The View from Here

Worth it!

 

We were offline much of the weekend, but it was certainly for a worthy cause. Finally got enough rain to make some decent puddles and to measure about half an inch in the new rain gauge. Of course some of that rain came with 60mph winds. This IS Oklahoma!  

 

Saturday morning I managed to work on the downtown flowerbed a bit. Gone are the days when I can work for hours and hours at a time and complete major gardening tasks, so it still looks rough. But I will get back to it this week and I’ll have some lovely flowers planted in it by the time Heritage Day is here.

 

Gary met me at Walmart after his 5am-1pm shift at Lowe’s. He is so good about helping me with the groceries so I can avoid some heavy lifting. Saw my Aunt Juanita and Uncle Larry at Walmart. Love seeing them anywhere, any time! Also saw some people who really, really, should invest in a full-length mirror. Honestly, you left your house looking like that?

 

Saturday afternoon we finally saw “Cowboys & Aliens”, a science fiction western. What a concept! I’m a big fan of both, so I was totally entertained. I know, I know, difficult to believe. But I’ve always been able to set aside my personal beliefs and even logic, if a story is entertaining and at least probable. I’ve been admiring Olivia Wilde’s acting on House, and of course I’m a big fan of Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. I do think some caution would be advised with regard to children seeing the film. Some intense scenes and some that would have to be explained. And a brief bit of nudity and language.

 
 

Saturday night’s storm was so wild and noisy that I didn’t sleep well. Then I woke up at 2am with a headache that persisted until about 4am, so I ended up sleeping until 6am. Needless to say, I didn’t accomplish much yesterday except a little reading. And thankfully the rain we got yesterday was the gentle, quiet kind.

 

Robert came for a visit and dinner last night. We hadn’t seen him in a few months so it was great to get to talk with him. Always enlightening and entertaining. And he always has a couple of books to recommend to his mom. I’m going to check on them the next time I go to the library.

Not much planned this week, but there is always room in my life for surprises! Gary will be 68 on Wednesday. Fall officially begins Friday. It even looks like we might get some more rain. I’m hoping that by December we will not see the stump that is still clearly visible in the middle of the pond.

 

BTW, there were two herons flying around the pond yesterday. I didn’t get a picture of either one, but they looked happy in the rain!

Have a great day!

 

Hope is...

 

Raindrops falling on brittle brown grass.

Temperatures written in two numbers.

Needing a blanket on the bed.

Seeing a friend preening in the rain.

The Storms of Life

 

Someone is grieving today.

Someone is coping with pain.

Someone is struggling to make an important decision.

Someone is missing a loved one.

Someone is sitting beside a hospital bed.

Someone is sleeping in a hospital bed.

Someone is hiding from danger.

Someone is needing your prayers.

Staying on the path...

 

You never know where God will lead you on any given day, or what He will ask you to do, if you are watching and listening for His guidance. Yesterday’s post was a bit unusual for me and I questioned it at the time. But I felt compelled to write it and since yesterday morning God has revealed a purpose for it and a task for me that I must complete. Someone in my “circle of concern” as I like to call my family and friends, has a need that I was only made aware of through yesterday’s post. That’s how God works sometimes…in little signs and signals that we might miss if we are not paying attention.

 

I suppose I have always been fascinated by the idea of life being a path, a journey through a world filled with confusing options and choices. My favorite poem has always been Robert Frost’s, The Road Not Taken, which I memorized as a young girl. Some literary critics have argued that it has little to do with our life choices and that Frost was simply commenting on the vacillating habit of his walking companion, but I know it has been important to MY life choices and I have often recalled it during times of indecision.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 

Our life journey is seldom as simple as choosing between two options, but then again, perhaps it is if you think of it in terms of our way or God’s way. The “What Would Jesus Do?” movement got a little tacky for my taste, but it made a valid point. Most of our choices in life do boil down to WWJD if we are trying to live a life modeled on His. Sure, we aren’t perfect and most of the time we are going to fail miserably, but our path should still be the best one for us.

