Goodbye, is the hardest...

You would think that hello would be the hardest thing for a kid to say. But not for our Mina.

For her it Is goodbye.

As an only child she experiences a lot of goodbyes. Where most of us have brothers and sisters to help soften the blow of missing people.
She does not.

So when she gets to be with her cousin Ellie, on weekends, at grandma and grandpa's it is a wonderful thing. Sure she has to learn to share and to remember that there are two sides to every issue. Something that is hard for all kids, of any age.

Her cousin, Ellie, is the same.

No, for Mina "hello!" comes naturally. Almost too naturally...

No for her it is "goodbye" that breaks her little heart. Despite all the things that make being together with her cousin hard, like sharing.

It is still her favorite thing to do .
She tries so hard to be a good "big sister" and her heart is just so open and giving...

I am so grateful for my brothers and sisters at these times watching these sweet girls become sister cousins. Something they both need, and want. So badly!

Then comes the sad part...

It is Sunday, and they must part.
The tears, the heartbreaking sadness... "but I don't want her to go grandma! "
"I just love her so much!!
Watching her, holding her hand and comforting her. I tell her it will be okay, and it will be.

But I realize that I am lying too.

Oh I have gotten used to the goodbyes and the time apart from my brothers and sisters. But goodbye is the hardest part. And though on the outside I am smiling. On the inside I am the same as my little Mina...

The Walk Home...

Pretty much every afternoon now I get to walk my granddaughter Mina home from school.

I love doing it!

It is a time for reflection and fun. Every day she shouts "grandma! As though it is the first time we are doing this.

We start our conversation with what her day was like. And then a quick rundown of my day so far. Then she begins to point out things to me. Flowers so small and perfect that would fit on the top of a pencil eraser.

She collects fall leaf bouquets for her mommy.

When she saw water workers drilling on the sidewalk she walked up and looked in the hole and asked what they were doing? They replied that they were looking for gold! She was so excited! "Maybe there really is gold under the streets and sidewalk grandma !"

I was about to dash all her young hopes but I decided not to.

Because... I remembered all the wonderful things I used to imagine on the way home from school. That wonderful time of endless possibilities

These wonderful walks remind me every day to look for the very small things, like little flowers.

The beautiful things all around me in the changing of the season that I could only see as a need to get things ready for winter.

And to make a beautiful gift of it to someone who was not there with us.

But I think my favorite thing is her glory in exploring the world around her the way she jumps in and asks questions. And her total dedication to the idea of endless possibilities !

Soon enough the real world will place it's weight on her. But I hope these walks encourage her to find a way to incorporate all the possibilities that she sees now.

"Grandma can we go slow? There's a lot to see. " She says.
"Yup honey!" "we have all the time in the world..."

On the road again, Naturally

My sweet hubby ,and I, are on the road to Hamburg again. And always he is being so supportive of me, teaching me new tricks for my IPad. Much is changing and we can't wait to share with you all. Be patient and keep an eye out. Look to see breaking news around the first of June.Thank you all for following me.

They Get a Cookie!

Cookie Monster!

When I used to work at the gas station, vendors used to come in and bring us stuff to give to the customers as free samples. 
One day a new vendor brought in 20 giant cookies for us to give out to customers. I was told they didn't care how we gave them out, that it was up to me. So I came up with a plan. 

We had four employees working that day so each of us had 5 giant cookies to give away on our shifts. 
We had to give them to someone who did a good deed. That was it! Simple as that. 

Someone helped an old lady pump gas. 
He " got a cookie!". 

Another person, brought in the money for a lady with kids in the car and pre-paid her gas for her, so she didn't have to worry about getting the kids out or leaving them alone. 
She "got a cookie!". 

One kid helped another kid learn how to pump air into his bicycle tires. "Oh, it was nothing my dad showed me how and he seemed to need help." 
Yup, you got it! "He "got a cookie!" . 

The next day everybody was talking about how much brighter their day had been because we had all been looking for good things, Instead of being worn down by the bad. 

