When the grand-girl arrived I was asked what I wanted to be called. My response was “Grandma.” To tell you the truth I don’t actually know any grandmas named ‘Grandma’. So I thought it would be unique. You know what I mean?
I also like “Gamma” as in the MOST powerful ray in the universe. I like the idea of being a powerful force for grandmotherly good. Roight.
My mother is ‘MeeMaw’. The children’s other grandmother is ‘NaNa’. I’ve heard a lot of cutesy grandmother names lately like ‘BeeBee’ or ‘Sugar’ or ‘Sweetie’. I have a friend whose grandkids call her “Ninena” (I spelled it phonetically, I’m sure it is spelled ‘Nina’). My daughter suggested “Banana”. I rejected that right away. Not only is it cutesy but I don’t want to be confused with a fruit.
My beloved grandmother’s name was “Nannie”. There can be no one else like her. My other grandmother’s name was “Grandmother”. We didn’t know her very well. I think sometimes names say it all. “Grandmother” is a bit stand-offish.
It has been a family tradition that the first grand baby names the grandparent.
To the grand-girl I suggested “Grandma”, “Grammy”, or “Grams” to no effect. At twenty months old, the grand-girl was thinking. She can recite her A,B,C’s. She can spell her name. She can count to ten.
I remained nameless.
To be honest this child never ever had to call me anything. I would do anything she indicated with a flick of her tiny wrist.
Then about two weeks ago I heard her practicing something that sounded like “Grandma” only it came out as “NHN-ma” – the first syllable pronounced somewhere inside the upper sinus cavity. (If a kid can do it so can you.) She would spend time by herself in another room saying this over and over. Precious.
Then this past weekend I heard her call me “NeeNaw”. I said, “So I’m NeeNaw?” She said, “Tee-Taw”. I said, “So I’m ‘Tee-Taw’?” She smiled.
Melencolia I. Print of Albrecht Dürer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
These past few weeks have been challenging. Sometimes I feel like Mighty Mouse trying to save the day against crazy odds.
Most of the time I think I’m more like Wile E. Coyote and life is a rent house full of those tricky anvils ready to fall on my head when I least expect it.
A few weeks ago one of our erstwhile renters decided to duck out in the middle of the night, leaving quite a bit of damage behind. It’s all good. We had her deposit. Okay well, her deposit covered the cost of the paint and sheet-rock mud.
So this is the thing. My husband wants to sell and I agree. But the place was a mess. So we gutted the kitchen, somehow scumming past the giant, dead or dying Palmetto bugs (they resemble giant cockroaches) and bundles of human hair stuck between the stove and the refrigerator to decide what we were demolishing. All the lower cabinets, and the breakfast bar-top in the kitchen had to go, maybe the bathrooms needed a serious makeover.
When the lower kitchen cabinets were removed we thought now would be a good time to install a water line to the refrigerator’s ice-maker. While unscrewing the fitting, the pipe broke. Water spewed. Rush outside to cut off water. Water had already been cut off. Quick! Find buckets. Found. Whew! I guess all the water in all the house drained down to that one pipe. We took in what other damage was evident then. The black mold on the sheet-rock from behind the cabinets was overpowering. We tore the offending pieces out. The insulation behind it was made up of tiny Styrofoam balls. They poured from the walls and floated across the floor. After sweeping them up a hundred times – most of them ended up in a garbage bin. Water line is now repaired, replaced pipe, refitted new insulation and sheet-rock.
We decided to gut the bathrooms. Taking out the sinks we discovered a giant depression in the cement foundation under the two of them. What was the purpose of this? It’s the oddest thing I’ve ever seen. We had to buy cement and fill in the depressions so a new vanity would fit in the place of the old ones (one of them we are making a pedestal sink to give an impression of more room.)
At this point we decided to tackle taking out the breakfast bar.
The breakfast bar is a layer of formica coated wood about 58″ long and about 15″ wide. Mark, the handyman, took a crowbar and hammer to it. It didn’t budge. I had a sledgehammer and I suggested that Mark use it. He was willing. I figured he would be. What man doesn’t want to use a sledgehammer? No, the bar still didn’t budge. Mark noticed the tiny dimples along the top and began slamming his claw hammer into them because he said, they were the nails holding the thing down.
