Our new year has begun very happily, a new grand-baby expected in September. JK & PMc will be here for a visit with that little ginger haired boy in a few weeks. Sales were good at the Store during November and December and January is promising. Life is good! God is good, all the time!

I am busy preparing for ‘the visit’ and cooking. We have invited the family and a few close friends to come and visit with us while they are here. I  love having people here, hope the weather holds up and no one else gets sick.

Father in law has been in the hospital, an infection similar to bed sores on his leg from compression stockings rubbing on his legs. At 96 any illness is life threatening. He is amazing in the way he always bounces back from them. Mother in law is a bundle of nerves but she always hangs in like a trooper.

I am still cleaning out closets and decluttering, how did we accumulate all of this stuff?

I know the answer, I am a sentimental person and can’t bear to part with cards and little trinkets. I have become heartless. Decided to only keep greeting cards from family (children and JB) and only birthday and anniversary. Eliminated dozens of shoeboxes.

While cleaning out my closet I discovered a couple of truths about myself, first I will never be a size 14 again and I am a shoebox horder. It is true! I found 12 empty shoeboxes in my closet.

I do like shoeboxes, when I was a kid I had all my treasures stored in shoeboxes under my bed, where hopefully my brothers would not find them. Some of them are fairly sturdy and handy for storing memorabilia, but a surplus of 12 is excessive. So I sent them off to be recycled into something new and hopefully just as useful. Continue reading “A New Year” →

What a weekend I have had! Friday evening a group of us from I.C. went to Santo Coyote to celebrate my retirement. It was such fun, service was terrible but we were enjoying each others company so much we didn’t mind. As I was leaving i.C. I had a moment when it all hit me. I had turned in my keys and loaded my car and was walking out the back door and I realized this finally was the last time I would be here. Not the last month or the last week or even the last day it was the last moment! I had a knot in my chest and I felt as though I couldn’t breath.

As we were sitting at the table I looked up and there by the door was a man I recognized but couldn’t place, then I realized it was my brother GH from Houston. I know I got up and ran to hug him but don’t recall if I screamed or squealed, knowing me I did both. I was so surprised and pleased to see him. He and his sweet wife VH had driven up for LD’s party on Saturday night. WOW!!!

The next day LD needed me to keep T so she could continue to prepare for the extravaganza she had planned, so I was busy all day caring for him. We went for a walk down the road from the house and he collected rocks and ran and talked non stop. It was a really great day. JB was busy working on our new home project, a green house. I’m so excited about this, we had some fellas out a week or so ago to level the site and now JB is building the forms for the foundation.

The party was amazing, friends from work, old friends, newer friends and family. LD roasted a pig in her back yard and all the side dishes were so good. The theme was Luau so she had inflatable palm trees and flamingos and grass skirt aprons on all the tables, tiki torches, flower leis and she had made my favorite Pla-di-do in a beverage dispenser. It was so much fun and great to see everyone. Suday was a quiet day, G & V left to go back home, L & W & T took the day off to rest from thier labors of the previous few days.

And I spent the day trying to wrap my head around not needing to get ready for the new week at work. Still pretty surreal!

This is my last week at I.C. It seems so surreal, this has been planned for nearly 2 years and now it’s here I can’t believe it.

My replacement has been trained, she is amazing and will do a great job. I have been slowly taking home all the ‘stuff’ I have accumulated in my office over the last 28 years, 2 months and 4 days. Fr J has given me the statue of the Immaculate Conception that I have had in my office for about 25 years. Msgr J gave it to me when they found it stuck back in a closet in the church, she has a few chips on her gown but she has the most beautiful face and I really, really wanted to take her with me.

LD (daughter)& RF(granddaughter) are throwing me a combination birthday party and retirement bash on Saturday evening. They have been planning it for weeks. Should be fun.

Lots of stuff going on this week, Thursday the office staff are taking me out for my birthday to El Porton. Friday nite we are all going to Santo Coyote for margaritas and guacamole & cheese dip. LD will join us just in case I need a designated driver to get me home. Still does not feel real.

this morning I woke a little later than usual (5:20 am), I have the day off because it is a Holy Day of Obligation, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven. It was still dark outside, as I was making my way to the kitchen for my tea I heard thunder way off in the distance. I love to sit on the the screened porch when it rains, especially when there is thunder & lightening and it is dark outside.

The view from the porch  is of the woods behind our house and this time of year the forest is pretty dense. We’ve had alot of rain this year and everything is very green, Normally August is hot hot and dry, not this year, and July had more rain than usual so we have beautiful green trees.

Anyway, back to this mornings storm, it is really putting on a show. The cat is nervous, she doesn’t care for the noise and flashes. She is either trying to sit on my chest or hiding under my chair. Poor baby girl, Ophelia was a stray who wandered up to a friends home one afternoon. She fed her for a couple of days and tried to find her owner but no one came forward. She put her picture on Facebook and when I saw her. I fell in love. She’s a calico and was very thin and had an injury on her hip that needed attention.

JB wasn’t crazy about our new feline but she has grown on him. Our last cat Miz Kitty was mostly his cat, she passed away a few years ago. and though he would never admit it he has missed her. But, that will be another post. After several visits to the vet she is healthy and has settled in as a permanent part of our home. She must have been an inside/outside cat because she is litter box trained but she loves to go outside which I won’t let her do because I am afraid she will wander off or be attacked by some of the wild life out here. She doesn’t understand.

Ophelia prefers my company to anyone else to the point that she has actually hissed and growled at JB when he enters the room, but then she will get in his lap if he is sitting on the couch with me.  She does not like little people and hides when TW comes to visit and if he should get too close, she hisses and slaps at him. So, we do our very best to keep them apart. I hope one day she will tolerate him.

Time to get started on my ‘day off chores’. Later!

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