST KIDDING)

Basically we have triumphed over adversity and turned around and made life better and realized what was important and what wasn’t  because of it and I’m thankful for the opportunity and the ability and the health to do it, especially during this time of financial difficulty.  (this is starting to sound like one of those bragging Christmas letters, little Johnnie is now the president of the cub scouts in North America and little Sally has been voted high school prom queen while in kindergarten and they will both attend Yale next year on a full ride scholarship, those kind of letters)

I’m grateful for my home and the ability to not live too close to people most of the time.  I’m grateful for all the “luck” and blessings that have enabled me to enjoy some(most) of lifes riches.

I’m grateful our relatives are still with us this year that were with us last year for the most part. I will miss Lester and Louella (my moms first cousin who married the widow of my dads best friend, got that?) because they were one of the links to my past.  I’m grateful that I was here when one of the closest family friends died.  I’m glad I got the opportunity to know our dog Mugsey.

I’m grateful I’ve sort of beat the fat genes that run in our family and have never seriously been over 160.  I shouldn’t say that because I will blossom (my brother has called me squatty body (say it it rhymes, he’s sometimes amusing, this isn’t one of those times) for years, we cant all be 6′4″ BRO!).  The last time I had a skinny woman ancestor was my great grandmother and her having no teeth may have had something to do with that?

I’m grateful for the man who is sleeping in my bed, (it’s my husband silly) and the dog who is sleeping in the chair, the dog sleeping on the porch, and the cat sleeping in the log cabin.

I’m grateful for the ability to overcome the health problems we have faced over the past year and the ability to “get healthy” disgusting and boring but we are doing it.  No drink, no smoke, no fatty foods, vegetables, very few sweets, sleep regularly, walk, drink water, blaaaahhhh.   BTW I never said I ever quit drinking, I’m the type of person who can have one and quit, or one potato chip.  I’m a sick sick puppy I know.  My husband will tell you how healthy he is and now he’s losing weight.  Did I mention the term ad nauseum?  I would never say those words? 

I’m grateful for the ability to go and stuff ourselves silly tomorrow with many of our close relatives and talk to the others. I am also grateful I can now distinguish most of  my grand-children’s voices over the phone and not call the boys by their mothers names which makes me NOT favorite grandma.  I’m also thankful we all have a way of making a living and/or our driving privledges left.  You know who I’m talking to.

Donnie Osmond won Dancing With The Stars and we missed it!  Sorry but I just couldn’t get behind Mya, I even sent a text vote for Kelley, first time I’ve ever done that and Johanna was GOOD and I think Derek is my nephew, that’s good and clean isn’t it?  When the show came on I thought it was the stupidest thing ever.  Now I’m usually pretty close with guessing how the judges are going to score the couples and how they will criticize them.  I know NOTHING about ballroom dancing or didn’t.  Just thought I”d throw that in there.

I’m grateful I learned how to spell quixote.

I’m on an angels on twitter list! Thanks Starlingpoet!  My family would say if she only knew me……..

I’d better quit.

Happy TURKEY DAY amigos!!

I wrote about Dispatches truck trip on animals that give pause.

Teacher and Classroom

I was laying in bed thinking about a post I’d been considering for days, maybe weeks.  I decided the post should probably be a page instead because I had too much to say.  The page will be about prejudice but it probably won’t be what you expect. This story isn’t about prejudice exactly but it is about kindness.  I haven’t gotten the page written yet.

I was thinking of some prejudice I’d met with in school, a small “hick” school merged with a much bigger “city” school.   I was like the big cheese in the hick school, not so in the new school.  That was 5th grade which was OK,  6th was a nightmare partly because of a teacher who was supposedly a friend of the family(I could do nothing right, he ridiculed me for getting through with assignments early etc, I could read faster than adults for years and he called me a liar…called 60s chick lit smut……. just NOT a good year), after that it got better, by high school I had convinced everyone I was just like them (I developed a VERY smart mouth) even though my mother was a teacher (in a different school)  and had cut my hair funny.

Then I remembered one incident that didn’t happen when I was going to school but when my youngest daughter was in kindergarten or first grade of the same school.  Her teacher was the wife of the high school principal.  I believe the teacher passed away @ a young  age of cancer  but @ this time she was probably in her 40s.   The incident was trivial but it made a lasting impression.

It was the Christmas party, I think I was a room mother, I’d brought cookies.  The students exchanged gifts of course.  Then it came time for an oddly wrapped present, it looked more like a ball of previously used paper than a gift.  I can’t remember who got the present but when she unwrapped it she found an obviously worn and stained old pink shirt. The teacher was prepared and miraculously somehow smoothed it over so the giver of the gift and the receiver both felt happy (the teacher either had another present or made such a fuss over the “nice” pink shirt that the receiver of the gift felt blessed, I don’t remember which).  There could have been such a scene as only little girls can make but having this teacher made all the difference in the world.  I know teachers are supposed to be prepared  for things like this and children might not even draw names anymore but the speed @ which this teacher took the mood in the room from disappointment and chaos to happiness and contentment was amazing.  No matter what else the children learned in that room they learned love, kindness, and acceptance.

I was always a stickler for my kids not making fun of others for not having things or being different or the gifts they gave but I was worse after this.  Why?  Probably because I had felt forms of prejudice firsthand.