There were twenty nails along the 58″ breakfast bar. It took about an hour, with much sweat, and a few choice words to get the wood to budge. By then the brick along the front of the bar was cracked and shaking with every swing of the hammer. Finally, the last nail was pried loose and the bar tilted up and with some effort was torn away from it’s sixty-year-long mooring.
So if you were wondering what happened to the blog all along these past few weeks, this little renovation project is one reason for the delay in my adding a new entry. The other reason is that during this time my mother-in-law was in the hospital briefly. She is fine. We don’t actually know what is wrong or why it happened.
Onward and upward we strive forth through the sea of tiny Styrofoam bits!
Demonstrates Proprio-Kinesthetic language learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When addressing the issue of social reforms and added programs that have little to do with education and the “educational” experiments made on our children I didn’t even mention “whole language“. When my son began learning to read the district used something called “whole language reading” instead of phonics. The idea is that language is a system and a child can learn to recognize concepts faster if they learn whole words as units instead of breaking the word up into parts and pronouncing each individual letter.
The problem is that it doesn’t work.
My son is a college graduate with a good job in the oil and gas industry but he doesn’t find reading enjoyable. He tested into the gifted and talented program in kindergarten with his strength in math and science but the whole language system threw him off reading for life.
I believe a good foundation in phonics would have changed that outcome.
Having worked with special needs children for so many years, dealing with every level of every kind of special needs, I can say with some authority that whole language doesn’t work for the average or below average child. How can a child who can not distinguish between a letter and a number “get” an entire word? Phew! The BEST program I used for teaching children with reading challenges was a program called “Scottish Rite”. (This is nothing to do with “Free Masonry”.) It used phonics and the whole body (kinesthetic) to get a grasp of what each letter is and what it does and from there how it can be used. By “using the whole body” I mean that you teach the child to fully extend their arm and trace the letter in the air. You would be surprised at how well this teaches the proper direction of writing and reading.
So, what did the school district do? It pulled the Scottish Rite program out because “it costs too much.” What? That’s right. They pulled the only program that worked, thank-you-very-much! There was no substitute for what the program did. It was a series of lessons on video that we used in a quiet spot or empty classroom for one or two kids at a time. (It wasn’t as if they were paying me extra for it, so that wasn’t the problem.) I could remember what each lesson had been, so with permission, was able to continue teaching phonics in that way with great success.
I mentioned in an earlier blog that there is a simple solution to many of the problems in our public school system.
Parental involvement.
I don’t mean that parents should go up to their child’s school and yell at administrators for the problems they see with their child’s learning programs. That kind of action only causes ill will between parties and solves nothing. What I mean by parental involvement is more parents and grandparents and legal guardians getting their hands and feet dirty and volunteering.
Yes, I said it – volunteering.
When I worked in the school system I saw quite a few parents who the teachers called the “rabble-rouzers”, the “pit-bull team”, and other not-so-nice-descriptors, come up to the school to yell at the principal, their child’s teacher, and otherwise name-call. Then, they would leave. I never saw those particular parents actually volunteering, helping their child’s teacher in the classroom, or helping make the tons of little paper things that kids in Elementary need. It is one thing to call for a meeting such as an IEP meeting. (“Individual Educational Program” meetings, or ARDs where the IEP is developed for the child), it is another to yell at supposed “wrongs.” In a formal meeting (usually video-taped or recorded) where all the teachers, speech pathologists, special-needs teacher, etc are called together, the idea is to help figure out an ever-improving path of education for a child. This is a good thing, although once again this is a serious interruption of the educational process that should be taking place in the classroom, not to mention the ton of paper-work that comes with the IEP that is then added to the teacher’s already over-loaded daily schedule. (A teacher must have a check list of modifications to implement on a daily basis for that individual child or two or more children. This takes special care to complete because it is a legal and binding contract under the child’s IEP.)
Parents and grandparents who came to the school on a regular basis rarely became angry at teachers, yelled at school principals, or declared that “my angel would NEVER do that!” when told of misbehavior. Parents who saw what went on in the classroom on a daily or even weekly basis were more likely to suggest improvements that were actually helpful, and to help teachers when real problems came up.
