YOU CAN DO IT!

The 4th of July is usually jam-packed with good food and good fun.  The 2019 holiday did not disappoint.

The grandkids seem to be growing with leaps and bounds.  Both the older ones will be in middle school this year.  Where have the years gone!

I especially loved watching Summer and Jasper interact with one another.  Summer is 7 and Jasper is 6.  They 'teamed-up' against the older kids and stuck together like glue.

I love how the cousins get along.  It always makes for fun get-togethers.

To make things easy-peasy we ordered from Chick-Fe-Le and it was wonderful!

To top it off I just so happened to have a pie in the freezer from Schwan and it was oh-so-delish!

We had other food like shrimp, macaroni and potato salad, chips, melon etc.  All the really awesome picnic foods.  It was a great day!

Gracie is healing nicely from her knee injury from over a month ago.  We've been walking her and letting her do pretty much what she wants to do and the exercise has been beneficial I believe.   But here is the problem:  She has grown accustomed to being babied and lifted onto furniture and into bed at night...  She didn't like it at first, but now she doesn't want to do it any other way.

Me:  Gracie, go up the ramp.

Gracie:  Forget about it woman, that ramp is too hard for me.  Remember -- my bum knee.

Me:  I think you can do it tho.  You are so much stronger now.

Gracie:  No way, Jose'

And so.... as the story goes....  it was the day we opened the pool and in her excited state to watch us out of the bedroom window...    I walked into the house to find her on the bed!  How did she get up there, you ask?  You tell me.  Or rather...  Gracie, YOU tell me!

Gracie:  I did not climb that ramp.  I have a bad knee, remember?

Me:  You had to get up there some way.

Gracie:  *Shrugs shoulders* I'm as baffled as you are.

Me:  I think you can do the ramp now.

Gracie:  No, I can't

Me:  Yes, I think you can.

And so starts the regimen of treats trailing up the ramp.   She was fearful and the first time she fell.  We gave it another week and then tried again.  Amazing!  She did it!  A couple more days of that.  But she refused to go up without treats.  Time for TOUGH LOVE.

Gracie:  Lift me into bed please *yawn* I'm tired.  Ready to turn in.

Me:  Go up the ramp

Gracie:  Lift me up

Me:  Up the ramp!

Gracie:  No can do

Me:  Gracie!  I know you can do it.

Gary and I both get in bed and leave her on the floor to think about her options.  Climb the ramp or jump up on the bed.  The latter would not happen, tho she gave it a shot.

A whine.

A whimper.

Silence.

And then....  the pitter patter of little paws, up the ramp she goes.

Humiliation followed.  She'd been found out.

"Stop telling me congratulations!  So I made it up the ramp, so what?"

Goodbye X-mas

Dear Xmas,

Well, there you were again this year showing up at my house same time as last year...  I suspect you have been cheating because it seems as though I just put you away from 2016 and there you were again!  

Life layers are shedding way too fast.  Time, not a friend of mine.  Where have the years gone?

Xmas, where is the joy you once brought each year?  The innocence?  The magic?  The anticipation and the celebration?  It seems that each year passing brings change, and it's not always good.

Oh sure, you still show up with your flickering lights and promises of Christmas Joy, but you have not delivered such joy for a very long time.  When you come you bring with you memories of Christmas past,  when all was right in the world.  Before death.  Before divorce.  Before separations.  Before the loss of innocence.

  

You are supposed to bring good tidings and great joy, but it seems you've been showing up empty-handed.  Nothing to offer but stress, work, guilt, and burdens almost impossible to bear to 'be ready for Xmas day'.    Why, Xmas, why?  Why did you become such a load to carry when you were once such sheer joy?

You do not speak, yet your lights flicker and shine and smile back at me the same way as always, seeming to taunt.  Telling me that it is me at fault and not you.

Time has swept away my years and the many wonderful memories now seem to sting.  The past and the present war within my soul.  Present, reminding me that past cannot be relived.   Past memories do not allow for handing my mom a plate of chocolate chip cookies.  Past memories do not let me talk to my sister about Xmas preparations or bake my brother cookies and see the smile on his face when I give them to him.  Past memories do not allow for hugs.  Physical, heartfelt, joy filled hugs when you can actually be with those loved ones who are no longer a part of this world.  Past memories do not bring back the innocence and wonder you once felt as a child waiting for Santa.   They remind us that we can't go back.  They are but a stepping stone to get to the present.   

What's that you say?  I need to leave the sting of those memories in the past, it is where they belong?  

Wait.

Is that you, Christmas?

I remember seeing you on Christmas Eve night.  You brought Joy in the form of two barefoot angels who sang of Your birth.  We lit candles that night as you reminded me to "go-light-my-world".  Thank You Christmas... for reminding me also that it's not Xmas that is to blame.   

Oh Xmas, I am so sorry for blaming you for so many years.  It's not your fault.  I fell right into the hustle bustle of the season and the buy-buy-buy trap that is set for so many of us.  My joy has subsided because I have become indifferent to the materialism brought on by a false celebration of gifts.    

 Xmas, let's make amends.  Let's just relax and enjoy each moment next year for Xmas, you do indeed make my world brighter.  

But....

Christmas, IS my world!  