Suddenly, the employees started buying a cookie each day to give out to someone who lightened their day, as well as someone elses by performing a good deed. 

I used to love to hear the shout  
"Oh! They get a cookie!". 

This past week the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, with a little helpful suggestion by his fiancee, made a way for people to sign up for organ donation easier and faster on Facebook . To help save lives.  
Yes! "He Gets A Cookie!"

We have a daughter with kidney disease FSGS. She has had one transplant. It lasted 9 years. Now she is on dialysis again.  Awaiting the gift of a kidney.

And we have been blessed with so many kind and wonderful friends and family who support her and us. 
Sharing information, getting tested to see if they would be eligible to help her with a kidney donation. I have never had to ask. These people just step up and do what they can, the best that they can!

These are people truly deserving of a 
"giant cookie! " 

But in the meantime I hope my thanks, my love, and my eternal gratitude will suffice. 

Now where did I put my chocolate chips? I've got a lot of baking to do.....

To learn how you can register to be an organ donor go to:

http://abcn.ws/IGknGK

JOY!

F. fully R. rely O. on G. God

 

I wrote this a while back, I read it again today and felt it was worth putting out there again!

Joy is full of Randomness!

by Laurie Blair on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 12:46am ·

1. I love my Children! well, any and all of them. Really.
2. I believe in heaven, I know, I will go on. Because I have felt and continue to feel the Love of those who came before me.
3. I love, and I mean really love, eggs for dinner! Drippy eggs on toast, nothing better!!!!!
4. I grow a little younger every day. despite grumpy people who think we should all do otherwise. Sillies...
5. I love my job! Whatever it is at the time. Because a job well done , really is it's own reward.
6. I am an ARTIST!!!!! I paint , I draw, I sing, I dance, I cook, I knit , I crochet, I sew, I write, I see the beauty in what others consider mundane. Forgetable, uninteresting...
7. I forgive everyone, because I am forgiven. How freeing this is.
8. My life has not been, nor will it probably ever be easy. But I pull on my big girl panties every day and run full on out into it every day with GLORIOUS EXPECTATIONS!
9. I love being a woman.
10. I love my husband!
11. I have fallen a lot in my life... Really, I can trip over my own shadow. My sister Bonnie so embarassed over my      ability to fall in the most open, well viewed area,  once stepped over me, looked down, and said, "I don't know you..." as if she could dissassotiate herself that easily!!! LOL HA HA HA!
12. Loves the Harry Potter books and movies!
13. Dreams answers to problems. And they always work. I think this is so cool!
14. Loves napping in the sunshine. with the wind blowing and birds singing.
15. My favorite age. How old I was when I started dating my hubby!
16. Loves teaching! anything!
17. Loves learning! everything!
18. Remembers her mom and her mom's sisters singing..."Do your boobs hang low" at a summer family picnic! It was the best!!! Probably more so now that mine actually do....
19. Can't believe I was this age and I had an 18th month old and twins. How did I do it?? No, really, somebody, tell me. I really can't figure out how I did it.
20. Loves roadrunner cartoons, and "Angry Beavers"!!!!!
21. Has stuffed animals.
22. Plays hide and seek, slides down slides, jumps, and skips and pretends with my grandaughter.
23. Has watched "Chicken little", "Barbie" and Baby Jack-jack 20 times in a day to make my grandaghter happy. And honestly loved it!
24. Is going to go to France, Scotland, and England some day! YUP!
25. Will be retiring in Vermont!!! Yay!!!!

Ah! Love.....!

Forever love

When I told my grandma Benoit I was going to marry Andy, she looked at me and asked me, "Do you like him?" Surprised and somewhat taken aback I said, "of course I do!"
"No!" She said, "Is he your best friend?' When I looked at her funny, she explained.

"Laurie, I love your grandfather with all my heart! And we have been together for a long time. But there have been years where I could not stand my husband, but could not have lived without my best friend."