There is not enough good things I can say about parents and grandparents who take the time to volunteer.
But you can’t volunteer in your child’s school because you work full-time? For the majority of parents there is someone who they can trust to help them out. Even another parent of a child in the same class as your student could report back to you on a regular basis about the education (or lack of it) taking place. You can even take turns volunteering, just as you take turns with car-pooling your children.
How much better our educational system can becomewill not take more money thrown at it by a largely indifferent government. What it will take is more parents or caregivers getting involved in volunteering at their child’s school.
Amazing, when she’s asleep, she’s goodness personified, when she’s awake, let’s just say that I have more grey hairs on my head now, than I did 3 years ago! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My usual morning routine is this: I haven’t got one. Monday through Friday I rise at 4:15 and stumble downstairs and then across a small yard to my daughter’s apartment above our garage. I get into her bed as she is off to save the world from micro-organisms that may be up at that hour also. The grand-girl is asleep. Well, usually. More usually (IS there such a phrase? Yes, at that hour, yes.) she wakes as soon as her mother leaves. I fix her a bottle and put her in bed with me. This sometimes gives me a few more winks, but sometimes I’m not able to go back to sleep and I lie awake planning all the things I could get done as soon as there is light to see.
Let me just say here. We have tried the cry herself to sleep business and it doesn’t work for her. More like cry-herself-to-throwing-up-her-supper is what happens. Let’s just say her mother doesn’t let her cry herself to sleep but perhaps for others that is an option.
The past few weeks the grand-girl has been waking at 9 AM (the real wake time is when she sits up and says “Hi!”, other times she wakes crying, she isn’t awake.) I have already made myself a cup of milky sweet tea and have drunk it. She is so adorable when she wakes. She crawls out of bed and brings me my crocs, one clutched under each arm. I change her and dress her and take her to my house to see Big Boy and think about what we will do for the day.
The past week it has rained, seems like nonstop, so we haven’t done much. Yesterday after her mother got home from work, we all went to Babies-R-Us to stock up on foods for her. I discovered Sam Moon imports next to Babies-R-Us. It is a big-box store full of really cheap designer knock-off purses, cheap, shiny jewelry, and wallets. I didn’t think I would get anything but I actually surprised myself and ended up buying a wallet.
Still rainy afterward, all night last night and mucho-much-more rain today.
She is asleep as I type this. So precious. Such angels when asleep, right? Here is a snippet of what we do on rainy days. I haven’t quite gotten the hang of loading a video, so – Hope it works for you.
English: The logo of the blogging software WordPress. Deutsch: WordPress Logo 中文: WordPress Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I read my blog stats for the year last night. The good statisticians for WordPress noted that my blogs for 2012 were not nearly as exciting as my blogs for 2011. I had 38 blogs for the year as compared with 60 for 2011.
I can not say that 2013 will be better but I can promise it will be different. Life is full of different.
In 2010 several things went wrong with my comfy world. My neighbor went crazy and began ranting and throwing bottles in her driveway outside our bedroom all night every night. Lack of sleep is a pandemic in our society, especially for women of a certain age, so truly not being able to sleep because of a noisy crazy person next door was a problem. My pregnant daughter’s boyfriend abandoned her, which affected the family in every way. A man rammed his car into her car the year before and was now suing her. She lost her job. We planned to renovate a house and then sell it but found ourselves the victim of an unscrupulous general contractor who took our money and did half of what he said he did to our house. We needed a bigger place anyway with the coming new family member so we moved into our 1910 Craftsman house. The house looked good on the outside but there were unseen disasters yet to come with it. My mother’s health was precarious but in 2010 she was falling almost every week. The parent’s-in-law in Arkansas were dealing with health problems. I had gained so much weight in course of the previous twenty years that my joints were aching too much to move. I went on a serious weight loss plan.
So in 2011 we built a garage apartment in the back yard for the daughter and grandchild. We dealt with plumbing issues and electrical issues that were a result of the unscrupulous contractor. Some of these thing made it into the blog. Our rental properties were having issues – also plumbing and electrical. I can tell you there is a huge difference between each plumbing and electrical contracting company. We dealt with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
By comparison, 2012 was a boring year. My end-of-year report for 2012 instead of being a list of who died or what fresh disaster we dealt with is instead a list of who is alive and how many of our disasters have calmed down.
