toasted

Sometimes, you find that sweet spot. The place where memories past and present collide. It can be bittersweet, but oh what a marvelous feeling. A connection, proof that we go on, threaded together in ways we can't anticipate. This morning was like that for me. A brief moment when I felt so connected to the past that I felt like a bridge between generations.

Maddie stayed over last night. Dunc stayed with the boys at Jim's house next door. This morning I told the kids we were going to have scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Maddie chirped in "I know how to scramble eggs!" I told her I was glad, that it would be fun to cook breakfast together. We counted heads and realized it was going to take a lot of eggs and bread. The eggs were no problem, a huge skillet fixed that. Maddie helped me break eggs into the bowl, and I finally turned the eggs over to her. She broke, beat and I chunked some butter in a skillet. We discussed adding cheese, decided that was a go, and then I faced the toast. I had a problem. The butter was hard because Jen had put my butter dish in the fridge (we always leave it out to keep it spreadable), and my dilemma was how to get the butter to melt on the toast when it was hard as a rock.

Then I remembered that little Revere pan I had inherited when I got married. Mom had given me the whole set and I had been cooking with them for 46 years. With the set was a little pot, which would hold about 1 cup liquid at most. It had been used for one thing when I was growing up.

Melting butter.

I got it out of the cabinet, added a chunk of butter and melted it, then grabbed a brush out of the drawer. By the time I was ready, Maddie had several slices of toast waiting for butter on a paper plate. I started brushing the butter across the toast, thinking about how Dad used to do the same thing.

I closed my eyed briefly and could see Dad in my mind, standing there smiling at me and his great granddaughter making toast the way he used to when I was her age. The funny thing was, I didn't appreciate that moment back then, but now I savored it. I smiled as I told Maddie the story of Grandpa and the buttered toast.

Memories past, memories present. Threaded together by a small pot and buttered toast.



...life is good... i am @jonesbabie on twitter and Instagram

stop this mudslide before we are buried

I just read a very disturbing article (see link below). It caused me to think back to my own childhood, and remember some things that happened. I also began to look at my own values, beliefs, and behavior. Then I decided to put them down in writing. These are just my thoughts...

The article in question came from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-trump-effect-our-kids-and-country-are-still-being-contaminated/2016/10/10/bd96b244-8eed-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

I compared what I read in the article to my own childhood. I grew up in the 60's mostly. It was a time of unrest. The struggle for civil rights was in full swing. Viet Nam was raging, as were the protests against the war here in the US. The Cuban missile crisis made me feel like we weren't as safe as I always thought we were. It was a time of great turmoil. Here are a few of my memories from about the 5th-8th grade (age 10-13):

I remember taking canned food to school, where we stockpiled food and water in case of a nuclear holocaust. We practiced getting under our desks if a bomb dropped. We talked about it like it could happen any time. This was the reality of the Cuban missile crisis for me. I lost a lot of sleep and worried a lot.

I was 11 years old when we found out in class that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember thinking that our country was going to be lost without him. He was the President after all, and nothing like that was supposed to happen, right? I had learned about the Lincoln assassination in school, and being an avid reader, knew about the Garfield and McKinley assassinations too. But that was history, remote and unreal to me. When Kennedy was murdered, I remember feeling like the ground had dropped out from under me.

The main thing I remember feeling was that even though there was so much turmoil in America, we were still strong, and would figure it out. I knew there was a lot of disagreement. Even my classmates and I would disagree sometimes about current events. But underneath it all was a feeling (for me) that the disagreements were healthy overall. I don't remember kids fighting or mistreating each other because they didn't agree about the news or politics. We fought about more personal things. We weren't perfect. But we got along. Mostly.

I don't see that now. I see articles like the one above with kids mimicking what they see on TV, and parents trying to shield their kids from what they see going on with this election. I know one thing. It is our responsibility to shield kids from things that are unsavory, until we can explain to them that what they see is not something that should be mirrored by them. The level of anger I see on both sides of this campaign is unnerving, and disappointing. The candidates should stick to the facts, and stop slinging mud. Just because one person slings mud doesn't mean you have to sling back. It brings to mind one other incident in my life when I was about 10 or 11.