I thought I understood what she was trying to tell me, but only with age and experience do I truly understand.

Love, it sounds so easy... It feels easy when it starts....
But one day reality hits you right square in the eye.

I know people who think they can separate their husband and wife into special categories. That the rules are not the same as say loving your sister or brother, mom or dad. Or your child.
That, "I love you "just because" thing."

They think, that their spouse or significant other must constantly earn their love. Or they do not have to love them any more. Sad to say many a marriage begins this way and quickly ends. Because it was not REAL Love.

Real love sees the person for who they really are and accepts them for it, loves them for it, can't stop loving them for it. You don't stop loving your child when they don't give you something for Valentines day, disobeys you, makes messes they won't pick up. You are hurt, for sure. But you still love them. Deeply! You do not give up! You try everything you can think of to reach them and let them know they are abusing you by your love. And usually that will bring about some change. But not perfect change... and you must and will still love them!

Please believe me when I say I am not talking about physical abuse in any way! If that is happening, GET OUT! GET HELP!

I am talking about the everyday crud. dirty boots on your new carpet, forgetting to pay an important bill, or pick up your wife at work, twice! For 6 hours! Saying the wrong thing, at the wrong place, in front of just the wrongest people....

There have been days that I have been so mad at the man I love! That I had to go talk to my best friend about it.

Luckily...

He listens, and hugs me, and tries to do better, because he loves me. And most important, he is my best friend... REAL LOVE...

I am very lucky...Thank you grandma.


~Love sees through a telescope - not a microscope.~

The Key...

Have you ever spring cleaned your home and found as the day went on you were just piling things up room by room, so frustrating! 


And you feel like you are getting no where until finally you got that "one" room done and all the others just started falling into place...


Then it is like things go at the speed of light from that point on. But until you got that "key" room done you were just on an uphill battle, getting nowhere. 


I find life is like that for me. I build up clutter. Job, relationship, spiritual, you name it... stuff!


Until finally I need to clean house.


I push things around until all the space is filled up, then I start trying to organize it into reasonable piles of stuff and put it away. I make myself crazy and frustrated. And it is just as I am stubbing my toe and dropping the pile of papers I have just finally sorted out, I cry out my pain and frustration! My husband will come and say "Do you need help?"


I bet you can guess my response...Maybe your response is similar?


"No!" "I'm fine!" 


But really, I am not.


Nope...


While I sit there holding my toe, tears squeezing out my eyes. I finally realize. I need help. I hate asking for help!


"Wait!"  "Come back please!"


I realize as he helps me pick up the papers and bandage my toe, that even if he isn't doing anything especially organizational, just having him there helps... I am less tired, I feel new ideas flowing through my mind. 
Why did I fight so hard against help? 


Allowing myself to rely on someone beside myself was the key! 


To step outside my area of control, and let go. To let someone else sit in the drivers seat, even if for a little while, restores me.


So should I be surprised when I take the time to stop and pray and turn all those piles of junk over to God that it helps? 


Really helps!


And yet every time, I struggle through trying to do it on my own. Until finally I am overwhelmed! Taxed beyond belief! Totally overwhelmed I will finally cry out for help....


Why do we wait to open that door? 


When we always had the "KEY." 


As spring gets closer I am making plans to clean my house. Both emotionally and spiritually. No more procrastinating! 


No more dilly dallying! 


"Jingle jingle..."


Ah! There's that "KEY!"


"Ahem, I could use a little help please..."

  

I Am Not A Duck!

Big Duck!

I am not a duck! What do I mean by that? Well... I am not free spirited.
I can not run up to that cliff and jump off. I have to check a few things first, talk it over with Andy, the girls, you know my peeps! Hee Hee! Check the weather report...

Things like problems and meanness, like water on a duck, do not roll off my back. My poor husband Andy has to put up with me working through it by talking about it and talking about it. And talking about it! Like a duck, I do not quack like crazy and just get it all out. Nope...