The grand girl is a joy to live with. The baby’s father is helping out. My daughter has a good job at Dr. Pepper/Snapple as a microbiologist. She is still being sued by the crazed guy who rammed her but no one is too worried because the court keeps putting it off – and will likely declare it a frivolous case and dismiss it. She discovered that the man has made car accidents and suing a habit. My mother is in a nursing home and is very frail but still spunky. She isn’t safe from falling, having fallen about seven weeks ago while trying to transfer from a piano bench back into her wheelchair. She forgot to set the break. She broke all the ribs on one side, one of which pierced her lung and almost killed her. We have such excellent hospitals in Houston. She went to Methodist and after an operation to drain her lung. She recovered. She is 87. My husband moved his parents from Arkansas to an apartment about five minutes from our home. They love their new life and their health has improved. I lost twenty-five pounds last year and kept it off in 2012. Our son has a new job in oil and gas, which is doing well at the moment. He looks forward to the future with his new company. Neither my computer nor anything attached to it has caught fire in the last six months.
I look forward to doing more than 39 blogs in the new year. I look forward to seeing you back here again in 2013. Thank you for reading!
English: Noah sent out this dove Русский: Ной выпускает голубя (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The End of the World day came and went. Some of us are still here. When speaking of end times the Bible says that ‘No man knows the day’ however, it mentions there will be some warning. The end days will be “like the days of Noah” with a mention of giving and being given in marriage. Until lately, I’ve often wondered what THAT meant. The days of Noah were marked by immorality so rampant it disgusted God. Someone asked ‘where was God’ during the recent school shooting. I like Former Governor Mike Huckabee’s commentary about that – If you make a point to escort God out of the classroom why do you ask where He is? I think the shootings were despicable. I mourn with those who lost loved ones. There is no excuse. I do wonder if that young man, the one who shot all those beautiful children, had ever learned the ten commandments? Parents blame schools for not teaching morals. Teachers blame parents for not teaching morals. Come on!
On a lighter note: This Christmas our fifteen month old grand girl is able to point and spout one word exclamations. Words such as “No!” That is what she says to the Big Boy when he tries to take the kolache out of her hand. She is a constant source of joy and serious giggles.
And the dog makes us laugh, too. He loves to share with the baby. He shares his chewed up toys, her chewed up toys, etc. Big Boy is full of joy – when I come home or even re-enter the room, or when I give him a treat, or after his bath, or at breakfast, or snacktime — just about all the time. I love that. He isn’t in my face about it. He is a big dog. And like most big dogs, he is laid back. Well, with the exception of thunderstorms, or the UPS truck driving by, or come to that – any truck driving by. At these times he is a powerhouse of BARK. Even then he believes that he is chasing the trucks or the thunder away, which is protecting his people from the terror of trucks and thunder, which translates into “I’m being a good dog!” So he is joyful.
Merry Christmas to all of you. And may the year 2013 be a joyful one for you.
The past two weeks have been rough at the Nolen household with the grand-girl very sick with a tummy virus and everyone else catching it. I’ve got a writing conference in two weeks and a garage sale in three weeks. Both will require a lot of preparation. Nothing like adding a little something to something else to keep it fresh. But I have to say that this is a refreshing Fall, what with the nice weather we’re having and the fact that we haven’t just moved, or are moving, or are planning to move soon. Nope, this will be the start of year two in the old haunted house on Welch street.
So I begin with me but this is really another post about the past. Digging through my mother’s paper’s I found an extraordinary cache of history. I include it for your enrichment. I can’t help but be impressed with the passion of patriotic feeling that is hard to find outside of military families these days.
How did my mother come to have a pen pal in a POW camp in France?
Turns out the German POW found my mother’s address in her cousin’s address book. The little booklet was removed from his dead body during battle. He sent a scrap with addresses that he’d copied out of the book before the book was taken from him.
It looks like the first time Mr. Haag wrote was the 6 of July 1947. He wrote a postcard in German. All I can understand is the address and the beginning “Geshles Frauleine!” I’ve probably spelled it wrong. It is beautiful script, but hard to decipher the letters.