Some people believe that our whole life is laid out in front of us from the moment of birth and that everything that happens is God’s plan. Perhaps our Perfect Life is…but I believe that God gave us free will and intelligence so that we could prove our love for Him by staying on the path through our own choices. I liken it to many of the things we do when we are raising our children. We teach and preach and love and guide, but there comes a time when we have to step back and see if they can get from point A to point B on their own. If they veer off the path a bit we nudge them back and give them a reminder, but eventually we have to let them go. We never give up on them, we never stop trying to guide them, we never stop loving them, but at some point we allow them to stay on their own path. If it is a dark and dangerous path we can only pray that they find their way back to the light, but God is powerful enough to force us back if He so chooses. At least that is my understanding. And that is another part of the puzzle- each of us only has the capacity to understand our life and our journey based on the intelligence and abilities God gave us. We don’t create. We don’t control. We just react with what we are given.

 

I cannot be in two places at once. I cannot live in two worlds. Each day I must make a dozen choices that either keep me on the path that is best for me, or take me down a twisting trail of mistakes and misery. If I’m wise I will always consult my travel Guide.

Have a pleasant journey today!

 

P. S. The somewhat fuzzy photos from yesterday were taken at dusk through the window. I call our evening dinner rituals “dinner and a show” because we always have such interesting visitors. Last night we ended up with six raccoons enjoying themselves, but one kept rising up on his hind legs and scouting the area. I’m not sure if he was looking for friends or enemies!  

Not much...

on my mind this morning. I sent this photo to a friend recently. It was taken at Heritage Day and I’ve probably posted it before. I’ll probably post it again in the future. I never stop missing my mom and wishing she could share so many things that are happening now. But somehow I think she knows…

 

If your mom is still alive, give her a hug today!

Dear Santa

 

I love to read letters to Santa, so I was thrilled to find some in the 1929 Caddo Herald last week and post them to my Caddo blog today. I also have my mother’s letter to Santa in my files. She wrote it when she was five. It’s fun to see what children from the past requested and to imagine their delight on Christmas morning. But it is also astonishing to think about how times and requests have changed.

I look around at all the stuff- toys, games, televisions, gadgets, clothes, shoes- that children have, and I wonder how they even think of something to ask of Santa! But I know they all have lists because they recite them to me and I send them to the paper. I don’t recognize and can’t spell half of what they want! Most things are tied to movies I haven’t seen and celebrities I don’t know. Gone are the days when children want a record player or a doll. They want XYZ brand ____ and Captain Hero ____. Of course the beginnings of that trend are even seen in the 1929 letters when the By-Lo baby doll was all the rage! Each year there is the coveted IT toy. I still remember when the Cabbage Patch doll was so popular.

 

I don’t remember my own childhood desires, except one, and that was the one thing Santa couldn’t bring. I always wanted a sister! Perhaps God knew what I needed was to be the one and only girl.

 

Gary and I were talking about Christmas yesterday. We are at the age and stage of life where we really want very little. If we need something we usually find a way to buy it. So we have made a pact to buy each other small “token” gifts for Christmas and save our money for what we really want…another summer trip to the beach.  So nice when you can talk to your Santa in person! Lol

Hope you are planning to consult with Santa soon! And don’t forget to plan ahead for your community’s little ones who don’t get many presents.

(The dolls are part of a business I had years ago. Made dozens of these babies!)

 

My Own Backyard

 

I was drinking coffee this morning and being grateful for a restful night when I turned and saw this astounding sight. Now, I’m not going to say that I won’t be traveling around anymore to seek out photos, but honestly, could it get any better than this? When a heron just poses like this it seems like such a blessing!

 

I am feeling fine this morning and I think I can attribute my Friday night pains to the shoes I wore. When you are old and wearing out the tiniest changes can throw your body out of kilter! The shoes I wore on Friday were new and very flat and I think they put too much strain on my shins. I am very prone to leg cramps and that seemed to make them worse.

 

And yes, YES, I do know that the Peanut Shoppe is south of Calera, not north as I said in yesterday’s post. Did you not listen when I said I didn’t feel well? That included my mind. Lol

 

I watched some of the memorial program this morning. Of course we all remember where we were that day ten years ago. I was on the playground at Kingston and I remember thinking when I was told by another teacher about a plane crashing into the building that it must have been some poor private plane pilot who got off course or something. I felt so sorry for him. Then in a few minutes we knew the truth of the situation and we barely got through the rest of the day.

