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IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN!

7/31/2017

JUST BECAUSE THE PAST DIDN'T TURN OUT LIKE YOU WANTED IT TO DOESN'T MEAN YOUR FUTURE CAN'T BE BETTER THAN YOU IMAGINED.

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On July 26th I reported that I had planted my pitiful little pumpkin patch. Yes, it was way too late in the season to try this project but I decided better late than never. After all, it is just an experiment this year. On the other hand, my Jenna had tossed Alec's Halloween pumpkin outside by her concrete patio . . . LAST YEAR! My plants are coming along okay, but nothing to write home about. Jenna's, on the other hand - again, have gone cray cray crazy! I am suspecting that the vines will begin encroaching into her neighbor's yard. And she did nothing special to start her "patch". She merely disposed of the used up pumpkin in her yard last year after the fall season was done. Too funny.

I am sure my farmer dad in heaven is looking down and shaking his head at me. I definitely did not inherit his talent for growing things. sigh He is probably giving Jen a big thumbs up. ;)

Anyhoo, almost every day I go and check on my plants to see what progress they have made overnight. Then something weird happened. Two days ago, I wandered around checking for any signs of blossoms that will eventually become pumpkins. And then I saw it.

There laid a large lump. I raced toward, hoping against hope that a miracle had occurred and things were looking up. Lo and behold it was a pumpkin! A big, beautiful, . . . wait a minute! It was purple . . . and glittery . . . and Styrofoam! My first thought was that I was growing a Disney movie type pumpkin. What had happened??????

THEN I remembered a similar situation. Remember on a previous post some time back, when I told the story about my beloved mother-in-law, Little Ma? Many years ago I tried planting a pumpkin patch behind one of our big buildings . . . in the shade. It also didn't help that I forgot to water the plants most of the time. Therefore, I was getting a really pitiful crop. Then I discovered a big, beautiful orange pumpkin nestled among the leaves. Later, I found out that Little Ma had taken pity on me and lugged this big specimen down the hill and put it in the patch. It was a ringer!!!!

So far, I have eliminated Jenna and Hubby as the culprit of this mystery. They have denied doing any mischief whatsoever. That only leaves one obvious suspect . . . sis-in-law Nina! It appears that she is more like her mother than I thought. History is repeating itself. The women in my family are truly wonderful, and a little nuts.

Today's quote sums it up. Maybe things won't turn out like I would like (a nice, big crop of pumpkins) but the purple ringer is almost better. It made a great memory. Thanks, Nina. (but watch your back, I will get back at ya).

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

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HUH?????

7/24/2017

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YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S AROUND THE CORNER. IT COULD BE EVERYTHING. OR IT COULD BE NOTHING. YOU KEEP PUTTING ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER AND THEN ONE DAY YOU LOOK BACK AND YOU'VE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN.

Tom Huddleston

Looking back on some of the posts of this blog make me ponder. Sometimes, I think "What the heck was I talking about?" or "Man, that doesn't even make much sense." Or "That was really dumb to write about." Or "I hope that helped someone feel better today." Whatever. But when I look back and see all the different things have happened over the last three years or so, I feel like I have definitely been putting one foot in front of the other to get where I am today.

I have no idea who you all are that read this post, but I figure you found out about it by word of mouth from someone you know. I don't have it listed on any list that describes what the general idea of it is ie: cancer survivor. That's what it started out to be . . . info on how things were going and keeping tabs on whether I was going to live or not. (Spoiler --- I lived). Sorry, a little dark humor there. Then it segued into a diary-like bunch of information about not much. Simple observations in the life of an average person.

What's interesting about this website is that they have a running stats page, to show me how many individual readers there are each day and also the amount of individual pages that were read. I am pleasantly pleased if I average 500 to 3,000 pages read per day. But, then I looked at the stats on July 18th and was surprised to see that it showed 65,366 read pages.

It's pretty obvious that this is an error, unless a whole bunch of people got on their computers and all of them had a marathon reading episode that day. Nah. Most likely a computer glitch at the website headquarters. Whatever. It was funny to see.

Anyhoo, thanks for hanging in there with me and reading my ramblings.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

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HAVING AN HGTV NIGHTMARE

7/20/2017

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MOVE ON! MOVE ON! DON'T LET ANY THING STOP YOU. GO ON AND MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.
Unknown

Things are beginning to roll on the Woodbridge Haven (WBH) project. I've never built anything brand new. My house was a tiny two bedroom many, many years ago when we moved in. Since then, we have expanded by renovating, but never, never have we taken on the task of something new from start to finish. Until now.