I guess he figured out pretty quickly that she didn’t speak German.
I think the next one is Epinal 15, 1947 (I have no idea when Epinal is so I leave it at that.) I think this is a second letter. Here is what it says:
“My Dear Miss Holl-, Last week I got your postcard and thank you very much. I had already given up the hope in your getting my card. I am sorry to write you, that the little book, in which I found your address amongst some others, is me taken off by a controll visit. I should like send to you your cousins address book. I was only able, to write up some adresses, which were well to card. In 1945 I was for a short time prisoner by the Americans, and well to remember me at this time, because we were well treated. In the next time, I hope to be repatriated and to be allowed to return to civil life. Perhaps, I am able to see once your country, America! I should you visite certainly. In the hope, soon to hear something off you, Dear Miss Holl-” I great you heartily and remain your Werner Haag.”
I think the next time he write is December 7, 1947. Here is what he says:
Dear Miss Holl- Your Christmas present for me, the Holy Bible, today at the same time so your kindness for which I thank you dearly. I am sorry that also in this year I cannot celebrate Christmas at house with my parents. For here in our prisoners camp there will be no distress in Germany is very great. Now I will tell you about me as you want it. I was born July 23rd 1927 in the Black Forest! I have brown hair, and eyes, as you can see in the little picture which was made in captivity. After having leaved school in 1942, I was offered a coppersmith job, but I could not finish my apprenticeship for in 1944 I was made a soldier having 16 years. To I wrote you I speak English but very badly. Nevertheless I desire to perfect my knowledge of the English language. I was in American captivity for only a short time. It is very difficult for us to learn English for we have no learning books. For order to simplify our correspondence one of my comrades translates our letters. Dear Mary Louise, I’m very pleased that you like your work and that you are happy to help unemployed people. As I am very interested in your country. I would like to read the newspaper which published the article about your work. As I lost my two brothers, who were killed in war. I only have an older sister. We are good Christians and my very good Catholic homeland has suffered by war, especially farms which were completely devastated. I envy your country which is truly blessed as you said. I always hope to have the possibility to visit you in your country but that will be difficult. The German prisoners in France are offered to stay in France as civil workers for one year. They will have a holiday in the next year. I am separated from my relative already three years. My parents want me to engage here for one year. You know certainly that the liberation of the German prisoners of war has been fixed to the end of the next year. As during my captivity I have been accepted hard work off all conditions and often without sufficient food. It will not be difficult for me to finish my year working off my labor in the coal mine. For that is what they have for me. And now my dear Miss Mary Louise, I must finish once more. I thank you heartily for your Christmas gift. I want you and your relatives to have a merry Christmas. Your German Friend, Werner.
The last note is a postcard dated Merlebach, 6/2/48:
Dear Miss Mary Louise! I thank you very much for the Christmas card. Have you received my air-mail letter? I’m am set free now, and drive this month to my parent’s. Hoping that you soon to answer, and kind regards, Yours very faithfully, Werner.
I tried to locate Werner Haag POW number 1084450 born July 23, 1927 (He was two years younger than my mother) in the Black Forest and I came up with one Werner Haag born that year in that region. This Werner Haag invented the polymer later called polyester. He died in 2003. I shouldn’t be surprised a bit if it were the same person.
I’m going to take a quick break from the past blast and catch you up on what we’ve been up to at the Nolen household. This past week we took the daughter and the grand-girl to the Grand Canyon. Left the house on a Sunday morning about 5:15, which is stinking early. Took the car to the ecoparking lot to leave it and catch the tram to the airport. The plane left on time at 8:15 and arrive in Phoenix at 11:45, which seems way too long but this was 11:45 their time which is about an hour behind our time. However, Arizona doesn’t recognize Daylight Savings Time (and this is WAY cool in my book) so they are two hours behind us at this time of year. In other words the trip lasted about an hour and a half.
We had about thirty minutes to make it across the airport to board the United Express plane to Flagstaff, a plane that seats twenty-five people and on this trip included one screaming baby on the lap of my daughter. She (the baby not my daughter) actually fell asleep about five minutes after take off but before take-off we were sitting for forty minutes on the plane with no air conditioning or fresh air and it was hot, hence the screaming part. I felt just like her but refrained from thrashing and crying.