I was being bullied by a girl at school. She was just mean. I would be taunted every day at recess, and one day as she circled me, saying the same nasty things to me I had been hearing for days (maybe weeks), something inside me snapped. I was sitting on the grassy area of the playground with some friends, and I reached up and yanked her skirt and told her to stop. Yelled at her actually. There was a small tear in her skirt, because I had yanked so hard. She told me she was going to whip my ass after school because I had torn her new skirt. Her exact words. I was terrified. She was taller than me and I was not a fighter by nature. (That was probably why she had picked on me in the first place.) After school, I raced home (I walked to school every day, about a two block distance). I remember seeing groups of kids here and there on the way, from school to halfway home, waiting to see "the fight". I think it was the longest distance I had ever run. I burst into my house screaming that this girl was going to beat me up. Mom grilled me, found out the girl had been tormenting me for a while and what I had done that day. She marched to my class the next day, and indignantly told my teacher what her thoughts were about bullying, and the bully who had been picking on me. When she finished, my teacher calmly pulled out a note I had passed to a friend at some point that year, and showed it to mom. It had an ugly word in it (hell, I think) and Mom read it and after not much else being said, she left. That afternoon, when I got home, Mom's wrath fell on my head. She had been humiliated defending me, and told me that because of being blindsided by that note, she would never defend me again if I got into a fight. My teacher had muddied the issue with a fact unrelated to what had happened. And it caused my mom to stop believing me. 

I see so many things that should have gone differently, but I was not in control. Mom should not have lost trust in me. My teacher should not have slung my past behavior into the discussion and muddied the issue with it. The teacher should have sat both of us down and explained to her that bullying was not ok, and told me that reacting in anger wasn't the best way to resolve the issue. She should have made us talk it out.

That incident is similar to what I see happening in this election campaign. Get hit by mud, get angry and sling it back. Then sling more mud, faster. Social media enables this, and that is sad. It is time to see what we are doing to ourselves, taking part in this. Where is the sense in all this anger? What does it resolve? It isn't ok to say whatever you wish when you are running for the highest office in the land. Both candidates have plenty of mistakes in their backgrounds. But at some point (and that point is now for me) we become saturated with all this and just stop listening. I am to that point. Overloaded. I think it is time to stick to facts, promote the positive and stop the mudslide. If one candidate takes down their own campaign with a mountain of mud, the other should not follow suit. We should all take that high road. We are better than what is happening, and should demonstrate this for our children. Because they are the ones who will ultimately lose in this. I remember when I lost, and what I lost, as though it was yesterday. So will the children watching this now.

So will the children. Let's show them the high road.


...life is good...
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

the ghost of gma mary

A couple weeks ago I woke up to my first cup of tea and some quiet reading.

Or so I thought. What actually happened was that I entered the living room and got sucked into a skirmish. The kid variety. Gramps had already been sucked into the vortex. This was how it went down...

Maddie: Grammy, Duncan and John lost the key to my 4 wheeler and I can't find it.
Me: Can you ride without the key?
Maddie: No. I looked all through the couch, but all I found was popcorn. (Last night was popcorn movie night...Duncan misses his mouth more often than not, but that's another story.)
Me: That could be a problem then. (I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer before my morning tea.)
Maddie: Grammy will you help me look?

So that was when I felt that first gentle tug into a situation I had accidentally stumbled blindly into. We searched between all the cushions, and I ran my hands down into areas of the couch I hadn't felt in years. We found a missing sock, but no key. Gramps lifted the couch and turned it over and we searched every nook and cranny. We did the same thing to his chair for good measure.

No key. But the floors under the couch and chair got vacuumed nice and tidy, sans popcorn and other unidentifiable food and garbage.

By the time I finished that (still without my first cup of tea), I was a bit irritated at two boys who had spent the whole time we were looking for the key THEY lost, playing in the bedroom with army men. That was when the ghost of Gma Mary materialized inside me. I marched into the kids' bedroom and informed the boys that they needed to use their brains to remember where they had left the key, and find it.

Both boys looked at me like I had sprouted two heads and was speaking a foreign language. I repeated myself, and told them to get UP and come and look for the key. They moaned and groaned and dragged into the living room. John had to recover from two feet he said weren't working before he could get to the scene of his crime.

John said he had left it on the couch and that was all he could remember. Dunc said John had the key last, trying to absolve himself of any connection to the crime. I told him his alibi didn't work, because he had started the chain of events by removing the key from the four wheeler.

After a half hearted search, the boys thought they were free and clear. I upped the ante at that point, thinking they would make a better effort to FIND THAT KEY. I told them they could not ride on the four wheeler anymore since the key was gone. They wouldn't be able to start the engine.

John: Dat's ok. I got my own four wheeler.
Dunc: I don't care. Doesn't matter to me.

This was when things started to escalate. I decided to hit them where it hurt, because Maddie was the only one upset by the missing key and loss of four wheeler riding time.

Me: Ok then, no more video games when you are here too.
Dunc: Fine.

Hmm, Dunc was playing tough guy. While I thought about my next move I looked for John, who was so crushed he had locked himself in the laundry room. My next statement was meant to win a stunning victory, but it worked out somewhat differently.