On HGTV you've seen how the contractor stars are redoing some old crappy place for a fresh-faced twenty-something couple who only have three or four hundred thousand to spend. (I'm being sarcastic there), and after the renovation begins, the contractors find out that the whole foundation needs to be replaced, or the wiring is totally shot and they are going to need a boatload of money to finish the project. I always found that so do-able on those shows, because it was always someone else's money and after all, that show is for entertainment. Right? But when you are on a strict budget, and you think everything has been tallied up, and the list of things you are getting in the building is written in stone you think you pretty much know how much cash is going to flow out. No changes are expected, no extra goodies are being included, just the basic final plan. X number of dollars. Think again.

A call from our builder informed us that we need to put frost footings around the big concrete pad along the front of the building, because the doors will swing out (building code calls for that), and if the frost heaves the pad, we won't be able to get the doors open. The original plan was to have the doors swing in. Okay. Sounds reasonable. Cha ching. Extra moolah. Then the building engineer says we need to have a side door off one of our special rooms, to allow for an additional exit. So we revised the plans, and made a window into a door. Cha ching! I don't know about you, but these two somewhat small changes that are costing a lot more than I thought, are a little disturbing. And I'm sure there will be more things that come up. Sigh. So be it. This building needs to be built. This building is going to be the headquarters for something important. It may be small, but who knows? This could be the beginning of something bigger than we ever dreamed. I refuse to think otherwise.

Anyway, I now feel more sympathetic toward those twenty-something fresh-faced couples who are finding out that their dream houses are gonna cost them a bunch more than they thought. All I can say is "Hang tough" and work hard to pay the mortgage!

NOTE: Did any of you notice that at the beginning of this post, I wrote the abbreviation for Woodbridge Have as WBH? Yup, that's us. I brought this odd fact up to my fellow board members. We had put a neat logo on our business cards and had WBH prominently displayed on it. I mentioned that I thought our name should be Wood Bridge Haven in order to have those initials make sense. I got voted down. It is our own little secret odd way of doing things. That's fine.

Okay. So I've tried to keep my mouth shut about all the political stuff that's been going on. I know if I say too much, I will offend half of you out there. But, again, things are getting really wonky in this country. Scary stuff. Every stinking day there is some major uproar. It seems like nothing is getting done in our government, except investigative committees being formed to check on almost everybody in the White House. And don't get me started on Mr. Trump's overseas visits. Oy Vey!!!! I cringed when I watched what was going on during these excursions. You can't make up this kind of stuff.

WARNING: Little J presents a little political cartoon. If you are worried that it will offend you, stop NOW! If you are sensitive about politics, remember I warned you.

Let's hope that this doesn't happen.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

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A BEAUTIFUL MIND

7/10/2017

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FOR BEING DIFFERENT, IT'S EASY. BUT TO BE UNIQUE, IT'S A COMPLICATED THING.

Lady Gaga

Okay, I just have a little something to share. No biggie. It's just something Jenna told me about Alec. I hope I can remember the details correctly, since I have a really poor memory anymore. Here goes.

Earlier this evening, Jenna remarked that Alec had a conversation with her this week-end. As many of you know, Alec is autistic and doesn't engage much in talking to others, other than scripting (speaking memorized lines) from various movies and TV shows. Anyhoo, Al mentioned to his mama that he had a beautiful mind. Jenna responded by telling him, yes, he did have a beautiful mind. She figured that he was getting that term from the movie, A BEAUTIFUL MIND.

Then she asked him what that meant when he was talking about himself. He said that John Nash (from the movie) could see numbers on the wall. I believe that in the show, it shows numbers floating in the air in front of John, depicting that he was constantly thinking about them and that his mind was completely filled with equations. Nash worked for the Pentagon to crack encrypted enemy telecommunications and he could automatically decipher the codes mentally. That's when Alec said his mind is filled with movies and magazines. It sounded like he was trying to tell Jenna that he sees words constantly and that is why he is always verbalizing that information. Interesting. I believe that his mind is pretty much always occupied by the words he has heard from all those movies. We know of several autistic kids that are obsessed with films, for some odd reason. I know there are times that he adapts what he wants to tell us by using lines of conversations that parallel what he is trying to tell us.

This afternoon, Al and I were in my office. I showed him a neat feature that I have on my computer which reads aloud what is displayed on the screen. Later I came back into the office, and he had typed a bunch of information on the screen and was listening to it.

He likes to watch YouTube (?) videos of kids talking about their movie collections. Then he memorizes exactly what the speaker has said. He sat down and quickly tapped out this page (and more) with the exact info from a YouTube video he had watched a while ago, so he could hear it read back to him. He thought it was cool! When it finished, he told me that he needed to "fix" it. He began to edit it, because he had "heard" the typo errors. ( I whited out the kid's name on the first line to respect his privacy).