We landed in Flagstaff in about twenty minutes after take-off. Flagstaff airport is about as big as my house and has one tiny cafe for entertainment for and hour and a half while we waited for the van that would shuttle us to Williams.
Once in Williams we found excellent food, lodging, and the people were more than helpful about everything. Williams, AZ is famous for the train which has ferried people back and forth to the Grand Canyon for sixty years and for the fact that Route 66 goes through the town. Cute. Very touristy. Loved it.
We stayed at the Depot Hotel and ate at the Depot Cafe (excellent all you-can-eat buffet for supper and breakfast), and shopped at the two souvenir shops full of train/Grand Canyon/Arizona/Native American STUFF.
Great fun. The baby enjoyed it, her mom enjoyed it, us old people enjoyed it. And that was the first day.
The horse can laugh. Cora thinks it’s a big dog.
The next day after a huge breakfast, we went to see the western shoot-em-up show nearby before loading up on the train. The actors engaged the audience well and we had a good laugh. The grand-girl did not like the gunshots so her mother had to take her to the train to wait for us.
The ride to the Grand Canyon on the train was relaxing. We took first class seats as they were wide, comfy, and there was an extra seat for the baby. A nice buffet was available. This was time we could spend with our feet up enjoying the views from the large windows.
At the canyon the first event was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Man, these people believe in shoveling the food out. However, this one wasn’t very good. We had eaten all day anyway so no great loss. Next, we boarded a bus for a tour of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
There were two major stops. The views were spectacular. Every view was spectacular. There are no two views alike. Even on the same stop. I guess because the weather is constantly changing and the light changes so any view of the canyon is ever the same. The canyon’s rim is well over 2700 miles long, ten miles wide in some places and a mile deep. Most trails down into the canyon are over seven miles long because the mile deep part is literally straight down, a route that most people never want to take. So walking or taking a mule down will usually take all day and needs a lot of preparation.
I picked up a book at the train depot called “Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon” written by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers. It is the store’s best seller. And I know why. It is an account of all known fatal mishaps in and around the Grand Canyon. Reading it is like eating popcorn, you just don’t want to stop. I’m about halfway through the book now and I can’t help but keep turning pages. Perhaps it’s because I’m astounded at all the stupid things people do – and die as a result. And this means lately by the way, as in last year. In fact the rangers report that people seem to believe that the canyon isn’t really dangerous.
I suppose because we all live in such an insular society. I guess we get used to the structural engineers and lawyers fixing all the faults … If something happens just sue, right?
I am not being serious.
Who are you going to sue if you back off the edge while getting a nice shot of the Hopi House?(about 3 people have done that) Or because you decide to drape your legs off the side to watch the sun set and then when you stand you lose your balance and fall in?(at least 6 people have done that)
Oh the ways you can die!!
Seriously, read the book before you hike the canyon. It might save your life.
So we are on this lovely tour and stop and look around, take pictures, see people stupidly standing on the edge. Obvious they didn’t read the book. And on our second stop we see not one but two condors.
Condors
Now this is incredibly cool because the California Condor was only recently re-introduced to the canyon. And we were not only seeing one from a great distance but they were swooping over our heads. I was too shocked to get THAT picture but I did get a few from a bit of a distance. They – and several other types of vultures – caught a thermal and cycled up miles above us and away. Really, really awesome.
Then we started back to the tourist camp and the Mastic Lodge where we were spending the night. And the rain came down. Not a little rain but a pouring, gushing, dropping buckets rain. And we didn’t know that was going to happen. They thankfully sold plastic ponchos at the souvenir shop at the lodge. We settled our sloppy wet selves into the rooms and dried off. The rooms were toasty and backed up to a gorgeous lush woods. After supper we were able to watch a female mule deer outside our window for a very long time. While we were watching her, my daughter saw a movement in the woods and we saw an elk. They are so big. And so quiet. The big male left as silently as he appeared.