Me: John, there are mice in the laundry room. (Actually there are only traps.)
John: I am getting a chocolate milk. (YooHoo, a drink made mostly of chocolate, water and sugar.)
Me: You can't have a YooHoo if you didn't eat breakfast.

zombie grandkids- yes that is a YooHoo in John's hand

Gramps: He ate a cinnamon roll. (WTH did that come from? Now they were triple teaming me.)
Me: A cinnamon roll does not count as breakfast. It is sugar.  (Giving Gramps the stink eye)...Now he wants to follow sugar with sugar.
John: I will eat my egg then have chocolate milk.
Me: The egg that was on the table? I threw it away when I cleaned the table off.
John: But I wanted that egg. (Chin quivering and pitiful eyes.)
Me: (Gma Mary standing firm.)Then you need to eat it when breakfast is served. I don't leave food on the table all day.

I could feel myself gaining ground. I was ready to zoom in for the kill, play my ace in the hole. Then John started to cry. Which of course made Gramps totally crumple. I was breathing hard by this time and my eyes were beginning to bulge. Gramps took a breath to say something but I shot them both down before anything could be said. I included Dunc in this shot. I was going to overwhelm them with THE TRUTH.

Me: Have you ever heard of nutrient dense and calorie dense foods? Nutrient dense means that there are lots of vitamins and minerals in the food you eat and calorie dense means...

I noticed their faces. John was looking at me like I had sprouted a third head, Dunc had one eyebrow raised almost to his hairline and a smirk on his face, and Gramps' eyes were rolling in his head like he was having a seizure.

Then the ten year old slipped in and struck the final blow.

Dunc: I don't know and don't care.
Gramps: I was going to say the same thing.
John: (speechless and staring at me...)
Me: OK THEN. Since my money is what buys most of the food around here, I just won't buy any more CINNAMON ROLLS. EVER. And no more YOOHOO either.
Dunc: whaaaaat? Fine then, I WON'T COME ANYMORE.
John: (crying...suspiciously fake sounding sniffing)
Gramps: (seizure continues)
Me: FINE THEN, Maddie can come alone. Maddie, the next time you come, we will do lots of fun things together. We can shop, and go to the park.
Maddie: There is a park here?
Me: No, it is in Jasper. In fact there are LOTS of parks in Jasper. (I see Dunc is unimpressed, and I know I have to dig deep and find his Achille's heel.)
Maddie: ok Grammy that sounds fun.
Me: Oh, and we can go fishing Maddie. Lots of fishing. LOTS. (Dunc's eyebrows shoot up, and I am pretty sure he is buying this.)

So I play my trump card.

Me: Oh, and Gramps, sell Dunc's fishing rod, since he won't be needing it anymore. (Duncan has forgotten he doesn't own a fishing rod here, he uses Gramps' tackle.)
Dunc: WAIT...WAIT!!!! YOU CAN'T SELL MY FISHING ROD! I need it to fish!
Me: No you won't need it, since you won't be coming anymore.

At that point, I began to grin, and saw Dunc starting to smile, Gramps started to chuckle, and Maddie was laughing. I looked around for John, who had been strangely quiet...

He had downed a nutrient rich banana in 2 seconds. While we were skirmishing. He was going to do whatever it took to get that YooHoo.

Gma Mary had won again. She taught us well.  Jones women never lose a skirmish.

And John got his YooHoo.

...life is good... Cath
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

taking a breath of life

Friday Reflections' prompt gave me something to think about this weekend. The prompt that caught my attention was this one:

Give us some advice on how to de-stress at the end of a bad day or week?

At first I wondered how I would give anyone advice on this prompt.  This past year has been so stressful for me that there were days I didn't know if I could find the energy to do ordinary tasks, much less deal with work and what was going on with the rest of my life.

But as it all spiraled out of control, I knew that if I was going to survive, I needed to deal with the stress. One day I stopped, took a deep breath and remembered how I had dealt with high stress times in the past. And so the advice I give comes from the lesson I learned then. It was actually a self taught lesson, a compilation of things I have learned over the years, and the way I survive times in my life when I feel as though I might explode from overload.

I see my life as a plate. Literally. I close my eyes and see what is going on in the here and now as a plate full of stuff. I don't see food, I see the words representing what is stressing me. For instance, if I have a deadline at work, I see a piece of paper with the name of the project on it. If I have several projects going, each one is on that plate. If I have someone in the family with something serious going on, I see them too. (The year my daughter Jen had multiple throat cancer surgeries, she was sitting on the plate, in a hospital gown.) This past year, my husband's pacemaker was on that plate, my cancer was on the plate, the dog bite I got on January 1, 2016 was there, and so was my mum's illness and death. Full plate huh? You bet it was.