 

So much of our life has changed in those ten years! It is no wonder that our lives are measured and mourned and celebrated in decades. I couldn’t begin to list all of people who have come and gone and impacted our life in the last ten years, the number of changes that have occurred in our jobs and home, the experiences we have had since that fateful day. And yet we don’t forget the important people, the most significant things. They are there in our minds for the retrieving and the remembrance.

 

I hope today is a day of blessing and remembrance for you.

Expect the unexpected...

 

I woke up feeling awful. Didn’t sleep well last night because of leg pain and cramping. Didn’t feel like doing much of anything except returning to bed, but Gary and I were looking forward to going out to do something together besides shopping, so I dragged my body into gear with the help of coffee and Tylenol.

 

I’m not sure exactly what I expected to find at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge this morning but it was not dry grass and water almost a mile out of reach. I suppose I’m still a California girl at heart, so it never occurred to me to connect the drought to the refuge. And perhaps I thought subconsciously that it might be maintained more like a public garden or a zoo- that through irrigation or levies or sprinklers or something, a portion of the marshlands would be maintained for the animals. But no…most of it looked as dry as my front lawn and there were no waterfowl to be seen or to be photographed.

 

We were quite disappointed, but did stay to see the wonderful new visitor’s center. And it is truly an asset to the refuge. I only hope that fall and winter will see the return of the rain and the birds.

 

On the way home I at least accomplished something. I have been craving almond butter and have not found it in any local markets. I bought some at the Peanut Shoppe north of Calera. Worth the wait, and the price!

Did our usual grocery shopping at Walmart and saw my dad in the parking lot. We didn’t have time to chat much so he came by the house later. While we were talking I saw a monarch at the window! No, I didn’t get a photo, but I was very encouraged to at least see one. Later I saw two cattle egrets, three dragonflies, a dove, and a mockingbird- more wildlife than at the refuge! I should count my blessings.

And I have to digress back to my return from shopping. I’m a bit OCD about some things. (Okay, my girls can quit laughing.) I like to put all of my groceries away before I do anything else. But today I was so worn out by noon that I only put away the cold stuff, made a quick lunch, and then napped for an hour!

Even now I feel like part of me is still asleep, so I plan to go to bed early. Today was definitely not what I expected, so I’m not planning anything for tomorrow! lol

Saturday

 

Here is where I plan to be tomorrow! Hope I get some good photos.

Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge Super Second Saturday

This isn't over...

 

Gary was standing in the yard with the water hose in hand when I arrived home yesterday. Still trying to keep the trees alive. Cooler temperatures mean that less of our water is evaporating, but none has fallen from the sky yet, nor is any forecast soon.

 

The neighbor’s horses, mules and donkeys wandered down to the pond last night; or I should say what is left of their side of the pond. If you look at the fence across the water, you will see that what remains on their side is merely a big puddle.  One of the foals actually got stuck in the mud for a moment and I held my breath as his mom prepared to give him a shove. But he managed on his own and then stood on wobbly legs for a few minutes before following the herd back to the pasture.

 

As I turned from the fence I noticed a new fire burning north of us. Like many of my friends and neighbors, I have driven highway 48 this week and seen the devastation caused by last weekend’s fire, and marveled at its winding capricious path. It is even more amazing to contemplate the actions of the firefighters when you see how many times the fire leaped across the highway or came dangerously close to an occupied home. And the distance from the starting point to the spot where it was contained at the river is phenomenal. It is not difficult to imagine that it could have burned until it reached Durant!

 

I say all of this with an old woman’s sense of foreboding. Hunting season is upon us and there will be so many men and boys (and a few women and girls) out in the woods. I hope they are very, very, very cautious with their guns and fires and yes, with their drinking. I know that hunting is not the only activity that takes place out there. A fire during hunting season could mean the loss of lives and no sport is worth that.

 

So please be mindful of the fact that our drought is far from over. Fall may be on the calendar page this month, but don’t be lulled into thinking that everything is back to normal.  

Be safe today!