The Grand-Girl
The next day it was still pouring but we decided to spend the day catching the free tram and seeing all that we could see in the rain. The grand-girls stroller has a nice rain shield that we’ve never used so much and am unlikely to ever use as much again. We visited the geology museum. It has a panoramic view of – clouds. Okay, we stayed there long enough so that some of the clouds parted at one point and we were able to spot the bridge over the Colorado river way down in the canyon. It’s the bridge that the mules cross.
My daughter and I are going back and taking the mules down. Determined we are on that.
Then, more rain and now it was cold, too. We went to the visitors center and saw the film. The National Geographic Society made the film so it was actually quite good. I appreciated how they blended the past with the present.
I have lots of pictures of the canyon and I am not including them all here. Just a few. Please forgive my feeble attempts. First, I had good views but I had left my camera in the rain about ten weeks ago and the camera’s viewer has not recovered. Second, I’m now reading that because of all the precipitation, and condensation, and stuff otherwise known as cloud droplets floating around in all that expanse above the vast crevice, a true photographer would use a warming lens on the camera to capture the colors our eyes see – instead of what the camera sees which is the blue haze.
With most of my photos you can see that blue haze.
Below this picture I redid it with a warm hue. It is a bit better. There is a difference. But when it comes right down to it. I need a new camera.
Traveling with the baby was a joy. She is funny, and cute, and always provokes a smile from everyone. True, she is only a year old and does have her moments of unbridled fury, frustration, and despair as only a one year old can have. But on the whole her good nature wins out. The hard part in traveling with a little one is all the preparation (it’s kind of like a endoscopy – the hard part is before the actual test) and of course the other hard part of traveling with baby is carrying all the extra stuff – diaper bags (we each had one), a car seat, and a stroller.
The next day train robbers tried to hold us up. We made one of them feel honestly terrible because he made the grand-girl cry. Ha. Ha. Ha. He went away yelling “I didn’t do it!” Yes, you did. A big guy with a mask over your face. And I bet you’ve made other girls cry before. Yep.
That was worth the picture.
Then the sheriff came through and rounded the bad guys up to take them them to “the pokey”. That was cute.
Again, a lovely train ride back to Williams. This time we had an even fancier buffet, with cheese cubes and a vegetable platter. The ranch dressing was the real thing.
We got back in time for the all-you-can-eat dinner buffet. We then ‘rolled’ our over-stuffed selves back to the depot hotel for a night’s rest.
Up the next day, an all-you-can-eat breakfast and then into town for some more shopping and seeing the sights. The taxi came and took us to the Flagstaff Airport where once again we couldn’t believe the airport staff told us we would just have to wait for them to open up for us. Wow? Then on the little plane for twenty minutes, then in Phoenix to board the big plane. We arrived back home at 12 AM our time.
Pooped but happy to have been there and done that!
As God is willing we are finally on the road. It is 3:45 and our mileage shows 51,518. The air is clear and warm. With all the shifting and tussling to get things in the camper and car I could use a shower. I never thought we’d leave. It took every ounce of forbearance to keep from screaming at the kids. They were forever getting packed and in the car. The pop-up camper is crammed to the gills (though I guess campers don’t have gills), so let’s say there isn’t an inch to spare inside the camper. Robbie spent $6.40 filling the tank at the Gulf station.
The worst thing – there was a terrible accident. A car went clean off the road and up into a house trailer sitting hundreds of yards off the highway. Fire trucks, police and ambulances, with wreckers fighting for space between them. It must have just happened. I check the kids in the back seat. Their eyes are wild. I tell them to look away. I must learn to be thankful for the things that slow us down in life.
Robbie tried to take a wrong turn but connected in time to get on the East-Tex freeway. The traffic is fast and furious. After our accident last year I still tense up in heavy traffic if R tailgates. I loosen my grip on the seat. R says there is a fierce tailwind so that is why the car is swaying so much. It couldn’t be because of the boat on top or the heavy loaded camper trailing behind. (!)
It is 40 minutes from our house to Baytown (Mileage 51,558). The air is heavy with the smell from the paper plant. We are going 70 MPH on the Freeway when some colored men in an old green car pull out in front of us doing 20 MPH. R swings around them just in time and he honks at them. We are back in the right lane again when the green car honks and speeds around us. I look at R. He looks angry. I tell him best not get upset, we’re just starting out.