In the past, when my plate got too full, I started taking things off the plate to relieve the stress. I quit a job that almost caused me to burn out as a nurse, and several other things too. The problem with this past year is that there was nothing I could remove from the plate. Absolutely nothing. I couldn't run from breast cancer, or the huge bite on my face that got infected. I couldn't run the day Steve nearly died because his pacemaker failed. And I couldn't stop my mum from dying. My plate was as full as it could get, with no room left for anything else. 

When that happens in my life, and it has happened in the past, then I use mental imagery to escape.  I fix a cup of tea, picture a favorite place I have been, remember something good that has happened in my life, and I go there for a little while. I have mastered the ability to be in a place physically, but be thousands of miles away in my mind. I actually discovered this when I was a child, and would live inside the books I read. It takes practice, but I can actually feel my muscles begin to relax, and my breathing softens and deepens. Relaxation. Life. De-stressing in the moment. 

Yoga is another way to accomplish this same thing for me. It is one of the best practices for releasing stress. I recommend it, because yoga has made such a tremendous impact on my life.

Taking care of yourself includes managing the stress in your life. Too often we spend all our days filling them with things to do, tasks for ourselves and others that takes up all our time and energy. And like a fuel tank on a car, eventually that tank goes empty. You have to make the time to refuel so that you can manage that busy life you live. A balanced life is a happy one. For me it is anyway.

And even with all that has happened since last April, I have found my happy spot again. That doesn't mean every day is easy and not stressful. It just means I have regained my coping skills again. 

Found my happy spot. I encourage you to find yours.

...stop, take a breath of life... ~cath

i am @jonesbabie on twitter

the lesson of the shawl

When my mother recently died, my sisters and I had to sort through her things. It wasn't a conscious "ok now it's time to go through Mom's stuff" sort of a decision. There wasn't much to go through.

Years ago mother decided the best way to make it easy on us when the time came was to get rid of as much stuff as she could. She was moving into my sister Vicky's house and was downsizing anyway, so we had a big cleaning out for her, and divided up what meant to us then, sorting and passing stuff to our kids. Mom was happy it was taken care of.

That meant that when she died, all she had left was what was in the room she occupied at Vicky's. So there was no huge task of sorting things out. That had been done and dusted a few years before.

What the task of going through mom's things became for us was a trip down memory lane. Especially her jewelry. Mom didn't have expensive jewelry. She had never believed in spending a lot of money on it. So what she had was a collection of good and not so good costume jewelry. Some of it was so tarnished we couldn't tell what it was. But as we sorted through it, we talked about where the pieces came from, who had given it to her, and what she wore it for, if we could remember.

We laid things out on her single bed, walked away when it became an emotional overload, and then one by one over the week and a half I was there, I noticed we would drift quietly into the room, touch her things, and sort through our own memories. That was how I discovered the shawl.

It was under some things mom had crocheted, and as soon as I saw it I recognized it. It was made by my grandmother many years ago for my mom. Grandma had a special tool called a daisy maker, and she had made the daisies then crocheted them together.

I pulled the shawl from the drawer slowly and wrapped it around my shoulders.  As I looked at myself in the mirror on mom's dresser, it seemed almost as though I was looking at mom. I closed my eyes and could almost feel her presence there with me, and I felt a calmness wrap itself around me like the shawl had.

The truth of life is that no matter what you do or say there is never enough time.  Letting go of the anxiety and fear of my own mortality was the lesson I learned that day.

I miss you Mary, more than I ever thought I would.

...life... ~cat
i am @jonesbabie on twitter

Writing prompt for Friday Reflections:
Tell us about something you have in your home that has been handed down to you. Describe it, take a photo, and tell us the history and meaning of this item.

YOLO

January 1, 2016

I've never been so glad to see a year end. Today is just one day away from one of the most trying years of my life. Realistically I know this year could (and I say could instead of will because I'm an optimist) have challenges ahead for me. Bumps in the road of life as I call them. 

Right now, in this moment, the road is flat. A calm spot. And I'm sucking up every second of that calm. 

Life is an adventure, ultimately. Some people face adversity with an attitude of fatalistic gloom and doom. But if you see things negatively, it's easy to lose the ability to laugh. If you can't laugh, your soul withers. 

I choose to laugh. Every day I will find something to laugh at. I choose adventure. 

I choose...LIFE. 

...and I wouldn't mind getting into that size 10 top in my closet, calling my name. That's optimism too, isn't it?