I now realize,

I am a turtle.
Yup! sorry to say it, but I am. I internalize things. I Carry them around with me... Oh believe me I hate it. I wish I could just waddle away without a care in the world, But no, I store it in my shell, ponder it, carry it around for awhile before I let it go.

Everything is so serious for me. I guess it is because I put so much of myself into everything. As I have gotten older I am learning not to let other peoples opinions matter so much. I am more confident and know who I am and am proud of my accomplishments.

But I just can't seem to as it says in the bible" turn the other cheek." and accept another hit with a forgiving heart. I work on this all the time in my turtle way, plodding along carrying extra baggage, that I don't need, that weighs me down.

When really, I wanna be free!
Quacking up high!

Nope, I am not a duck...

I am a turtle, trying to grow a few feathers.

Ahem...Quac.. Qua...nope, still a turtle.

Here's me working on it and hoping we all find our inner duck.

CHANGE, a little of this, a little of that...

I am trying to change...
It is not easy. I am comfortable with who I am.
Honestly, I think most of us are happier to let life happen to us, Rather than us making the effort to have an impact on life.

You see I am trying to lose weight. I am on my first diet. No kidding, it's true.

When I have lost or gained weight in the past it just happened. I did nothing to help one way or the other. If I am successful I don't want people to admire what I am doing or to compliment me. I am doing it for me. And for my grandchildren. Plus I have seen others lose weight get compliments and then they gain it back, that has to feel awful.
Not that I plan on gaining weight back. But I know it happens

Right now I see others around me doing it and maintaining it. And I am encouraged to do my best. To believe. But I know the change must come from me. So I can be healthy and live the long life I want to live.

But I recognize this will not be easy for me.
I hold things in. Panic when food supplies are low. Soothe my anger and hurt with food. I need to change. so I can change.
Does that make sense to you?

Strangely it does to me.

So up front I want to say, I am not doing this to be prettier, or admired.
I will appreciate encouragement.
No judgement please...
I have had enough of that to  last a lifetime.

You would be astounded what people feel comfortable saying to overweight people.
Once I was picking up a birthday cake at Wegmans for my son's birthday party and a man came up to me and said "you wouldn't be so fat if you didn't stuff that @*#@ in your fat face.!" It was not the first horrible insult, nor the last.
So, you will understand when I say, I am a little sensitive.

Be patient with me, while I work on changing a little of this, and a little of that.
I am proud of me! 
I think just making the decision to change and starting on that journey was a big step.
I am CHANGING.

Do You Dream?

Dreaming


Do you dream a lot? I do. In fact I am pretty sure I come from a gifted family in the dream department.


My dreams are nothing like what the experts say they should be.
I have dreamed solutions to problems in my dreams woken up yelling about it and fixed things just like I dreamed in the morning.
I once dreamed that I had died and was picked up by a bus where the Angels nicely explained to me that I had my choice of heavenly destinations, I could live on an Irish island, live under the sea in a mermaid community, or in a fuituristic city that was super clean and pretty. Of course me who is terrified of dark water and sharks chose the mermaid. Go figure!?
 And no this was long before the movie "What Dreams may Come." so I did not get the idea from that.


The experts say your dreams are how your brain works through your day. Okay....


Explain to me how,  me and six other women hanging in nets, starved and badly beaten up, dirty and terrified. waiting for something terrible....then I hear a noise like marbles clicking together and look in front of me and a small bag of marbles is doing just that, dancing around and banging together and I know the bad thing is coming. They are horrible monsters! I wake up sweating and crying.


What does that have to do with my pleasant, quiet day of crocheting?


Nope, not so much...


Apparently we are not supposed to dream in color. But I do.
I fly a lot too. Later when I go places I remember flying there and tell Andy the layout of the rooms. I freak him out with that .
I have seen my grandparents in my dreams and spent wonderful nights in conversations with them I met my granddaughters before they were born in my dreams.
Twice I had dreams that could be epic best sellers if I ever wrote them down. I can still recall both of them vividly to this day!