The little girl who gave the gift?  She gave from her heart, the shirt was probably her most prized possession.  She lived not far from us, I took my daughter to see her, I think I managed to give her some clothes my kids had “outgrown”.   The child was 6 I believe and she was watching her younger brother (he was still in diapers I think) alone in the house while her parents worked as hired hands on a  large farm (I wasn’t rich by any means but my kids never knew hunger unless I was trying to get them not to be fat, this little girl obviously knew hunger and poverty firsthand).   The parents were less than  a mile away but yet not in easy calling distance.  The little girl offered me a chair when we arrived and a drink of something like a little hostess.  I just wanted to grab both of the kids up and drag them home with me (and feed them and spoil them with TV and games and attention and let them run wild and play like my kids did 90% of the time) but they seemed to be as well taken care of as they could be in those circumstances.    Yes I could have called child services but it wasn’t “done” then except for obvious physical abuse.   We lost track of the family, they moved away, but the kindness of that teacher will always remain with not only myself but with every child who’s life she touched.

Did you ever have or know a teacher or person of authority that could change a bad situation into something good @ the drop of a hat?

This is what I emailed my cousin this morning.

My goals for today are paying the bills that HAVE to be paid, dusting if it ever gets light, giving the dog a bath, and cleaning the leftover Christmas mess off of the dining room table and dusting and sweeping in there.

Getting dressed is high on my list of priorities right now. We here in MO are supposed to get a bunch of snow this week and for added fun and enjoyment a wintry mix, this is what it looked like from my front door a few minutes ago, road looks better than it did. That’s a state highway in the distance, snow and sleet seemed to be blowing off of it because it’s so cold.
Ok I did the getting dressed thing. Also have to do a load or two of laundry, fold what I did Friday on my non day off and put anti freeze in the old pickup because from the weather forecast I’ll be driving it to work probably. Car does fine but if pickup goes in the ditch or hits something else it might improve it’s looks?

Had an evacuation @ the Wal Mart where I work, can’t say too much but it was a bomb threat evidently, that much was on the local news so I guess I can say that. I wasn’t there, all went fairly smoothly, they determined it was just a threat and no bomb was present and employees were back in the store in an hour or so. I knew about it when it was going on, had to be @ work early the next morning, I called to make sure they were there. I wasn’t about to go in if the store wasn’t open!

My daughter surprised me last Thursday, she lives in KS, I called her about noon and casually asked what she was doing later in the day, she said she was going to go somewhere, mama intuition kicked in and I asked if she was coming home. Point blank question, she can’t lie, she was going to try to surprise me @ work. It didn’t work, I got off work early that day anyway but she had to tell me what was going on, other daughter was supposed to evidently find out what was going on but was busy. We sat outside Thursday evening because it was WARM, like no coat could sit outside warm. Here’s a picture of her and Dispatch the Bichon and Crusoe the orphaned cat, you can read about them in my other blog, animals that give pause, also a fine picture of the kids toys or grandpas toys kids left outside and the dead plants in the planter. January in MO 60 degrees isn’t unheard of but felt we HAD to sit outside and enjoy it for a bit.
So she came for a SHORT visit, we went to KC on Friday on business and then my other daughter and kids came over for a bit. We visited an office I hadn’t been to for like 3-4 years in KC, I told the guy there my daughter was in for a short visit and he asked if she was home from school. She is 33 years old, she will bless that baby face soon. Everyone else went to wrestling meet for two of the grandkids but I had to work (they lost, that doesn’t happen very often, Zach has gone to state two years in a row, Jacob the little one was on his mamas lap and told her he had a temperature, he meant temper cuz he lost)! Then life returned to normal after younger daughter left and it started snowing, bah humbug.

Can you tell I’m not looking forward to whatever this week is bringing as far as the weather is concerned? My cousins are in law enforcement and live next door so we all keep each other informed as to local road conditions etc. and all work different shifts so it works out well but I almost totalled a lincoln continental in the ice one year, NOT a fun thing to do!

Husband has to drive through OK @ some point this week, last time I looked @ the forecast for Oklahoma City it was freezing rain straight through till Wednesday. Lets hope it doesn’t materialize! Don’t know if you can see the snow flurries in the picture here but it’s definitely gotten thicker, @ least it’s snow now. That’s the house I was raised in and my dad was raised in and some of the other buildings are ones my great grandpa built or helped build. My brother owns it now and my cousin and her husband live in it.

Hope everyone pays attention to the weather and stays safe and warm, don’t forget the pets, I give mine hot water several times a day, the ones that are banned from the house per my husband, also we have 6 cats, that would be a bit much in the house. Don’t feel too sorry for them, there’s a log cabin full of straw in the first picture across the driveway behind the cedar tree, they don’t go there unless it gets really cold but when it is cold the dogs and cats have been known to forget animosity and huddle!!
Oh and I promised myself I would forget my pride and put a picture of my dining room table on here so I would be forced to show a clean picture later which means I’d be forced to actually clean it off today and admit the holidays are OVER. I keep telling myself laziness is a sign of depression and not real laziness, I read that someplace, sometime, too lazy to remember? I remembered where my cookie sheets are now, on the dining room table, kids used them to sort puzzle pieces, there’s a completed puzzle too, daughter didn’t take it with her this time either did she? Basket is a fruit basket, I love baskets, thanks Deanna, paper cups and plates do have a home and it’s not there.
If this guilt cleaning by posting it on the internet works maybe I could put a picture of my supposed to be spare spare room that is like a glorified closet supposed to be a place for the books with a single bed in it? The books are there and the bed is there but you can’t really see the bed, the dog and cat food is inside the door, that’s about what it’s used for daily a closet to store the dog and cat food.

Update, 7:30 pm, life is what happens when you aren’t looking. Things were going well, then I decided to take a nap. Long story short, look @ my other blog http://animalsthatgivepause.blogspot.com/ for details of my day, I did get some bills paid and laundry done, not folded and the dog still has to be bathed but here’s a picture of my oldest daughter holding him after brushing, isn’t he cute?