So, for another year I say goodbye.... and ask you to rest well this spring, summer, and fall.  If God will, I shall see you again next year and we (you and I) will live in the moment while we appreciate with heartfelt joy the stepping stones that brought us to where we are.  Let's then bury that aX and live the Christmas of giving, innocence, love, joy, peace, hope, and magic that was...  

once upon a Christmas.

Your friend,

Bobbi

Show and Tell

I am grateful to have the holidays behind me without incident.  For the past three years holidays have coincided with family loss.  Close family loss.  I'll be honest.  My faith had dimmed and I was trying not to care too much or get too comfortable with life while going through the 'happy' holiday motions.  

I baked.  I wrapped.  I decorated.  I lit candles.  And it was all good.

But all the while, a burn in the pit of my stomach, the same burn that stayed with me that day last year on the 29th of December when my sister and I met up for our last sisterly chat and she breathed her last breath of life, right there as I was in mid sentence.  How dare her!  But.  Her mansion awaited.  It was her time.

Oh, back to the burn...  

I want to blame it on a combination of cookies, lack of sleep and stressssss but deep inside I knew that I was preparing myself for something awful.  

But nothing awful happened.  And the burn is gone.  

And so... I'm embarrassed for my lack of faith.  But thankful for the gift of hope that God gave me this year at Christmas!

 And speaking of gifts,  do you mind if I share some of my more special Christmas gifts 

from this year?

A cup which I am drinking my tea and honey from right this very minute...  it reads

  Everything is Sweeter at Grandma's.  Jake was so excited to give this to me, and he picked it out himself at the school Christmas Santa shopping event. 

And....  This paper weight.  It is wonderful!  I have it sitting on my desk and I will look at it every single day to remind me to ENJOY LITTLE THINGS IN LIFE!  And who wouldn't enjoy those two 'little things' whose picture I will look at along with the message...

Another very special gift....

There's a story behind that little plaque.  You see a couple of years ago Gary bought me a cute little globe.  I'd always told him I wanted one...  so he came home with one that he had engraved 'You are My World'  Love, Gary.  Well.  I teased him saying that I couldn't find my name on it anywhere and I asked him who it was for?  I told him the reason he did not put my name on it was so if we ever split, he could give it to someone else.  Or, in the event that I died first... he could re-gift it.  Haha!

Well, well, well....

My special guy made a special trip out of town just weeks before Christmas just to find a place that would engrave a plaque just right... so that he could use to replace the old one.  Now wasn't that special?  I thought so.

Gracie, tell them what you got for Christmas...

Bells on my neck and feet.  Forgotten about. Oh, and a cookie and new toy. That's all I have to say. Gracie.

United We Stand

Dear Diary,

Something was going on at my house this weekend.   Cookie carriers were swarming everywhere.

The smell of hotdogs was wafting past my nose outside and I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be outside in the heat where the good smell was or in the house where it was cooler.

The gentler of the cookie carriers said they were napkin hander-outers.  They didn't give me a napkin.  They must have forgotten about me.

Lots of those kids went into the big bathtub outside and started making a lot of noise and splashing water around.  I stayed clear of that mess.

A bright, giant alien looking bug carried them all around in the big bathtub and those cookie carriers squealed and laughed and kept falling off of it into the water.

I was just about ready to jump in and save them but then I remembered that I don't like baths and as much as I love those kiddo's, I just couldn't do it.

Mom kept saying, "Gracie... do you want in the house or outside? Make up your mind."  Duh.  I follow you around because I smell hamburger on you I want to be with you, Mom.  I love you that much!

When Mom did the group photo of the kids I was not invited, even though I promised to be good and not run away. 

like some kids I know....  ahemm...   catch that boy!  

Oh.  Sorry.  Got sidetracked by the next picture.

The thing I like the most about Smores is the graham crackers that fall from little cookie carrier hands. 

And so I watched and waited.

And though the nag Mom was diligent in making sure I snagged none of the chocolate which she says is off limits to dogs.... but was melting deliciously down the arms of certain of the smaller carriers...

I did find the graham crackers to be quite tasty and plentiful.

When all was said and done I was full and dog tired.  

And so I called it a night.  But I couldn't stop thinking about the smell.  That wonderful smell of meat sizzling on that hot outside stove... the one they call the grill.  I hope we do this again tomorrow.   Gracie.

Eighteen Years

(A Repost from a couple years ago)


Fourth of July Memories:

****
 Hot summer night.  Six kids in a Ford Falcon, one between  Mom and Dad in the front seat and five in the back - going to Cumberland, then sitting on the car hood watching fireworks.  After that, Queen City for ice cream cones.  

****
 Taking my kids to the White Oaks parking lot and meeting friends there.  Watching innocent faces light up as they watched the magic in the sky.  Then...   Dairy Queen for ice cream.

****
 4th of July Picnics at my house with plenty of hamburgers, hotdogs, kids playing, adults laughing, and Mom asking, 'Can you get me more potato salad?'

****
Standing in Mom's hospital room with tears streaming down my face and thinking back to the laughter inside that Ford Falcon from years earlier,  while waiting for her to take her last breath...   watching her slip slowly away from this world to the next...  The sound of  fireworks echoing  beyond the hospital window.

****

It's been eighteen years since her passing.  But a July 4th does not come and go without me thinking of her, and missing her.