Like I said, I hoped I could remember the details of what Jenna had told me a few hours ago, and all this info that Al typed was something he had heard quite a while ago. Go figure.

 GOD BLESS YOU ALL

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THE FOURTH AND BIRTHDAYS!

7/4/2017

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,HERE IS YOUR COUNTRY. CHERISH THESE NATURAL WONDERS, CHERISH THE NATURAL RESOURCES, CHERISH THE HISTORY, AND ROMANCE AS A SACRED HERITAGE, FOR YOUR CHILDREN AND YOUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN. DO NOT LET SELFISH MEN OR GREEDY INTERESTS SKIN YOUR COUNTRY OF ITS BEAUTY, ITS RICHES ,OR ITS ROMANCE.

Theodore Roosevelt

Happy Fourth of July. It's even more wonderful because the weather outside is amazing.

We already had a fantastic fireworks experience last night when one of our neighbors put on quite a display in his big backyard green space. Hubby, Alec, and I just sat on the deck and enjoyed it.

Remember that song that goes, "Real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July"? Well, I am a real live niece of my Uncle Everett Jack, who was born on the Fourth of July along with his twin brother, Ernie Junior., who is now deceased. Happy Birthday to Everett and Ernie.

Actually, there have been a bunch of birthdays in the family lately. Brother Ken (who I call Reverend Kenny) on June 8th, Alec on June 27th, Nina (my BFSILPIC - Best friend, sister-in-law, partner-in-crime) has two granddaughters born in June, and Big sister Karen whose day was June 30th. She turned mumble mumble mumble this year. Out of respect and love, I did not call Karen and sing Happy Birthday, like my other sisters. For some reason, Sandy and Judy insist on calling family members and screeching and wailing . . . I mean, singing . . . over the phone. (Don't tell them I said this, but they really aren't very good singers). shhhhh

Here is a snapshot of me and the sisters about 60 years ago! Top left (Sandy) Top right (Karen) Bottom right (Judy), and bottom left (me). The neighbor lady, Mildred Edler, had a bunch of kittens, and evidently we were having a good time playing with them.

The June 30th date also brings back memories of that terrible storm that whipped down on our little town in 2014 and really made a mess. Having no internet for a week or so was kinda nasty. No phone, no TV, and no computer. I think the pictures of the damage are under the July 2014 posts. Yup, three years have gone by.

Woodbridge Haven is going forth. The builder will start in September or early October. Lots of amazing people have been helping us plan our programs, work out our strategy for fund-raising (when the time is right), and deciding how the building is going to look. Hubby has done a ton of work cleaning the site. It looks so beautiful now.

Oh, and I got my pumpkin seeds planted. And they are coming up! I check on my babies everyday. Even if we just get a small amount this year, it will be okay. We will use them for decorating and yardscapes. But NEXT year, I plan on having a really sizable pumpkin patch to raise money for our cause.

All together . . . CAN WE DO IT? YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!!

NOTE: A friend of ours stopped by and told us that unfortunately, his mother has joined the "C' Club. She has three-stage breast cancer and it has traveled to other organs. Not good.

A few posts back, I mentioned that two women I know who had breast cancer, quit taking their meds that stop the development of estrogen, because of painful side effects. The purpose for the pills is to squelch the development of estrogen which is like fertilizer for cancer cells. Cancer feeds on it, and if a patient has any tiny little sparkles of bad cells floating around, this could stir things up again. In that recent post, I said that you just can't stop taking that med until your five years is up. Well . . . I stopped taking it. Just for two weeks. I was having severe pain in my legs. Literally, my thigh bones and leg muscles hurt so badly, that I had trouble walking. From the moment I got out of bed in the morning, I was toddling around, pain in every step. It got to the point where it was very hard to walk. So, I decided to stop taking the pills for a while. And my legs began to feel better. I had to concentrate on every step I took, to try and look like I was walking naturally, but it was still an effort to get around.

Then, after two weeks, I had a horrible dream in which I was crying and lamenting that my cancer had come back in full force, and I was wishing I could go back in time and continue the program that I had been on. If only I had another chance, maybe the cancer wouldn't have come back.

When I woke up, you had better believe that I popped one of my pills immediately. I'll let ya know how things work out.

Enjoy any fireworks you see tonight.

GOD BLESS YOU ALL

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IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN!

HUH?????

HAVING AN HGTV NIGHTMARE

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

THE FOURTH AND BIRTHDAYS!

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