I can fall into dream sleep pretty rapidly, even though I have terrible insomnia. When I do fall asleep, I dream. Andy has woken me up after five minutes and I am already dreaming. I don't think he would believe me except I have woken up telling him to get out of the way of the train. And I am strangely mad at him when he wakes me like that... It feels like I left a part of me back in my dream. And it takes me awhile to feel normal. Not a good feeling.


I have had dreams that warned me of things. Dreams where I have met people, and later on I really meet them. Very spooky.


I can remember having dreams when I was very little. Very little! Dreams where I did not talk, and people were talking but I did not understand them. I  did not talk yet apparently. These dreams are all sights sounds and smells. Yes, I said smells.


 I want to believe the experts know what they are talking about, but my own experiences tell me, they don't. The other day a Doctor on NOVA said we only have a very small understanding of the power and ability of the brain. That right now science only understands one tenth of it's capacity and abilities.
I think we need to reserve judgement about dreams, until we know a lot more. We need to encourage our children to dream, take the bad with the good. In my bad dreams I have learned to not be so afraid that I don't fight back. In my good dreams I go exploring, I have solved problems, found answers. Touched base with those I love who have passed on. And flown past the boundaries of my life!
I think that is why I am not afraid of dying. I will only be passing into a forever dream.
I tell my granddaughters to dream of ponies and rainbows when I tuck them in. I know they probably won't but it can't hurt to put the thought in their little minds and hope for the best. I know they too will learn to appreciate their dreams. Good or bad.
I wish you all sweet dreams...

AHHH_CHOOOO!!!!!

I should have this posted all over my home!

I have a cold....

I get my flu shots every year and have had my Pneumonia shot also because...

I hate being sick!

Usually my husband brings one home and shares with me. Or my grandkids come and share their incubated viruses with me.

Problem being when I get sick, because of my lowered immunity, and I am getting older.
I get really sick!
Instead of a week, it's usually 3 weeks for me....

Yeah, I really hate being sick.  But I am my own worst enemy. I kiss my husband and then remember he is sick! " Oh no! I shouldn't have done that!" I say. Too late...
Same goes for the grand kids...

Oh, I remember to wipe down the shopping cart handle at the grocery store and to wear gloves at work and a mask at the doctors office. To use hand sanitizer when I am out and exposed to the public. But at home...

I forget all the rules... Voila! Ahhhhhchooo!

And as I am the caretaker of our family, I am also the one who for the most part must care for herself .
I miss the days when my mom or my grandma used to come and look after me. I can remember my grandma putting mustard rub on me.
Laugh if you will.
It really worked and it felt great! Chicken soup and game shows. Mom reading me a story, and sleeping on the couch, feeling her cool hand on my forehead as I slept... But those days are gone. They are just wonderful loving memories.

Now, I need to treat my home like I do when I am in public spaces.

When my hubby is sick either he or I will be wearing a mask, hand sanitizer will be strategically placed around my home and person. No kisses while he is unwell. Sorry Babe! These viruses are getting nasty and harder for me to beat. So... don't be surprised if you see me wearing a mask, or wiping my hands with sanitizer after I shake yours, nothing personal. I just don't want to be so sick anymore.

Maybe you need to post a few of these around your home. I think, when we are there, we are so comfortable and in our routines that we just forget. And I don't want to continue passing on these germs.

I have a daughter whose own journey to dialysis began with strep throat caught from a girl at school, who didn't want to miss the Christmas parties and came to school sick. Please keep your children home when they have fevers and are really sick. There will be other parties.... Please don't go to work if you can, and if you can't talk to your doctors office. They can provide masks for you. We've all got to start being more conscientious.

So here's me doing my part. Hopefully I have finally learned my lesson.

Ahhhhhchoooooo.... I am going to bed. With lots of water, tissue, hand sanitizer. turning on my humidifier. And dreaming of mustard rub and gentle hands.

I wish you all a virus free season.