We stop at Stuckey’s at 5:15. I get a sandwich as I had no lunch to speak of. Cold apple cider for everyone. Nut butter crunch is so good.
Becky dropped stuff out of her purse all over the floor. Her hairbrush went into the toilet. I tell her I left the Lysol spray in the trailer and just throw that nasty thing away. It only cost 69 cents.
Got gas before entering Louisiana as gas has a 12 cent tax there. Gas (Gulf) $4.39 for 11.6 gallons
On the road R keeps pushing up his dark glasses every minute. Why does he do that?
I glance back and see that Jon and Jeff have added dark glasses and a hat to my wig holder. Very funny.
Cross the line between Texas and LA – the Sabine River that is. The kids all holler “Leaving America and entering Louisiana!”
May 20, 1905. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve moved my mother to a nursing home. It is a gorgeous situation where she has an almost private room with her own shower. This is an unusual thing. Most of the nursing homes have semi-private rooms with a curtain between residents and a shower down the hall. She has spent the last three months in a tiny room with the shower down the hall, so we know. Now, her room has a wooden divider between her roommate and herself and a shower in the room. She is one fortunate woman.
I’m going through her things, which is no trouble because though she saved every little thing from 1939 on, this is only a quarter of what we went through trying to clear her house out.
But here is a sample of what I found in one box: Old rubber bands, old worn dog tags from every dog we ever owned, hat pins (a treasure!), human teeth with fillings, old lead bullets dug from our ditch in South Houston, broken paste jewelry, name tags from the Houston Fat Stock Show 1973, Amway reward pins (I used to sell Amway, too. Don’t get me started.), her diploma from Secretarial School, her rejection from the Civil Service during WWII, Canadian money, her saving account book dated 1942 in which she spent five months saving up pennies to $5.95, several lace mantillas that she wore to church, dozens of tiny old perfume bottles, and ancient salt and pepper shakers.
The most interesting find of all may be the letters from the German POW in France. He had found her address in an address book on her dead cousin’s body. MORE on this later.
I had never seen any of it before. After my father died suddenly, I squeezed a vast amount of her personal belongings from their large four bedroom ranch house into her one bedroom apartment. I did not spend a lot of time poking around. It was toss and go, her house was in foreclosure. It was a tough time for all of us. There wasn’t any time to peruse things. Also, it was horrid enough for my mother to lose her husband and her home at the same time, I needed to give her a bit of privacy with her personal things as much as possible. I would go through drawers, see her handwriting and toss the notebook or scrap of paper into a box while I was clearing her house. So most of her personal writing, poems, and photos were salvaged.
I never looked at them until now.
My mom was an aspiring writer. In those days there wasn’t much in the way of information about publishing but she sent her poems and short stories to Ladies Home Journal, Woman’s Day, and Saturday Evening Post from 1959 until the mid 1960’s. She was never published. I look at what she has and know that with a bit of editing and some serious cutting she has some golden kernels.
I’m sad for her. If someone had taken the time with her, she could have been a contender.
So…I’m going to be publishing her poems and short stories on my blog. In honor of her, my mom, the writer.
I will do it within the jacket of an idea, a casing if you will, of the vacation notes she made of our trip to Canada and back to Texas in 1970. I found that she not only journaled everything we did, she included the mileage and the amount of money spent for everything. This trip was amazing. We left (I know this from the extensive notes that she made) on June 29 and returned on August 25. Who does that? Two months of vacation? Wow.
Also, she says some things that might seem shocking and controversial in our new politically charged environment, but these are real things that she said. The date is 1970, a very politically charged time indeed. So bear with the things she says, take them for being said at that time, and realize that something shocking and related to my mother’s controversial statements took place the day we returned from our vacation. You’ll have to keep reading to discover what happened.
I know that for so many years she tried and tried to get her efforts published. Now they will be, albeit not in the format she was hoping for. But I think that if she had ever learned how to get on the internet, I know that she would be pleased. It would be especially exciting for her to know that you will read what she had written.
When the grand-girl arrived I was asked what I wanted to be called. My response was “Grandma.” To tell you the truth I don’t actually know any grandmas named ‘Grandma’. So I thought it would be unique. You know what I mean?
Rebecca Nolen 